As far as baseball movies go, Major League was definitely a grand slam.
The 1989 comedy featured a sweetheart season for a down-and-out Cleveland Indians filled
with lovably bonkers characters, friction between players and team executives, and a
lot of feel-good fun that still resonates with audiences decades after the fact.
Two sequels followed the original, and a third has been knocking around the ballpark for
ages.
Let's take a look back at the untold truth of Major League.
Winner takes all
Writer-director David Ward originally came up with his concept for Major League based
on his own personal love for the ballclub it featured.
The Cleveland Indians, who again lost out on a chance at the World Series title in 2016,
hadn't taken home a trophy since 1948.
So, Ward, a longtime fan, wanted to turn their luck around — even if it was just onscreen.
As he told Yahoo!
Sports, "I started to feel like the only way I would see the Indians win anything is if
I made a movie where they did.
I realized it would have to be a comedy because nobody would take this seriously."
Away game
Although the B-roll shots of Cleveland Municipal Stadium were filmed in the Rock and Roll Capital
of the World, most of the movie was made in another midwestern city: Milwaukee.
Yes, although it might seem like a bit of sports sacrilege for a movie about one ball
team to be shot on another's turf, much of Major League was filmed at Milwaukee County
Stadium, which was home to the Brewers.
Ward told ESPN that the reason for the shooting locale shift was that the Cleveland Browns,
the town's NFL team, was using the stadium at the time for their pre-season games, so
it was unfit for filming.
Talk about a foul ball.
Performance enhancement
Given his torpedo-like public profile in recent years, it might not seem too out of character
now for Charlie Sheen to have used performance-enhancing drugs to beef up for his part in this movie.
"Well, of course I'm on a drug.
It's called Charlie Sheen."
What might be surprising, though, is why.
Sheen told Sports Illustrated that he considers the sport of baseball "not just a hobby [but]
a religion" and that it's the only sport he cares about watching.
His favorite team was actually the Indians' rival, the Cincinnati Reds.
Meanwhile, he even played baseball in high school and was teetering on making it to the
big time at one point.
Taking steroids, Sheen revealed, made his fastball reach up to 85 miles per hour, but
it also made him a little testy when it came to criticism of Ricky Vaughn's signature hairdo.
The actor admitted that because he was so on edge from the drugs, he got into some scuffles
with bar patrons who made fun of his razed mane during off-time from the shoot.
Years later, people still consistently call him "Wild Thing," — though, maybe for different
reasons these days — and he even revived the character for Game 7 of the 2016 World
Series matchup between the Indians and the Chicago Cubs in hopes of bringing a little
luck on his on-screen team.
Dream team
While a lot of the actors had to attend baseball camp to prepare for their turns around the
diamond, some of the cast members came to the field with their own set of skills already
groomed.
Dennis Haysbert, for example, was such a good hitter that he actually did knock it out of
the park with those insane homers we saw on the big screen … and he didn't need Jobu
to do it, either.
"I say —— you Jobu, I do it myself."
Wesley Snipes, on the other hand, was exactly the opposite of his fast-running screen ego
WIllie Mays Hayes.
He's said to have been terrible at throwing, and couldn't nearly run as quickly as his
base-stealing counterpart.
Double switch
In Major League, the central villainess was Rachel Phelps, the blithe team owner who purposefully
assembled the ragtag ensemble in hopes of having them fail so she could move the organization
to another site.
"Here's to the thrill of defeat, Charlie."
In the end, the joke was on her once the team came together to win their division and secured
their standing in Cleveland by selling out seats at their hometown stadium.
However, there was an alternate ending in an early version of the movie that got booed
out of the theaters.
Originally, Rachel was supposed to have a scene that showed her as the not-evil mastermind
behind their runaway success who only acted mean to encourage the budget squad to exceed
all expectations of them.
Test audiences who saw the original cut, however, didn't like the turnabout and said that they
wanted her to stay bad because they'd gotten so used to hating her by the end.
Free agent
Long before he'd become a household name for playing anxiety-addled agent Ari Gold in HBO's
Entourage, Jeremy Piven was chopped completely out of Major League.
Piven was originally expected to appear as an insult-hurling benchwarmer for the team,
but his scenes were left on the cutting room floor.
We can certainly imagine what that would be like…
"Jesus Christ you all suck.
If I didn't have a 5 year lease on this place I'd shut it down and work out of a cardboard
box by myself!"
Double play
Although David Ward did return to helm the 1994 follow-up film Major League II, he doesn't
exactly consider the film to rank among his finest achievements.
He publicly panned the second pic, for which he didn't write the screenplay, as being "not
as good as the first one" and said that it "tried too hard to be funny."
Neither Ward nor Charlie Sheen were involved with the third installment, Back to the Minors.
They both hated the movie so much that neither of them even count it as a Major League movie
and widely refer to the sequel they're hoping will happen next as Major League 3.
The closer
Ward has written another installment to the Major League movie-verse that's said to be
set 20 years after the original events, after Wild Thing has already retired from the sport.
The character would be brought back to train a new generation phenom pitcher — who just
so happens to be his secret son.
Sheen has said that he's fully on board with the proposed project, that the script is definitely
winning and that it has only been delayed on account of studio rain … for now.
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