Blog Review: David S. Ward's Major League (1989)

Having grown up in a family where sports played no significant part in our daily lives, I have for several years now been working to fill in the gaps of my historical and cinematic baseball education. For the most part, I find the history of baseball fascinating, but baseball films seem to me to be hit and miss. In some cases, the "misses" are poorly made, contain a flaw in some element of casting or production, etc. In others -- perhaps in more than I realize -- the passage of time has rendered them opaque. To a degree, that is a statement on the films themselves though it is also a mark on me and my inability to see through a slower pace, less advanced visual effects, and other features to recognize what makes them truly excellent.

This being established, I came across Major League on Amazon Prime several months ago and decided to give it a try. Expecting a cheesy eighties flick chock full of young stars whose fame extended far beyond this movie, I was pleasantly surprised to find much, much more than I could have predicted.

For one, this film presents the world of baseball in a manner that is equal parts cheeky and respectful. Each scene, even the serious ones, contains some nugget of slapstick or sarcasm, and yet the film is fastidious in its representation of the look, sounds, and feel of major league baseball. From the locker room to the field to the fans to the booth, there is a sense that viewers are being treated to a little bit of all parts of the game.

Of course, Major League is hardly a documentary, but it succeeds in selling the viewer on the premise that every character on the team loves the game and thereby invites those of us who also love baseball to invest in this story. This characterization begins early in spring training as each player has his own approach to preparing for the possibility of the dreaded "red tag," a crimson mark placed in your locker if you're being sent to the minors. (Watching the Netflix documentary The Battered Bastards of Baseball (2014) a short time after this, it was difficult not to have this entire spring training sequence from Major League close in mind.)

Incredibly, the pacing and humor of Major League translate smoothly nearly thirty years on, most likely due in large part to the outstanding casting: Tom Berenger seeks one final playoff run in the majors as protagonist Jake Taylor; Wesley Snipes is electric as Willie Mays Hayes (and whose physicality plays for both humor and athleticism); Charlie Sheen becomes a hard-throwing local celebrity known as "Wild Thing" Vaughn; Dennis Haysbert strikes a balance between enigmatic and endearing as Cerrano; Corbin Bernsen is Dorn, a flawed but vital corner infielder; James Gammon is the quintessential no-nonsense baseball manager Lou Brown; and real-life Brewers broadcaster Bob Uecker as fictional Cleveland Indians announcer Harry Doyle is the voice of the team as well as the film. Are these characters all well-developed, fully fleshed-out individuals? Well, no. There are certainly archetypal structures throughout, but they never seem to matter. If you don't find yourself rooting for these players and this team as they make a run at 32 wins down the stretch, then perhaps you've never endured a losing season with your favorite team and reveled in the minor victories or indulged in an irrational hope that they could -- contrary to all sense -- go all the way.

CALL ON THE FIELD: Major League is a leadoff homer, still filled with punch and vivacity several decades after it was first released in theaters. Grab some popcorn, kick back, and enjoy the laughs.