Major League (1989)

*** out of ****

There are great baseball films out there (like “Field of Dreams” or “Bull Durham”), and there are heartwarming baseball films out there (like “The Natural” or “Rookie of the Year”). But there is only one baseball movie that I would say is really and truly “fun” - a baseball movie for baseball fans that makes you cheer, laugh and quote it over and over again.

That movie is 1989's “Major League”. From the opening scenes, which are played to the soulful Randy Newman classic “Burn On”, this is a film that if you don't like it, you just don't like fun.....

It's 1989 and the owner of the Cleveland Indians has passed away, leaving his ex-showgirl widow, Rachel Phelps (Margaret Whitton) with the ownership of the team. One problem – she absolutely hates Cleveland. They haven't made the playoffs in decades, they're still playing in dilapidated Municipal Stadium and low attendance makes profitability a real challenge. Miami has made her an offer to move the team there, and all she needs to do to be able to break the team's lease with Cleveland is draw less than 700,000 in fan attendance for the year. Desperate to get away from the “Mistake by the Lake”, she assembles a team she feels will be so awful that nobody will come to watch them. 

But nobody told the players that they're supposed to lose. Cue “great underdog story” music.....

An ensemble cast, with each character having their own unique storyline, makes this whole thing rock. Tom Berenger is central character Jake Taylor, a broken down former all-star catcher looking for one last shot at a winner. His ex-girlfriend (Rene Russo) is looking to move on from him, but he longs for one last chance. Charlie Sheen is Rick “Wild Thing” Vaughan, an ex-con with a 100 mile-per-hour fastball and few social graces. A very young Wesley Snipes plays speedy leadoff man Willie Mays Hayes, and Corbin Bersen is right at home as superstar jackass third baseman Roger Dorn.  

These players, along with a mishmash of similar characters, make for some really entertaining personality clashes. Like Christian pitcher Eddie Harris (Chelcie Ross) and his holy war with voodoo-practicing slugger Pedro Cerano (Dennis Haysbert). Even manager Lou Brown (James Gammon) is a misfit, seeming at first to care more about selling tires than managing a baseball team.

As the season goes on, the group starts to gel and make some progress. Then, after finding out that the plan was for them to be bad enough to finish last, they come together to try to win the whole thing. It's a fairly predictable, overly macho B-movie story told before, but this time it's told absolutely right. The baseball sequences are great, the cast is spectacular, and the direction and cinematography all get you caught right up in the action.

....and it has, for me, the greatest single sequence in any sports movie – in the last game of the season, when Rick “Wild Thing” Vaughan comes in from the bullpen..... I still grin and get caught right up in it every time I see it. It's a spine-tingler of a scene, especially for a baseball fan.

Laughs over the dialogue and situations are endless, the story is entertaining as hell and the characters are so likeable that you wish they were real so you could see more of them. “Major League” may not be the best sports movie ever made, but I can't imagine one that could be any more fun.