Movie Scouting Report 3

Ricky Vaughn, Cleveland Indians

Strengths: Plus-Plus fastball ... Four seam fastball was clocked consistently in mid-to-high 90s while pitching for Portland ... Fearless. Is not afraid to come inside with the fastball. ... Flashes an above average slider ... Two seamer has great movement -- a swing and miss pitch ... Can be an intimidating presence on the mound. ... Only 19 though he looks quite a bit older ... Rumor is that he took in brother and his son after a nasty divorce. ... Competitor.

Weaknesses: Awkward looking delivery -- looks like a breakdown candidate ... Wild. Buries his slider often and has no fastball command ... Has some character issues. Last seen pitching in the California Penal League after grand theft auto ... Doesn't take well to coaching.

Overall: Vaughn generates amazing power out of what looks like the motion of a guy who has never played above high school. You would swear he was throwing 70 mph, but the radar gun shows 96 ... Throws as hard as anyone in the big leagues. He has the fastball to dominate Major League hitters if he can learn to command ... Character questions are what led San Diego to release him after his arrest. ... Arm appears to be sound ... Could be worth a flyer if something can be worked out with law enforcement officials ... Doesn't have a third pitch. Might be better in the bullpen. ... Control problems have haunted him his entire career. Managers think he might have eye issues, but he's too vain to deal with them.

Movie thoughts: I've heard so many people say that Charlie Sheen's motion was "very realistic looking." I suppose it is compared to, like, the guy in "It Happens Every Spring." But it still looks like a high school motion, right? Nobody in pro ball finishes like that.

I've always been interested in the connections between Major League and the real Cleveland Indians. David S. Ward, the writer and director, is from Cleveland. Not only that, he's from South Euclid, my suburb. So, of course he's my hero (and if David is reading this, you know, Soul of Baseball could make a fine film!).

You can tell David's a real Indians fan -- at the end of the movie, the Indians only win their division. That's what qualifies as a Hollywood happy ending for Indians fans. David is enough of a Clevelander fan to know he couldn't have them win the World Series

Anyway, even though David's a few years older than I am -- he actually remembers the 1954 World Series fiasco. he generally seems to be picking baseball scenes from my childhood.

1. Eddie Harris is clearly supposed to represent Gaylord Perry, circa 1974. His body is covered with Crisco, Bardahl, Vagisil. "Any one of them will give you another 2-3 inch drop on your curveball," he says. Perry for years tried to get Vaseline to let him sponsor their product, and supposedly (though it could be apocryphal) got a postcard back from the Vaseline people saying: "We soothe baby's backsides, not baseballs."

2. Pedro Cerrano, the Cuban defector who practices Voodoo, crushed fastballs and couldn't hit the curve may very well have been based on Rico Carty. I would like to think so. Carty was an absolutely remarkable hitter when he was young -- in 1969 and 1970, he hit .342 and .366. He won the batting title in 1970. He was almost impossible to strike out, he hit with power, etc.

But by the time he came to Cleveland, he was a pure designated hitter, slower than Mondays, a double play machine -- but he could still hit the fastball. He was also pretty crazy; everybody in Cleveland has a good Rico Carty story. One of his teammates tells of a time they were driving in California, along the ocean, and Rico suddenly shouted, "Stop the car! Stop the car!" Then he had to go out and throw some piece of jewelry in the ocean. Apparently, he had seen the devil or something like that. I might not be getting the story exactly right, but close enough. Rico was out there.

3. The scene where the Indians are waiting on the tarmac for their junky private plane ... Indians center fielder Rick Manning said that absolutely happened in the 1970s. "We were just sitting there on the runway waiting for a plane to come," he says.

4. The idea of an owner who wanted to cut costs to "make the team tougher" ... that absolutely happened too. For years and years, the home clubhouse at Cleveland Municipal Stadium was not air conditioned. Not only that, but the everybody knew the only time the heater worked in there was during the summer. And it REALLY worked.

One year, as every Indians fan knows, the Indians signed Wayne Garland to a big money deal. Garland didn't pan out -- injuries crushed him -- but he's a pretty great guy. Garland was so fed up with the unbearable heat in the clubhouse that he went out and bought air conditioners for the whole team. And here was the great part: Gabe Paul and the Indians management were FURIOUS. When asked about that years later, Garland's reply was pretty simple: "It was hot in there."

5. Willie Mays Hays could have been based on about 500 different players -- a speed burner who thought he had power -- but I like to think of him as movie version of Miguel Dilone. ... Dilone hit .341 with 61 stolen bases in 1980; that might be the best single season for any Cleveland Indians player of my youth (competing against Gaylord Perry's Cy Young year in 1972 and Joe Charboneau's rookie the year season, also in 1980, but only because he could also open beer bottles with his eye socket). The next year, as I recall, Dilone banged a home run on Monday Night Baseball and from that day on he thought he was a home run hitter. He hit .235 in 1982, .191 the next year and was gone.

Here's one more movie bit: Apparently Dennis Haysbert, who played Pedro Cerrano and later was President on 24 and the guy narrating accidents on the Allstate commercials, is embarrassed about his "Major League" time. One of our reporters tried to talk to him about Major League, and he refused. Shame. He was brilliant.