Major League

Dir. David S. Ward. 1989, 106 mins. DCP. With Tom Berenger, Charlie Sheen, Corbin Bernsen, Margaret Whitton, James Gammon, Rene Russo, Bob Uecker, Wesley Snipes, Dennis Haysbert. When a former Las Vegas showgirl (Whitton) inherits the Cleveland Indians from her deceased husband, she deliberately assembles the worst possible team to sabotage attendance and trigger an escape clause in their contract with Cleveland, allowing the franchise to relocate to glitzier Miami. She hires Lou Brown (Gammon), a gravel-throated minor league skipper and part-time tire salesman, to preside over a motley crew of aging has-beens (Berenger, Bernsen) and Achilles-heeled rookies (Sheen, Snipes), who fail miserably before coming together to win over the city and even start winning games. Ward’s crowd-pleasing comedy was a box-office breakout and would prove an enduring touchstone within baseball culture. Its characters were a savvy amalgam of hardball types—the speedy runner who can’t hit, the big bopper who can’t hit a curveball, the veterans with brilliant minds but brittle bodies, and the fireballer reliever who can’t throw straight—that then became reference points for and inspired nicknames and ballpark singalongs (aka “Wild Thing”). More than three decades later, watching a baseball game entails somebody, at some point, referencing one of announcer Bob Uecker’s dryly understated one-liners.

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