Half-Assed Internet Research
The research covers rejected roles, alternate endings, Milwaukee production logistics, baseball-player casting, injuries and stunts, Wild Thing history, sequel tensions, cast friendships, and Margaret Whitton’s dispute with Ron Shelton.
In the discussion (23)
Approx. transcript time · 00:57:38Read transcript
- Wesley Snipes reportedly turned down Do the Right Thing, although the role is not identified in the discussion.
- Tom Berringer reportedly turned down the Crockett role on Miami Vice.
- An alternate ending exposed Rachel Phelps as secretly supporting the team, but test audiences preferred her as a straightforward villain.
- Milwaukee stood in for Cleveland during filming, including County Stadium and local crowd scenes.
- About 20,000 extras were recruited for the Yankee-game crowd scenes.
- Dennis Haysbert recalled being emotionally overwhelmed when the team ran onto the field as the crowd roared.
- Former player Steve Yeager was the technical adviser, played the third-base coach, and doubled for Tom Berenger at catcher.
- Former major-league player Willie Mueller played Yankees pitcher Duke Simpson.
- The discussion says Chelcie Ross had pitched in college, although twenty years had passed since he had thrown a ball.
- Steroid use reportedly helped raise Charlie Sheen's fastball for the movie.
- A filming shoulder injury led Charlie Sheen to stop for cortisone shots and anti-inflammatories on the way to work.
- Mitch Williams adopted Wild Thing with the Cubs, and the movie sequence is credited with creating the closer-entrance-music tradition.
- Wesley Snipes complained about repeated sliding after getting strawberries, and Steve Yeager answered that he had done it for twenty years.
- The fictional owner plans to move the team to Miami, and the discussion connects that premise to later Cleveland and Florida baseball history.
- The hosts find Willie Mays Hayes’s wall of dirty black gloves creepy when imagining him bringing a date home.
- A Jake-and-Lynn marriage scene intended to follow the Yankee game was filmed and deleted.
- Dennis Haysbert's Yankee-game home run reportedly traveled 315 feet down the left-field line and hit the top of the wall.
- In Dennis Haysbert's account, the close cast went to bars together and joined James Gammon’s poker games.
- Charlie Sheen recalled James Gammon arriving badly hungover and called him an absolute warlock.
- The oral history says Sheen coordinated women flying into Milwaukee, and Sheen compared it with women passing each other on the road during Young Guns.
- Burnson mistakenly punched Charlie Sheen while filming the ending and left a welt.
- Stacey Carroll's limited acting career and departure from the business are discussed in connection with Dorn's wife.
- Margaret Whitton’s work on Major League and a settlement involving Ron Shelton and Bull Durham are discussed at the end of the research block.