Wesley Snipes knew from leap tips on how to make us love him. He made a placing function debut as cocky working again Trumaine reverse Goldie Hawn in Michael Ritchie’s 1986 high-school soccer comedy “Wildcats,” and labored a subdued variation on the conceited athlete kind as up-and-coming boxer Roland Jenkins in Joe Roth’s affecting drama “Streets of Gold.” Neither movie set the field workplace on hearth, however Hollywood was paying consideration. It was only a matter of discovering the fitting components to use Snipes’ live-wire charisma, which, within the Eighties, wasn’t a certain factor for a younger African-American actor.
David S. Ward’s “Main League” didn’t initially seem like that film. Paramount offered the baseball flick as a broad, bawdy comedy that eschewed the soulful nuance of Ron Shelton’s sleeper hit “Bull Durham,” however the movie proved to have loads of underdog coronary heart because it follows a built-to-lose Cleveland Indians (now Guardians) staff on an unlikely march to the postseason.
The casting, from Tom Berenger’s veteran catcher Jake Taylor to James Gammon’s surly supervisor Lou Brown, is spot-on, however Snipes sizzles as speed-demon, lead-off-hitter Willie Mays Hayes. Hayes crashes coaching camp, boasting that he “hits like Mays, and runs like Hayes.” He comes on like a hustler, however he’s, in actual fact, a terror on the bottom path (supplied he can get there).
Hayes is probably the most thinly written character of the three leads. He is a trash-talking goofball whose self-confidence seems to be remarkably well-earned. In another person’s palms — like, say, Omar Epps, who took over as Hayes within the awful sequel — the character would’ve been nothing however clichéd bluster. Snipes, nevertheless, together with his supercharged allure and supernova smile, used Hayes as a springboard to mega-stardom. Nobody, not even Tom Cruise, may match his blazingly sensible charisma.