Top 10 revelations from SI’s oral history of ‘Major League’

   Top 10 revelations from SI’s oral history of ‘Major League’

The 1989 baseball comedy "Major League" is consistently near the top of moviegoers' favorite sports films despite the ridiculous concept of the Cleveland Indians beating the New York Yankees for a pennant. Crazy, right? Sports Illustrated writer Chris Nashawaty recently interviewed the director, David Ward, and most of the cast for his latest feature, an oral history of the movie that digs deep and reveals some things we didn't know.

Here are the top 10 revelations from Nashawaty's exhaustive interview feature in the July 4 "Where Are They Now?" issue of Sports Illustrated. Hopefully, he'll avoid doing a followup for the cast and crew of that dud "Major League III: Back to the Minors."

1. Charlie Sheen was doing steroids during filming!: Or so he claims. Sheen, who played fireballing reliever Ricky "Wild Thing" Vaughn, played some baseball in high school but got kicked off the team because of poor grades. To prepare for his role in the film, Sheen says he improved his fastball from the high 70s to the mid 80s with the help of steroids. That's dedication to the craft. Or something.

2. Jeremy Piven was left on the cutting room floor: Director David Ward admits that Piven, then a prematurely balding 23-year-old actor with just "Lucas" and "One Crazy Summer" under his belt, played a supporting role as a bench player who pelted opposing teams with insults. All of Piven's scenes were (mercifully) cut.

3. Dennis Haysbert can hit a baseball pretty far: All of the actors in the film had enough athletic ability to fill the roles of ballplayers, but Haysbert, who played voodoo-worshipping slugger Pedro Cerrano, actually hit a ball out of the park during filming. Sure, it was only 315 feet but there are enough Yuniesky Betancourts in the majors now who could use that kind of power.

Top 10 revelations from SI’s oral history of ‘Major League’4. Bob Uecker was hired for his work in commercials: Ward claims that when he asked Uecker to play the role of Indians radio announcer Harry Doyle, he did it because of Uecker's hilarious work in Miller Lite ads. Ward had no idea Uecker was already the real life radio voice of the Milwaukee Brewers.

5. Bob Feller didn't like all the swearing: Legendary Indians hurler Bob Feller saw a screening of "Major League" in Cleveland soon after the film's release and told director Ward that he was upset at the foul language used by ballplayers in the locker-room scenes, claiming that they "didn't talk like that." I guess in Feller's day, teammates spoke to one another with flowery prose and bend-over-backwards politeness!

6. The original ending was terrible: Spoiler alert! Ward originally put a twist in the end of the movie where evil owner Rachel Phelps, who spends the entire season trying to sabotage the team in an effort to move them to Florida, turns out to be the team's savior, working behind the scenes to make them better. Test audiences hated that ending, preferring to live in a world where good people are good and evil people own baseball teams in Miami.

7. Wesley Snipes is actually slow as molasses: Snipes played Willie Mays Hayes, a character who was supposed to have both the baseball skills and the self-aggrandizing attitude of Rickey Henderson. Turns out he had the latter but not the former. Scenes where Snipes runs the basepaths were shot in slow motion because he was "not very fast."

8. Corbin Bernsen is as arrogant as the characters he plays: All the actors playing ballplayers auditioned for their part by participating in actual baseball tryouts except Bernsen, who was shooting another film at the time and assured the producers, "Trust me, I can play." Playing washed-up third baseman Roger Dorn, however, didn't require much skill anyway except to be cuckolded by Ricky Vaughn.



9. "Major League" was Joe Morgan's "Citizen Kane": According to Charlie Sheen, the film became a quick favorite among the MLB community and that Hall of Famer Joe Morgan claimed that "Major League" was the only movie he brought with him on airplanes. Bringing your own VCR tapes on airplanes? Fancy!

10. Nearly all the cast members want to do another sequel: David Ward has written a third sequel (or second sequel, for those of us who pretend "Major League III" never happened) in which 20 years have passed and Ricky Vaughn is mounting a big league comeback. In these interviews, Bob Uecker, Dennis Haysbert, Tom Berenger (catcher Jake Taylor), Corbin Bernsen and, of course, Charlie Sheen are all open to come back and let Hollywood unleash foist another sequel upon the popcorn-addled masses.  

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Pakistan arrests CIA's bin Laden informants: report

 

 

 

 Pakistan's top military spy agency has arrested five CIA informants who fed information to the US spy agency before the raid last month which killed Osama bin Laden.

One of the detainees was reported to be a Pakistani Army major whom officials said copied license plates of cars visiting the al Qaeda leader's compound 30 miles northwest of Islamabad. 

The fate of the CIA informants arrested in Pakistan is unclear.

Outgoing CIA Director Leon Panetta raised the issue of the informants' detention during a trip to Islamabad last week where he met with Pakistani military and intelligence officers.

Some in Washington see the arrest as another sign of the deep disconnect between US and Pakistani priorities in the fight against extremists.

The United States kept Islamabad in the dark about the May 2 raid by Navy SEALs until after it was completed, humiliating Pakistan's armed forces and putting US military and intelligence ties under serious strain.

Last week, at a closed Senate Intelligence Committee briefing, Deputy CIA Director Michael Morell rated Pakistan's cooperation with the United States on counterterrorism operations a "three" on a scale of 1 to 10, the Times reported, citing officials familiar with the exchange.

Other officials cautioned that his comments did not represent the administration's overall assessment, the newspaper said. "We have a strong relationship with our Pakistani counterparts and work through issues when they arise," CIA spokesman Marie Harf told the newspaper.

"Director Panetta had productive meetings last week in Islamabad. It's a crucial partnership, and we will continue to work together in the fight against Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups who threaten our country and theirs."

Asked about the Times report, a CIA spokeswoman neither confirmed nor denied it and said she had no further comment.

Pakistan's Ambassador to the United States, Husain Haqqani, was quoted as saying that the CIA. and the Pakistani spy agency "are working out mutually agreeable terms for their cooperation in fighting the menace of terrorism. It is not appropriate for us to get into the details at this stage." 

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Hackers break into US Senate computers

Warning: CIA director said that a cyber attack could be the 'next Pearl Harbor'

The US Senate's website was hacked over the weekend, leading to a review of all of its websites, in the latest embarrassing breach of security to hit a major US-based institution. The loosely organized hacker group Lulz Security broke into a public portion of the Senate website but did not reach behind a firewall into a more sensitive portion of the network, Martina Bradford, the deputy Senate sergeant at arms, said on Monday. Despite the breach, the Sergeant at Arms Office, which provides security for the Senate, said that the breach had not compromised any individual senator's information. Lulz announced the hack on Monday. "We were responding to their allegations. Basically what we're saying that the server they got into is for public access and is in the public side," said Bradford. Lulz Security, who have hacked into Sony's website and the U.S. Public Broadcasting System, posted online a list of files that appear not to be sensitive but indicate the hackers had been into the Senate's computer network. "We don't like the US government very much," Lulz Security said at the top of their release. "This is a small, just-for-kicks release of some internal data from Senate.gov - is this an act of war, gentlemen? Problem?" The comment refers to reports that the US military had decided that it could respond to cyber attacks from foreign countries with traditional military force. Senate staffers were alerted about the breach late Monday. "Although this intrusion is inconvenient, it does not compromise the security of the Senate's network, its members or staff," Bradford said in a statement. "Specifically, there is no individual user account information on the server supporting senate.gov that could have been compromised." "The hackers may have done the equivalent of burglarizing the Senate and bragging because they managed to steal a bunch of souvenirs from the gift shop," said Stewart Baker, a former cyber official at the Department of Homeland Security. He is now with the law firm Steptoe and Johnson.

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IMF latest target in string of cyber attacks

The International Monetary Fund says it was targeted by a sophisticated cyber attack earlier this year.

 IMF officials say the attack was a very major breach of its systems.
Cyber security officials say the hack was designed to install software to create a digital insider presence.

The headquarters of the International Monetary Fund in Washington, DC.

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The IMF says its operations are fully functional. The agency holds sensitive economic data about many countries.
The attack took place over several months.

IMF staff were told of the intrusion on Wednesday by e-mail.

 the incident is the latest in a string of high profile cyber security breaches.

In April, the Sony Playstation network was shut down after hackers stole the personal data of about 100 million accounts.
US defence firm Lockheed Martin said in May that it had come under a significant cyber-attack.

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Death toll in Haiti's floods, mudslides rises to 23

Overturned furniture covered in mud is seen in a home damaged by severe rainstorms the night before in Port-au-Prince, June 7, 2011.

Credit: Reuters/Swoan Parker

The death toll from days of heavy rains that triggered flooding and mudslides in earthquake-ravaged Haiti has climbed to 23.
 The deaths and damage caused by the first major rainfall of the Atlantic hurricane season have raised concerns about the ability of Haiti, the Western Hemisphere's poorest country, to respond to a major storm as it works to stem an eight-month-old cholera outbreak that has killed about 5,400 people.
Emergency crews cleared rocks, trees and downed power lines from roads in the Haitian capital on Wednesday and aid groups fanned out to further assess the damage.
The rains turned dirt roads in Port-au-Prince into muddy streams, flattened ramshackle homes and flooded tent encampments where hundreds of thousands of homeless survivors of Haiti's devastating 2010 earthquake still live.
At least six people were reported missing, said Nadia Louchard, a coordinator with Haiti's Civil Protection Department.
"We are asking the population to be vigilant and to leave areas at risk when it is raining," she added.
The rains eased in Port-au-Prince but weather forecasts showed more precipitation was likely in coming days. Torrential rains also set off flooding in the Dominican Republic and Jamaica.
Some Haitians wondered whether the government was adequately prepared to deal with a more powerful storm if one were to hit the impoverished country.

"If these rains can cause so much damage, what would happen if there was a real disaster?" asked Angeline Mauger, 38.

Last year, Haiti escaped a potential disaster when Hurricane Tomas skirted the country, flooding some coastal towns but largely sparing the crowded camps in Port-au-Prince.

Flooding set off by Tomas, however, is believed to have worsened Haiti's cholera outbreak, which started 10 months after the January 2010 earthquake killed more than 300,000 people.

A huge U.N.-led humanitarian operation has helped reduce the fatality rate from the cholera epidemic from peaks last year when dozens of victims were dying every day.
Still, humanitarian workers say flooding is causing fresh outbreaks of the deadly diarrheal disease spread by contaminated water and food.
"We can never say we are fully prepared," said Louchard. "The country has its structural problems. We are just trying to do our best."

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