EDITOR’S NOTE: Major League was on USA Up All Night on January 9, 1998.

David S. Ward wrote The Sting and Sleepless In Seattle, which makes me rethink that this is just a silly movie and made by people who maybe loved the game. He also directed King Ralph, Down Periscope and the sequel to this.

Rachel Phelps (Margaret Whitton) is a Vegas showgirl who came to Cleveland with the rich man she married. He dies, she’s stuck here with the team, but if they play poorly, she can move them anywhere. So she makes the Indians the worst team in baseball, yet one that comes together to become winners.

A few years ago, I wrote “Ten players on my movie All-Star team (yes, including the DH)” and pitcher Ricky Vaughn (Charlie Sheen), third baseman Roger Dorn (Corbin Bernsen), Center Fielder Willie “Mays” Hayes (Wesley Snipes), Manager Lou Brown (James Gammon), Clu Haywood (real life pitcher Pete Vuckovich), Right Fielder Pedro Cerrano (Dennis Haysbert, before he was the President) and Catcher Jake Taylor (Tom Berenger) all made the team.

I can’t believe I got this far before saying that the general manager of the team, Charlie Donovan, is Charles Cyphers, Sheriff Lee Brackett. And hey, Rene Russo is in it too.

Ward grew up in the Cleveland suburb of South Euclid, Ohio and said, “I figured I would never see the Indians win anything unless I wrote a movie where they did. That was the real genesis behind the movie.” But then the movie was shot in Milwaukee.

Throughout the movie, each win gets a piece of paper with a nude image of Phelps. However, in the original cut, she picked thewhole  team and was really on their side. Test audiences liked her better as a bad girl.

Could anyone really play? Well, Sheen pitched in high school and did steroids for two months, which gave him an 88 MPH fastball. And yeah, Bob Uecker really played. His line, “Just a bit outside,” has entered the words of nearly every baseball announcer.

Major League was made into and released as a video game, developed by Lenar and published by Irem, exclusively in Japan. That’s crazy!