FanHouse MajorLeague

"Major League" -- good movie. Not a great or classic movie in any sense, but for baseball fans, it doesn't get much better than a late-Saturday, darkened-living room viewing of "Major League," especially when one's favorite real-life baseball team is particularly horrendous. Afternoons like that are good for the soul.

Baseball players agree. Emphatically. At least, that's the anecdotal lesson in this blog post by the Seattle PI's John Hickey:

There were literally 19 pairs of eyes transfixed on the screen as almost all other business in the clubhouse was put on hold. The players, most of whom have seen the movie dozen and dozens of times, knew all the dialog and talked along with each of the characters. Catcher Jamie Burke estimated he'd probably seen the movie 250 times, and said it and Bull Durham remain his two favorite baseball movies. Pitcher Jarrod Washburn, also one of those transfixed during the movie's finale said it was his favorite baseball movie, bar none.

The standard-issue question here is whether or not "Bull Durham" is a better movie, which leads me to a confession: I've never seen it. I know, I know. I suck. I've never seen Back to the Future or any of the Indiana Jones movies, either, and I blame my parents and my millenial birthdate. Get off my case, OK?

How bad have things been for the Reds lately? So bad that after two straight wins, the Reds page at Cincinnati.com is covered with the word "streak." Two wins in a row. Over the Pirates and Astros. The Astros had lost eight straight before last night. This is no major accomplishment. Still, both major Cincy papers printed articles today with the magic word in the title. The Cincy Enquirer ran with "Winning Effort Results in Streak" while the Cincy Post went with "Winning Streak Anyone?"

I'll be honest. I'm a little more partial to the Post article because it ran with the quote that both of those headlines immediately put into my head.

As Reds starter Matt Belisle was stretching in the training room before Tuesday's game with the Astros, he heard a teammate yelling out a quote from the classic baseball movie, "Major League."

"We won yesterday. If we win today, that's two in a row," manager Lou Brown says in the movie. "If we win tomorrow, that's called a winning streak; it has happened before."

To be perfectly fair, the Reds hadn't won two in a row since April. That's right, they went almost all of the month of May without winning two games in a row. That is a bad month. Luckily for them, the rest of the division also took the month off and the Reds are only two games away from pulling themselves out of last place.

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