Major League (1989) on Netflix
The Cleveland Indians' new owner, Rachel Phelps, wants the club in Miami. The lease breaks if attendance falls, so she builds a roster of rookies and washed-up veterans.
- Netflix3.7/5
- IMDb7.3/1084,154 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes83%
Trailer
Plot summary
Rachel Phelps, a former Las Vegas showgirl, takes over the Cleveland Indians after her husband's death and wants the team in Miami. The lease with Cleveland can be broken if season attendance falls below a set figure, so she sets out to build a losing club, ordering executives to drop their players for rookies and washed-up veterans. She hires Lou Brown, who has spent 30 years managing the Toledo Mud Hens. Spring training in Tucson brings catcher Jake Taylor, whose knees are failing; third baseman Roger Dorn, who avoids injury; pitcher Eddie Harris, who doctors the ball; voodoo-practicing slugger Pedro Cerrano; fast but weak-hitting Willie Mays Hayes; and rookie pitcher Ricky Vaughn, whose fastball has no control.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Major League (1989)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The film was originally shot with a twist ending in which Whitton's character was revealed to have wanted the team to win all along, having personally scouted each member with flaws that hid their talent. It was changed after audience test scores showed viewers had grown to like her villainous form.
- Charlie Sheen, who played a high school baseball pitcher himself and whose own fastball topped out at 88 mph during filming, later admitted in 2011 that he had used steroids for nearly two months to boost his athletic performance for the role of Rick Vaughn.
- Writer-director David S. Ward, who grew up in the Cleveland suburb of South Euclid, said he made the film because it was the only way he'd ever see the real Cleveland Indians win anything in his lifetime.
- Real pitcher Mitch Williams earned the nickname "Wild Thing" the same year the film came out, and the Wrigley Field organist actually played the movie's "Wild Thing" theme when he entered games; years later with the Phillies, Williams started wearing uniform number 99, the same number worn by the film's Rick Vaughn.
- Team owner Rachel Phelps was loosely modeled on real-life Rams owner Georgia Frontiere, who took control of the team after her husband died in 1979 and later relocated the franchise to her hometown of St. Louis in 1995, similar to Phelps's fictional plan to move the Indians to Miami.
- Even though the story is set in Cleveland, most of it was shot in Milwaukee for cost and scheduling reasons, and one continuity slip left a Milwaukee TV station's call letters, WTMJ-TV, visible on the scoreboard sign in a supposedly Cleveland stadium.
- Pitcher Eddie Harris's habit of doctoring baseballs in the film was based on real major leaguer Gaylord Perry, who was known for illegally altering pitches with vaseline, spit or other substances.
