Major League: Not quite, but good enough
Opening Day for the 2010 baseball season approaches, so let’s revisit one of the more popular baseball flicks out there. Flawed, but a must-watch for any fan.
Rating: 2 and a half stars (out of 4)
Major League doesn’t treat baseball with the same reverence that Bull Durham or Field of Dreams (or, for that matter, For Love of the Game) does, but it celebrates the quirkiness of those who play it. It embraces the oddities and idiosyncrasies of a group of players on a makeshift Cleveland Indians team, faltering only when it diverts from that path and devolves into a soppy love story.
The owner of the Indians, Ms. Phelps (Rachel Whitton) notices the team’s sagging attendance and decides to employ a most unusual strategy: because she can move the team to Florida if crowds drop below 10,000 a game, she wants to put the worst possible product on the field. To that end, she wipes the roster clean and invites a bunch of has-beens and never-weres the fans have never heard of to training camp: Jake Taylor (Tom Berenger), a broken down catcher; Roger Dorn (Corbin Bernsen), a self-obsessed third baseman with a decent bat and a glove made for a designated hitter; Pedro Cerrano (Dennis Haysbert), a voodoo-preaching defector from Cuba who devours fastballs and flails at anything else; Rick Vaughn (Charlie Sheen), who spent last season in the California Penal League; and Willie Mays Hayes (Wesley Snipes), who in his attempts to impersonate his namesake spends his spring training doing push-ups for trying—and failing—to hit every pitch he sees out of the park.
As is customary with comedies, the best and funniest scenes occur in its first half, as it follows these oddballs through spring training and the beginning of their season. I can’t help but crack up when I see Willie’s bed carted out onto the field in the middle of the night as punishment for showing up to camp uninvited, or when Vaughn takes the mound for the first time minus critical pieces of his uniform. (“We wear caps and sleeves at this level, son!”) When Dorn barely flinches at a groundball that goes past him, the manager tells him he’ll be joining Willie in physical education exercises with sit-ups, prompting Dorn to insist that his contract specifies that he’s not required to perform any calisthenics with which he’s not comfortable.
Pedro, however, is by far the most memorable character, whether he’s antagonizing a straight-arrow Christian teammate with his religious practices, demanding a live chicken be killed in order to break a curse (even though this does ape Bull Durham, which required the dismemberment of a live rooster for such a purpose), or hopelessly whiffing on curveballs. (He’s also the only one to survive the painful follow-up, Major League 2.) Props too for Bob Eucker’s announcer, who has memorable fun at the team’s expense. Early on, he peruses a box score and bemoans, “One hit? That’s all we got, one godammned hit?” and re-assures his partner that the tirade won’t cause problems because “no one’s listening anyway.” Later, when they start winning: “In case you haven’t noticed—and judging from the attendance, you haven’t—the Indians have started to win a few.”
The problem with this movie is that it runs out of steam about halfway through, as do a lot of decent comedies (Wedding Crashers, anyone?). Not knowing what to do, it reverts to familiar clichés: an underdog team that starts to win and believe in itself and a paper-thin love story you wouldn’t read to your dog. The latter features Jake’s attempts to win back an ex-flame (Rene Russo) he sees at a restaurant one day. All of these scenes are cringe-inducing, and it’s hard to not point out the narrative flaws. She swears that she’s marrying someone else and tells him to bug off, and then, boom, she attends a game, after which he follows her home and they sleep together. Once that’s out of the way, obviously the fiancée is too, and everyone can go home happy. Right. Just not the viewers.
Similarly, when the team begins to win, things get much less interesting. I’d much rather see Rick Vaughn plunking a guy after serving up a first-pitch grand slam after three consecutive walks than him striking out the side, especially when Indian victories mean the typical montage of inspired play (set to music, of course) that’s been around the block too much. Fortunately, the movie stays afloat when Ms. Phelps, fed up with the winning, makes their lives more and more uncomfortable—first to go are the jets (they take a bus to games in the spirit of minor leaguers), then the hot water in the locker room, and any other convenience she can deem a needless luxury. Sadly for her, though she can try to make her team bush-league, they play better with someone to root against; the movie’s most famous image involves them placing a statue of her in the locker room and removing one piece of her clothing for every win that puts them closer to the playoffs.
Because this movie isn’t as serious or intelligent as the aforementioned, it will never be ranked high in the pantheon of baseball movies, especially considering its dramatic flaws. Despite certain segments excelling, the turgid second half submerges it. But it takes a light-hearted approach to baseball and provides some hilarious moments without ever crossing the line and making the game a farce, which it could easily have done. In April or October, watch Bull Durham or Field of Dreams. In February, watch Major League.