Major League (film)

Major League
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	David S. Ward
Written by	David S. Ward
Produced by	James G. Robinson Joe Roth Mark Rosenberg Chris Chesser Irby Smith
Starring	Tom Berenger Charlie Sheen Corbin Bernsen Rene Russo Wesley Snipes Chelcie Ross Dennis Haysbert Bob Uecker James Gammon
Music by	James Newton Howard
Production company	Morgan Creek Productions
Distributed by	Paramount Pictures
Release date	April 7, 1989
Running time	107 min.
Language	English
Budget	$11,000,000

Major League is a 1989 American satire comedy film written and directed by David S. Ward starring Tom Berenger, Charlie Sheen, Wesley Snipes, James Gammon, and Corbin Bernsen. Made for US$11 million, Major League grossed nearly US$50 million in domestic release. The film deals with the exploits of a fictionalized version of the Cleveland Indians baseball team and spawned two sequels (Major League II and Major League: Back to the Minors, which were released by Warner Bros.), neither of which replicated the success of the original film.

Plot

Rachel Phelps, a former Las Vegas showgirl, has inherited the Cleveland Indians baseball team from her deceased husband. She wants to move the team to the warmer climate of Miami. In order to do this, she must reduce attendance at Municipal Stadium below a total of 800,000 ticket sales which will trigger an escape clause in the team's lease with the city of Cleveland. After she moves the team, she would also be able to release all the current players and replace them with new ones. She instructs her new General Manager Charlie Donovan to hire the worst team possible from a list she has already prepared. The list includes veteran catcher Jake Taylor, who has problems with his knees, and was last playing in Mexico, incarcerated pitcher Rick Vaughn, the brash but speedy center fielder Willie "Mays" Hayes (who was not invited to camp), power hitting outfielder Pedro Cerrano, who practices voodoo to try to help him hit curve balls, veteran pitcher Eddie Harris, who lacks a strong throwing arm and is forced to doctor his pitches, and third baseman Roger Dorn, who is already under contract but is a high-priced prima donna. As manager, Phelps hires Lou Brown, a tire salesman who "has managed the Toledo Mud Hens for the last 30 years".

Spring training in Tucson, Arizona reveals several problems with the newer players. Vaughn has an incredible fastball but lacks control. Hayes is able to run the bases quickly but hits only pop flies, and while Cerrano has tremendous power he cannot hit a curveball. The veterans have their own problems, as Dorn refuses to aggressively field ground balls, afraid that potential injuries will damage his upcoming contract negotiations. On the final day when Brown is to cut the team down to 25 players, Dorn plays a practical joke on Vaughn making him believe he was cut. After the team returns to Cleveland for their opening game, Taylor takes Vaughn and Hayes out to dinner but comes across his ex-girlfriend Lynn who is dining with her current beau. Taylor believes he can try to win her love again but is disappointed to hear that she is already engaged.

The Indians' season starts off poorly with Vaughn's initial pitching appearances ending in disaster, his wild pitches earning him the derogatory title "Wild Thing." Brown discovers that Vaughn's eyesight is poor and once Vaughn is given glasses he becomes very accurate and "Wild Thing" becomes Vaughn's nickname, even using the song of the same name as his theme music on walks from the bullpen. The team begins winning and are able to bring their win-loss percentage to .400. Phelps realizes this is not bad enough to stall attendance and decides to remove luxuries the team has, such as replacing their airplane with a bus. However, these changes do not affect the Indians' performance and the team continues to improve. Donovan reveals Phelps's plan to Brown who then relays the same news to the players, telling them that if the team plays too well for Phelps to void the lease, she will bring in worse players who will. Taylor says that, since they have nothing to lose, the team should get back at Phelps by winning the pennant. Brown gives the team an incentive by removing one portion of a dress on a cardboard cut-out model of Phelps taken during her showgirl days for every win the team achieves. The team plays very well down the stretch of the season, and eventually clinch a tie for the division by beating the Chicago White Sox on the last game of the season. This forces a one-game playoff with the division's co-leaders, the New York Yankees. Prior to the playoff, Taylor continues to try to woo Lynn back and they share a night together. Vaughn learns that he will not be the starting pitcher for the game and goes to a bar to mope. Suzanne Dorn, after seeing her husband during a television broadcast leave the team's hotel lobby with another woman, lures Vaughn to sleep with her. Vaughn became aware of who she was when she told him shortly before leaving Vaughn and Taylor's apartment the next morning.

Based on Taylor's advice, Vaughn keeps his distance from Dorn for most of the game by staying in the bullpen. The game remains scoreless until the seventh inning when Harris gives up two runs. Cerrano comes to the plate in the bottom of the seventh and misses badly on two curveballs. He angrily threatens to give up his loyalty to the voodoo gods, and hits a two-run home run off a curveball on the next pitch to tie the game. In an ironic twist, it is Harris (a seemingly devout Christian) who places Cerrano's voodoo doll Jo-bu at his side while warming up. At the top of the ninth, the Yankees are able to load the bases and Vaughn is called in, the crowd roaring their excitement over "Wild Thing." Vaughn and Taylor are concerned when Dorn comes over to the pitcher's mound but he only gives Vaughn sound advice for pitching to the next batter. Vaughn is able to strike out the Yankee's best batter in three straight pitches and end the inning.

With two outs in the bottom of the ninth, Hayes manages to single to first and subsequently steals second. Taylor is next to bat, and after signaling back and forth with Brown, points to the bleachers, calling his shot. However, Taylor bunts instead, catching the Yankees infield off-guard. Despite his weak knees, Taylor get to the first base safely. Hayes, knowing that the infield is focused on catching Taylor at the first base, clears the third base and goes for the home, catching the Yankees off guard again. Hayes slides safe into home, giving the Indians the win. As the team celebrates, Dorn punches Vaughn in the face but then helps him up to continue the celebration, while Jake finds Lynn in the stands, who raises her left hand to show that she is no longer wearing an engagement ring, indicating that she wishes to be with him.

Alternate ending

The theatrical release's ending includes Rachel Phelps, apparently unable to move the team because of increased attendance, angry and disappointed about the team's success. An alternate ending on the "Wild Thing Edition" DVD shows a very different characterization of Phelps. Lou tenders his resignation and tells Phelps that he can't in good conscience work for her after she sought to sabotage the team for her own personal gain. Phelps then tells him that she never intended to move the team; when she inherited the club from her late husband, it was on the brink of bankruptcy. Unable to afford top flight players, she decided to take a chance on unproven players from the lower leagues, whom she personally scouted, and talented older players who were generally considered washed up. She tells Lou that she likewise felt that he was the right manager to bring the ragtag group together.

Phelps made up the Miami scheme and adopted a catty, vindictive persona to unify and motivate the team. As the players believed that she wanted the Indians to fail, she was able to conceal that the team could not afford basic amenities such as chartered jet travel behind a veil of taking them away to spite the players.

Lou does not resign, and Phelps reasserts her authority by saying that if he shares any part of their conversation with anyone, she will fire him.

Producers said that while the twist ending worked as a resolution of the plot, they scrapped it because test screening audiences preferred the Phelps character as a villain.

Casting

Major League was notable for featuring several actors who would go on to stardom: Wesley Snipes and Rene Russo were relative unknowns before the movie was released, while Dennis Haysbert remained best known as Pedro Cerrano until he portrayed US President David Palmer on the television series 24.

The film also featured former Major League players, including 1982 American League Cy Young Award winner Pete Vuckovich as Yankees first baseman Clu Haywood, former Brewers pitcher Willie Mueller as the Yankees pitcher known as "The Duke", and former Los Angeles Dodgers catcher Steve Yeager as third-base coach Duke Temple. Former catcher and longtime Milwaukee Brewers broadcaster Bob Uecker played the Indians' broadcaster Harry Doyle. The names of several crewmembers were also used for peripheral players.

Charlie Sheen himself was a pitcher on his high school's baseball team. At the time of filming Major League, his own fastball topped out at 85 miles per hour. His delivery in Major League is frequently noted as far more realistic than others depicted in films.

This movie reunited Sheen and Tom Berrenger, who starred together in the film Platoon.

Background

The film's opening montage is a series of somber blue-collar images of the Cleveland landscape synchronized to the score of Randy Newman's melancholy "Burn On": an ode to the infamous night in Cleveland when the heavily polluted Cuyahoga River caught fire. The filmmakers chose the Cleveland Indians as their example of a notorious losing franchise because the actual Indians had a very similar history of futility—the franchise was the butt of many jokes and fit in perfectly with the premise of the film.

While it is not known if there was any inspiration taken from this source, the attempt by an owner to manipulate a roster to create the worst team possible actually was done with a Cleveland baseball team, in 1899, when Frank Robison, then owner of the National League's Cleveland Spiders, sent almost all of the Spiders' major league caliber players to another team he had simultaneously purchased (owning more than one franchise was allowed in baseball at this time) and thus left the Spiders as effectively a minor league team for the season. It was apparently an act of revenge against the fans of Cleveland after several seasons of falling attendance figures. There was no storybook poetic justice ending to the real life version, however. The 1899 Cleveland Spiders finished 20-134, the worst single season record in baseball history.

Within five years of the film's release, however, the real life Indians had a new stadium (Jacobs Field, now Progressive Field) and had entered into a period of success. From 1995 to 1999, they won five division titles (with two more in 2001 and 2007) and two American League pennants. The Indians lost the 1995 World Series to the Atlanta Braves in six games, and they came within one out of winning the 1997 World Series against the Florida Marlins, but ultimately fell in extra innings in Game 7.

Despite being set in Cleveland, the film was principally shot in Milwaukee because it was cheaper and the producers were unable to work around the schedules of the Cleveland Indians and Cleveland Browns. Milwaukee County Stadium, then the home of the Brewers, doubles as Cleveland Municipal Stadium for the film, although several exterior shots of Municipal Stadium were used, including some aerial shots taken during a rare sellout game. Both facilities have since been demolished: the playing field of County Stadium is now a Little League baseball field known as Helfaer Field, while the rest of the former site is now a parking lot for the Brewers' new home, Miller Park; the new Cleveland Browns Stadium, a football-only facility owned by the City of Cleveland and used by the Browns, sits on the site of its predecessor.

Life imitated art in the 2007 season, when continuous snowfall and cold led Major League Baseball to transfer an entire three-game series between the Indians and the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, including the Indians' home opener, to Miller Park, forcing the real-life Indians to play three "home games" in Milwaukee. When Cleveland closing pitcher Joe Borowski entered in the ninth inning of the first game of the series, "Wild Thing" was played in the stadium, much to the delight of the 19,031 fans in attendance, as a tribute to the situation.[1] In a bizarre coincidence, this game was originally scheduled to be Rick Vaughn Glasses Night in Cleveland.

Life imitates art

In the film's climactic one-game playoff with the Yankees, Ricky Vaughn, relegated to a relief role, dramatically enters the game to a cover of the The Troggs' hit song "Wild Thing" as the crowd cheers wildly and sings along. Today many real-life closers walk or run in from the bullpen accompanied by loud and imposing hard rock or heavy metal music.

Relief pitcher Mitch Williams, whose speed and control problems were similar to Vaughn's, was nicknamed "Wild Thing" after the film came out. Instead of fighting the image, he switched his uniform number from 28 to Vaughn's 99, and wore it for the rest of his career. According to an interview on the Dan Patrick radio show on October 10, 2008, the number change had nothing to do with the movie Major League. Williams said he had wanted the number 99 for years because of an admiration for the football player Mark Gastineau, who also wore number 99. Williams said that he didn't change his number until 1993 because that was his first chance to get it.

Corbin Bernsen, who played Indians third baseman Roger Dorn, stated in interviews relating to the film (including those for ESPN Classic's Reel Classics series) that Major League had an indirect effect on the real-life Indians, as the Tribe became perennial playoff contenders within five years of the film's release. Since 1994, Cleveland won seven American League Central Division titles (1995-1999, 2001, and 2007), two American League championships (1995 and 1997), and made two World Series appearances (the 1995 loss to the Braves, and the 1997 loss to the Marlins).

During the beginning of the 2006 season, Boston Red Sox pitcher Jonathan Papelbon donned a haircut similar to that of Rick Vaughn's from the movie. Although Papelbon sported a mostly shaved head with a mohawk, he had a "zig zag" pattern in the back, beginning behind the ears and leading down to this neck. He reportedly won a friendly bet with teammate Kevin Youkilis, and in doing so, was forced to cut his hair. Even though he no longer resembled Rick Vaughn, Papelbon continued to enter home games from the bullpen to "Wild Thing" blaring from the Fenway Park sound system, until "I'm Shipping Up to Boston" became his entrance song. In 2008, Papelbon regained the theme music, using "Wild Thing" as his entrance song while running to the mound and using "I'm Shipping Up to Boston" by the Dropkick Murphys once he got there and started throwing his warm up pitches.

To this day, the Indians embrace the Major League franchise as part of their history. On June 15, 2009, the Cleveland Indians held "Rick Vaughn Bobblehead Night" at Progressive Field, giving away a doll based on the Charlie Sheen character. They played the Milwaukee Brewers, for whom Bob Uecker still calls games. Bob Uecker threw out the first pitch.

External links

• Major League at IMDb
• Major League at Rotten Tomatoes
• Major League at Box Office Mojo
• DVDTalk.com Review of "Major League - Wild Thing Edition"