The Making of Little Big League and the Big Big League Mariners

How a movie gave us the perfect snapshot of where the Mariners were and where they were going. Plus, Brooks Robinson and Nora Ephron, and thoughts on life and death and joy.

30 years ago, the mid-1990s Seattle Mariners became movie stars when they filmed the best baseball movie of all time. (This is not a hot take or a call for debate. As far as this writer is concerned, the question is eminently settled.)

Little Big League was released on June 29, 1994. It was part of a spate of baseball movies, following The Sandlot, Rookie of the Year, A League of Their Own, Mr. Baseball, Major League II, and The Babe, and preceding Angels in the Outfield, The Scout, and Cobb. It was filmed in 1993 and included cameos from a number of contemporary major league players and scenes shot on site at American League stadiums with the majority of the baseball action at the Metrodome.

I recently rewatched the movie with my 5 year old on a sick day (Yes, I totally forgot about Night Nurses from Jersey!) I have so much I could say about this movie, but for today I’m going to focus on the Mariners’ part. For those of you who may not be familiar, Billy Haywood has an encyclopedic memory and strategic mind for baseball. He spends a lot of time immersed in baseball because his grandfather owns the Minnesota Twins. When his grandfather dies, the 12 year old inherits the team and names himself manager. The players are naturally skeptical, but Billy wins them over by convincing them that baseball should be fun. Billy and the players on the team go through their own growth cycles and end the season tied with the Mariners for the American League Wild Card.

1994 was the first year the Wild Card existed. Just weeks before the Mariners filmed their part in the movie in 1993, MLB owners agreed to the realignment and playoff expansion, which necessitated adding a Wild Card spot. (I suspect this was a last minute script change; up until MLB agreed to realignment the Mariners and Twins both played in the American League West.)

It just so happened that the Mariners were wrapping up the 1993 season in Minnesota. Their two stars, Ken Griffey Jr. and Randy Johnson were signed on to the movie, along with infielder Dave Magadan and manager Lou Piniella.

By this time, Ken Griffey Jr. was already a 4-time All-Star and a 4-time Gold Glove winner, known as much for his spectacular catches in center field as he was for his beautiful home run swing and backwards cap. He was already a star and cemented that status by hitting the warehouse at Camden Yards during the Home Run Derby and hitting home-runs in 8 consecutive games in July.

Randy Johnson made his second All-Star appearance in 1993, starting the game for the American League. He had already thrown his first no-hitter and was renowned throughout baseball for his overpowering fastball and brutal slider (nicknamed Mr. Snappy), and infamous for his wildness on the mound. You never knew where that 98 mph fastball was going to end up.

The 1993 Mariners had undergone a full rebrand, complete with totally new colors, logos, and uniforms. For the first time in their history, they gave fans a momentary taste of contention. They were only 2 games out of first place going into the All-Star Break. Unfortunately, they couldn’t maintain the good play and had fallen 7 games out by the end of July and Randy Johnson was nearly traded away. Going into the final series, they were 11 games out of first, but ended the season with a winning record for only the second time in their 17 seasons of existence.

The start of the first game of the series was delayed about 10 minutes because movie scenes were being filmed before play got underway. Randy had begun his warm-up routine, but had to pause while the cameras were rolling. The game that day had a huge crowd of over 44,000 fans. The filmmakers needed a big crowd, so they bought all the unsold tickets and donated them to local youth groups to fill the stands.¹ The scene at the end of the movie where Billy tips his cap to the crowd? It was filmed before the Twins and Mariners played a real game.

Before the Sunday season finale, a few more scenes were filmed. In the movie, the Twins and the Mariners face off for a winner-take-all game to determine who snagged the Wild Card spot. The teams battle to a 0-0 tie in the sixth inning when Ken Griffey Jr. steps up to the plate:

Real-life Twins third base coach Kent Paulson was throwing to him. Griffey wasn’t quite getting the pitch he needed, so he went out to Paulson on the mound, and according to a Bally Sports oral history of the movie:

Paulson: [Griffey] came out to the mound to talk to me, and I’ll never forget it. He said, “Keep it knee high, inside, and if you have to hit me, hit me. But if you keep it inside, I’ll get it out of here.”

Scheinman: John Minch was the catcher. Andy goes, “OK, John, just set up inside.” Not trying to be funny, Minch says, ‘‘There’s no way I’m setting up inside on Griffey in a 0-0 game in the sixth inning.” That’s the level that these guys were taking it.²

Griffey hit the next pitch into the upper deck. However:

Busfield: The [production team] comes around home plate, and they’re talking to him. I run down and say what was wrong with that? That was perfect! Andy Scheinman says, “It exited frame. The way the camera was lined up, we didn’t see it land.” And [Griffey] goes, “OK, no problem.” He takes the bat and taps it upside down on the plate to see if it’s broken. The AD [assistant director] starts yelling, “We gotta go, we gotta go, we gotta go.” And Griffey, not being [experienced] on a movie set, he panics and says “OK, we gotta go.” And I could see there was a little hairline crack in the bat. I go, you need another bat! And he says, “No, that’s ok.”
Paulson: On the second pitch, he bombed one into the right-field stands.

Busfield: And action! He hits the next pitch out with a broken bat in the right section, exactly where the director wanted it. Two swings, two balls in the upper deck. Literally, like he was playing pepper. He had that kind of control. It was stupid.³

Prime Ken Griffey Jr. truly was so good, it was stupid.

Griffey got his comeuppance for that wink later in the game though:

The ole hidden ball trick. Luckily, the Mariners had another trick of their own up their sleeves: Randy Johnson in relief.

As you may recall, Randy Johnson earned the first save of his career in 1993, coming out of the bullpen in a foreshadowing of Game 5 of the 1995 ALDS. He comes in to face Lou Collins, played by Timothy Busfield, a former junior college and semi-pro baseball player, and a natural right-handed hitter. He hit left-handed in the movie because he thought his lefty swing looked better.⁴

Busfield later recalled:

Randy came to shoot the scene where he’s pitching the ball to Lou. He gets on the mound and he calls Andy Scheinman out to the mound. And he says, “I don’t get it. [Wade] Boggs and [Don] Mattingly are taking themselves out of the game when I come to New York. And Busfield is gonna hit me?”

…I went to Randy, walked out there and I said, do you have four-seamers in the 70s? Can you give me three of those? And he goes, “I don’t know how to do that.”⁵

The first pitch from Randy is up and in on Lou Collins. it instantly brings to mind Randy facing John Kruk at that year’s All-Star Game:

For Busfield to stand in there and take that up and in pitch? Phew. That’s some real baseball cred! Eventually Lou gets a hold of a pitch, but Ken Griffey Jr. runs it down in center field and makes a spectacular catch to end the game. The Mariners win, and earn their first, albeit fictional, playoff berth.

In the celebration scene, Randy starts by jumping up and down awkwardly on the mound and the team rushes out to join him. In all the jubilation, Randy starts to get pulled off the mound:

I cringed so hard watching that 30 years after the fact. Thankfully, he was uninjured. Because two years after they filmed their scenes, the real life version happened in a one-game regular season finale for the last playoff spot, complete with Randy on the mound in a dome:

It’s impossible to look at this picture without hearing Dave Niehaus yell, “Nineteen long years of frustration is over!”

*****

I’ve been considering what it is about this movie that made it stick with me when it first came out. There’s the Mariners winning at the end, of course, and getting to play the role of the villain. The movie also had a deep reverence for baseball history in a way that absolutely enthralled me. Now, I appreciate how realistic and authentic the baseball scenes are, and what a neat time capsule it is of baseball during the time that I came to love it. I also love that the Twins lost at the end. It’s a twist on most sports movies that feels more true to real life, perhaps a strange thing to revere in a movie about a 12-year-old manager. In baseball, and in life, there is a lot of losing. Sometimes you’ve tried your hardest and still lose. There still has to be something worthwhile in that. Not just the act of trying and the hard work, although that’s usually the message in things like this, but something in the journey and the process of it all. It can’t just be because you have a desire to win and you’ll work hard until you win. It has to be the thing itself that provides motivation or joy or some other source of satisfaction.

I realize that my views on sports and winning have been largely shaped by the experience of being a Mariners fan. If you became a Mariners fan with the goal of watching a winning team win championships, well, you gave up on that fandom a long time ago. And quite frankly, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. Find the joy where you can.

I’ve been a fan for roughly 40 years. A lot of those years I haven’t been entirely sure why. But the thing about the Mariners is that you accept them as they are. There is nothing we, as fans, can do to change them. I know people will scream on the internet that this attitude is why they haven’t won a World Series yet, and that’s just ridiculous. The Mariners have never, not for a single year, been owned by a person or group that wanted to win. So, you find the joy where it is. You find the things that are worthwhile about the whole enterprise. If your enjoyment comes solely from winning, you’re gonna be disappointed most of the time anyway.

Other Mariners-Related Movie Items:

Dann Howitt Has Reproduced

If you’re familiar with Mariners legend Dann Howitt it’s likely because he was the last batter to not only get through a full at-bat against Nolan Ryan, but the last to get a hit, a home run, and a grand slam against Nolan Ryan.

On September 22, 1993, Nolan Ryan and the Texas Rangers came to the Kingdome, expecting it to be his last appearance in Seattle because he was retiring at the end of the season. In the bottom of the first inning, he immediately ran into trouble, loading the bases with no outs. After walking in a run, he faced left fielder Dann Howitt who hit a grand slam to left field. Then, after running the count 3-1 on the next batter, Dave Magadan, Ryan exited the game with an elbow injury, ending his career.

Howitt was a journeyman and only appeared in 45 games for the Mariners over two seasons. His baseball career ended in 1994 with none other than a pitching injury he sustained pitching in a blowout loss for Triple-A Colorado Springs.⁶ One of the real -life baseball players hired for Little Big League was John Minch, who played catcher Mark Hodges. Minch played with Howitt in the minor leagues and they remained friends. Filming took place shortly after Howitt’s second child was born, so as a tribute Minch hung a sign in his locker that read “Dann Howitt has reproduced AGAIN.” It just happened to be visible in a few scenes:

Howitt said he got a lot of phone calls when the movie was released. So, he has more than one claim to fame. Not bad for a journeyman.

Lenny Randle Gets the Shaft

The filmmakers were intent on putting realistic baseball into an entirely unrealistic movie. In addition to hiring real ball players, they joked that they were trying to put a real team together. In one interview, screenplay writer Adam Scheinman said, “I’m going, you know Lenny Randle, we could use him at third.” (Never mind that Randle had been retired for 11 years by this time.) His brother and director, Andy Scheinman, said, “He can’t act!”⁷

Au, contraire!

Among Randle’s many talents was a taste for show biz. While it isn’t strictly acting, watch this incredible commercial from 1981 and tell me Randle wouldn’t have been a lot of fun in Little Big League:

The Reviews? They Were Bad

Interestingly, the Mariners didn’t get a ton of attention or excitement over their role in the movie. This may be because the players were on the verge of striking when it was released in 1994. Still, the local reviews for the movie were terrible. Several complained about all the baseball movies, and wrote that this one was too similar to Rookie of the Year to be worthwhile. And they found the idea that the Mariners would be in playoff contention, even with the new Wild Card, implausible. John McGrath of the News Tribune wrote:

Another baseball movie, another impossibly absurd premise. …The Mariners in contention to the last day of the season?

A kid skipper, I can buy. But the Seattle Mariners competing all the way into October? Keeping hope alive for fans accustomed to tuning baseball out a few weeks before Labor Day?

Dunno. That’s a twist that requires more than a momentary suspension of belief. That’s sheer hokum.⁸

Just wait ‘til next year, John.

Nora Epron’s Contribution to Seattle/Baseball Movies and Baseball Crushes

I’m sure you all know that Brooks Robinson died last week. For most people, baseball things of some sort pop into your mind when you hear about him. I, on the other hand, always think first of Sleepless in Seattle.

In this clip, Annie (Meg Ryan) writes a letter to Sam (Tom Hanks) after hearing him on a radio program talking about his dead wife. Annie’s letter stands out to Sam’s son Jonah because she declares that Brooks Robinson is the best third baseman ever. Sam agrees, and brushes off the letter replying, “Everybody thinks Brooks Robinson is the greatest.”

Like Little Big League, Sleepless in Seattle is utterly absurd and I absolutely love it. It’s hilarious, for one, and it’s a real nostalgia capsule for a Seattle that I miss, the same way Little Big League is a nostalgia capsule of 1990s baseball.

Sleepless in Seattle has a bunch of other baseball references in it too. Nora Ephron wasn’t much of a baseball or sports fan, but she did write two pieces on baseball and I deeply love them both. One was an essay on Bernice Gera (now available in Ephron’s book Crazy Salad), the first woman umpire in professional baseball, that cut through so much of the discourse around her and got right to the heart of it. The second one was as essay in the Washington Post about her love for Kent Tekulve. I related to that one because I often get weird looks and lots of questions when I reveal my baseball crushes. (No matter how many times you ask, “But why?” my love for Craig Counsell will never die. Even though he’s a Leo! It’s that serious.)

Ephron wasn’t responsible for the bit about Brooks Robinson, but nonetheless, I like that baseball was part of bringing two people together in her movie. It’s a fun little piece in Brooks Robinson’s legacy too.

Some Personal Thoughts on Death and Winning and Writing Garbage

This year the Mariners were in the playoff hunt until Game 161. I feel a sense of relief that they didn’t make it. I’ve been checked out on them for the last month and when they finally have a good run, I want to be able to enjoy it.

Last Friday, my step-father-in-law died. He’d been having some pretty severe medical problems for the month leading up to his death. I don’t want to get into the details, but suffice it to say it’s been really stressful and awful. Now the grief at his loss is mixed with the urgent need to take care of my mother-in-law. There’s a lot of do there. So the stress and grief of the last month aren’t over, and there’s more to come. I’ve spent so much of my adult life not feeling like a full adult. Even with all the trappings of adulthood, marriage and houses and kids and careers, I very much feel like I’m mentally barely 25. But then you find yourself immersed in the world of assisted living and powers of attorney and Medicare and, ooof. I guess I’m a grownup after all.

All of this happened in the midst of getting the kids back to school, my oldest’s birthday and birthday parties, our washing machine breaking, yellow jackets living in our walls, and termites on our fence (It has truly been a MONTH). I’ve just had no head space for the Mariners. I also didn’t read a book for almost a full month, which is extraordinarily weird for me.

This newsletter is much longer than I intended. Oddly enough, with my lack of head space, I’ve been writing like a person possessed by some little writing demon. All of my thoughts run through my head as though I’m writing them down, trying to find clever phrasing and pulling a thread through the narrative to find the lesson I’m supposed to get out of all of this. A lot of what I’ve written is absolute garbage. I’ve come to appreciate and embrace that sort of writing garbage because it’s just for me. It’s the thing itself that matters.

Anyway. I’d like to wrap this up in some pithy little statement that feels exceptionally profound, but I don’t know that I have one. Just find the joy where it is. Does it really matter if your baseball team ever wins the World Series? I guess I don’t know. I just know that I’ve never been able to ignore the pull of baseball, and due to geographic closeness, the Mariners. I think often of my grandfather, who was two years old the only time the Red Sox won the World Series in his lifetime. And yet, he continued to watch them and cheer for them.

That joy, it shouldn’t need to be an exciting win in a championship game. It can just be the thing itself.

1. https://theathletic.com/1045594/2019/06/28/little-big-league-at-25-the-inside-story-of-an-unlikely-baseball-classic/

2. https://www.ballysports.com/north/news/an-oral-history-of-little-big-league-3709392

3. https://www.ballysports.com/north/news/an-oral-history-of-little-big-league-3709392

4. https://www.ballysports.com/north/news/an-oral-history-of-little-big-league-3709392

5. https://www.ballysports.com/north/news/an-oral-history-of-little-big-league-3709392

6. https://www.seattlepi.com/news/article/where-are-they-now-dann-howitt-1125137.php

7. https://www.ballysports.com/north/news/an-oral-history-of-little-big-league-3709392

8. McGrath, John. "ONLY IN HOLLYWOOD: NEW MOVIE HAS MARINERS BATTLING TWINS FOR PENNANT." The News Tribune, June 29, 1994: C1.