Ward’s Dream Put ‘Major League’ Underdogs on Top

“One of the biggest disappointments of my young life was when the Cleveland Indians lost the World Series to the Giants,” said screenwriter David Ward, who was 9 and living in Cleveland when the Indians blew their last chance in 1954.

“It taught me that things don’t always happen the way you think they should,” he said. “It was a real crusher to me.”

Ward, who won a screenwriting Oscar for “The Sting,” has had his own disappointments.

He wrote and directed “Cannery Row,” starring Nick Nolte and Debra Winger, and wrote the adaptation for Robert Redford’s “The Milagro Beanfield War.” Neither was a commercial or critical success.

His fascination for the game of baseball and his affection for the Indians persisted, along with his desire to write and direct a movie with major stars that would do big business at the box office.

Ward said he wrote “Major League” without studio backing five years ago. “I followed (the Indians) over the years,” Ward said, “hoping they would return to glory. Thirty-four years later, they still haven’t won anything. I wanted to do a film about an underdog team and I can’t think of a more underdog team than Cleveland.”

This time out--with full cooperation of the Cleveland Indians franchise, which approved the script, and former baseball commissioner Peter Ueberroth--the Indians would win.

“This is a story of personal and team redemption,” said Ward, who wanted his contemporary comedy about something “so quintessentially American” to look and feel like real baseball--”The Not So Magnificent Seven.” In spite of the spate of baseball movies in release and in production and the success of “Bull Durham,” which had a similar storyline, Ward pressed for financing and a start date.

“I was a little concerned about (the other baseball movies), but they’re different enough,” Ward said. “I wanted to do a contemporary comedy about major league ball. In writing the script, which is about American values, I tried to figure out what is American. Baseball is a game we invented. We have a proprietary interest in it. We feel like it’s our game. Baseball was a part of my social fabric. (The ball park) was a place to be with friends, to hang out.”

Ward’s love of baseball and affection for an American tale of redemption was shared by Chris Chesser, a lifelong baseball fan and former New York-based film distributor. Now an independent producer in Los Angeles, he shares producer credit on “Major League” with Irby Smith.

Chesser grew up two blocks from the Cleveland Indians’ spring training field in Tucson, home of the Tucson Toros. Chesser, who is collaborating with Ward on film and television projects, was equally committed to a contemporary comedy about the underdog team he knew so well coming up a winner.

And Chesser thinks “Major League” has “blockbuster potential” in spring release, in spite of the competition.

“This is not ‘War and Peace,’ ” Chesser said, “it’s a comedy with great dialogue that is extremely well executed.”

“Major League” is a surprise box-office hit for a baseball film. It has been America’s most popular movie during its two weeks in release, taking in more than $20 million.

Ward said it was important to him that the audience feel a part of what is happening on screen in “Major League.”

“Other baseball movies used baseball in the background, or in a very unrealistic way,” he said.

“The plot mechanics are ridiculous. The actors couldn’t play baseball. A lot of it lacked credibility. It has to be realistic. . . . It’s very important to me to have it look and feel like real major league baseball.”

“Miami Vice” production designer Jeffrey Howard was hired to give the picture visual wit and sparkle. And director of photography Reynaldo Villalobos, who shot the hits “Risky Business” and “Urban Cowboy,” was signed on, partly because of his experience as a cameraman for “ABC Wide World of Sports” in the ‘70s.

The project was a challenge that held the promise of redemption, of a sort, for each of “Major League’s” three stars, who said the movie allowed them to play out a childhood fantasy as well as prove something in the adult world of moviemaking.

Charlie Sheen, who plays a pitcher who steals cars in the off-season, sees his role as a larger-than-life portrait of the artist as reckless young man.

“I’m the most intense man on the team,” Sheen said, but “Major League” is a comedy, so “there is less pressure on me as an actor. I (got) to show up on the set and laugh. It’s different. It’s light. I have done something finally that is a correlation of my dreams and my current profession.”

Sheen apparently had a pretty good fastball of his own when he was playing ball at Santa Monica High School. He said he was offered a baseball scholarship to the University of Kansas, but he was tempted away from college by a role in “Grizzly II, The Predator” a few days after graduation.

“I don’t regret not continuing with baseball,” Sheen said, “but I’ll always wonder.”

Knowing he still had a good fast ball--clocked at more than 80 m.p.h.--and wanting to see it on film, Sheen signed up for “Major League,” a film that reunites him with his “Platoon” co-star Tom Berenger.

Berenger plays the team’s Wise Man, an over-the-hill catcher who counsels Sheen and pulls the team together in their last bid for glory. He trained for the role with technical adviser Steve Yeager, the ex-Dodger catcher who retired in 1987 and now sells cars in Sherman Oaks.

In spite of earlier injuries that made training painful, Berenger said he proved to himself that he could stretch his hamstrings, make his knees work and catch like a pro. With his left hip and knee broken in a car accident a few years ago, doing physical roles is “not as easy as it used to be,” Berenger said, but Yeager wouldn’t let him quit until he was done, and he wouldn’t stop until it was right.

Corbin Bernsen cut short a vacation in Rome with Amanda Pays and commuted between Los Angeles and Tucson to take the role of Dorn, written as Beck, which he felt sounded a little too much like Arnie Becker, his “L.A. Law” persona.

He was completing work on “Bert Rigby, You’re a Fool” for director Carl Reiner, but showed up on the Tucson playing field with his own Dodgers gear, soon replaced with Indians gear, and a special request.

Although his baseball character wears an ascot and carries a briefcase, Bernsen didn’t want Beck to be confused with his work on “L.A. Law.”

Ward agreed to change the name from Beck to Dorn, but similarities in the vain, womanizing character remain.

Even so, Bernsen said he hoped “Major League” would help pull him out of the minors.

“I know these are name movie actors,” he said, but I hope they saw the possibility in this movie for an ensemble film . . . I hope I’ll get to the point where it’s my name that’s the bankability factor.”

He is always looking for ways to show what is behind his blue eyes and easy charm.

“I like to create a character that will make you say, ‘Yeah, blue eyes, nice haircut. Nice car. What? Oh, I see. . . .”

With “Major League,” Bernsen said, “I think people will start to see I can do other things.”