How The Late, Great Bob Uecker Changed Baseball Movies Forever

When David S. Ward's "Major League" slid into multiplexes on April 7, 1989, a lot of people wrote it off as a pro baseball clone of the minor-league-set "Bull Durham." A wise veteran catcher (Tom Berenger) with bad knees looking down the barrel of a forced retirement? Check. A screwy rookie pitcher (Charlie Sheen) with a flamethrower for an arm and no semblance of control? Check. A superstitious slugger (Dennis Haysbert) who demands to sacrifice a live chicken to get him out of a hitting slump? Check.

The very existence of these familiar elements was enough for many of the nation's critics to dismiss "Major League" as a meatheaded comedy (Roger Ebert, who reviewed almost everything, skipped it entirely). Moviegoers did not concur. The film grossed $50 million in the U.S. on an $11 million budget, and earned an A- CinemaScore before turning into a home video/pay cable sensation. By the time the next baseball season rolled around, "Major League" was considered a full-fledged, off-color classic about America's pasttime (it's one of /Film's 30 best baseball movies of all time).

And this never would've happened had Ward not hired Bob Uecker to play the long-suffering, hard-drinking play-by-play man, Harry Doyle.

The only people who didn't consider Uecker perfect casting as the radio announcer for the team then known as the Cleveland Indians (the organization changed its name to the Guardians in 2021) were fans of the Milwaukee Brewers, who'd been listening to "Mr. Baseball" call games for their squad since 1971. But the former pro baseball player who once shared a dugout with Milwaukee Braves greats Hank Aaron and Warren Spahn was bigger than the city and far more than just a sports celebrity when he took on the role of Doyle. He was the star of many a Miller Lite commercial in the 1980s, and played the beloved TV dad George Owens in the long-running ABC sitcom "Mr. Belvedere." He was also a fixture on "The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson," where he built his reputation for being quick on his feet with the perfect quip.

There was nothing surprising about Uecker stealing scene after scene in "Major League," which may be why so many critics took the film for granted.

The hook of "Major League" is as familiar as those aforementioned gags. Margaret Whitton stars as a Las Vegas showgirl who inherits the notoriously lousy Cleveland baseball franchise from her late husband. Having no love for the depressed Midwestern city on Lake Erie or its famously nasty winters, she forces the team's front office to assemble a team of nobodies and has-beens whose poor performance will torpedo attendance and allow her to move the organization to Miami. Basically, it's "The Bad News Bears" with higher stakes. Predictably, this team of losers will pull together out of a sense of pride and wind up in a winner-takes-all game with their archrivals (in this case, the New York Yankees).

"Major League" works beautifully as a formula comedy about last-chance misfits, but even with first-rate performances from the entire ensemble, it'd play like a cookie-cutter studio programmer without Uecker. Though Ward does a fairly solid job of conveying how miserable it felt to be a Cleveland baseball fan in the 1980s (the opening credits scored to Randy Newman's "Burn On" is tremendously effective), the gallows sense of humor that allows die-hards to survive season after season of heartbreak and futility comes through loud and clear when Doyle and his colorless color man Monte are introduced during the opening day game. Uecker may be a Milwaukee native, but he's been around the game long enough to know that particular quality of self-deprecating malaise that's passed down from generation to generation in Cleveland. And in his first scene, he makes sure every single person in the audience feels it like they've been ruing the Rocky Colavito trade since they were born.

Uecker's Doyle is a liar by necessity. On the outside, he's a peppy play-by-play man who calls the game with eloquence and, despite his god-knows-how-many-years in the booth, a compelling capacity for surprise. A line drive to deep center still has that does-it-have-the-distance mystery for him. At least, it would if anyone on this lousy iteration of the Cleveland club could put sufficient lumber on the ball.

Instead, Doyle has to find fierce poetry in the first at-bat of Willie Mays Hays (Wesley Snipes), a total unknown who inexplicably turns an accidental dribbler to second base into a single. "Hey, here's a hot shot toward the hole," exclaims Doyle as the fielder charges the weakly struck ball. When Hays beats out the throw, Doyle breathlessly adds BS color to the play by saying, "Hey, give Rudy a credit for sacrificing his body on that racket. That guy's got a family to think about."

It's going to be that kind of season for Doyle because it's always been that kind of season. But he'll make it sound like professional baseball is being played here because his paycheck demands it. How does he stomach the horror? By pouring several fingers of Jack Daniels into a paper cup and lying some more. Doyle is dying inside, but he'll never let his ever dwindling band of listeners know it.

Uecker's best moment comes later in this game when he's confronted with the errant fastball terror of Sheen's Ricky "Wild Thing" Vaughn. When the rookie pitcher's first offering goes hurtling well out of the reach of Berenger's Jake Taylor, Doyle delivers the film's most quotable line: "Juuuuust a bit outside." It's a huge laugh line that drowns out the even funnier follow-up "He tried the corner and missed."

36 years later, sportscasters of all stripes still quote or paraphrase Doyle — and Uecker in general. But you can only get away with this kind of artful lying if you're the eyes of your listeners. It's a dying skill, one that had never been shared with sports fans before "Major League." Doyle was an incorrigible fabulist for the stupidly faithful. There's nobility in loving a team that gives you only heartache, and believing it'll all work out when it never, ever does. Bob Uecker, who passed away today at the age of 90, encouraged us to believe this because, deep down, I think he believed it, too.