Major League Wrong?

Here at The Sports Riot! we are not just here to entertain you with humor, sarcasm, and the occasional actual sports fact.  We care about your health as well.  A dead reader isn’t a good reader.  So before I get started, I want to give you a little PSA (Public Service Announcement kids), for you all to ponder.

I’m currently on Day Three on my goal to quit smoking, so bare this in mind if I appear a bit all over the place.  I had four cigarettes on Monday, less than three on Tuesday (I clipped one), and at the time of this writing, zero on Wednesday.  As a smoker who lit up a pack to a pack and a half a day for the last 18 years, it’s a bitch to quit.  I’m going through mental and physical withdrawal.  I’m feeling shaky, to having coughing fits where I learned there are colors in my lungs I didn’t know existed (I know ladies, sexy right?),  to my mind being in 17 places as one (and that’s on top of my A.D.D).

Why quit you ask?  Aside from the various health risks, I realized I didn’t want to wake up one morning looking like Jim Leyland or John Daly.  I personally blame Denis Leary for my addiction to nicotine.  He looked pretty cool in No Cure for Cancer.  But after smoking and knowing he’s a Red Sox fan, I’m not sure if we can be friends again (Denis, I kid, you know I love you).

So remember kids, just because Keith Hernandez smoked doesn’t mean you need to.

Okay, enough of The Jay Show and his nicotine addiction, let’s look at some other things.

The finishing touches are currently being made on the script for Major League 4, the obvious fourth installment of the Major League franchise, which I don’t quite understand.  Hasn’t this franchise been bastard-ized enough?

The original Major League is one of my favorite sports movies, which for a slapstick comedy featured a strong cast of leads.  Led by catcher Jake Taylor (played by Tom Berenger), he got a bunch of nobodies and has-beens to rally together (in the funniest way possible), to save the Cleveland Indians franchise from relocation and stick it to a bitch of an owner.

This sports comedic gem has an outstanding cast which featured Berenger, Wesley Snipes (outfielder Willie Mays Hayes), Corbin Bernsen (washed up third baseman Roger Dorn), Rene Russo (Taylor’s love interest Lynn Wells), Bob Uecker (alcoholic announcer Harry Doyle), Dennis Haysbert (practitioner of voodoo and outfielder Pedro Cerrano), and the ever so stable Charlie Sheen (ex-con and pitcher Ricky Vaughn), and features a couple of my favorite cinematic lines (my favorite being “You may run like Hayes but you hit like shit”).

The movie is money and if you haven’t seen it, you might be my a-hole of the week, so do yourself and favor and order it on Netflix.

While I personally thought Major League stood out by itself (they never made a Slapshot 2. Okay they technically did but it was a documentary about the making of Slapshot), I wasn’t opposed to the idea of a Major League 2. 

In this sub-par sequel, the Indians are World Series favorites, but they forgot their roots.  They all have become cocky and complacent.  The main core of the cast returns (with the exception of Snipes, he was replaced by Omar Epps), and some changes are made.  Taylor is now the manager of the club and Jack Parkman (played by David Keith), is the new all-star catcher, and Dorn is now the owner of the franchise (do you see the wheels slowly loosening here?).  Predictably Parkman doesn’t get along with his teammates and is traded for “kooky” Japanese outfielder,  Isuro “Kamikaze” Tanaka (played by Takaaki Ishibashi).  Eventually the team rallies together (again), to defeat the Chicago White Sox (with Parkman making the final out), and advance to the World Series.

Heartwarming isn’t it?

Major League 3: Back to the minors is when the wheels totally fell off.  The only original cast from the first movie is Dorn (now the owner of the Minnesota Twins), Doyle (now a minor league announcer), and Cerrano (who is now a minor league outfielder).  Brought back from the second movie was “Kamikaze” (now also a minor league outfielder).  The key additions for this train wreck is Scott Bakula (manager Gus Cantrell), and Ted McGinley (manager of the Twins Leonard Huff).  The cast essentially looked more like a Lifetime Movie of the Week than a sports comedy (which with the exception of drug abuse or domestic violence it might have been.  There was nothing funny about this piece of trash and was about equally as entertaining as a Lifetime flick).

The plot of this abomination goes as follows.  Dorn, owner of the Twins, recruits failed minor league pitcher, Cantrell, to manage the South Carolina Buzz, the Twins AAA affiliate.  As expected it’s a team full of losers (one of the outfielders was a ballerina), but Cantrell was determined to make them a winner.  After getting in a pissing contest with Huff over dinner, Cantrell challenges the Twins to a scrimmage.  You know how this one ends.  Obviously the Buzz win and the Twins go to the locker room to cry into their beers.

Never ever waste your time on seeing this movie.  You will finish it feeling dumber.

Which brings me to Major League 4… 

While production has yet to start, the movie will star Sheen, bringing back his character as Ricky Vaughn.  It’s also rumored that Berenger will return as Jake Taylor, Snipes will return as Willie Mays Hayes (although isn’t he in prison?), and Haysbert will return as Pedro Cerrano.  One missing key player in this movie is there’s no return of Roger Dorn (maybe its Bernsen’s punishment for agreeing to star in Major League 3).

The lack of Bernsen in the cast apparently has Sheen’s panties in a bunch because he wants his buddy to be in the flick.  It’s also rumored he’s threatened to back out and there won’t be a movie (which probably wouldn’t be a bad thing).

Hey Charlie, I know you’re reading this, so put down the coke straw and listen up.  Take the sand out of your vagina, focus on pornstar vagina, and do your job.  Or quit and go back to Two and a Half Men (celebrities on power trips piss me off).

Anyway…  The rumored plot is that Sheen rejoins the Indians as a coach to mentor a 19 year old pitcher who is struggling.  I’m assuming in true realistic fashion Snipes and Haysbert join him and Berenger as coaches.  Yeah, this idea has Academy Award written all over it.

I personally have a few ideas for better plots:

-          Sheen and the boys all live in a retirement home in Boca and Snipes gets into a beef with a fella from a rival retirement home at the early bird Ponderosa buffet.  Instead of taking it outside, they handle it like men.  On the diamond.

-          Omar Epps makes a surprising return forcing the gang to figure out who is the Real Willie Mays Hayes.

-          Instead of baseball, the focus on their post baseball careers.  One guy is an alcohol fueled womanizer, one is in prison for tax evasion, one is doing insurance commercials, and one vanished from the spotlight (ok, maybe that’s too close to home).

-          Dorn, now the owner of a shipping company, is being held hostage by Somali pirates.  It’s up to the gang to track him down.

-          They all die in a plane crash.  It’s a sports themed La bamba.   

The making of a Major League 4 is clearly a bad idea.  Producers, as you read this, please stop beating this dead horse.  You’re making more stupid sequels then most horror flicks.

This entire blog was fueled by no nicotine.  First time I’ve ever written without having a cigarette.