When "Major League" by David S. Ward slipped into multiplexes on April 7, 1989, many people wrote her off as a professional baseball clone of Bull Durham Minor League set. Wise veteran hunter (Tom Berenger) with bad knees staring down the barrel of forced retirement? Check it out. A screwed up rookie pitcher (Charlie Sheen) with a flamethrower for an arm and no apparent control? Check it out. A superstitious slugger (Dennis Haysbert) who demands the sacrifice of a live chicken to get him out of a catastrophic slump? Check it out.

The mere existence of these familiar elements was enough for many of the nation's critics to dismiss "Major League" as a meatball comedy (Roger Ebert, who reviewed almost everything, skipped it entirely). Movie fans disagreed. The film grossed $50 million in the US on an $11 million budget and earned an A-CinemaScore before becoming a home video/pay cable sensation. By the time the next baseball season rolled around, "Major League" was considered a full-fledged, colorless classic of the American pastime (it's one of /Movies The 30 Best Baseball Movies of All Time).

And this would never have happened if Ward hadn't hired Bob Uecker to play the long-suffering, hard-working play-by-play man Harry Doyle.

The only people who didn't think Uecker was 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 Milwaukee Brewers fans who listened to Mr. Baseball call the games for their team. since 1971. greats Hank Aaron and Warren Spann was bigger than the city and much more than just a sports celebrity when he took on the role of Doyle. He was the star of a lot of Miller Lite advertising in the 1980s, and played beloved TV dad George Owens on the long-running ABC sitcom “Mr. Belvedere". He also appeared on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, where he built his reputation for being quick on his feet with the perfect joke.

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 "Major League" hook is as famous as those aforementioned gags. Margaret Wheaton stars as a Las Vegas showgirl who inherits a notoriously lousy baseball franchise in Cleveland from her late husband. With no love for the depressed Midwestern town on Lake Erie or its famously unpleasant winters, she forces the team's front office to assemble a team of nobodies and people whose underperformance 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 rally from a sense of pride and end up in a winner-takes-all game with their rivals (in this case, the New York Yankees).

"Major League" works beautifully as a formulaic last-chance comedy of misfits, but even with top-notch performances from the entire ensemble, I'd be playing hooky studio programmer without Uecker. Although Ward does a pretty solid job of conveying how miserable it felt to be a Cleveland baseball fan in the 1980s (the lead credits scored to Randy Newman's "Burn On" are incredibly effective), the gallows sense of humor that allows hard-nosed 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 a game on the day of the opening. Uecker may have been born in Milwaukee, but he's been around the game long enough to know that particular quality of self-deprecating weakness that's passed down from generation to generation in Cleveland. And in his first scene, he makes sure that every person in the audience feels like they're being vilified the Rocky Colavito trade after they are born.

Uecker's Doyle is a liar by necessity. On the outside, he's a jovial play-by-play man who calls the game with eloquence and, despite his god-knows-how-many years in the booth, an endearing knack for surprise. The line drive to deep center still has that mystery that distance has about it. At the very least, it would be if someone on this poor iteration of the Cleveland clubhouse could put enough lumber on the ball.

Instead, Doyle should find searing poetry in the first ballad of Willie Mays Hayes (Wesley Snipes), a total stranger who inexplicably turns a random dribbler at second base into a single. "Hey, here's a hot shot to the hole," Doyle exclaims as the fielder bowls the poorly hit ball. When Hayes drops the shot, Doyle breathlessly adds BS color to the play by saying, “Hey, give Rudy credit for sacrificing his body on that racquet. That man has a family to think about.''

It will be that kind of season for Doyle because it has always been that kind of season. But he'll make it sound like professional baseball is being played here because that's what his salary demands. How does he experience horror? By pouring a few fingers of Jack Daniels into a paper cup and laying back some more. Doyle is dying inside, but he'll never let his dwindling band of listeners know it.

Uecker's best moment comes later in this game, when he faces the errant fastball terror of Shin's Ricky "Wild Thing" Vaughn. When the rookie pitcher's first pitch is out of Berenger's Jake Taylor's reach, Doyle delivers the film's most quotable line: "Juuuuust a little out." It's a huge laugh line that drowns out the even funnier sequel "He tried the corner and missed."

36 years later, sportscasters of all stripes are still quoting or paraphrasing Doyle — and Uecker in general. But you can only get away with this kind of artificial lying if you are the eyes of your listeners. It's a dying skill, one that was never shared with sports fans before the "Major League." Doyle was an incorrigible fabulist for the foolishly religious. There is a nobility in loving a team that only causes you heartache and believing it will all work out when it never, ever will. Bob Uecker, who died today at the age of 90, encouraged us to believe this, because deep down I think he believed it too.