‘Major League’: The Cuyahoga Warriors of Milwaukee County Stadium
This article was written by Steve Kuehl
This article was published in From the Braves to the Brewers: Great Games and Exciting History at Milwaukee’s County Stadium (2016)
What is the best baseball movie ever made?
Most likely your mind jumps to a film like Bull Durham or Field of Dreams. So let’s rephrase the question.
What is the best baseball comedy ever made?
Again, most likely your mind jumps to a film like The Bad News Bears or The Sandlot. So, again, let’s rephrase the question.
What is the best baseball slapstick comedy ever made?
Now, hopefully Major League jumps to the top of the list.
Major League, which starred Charlie Sheen, Tom Berenger, Corbin Bernsen, and Wesley Snipes, etc., opened on April 7, 1989. It quickly rose to the top at the box office and is now one of the most beloved baseball films.
Baseball America, with the help of Gene Shalit, a panel of experts, staff members, and friends, set out to pick its 10 favorite baseball movies. Shalit helped determine two key criteria: The film must be worth watching 10 years after its release, and its characters must be interesting enough to be enjoyed by people who know nothing about baseball.
Baseball America rated Major League as the 10th best baseball movie. It wrote, “You’ll find just as many people who hate this movie as love it, but just about everyone who has seen it remembers it, which puts it ahead of most movies. While the story is cliché, the gags predictable and the characters two-dimensional, the movie is fun and the actors look like they can play.”1 The movies previously mentioned all ranked higher than Major League.
David S. Ward, a writer/director and longtime Indians fan from Ohio, wanted to make a baseball movie centered on the Cleveland Indians.
“I started to feel like the only way I would see the Indians win anything is if I made a movie where they did,” Ward said in 2014. “I realized it would have to be a comedy, because nobody would take this seriously.”2
This movie holds a special place in Milwaukee baseball fans’ hearts because parts of it were filmed at various locations in Milwaukee. If you watch the movie closely, there are subtleties that give this away.
Other than the opening scene of the film, few scenes were shot in Cleveland. It starts off by showing a number of popular landmarks in the city. The final game of the film attracted over 27,000 fans who wanted to be a part of it, fans who cheered loudly for the Indians. “We were all stunned that many people came out,” Ward said.3 They had to film the movie while the Brewers were out of town, since it was filmed during the season.
The film was shot in Milwaukee because it was cheaper and the producers were unable to work around the schedules of the Cleveland Indians and Cleveland Browns, although several exterior shots of Cleveland Municipal Stadium were used, including some aerial shots taken during an Indians game.
One of the biggest clues that the film was shot in Milwaukee might have been the hilarious Indians play-by-play announcer, Harry Doyle. Doyle was played by Bob Uecker. A Milwaukee native, Uecker played six seasons as a catcher for three major-league teams, then launched a three-decade-plus career as a Milwaukee baseball announcer. Hewas inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame in 2001, joining such baseball broadcasting luminaries as Vin Scully, Mel Allen, Red Barber, Ernie Harwell, and Jack Brickhouse, as well as other American icons such as Bob Hope, Jack Benny, Edward R. Murrow, and Orson Welles. Uecker has earned the Wisconsin Sportscaster of the Year award five times and was inducted into the Wisconsin Sports Hall of Fame in 1998.4
Some of Doyle’s most famous quotes from the film are:
- “Juuust a bit outside. He tried the corner and missed.” [After the ball was thrown several feet off the plate by Rick “Wild Thing” Vaughan.]
- “Ball four … ball eight … and Vaughn has walked the bases loaded on 12 consecutive pitches. How can these guys lay off pitches that close?”
- “This guy threw at his own kid in a father-son game.”
Even though Doyle did nothing to move the plot along, he is one of the film’s most memorable characters. He set the tone for every scene he was in and, in Wisconsin style, was drunk when the Indians stunk, but exuberant when the Indians were good. But he was not the only hint of Milwaukee flavor in the film. The stadium the Tribe played in oozed subtleties that only astute fans could catch.
Throughout the movie, County Stadium patrons will recognize the colors of the seats. They were split within each level: the lower rows bright red and the upper rows forest green.
Patrons might also notice that the soft blue outfield fence sported Milwaukee Brewers logos.
Also, logos for the Milwaukee NBC affiliate, WTMJ, can be found on the scoreboard. The Indians are also interviewed by a WTMJ reporter, which for the purpose of continuity in the film, was depicted as Cleveland’s NBC affiliate. WTMJ’s logo currently resides in the bottom left-hand corner of Miller Park’s scoreboard as part of the station’s sponsorship with the Brewers. Uecker does the play-by-play broadcasting for WTMJ.
Logos for Milwaukee-based Miller Lite can be found throughout the ballpark, specifically on the scoreboard. The brewery was a 2½-mile drive from the ballpark. Drinking a Miller product is a game-day ritual for many Milwaukee baseball fans. It was also a ritual for Doyle, as he was seen many times with a Miller Lite cup.
Finally, we come to the last County Stadium clue. Toward the end of the movie, in the scenes about the playoff game, if you look closely you will see some attendees wearing Quad/Graphics apparel. This is because many employees went to the filming as extras. Quad/Graphics was started in Sussex, Wisconsin, and became one the world’s largest printing firms, with more than 25,000 employees.
County Stadium was not the only Milwaukee venue that appeared in the film. A few scenes were shot at other popular locales in the city.
Toward the end of the movie, there is a scene in which a group of Indians fans are huddled around a horseshoe-shaped bar cheering for the Tribe while watching the game on TV. (It was the scene in which a punk-rock teenager hugs a stereotypical construction worker.) This scene was filmed at one of Milwaukee’s great eateries, 4th Base Restaurant. As its website states, “Established in 1977, 4th Base Restaurant was originally located underneath the Wisconsin Ave. viaduct near Miller Brewery, in what was then called ‘Piggsville.’ After a solid five years down in the valley, 4th Base was closed for about a year, and re-opened in its now National Ave. location. One of Milwaukee’s top hidden destinations, 4th Base is a must stop for any Brewer game, as well as a must try for any sports enthusiast and foodie.”5
The 4th Base Restaurant was not the only Milwaukee locale was used in the film. A scene in the middle of the film was shot at the Safe House Restaurant in Milwaukee. This scene features Rick Vaughan and Jake Taylor sitting around a table with a fan coming up to Vaughan asking him for his autograph. “David Baldwin opened the retro restaurant and house of espionage in 1966, capitalizing on the Cold War’s spy craze,” a restaurant historian said. “To enter the restaurant, you need to know the password, although we’re told that ‘Control’ has never turned away a hungry spy for not knowing the password. Once inside, you’ll see spy-holes, 2-way mirrors and a labyrinth of hidden passageways. One of the restaurant’s booths is actually a secret entrance to the social club next door. Make sure you order the signature cocktail, the Spytini. Bartenders send the shaker through 600 feet of tubing that passes through every room in the restaurant before landing back at the bar and being poured into your glass.”6
The next time you watch this film, see if you can catch all of these Milwaukee signatures.
A lifelong Tigers fan, STEVEN KUEHL was born in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, but now resides in Wisconsin with his wife, Kathleen, and Labrador retrievers Lola and Oliver. An assistant professor of mathematics and department chair at Silver Lake College in Manitowoc, Wisconsin, he has been published in the Baseball Research Journal: “The 20/30 Game Winner: An Endangered/Extinct Species” (2013). He has also worked on the recent SABR book project Tigers by the Tale: Fifty Great Games at the Corner of Michigan and Trumbull.
Notes
1 baseball-almanac.com/moviebat.shtml.
2 Mike Oz, “Major League turns 25 – here are 15 things you didn’t know about the movie,” Big League Stew, sports.yahoo.com/blogs/mlb-big-league-stew/-major-league–turns-25-%E2%80%94-here-are-15-things-you-didn-t-know-about-the-beloved-film-091540571.html.
3 Mike Oz.
6 Erica Walsh. “Extreme Restaurants,” Travel Channel, travelchannel.com/interests/food-and-drink/articles/extreme-restaurants.