Garra de Campeões

Major League was six years too early in its prophecy for success for the Cleveland Indians. I'm old enough to remember when they had a good team back in the Fifties. When I was just a small kid, large Municipal Stadium known without affection as mistake on the lake used to have 70,000 plus crowds because the Indians had such players as Bob Feller, Lou Boudreau, Joe Gordon, and Satchel Paige. But when that team went bad, the larger the stadium and they had the largest in baseball looked all the more empty.

Terry Pluto wrote a book on the history of the Indians failure called The Curse Of Colavito. In 1959 the Indians finished a respectable second to the White Sox in the pennant race that year with Casey Stengel's Yankees having an inexplicable bad season and a distant third. Rocky Colavito led the American League in home runs and he was the most popular fellow in Cleveland. He became one of a select group of Major Leaguers that year to hit four home-runs in one game. And he was traded to the Detroit Tigers for the batting champion, Harvey Kuenn. It was never the same for Cleveland.

Which takes us to the futile Indians of 1989 as futile in real life as they start on screen. The team comes into the possession of a new owner former showgirl Margaret Whitton. Her contract with the city specifies that if the team attendance dips below 700,000 for the season, she can move the team and she wants the warm sun of Miami instead of winters on the Cuyahoga River.

Building a winning team in baseball is a lot harder than what you see in Major League. But this collection of goofballs, misfits, and has beens actually get mad enough and start winning.

Major League has a nice collection of players playing ballplayers like veteran catcher Tom Berenger, narcissistic third baseman Corbin Bernsen, juvenile delinquent rookie pitcher Charlie Sheen known as Wild Thing for his lack of control, Wesley Snipes as center-fielder Willie Mays Hayes and Dennis Haysbert as a Santeria observing power hitter. It is the American League so Haysbert probably is the designated hitter. My favorite in the film is veteran manager James Gammon who pulls this collection together for a winning team.

Major League is a film for baseball and film fans it so nicely blends the interests. As for the Cleveland Indians when Municipal Stadium closed down and they got a new ballpark in Jacobs Field, they actually won a couple of pennants in 1995 and 1997. Of course the process to build the Indians wasn't half as entertaining as Major League is.

Let me preface this by saying I can't stand baseball; I find it to be one of the most boring sports out there. With that said, I love this film. It has a great "underdog" story, some genuine comedy, great characters, and heart. It's a minor film, but it's thoroughly entertaining. If more films could just be entertaining, I might go to the theater more often.

The heart of this film is the characters. We have the broken down veterans, the rookies, the love interest, the wise old coach, and the villain. These are rather cliched characters, but they are written and performed so well, you don't notice. Much of the humor arises out of character moments, which keeps it from becoming tired or dated.

Tom Berenger and Charlie Sheen were hot, coming off of the success of Platoon. Corbin Bernsen was enjoying fame on LA Law. Rene Russo and Wesley Snipes were relative unknowns who got a chance to shine. And then there's Bob Uecker! Uecker is the glue that brings everything together and he gets the best lines in the movie.

You can't go wrong with a film like this. Everything works well and a good time is had by all. Too bad the sequels forgot what made this a success.

This is one of the best baseball sports films ever made. Notg because it exactly depicts the tradition of baseball. Mainly because of a pitcher who can throw a ball at 96 mph at a guys head, a vodoo guy who doubts Jesus Christ's curve ball skills, and a guy named Willy Mayes Hayes who can run like haze but hit like s***. These are the original comedy things added to this great baseball film about the new owner of the Cleavland Indians who wants the team to finish dead last so she can sell the team. That is until the team (which includes Tom Berenger, Cornin Bernson, Charles Cyphers, Wesley Snipes and Charlie Sheen) changes all that. Incredibly funny, and it gets better with each viewing. My favorite moment, when Hays (played by a good newcomer named Wesley Snipes) finds out he made the Indians and just runs outside and goes (Owwwww, yes yes yes). A+

This is one of the cleverest predictable movies of all time, and for my taste the best baseball movie. A great cast, an underdog plot, and one memorable choice after another by the writers and director make this a valentine to the foot soldiers of our national pastime. (Remember, this was 15 years ago.)

The fabulous scoreboard, the hysterical radio play-by-play of Bob Uecker, even the motley occupants of Cleveland sports bars are irresistible hooks to reel us in, after we've been hooked by the motley team of colorful has-beens and never-were's. If this is a formula, it's the right one. I deeply love this movie, and regret not having seen it in its theatrical run. (I've seen it a dozen times since.) I'm sure the audience went wild during that climactic Yankees game! How about that Dorn making a bunch of clutch plays! Didn't you love Cerrano carrying his bat around the bases with him? Jake not dusting off, and pointing, twice...man, I wish I'd been there.

Then there's the little insert, early in the story, about Jake's fantasy of hitting the winning run out of the park. What happened instead when the chips were really down?

Okay, it isn't "poetry" -- it's more of a limerick, know what I mean? Just start with three words: "There once was...." and finish it yourself! I bet you'll finish with a big smile on your face!

There have been some excellent baseball movies made from Field of Dreams to The Pride of the Yankees, but no movie based on the national pastime can ever claim to be as hysterically funny as Major League. Granted, the value of the original was hurt by the second and third attempts at re-creating the atmosphere. Those two films were an embarrassment to all involved.

Major League, however, personified the attitude of "Nothing to lose". Aside from the easily identified woes of the Cleveland franchise of the late-eighties, there were several actors in this film that had yet to hit big or had started to fall from grace. The incredibly strong language of the movie only made it seem that much more realistic.