Brewster's Millions and Baseball at the Bottom

In 1985, Richard Pryor starred in Brewster's Millions, a comedy directed by Walter Hill and based on George Barr McCutcheon's 1902 novel of the same name. It was the seventh film adaptation of the story. It was also, unexpectedly, one of the most affectionate depictions of minor league baseball ever put on screen.

Pryor plays Montgomery "Monty" Brewster, a pitcher for the Hackensack Bulls, a fictional minor league team in New Jersey. He earns $11,000 a year, and his best friend and catcher is Spike Nolan, played by John Candy. When the two are arrested after a bar fight following a game and can't afford bail. A stranger posts it for them and drives them to Manhattan, where Brewster learns that a long-lost great-uncle has left him $300 million, with a catch. He must spend $30 million in 30 days and have nothing to show for it. If he succeeds, he inherits the full fortune. If he fails, or tells anyone about the challenge, he gets nothing.

The baseball frames everything without driving the plot. Brewster's identity as a minor leaguer is the film's emotional anchor. He is a man who has never had money, who plays a game for almost nothing, and who is suddenly asked to understand what money means by spending more of it than he can comprehend. One of his most extravagant moves is hiring the New York Yankees for a three-inning exhibition game against his Hackensack Bulls. The Bulls start strong, then, as you'd expect from mediocre minor leaguers playing the best team in America, get demolished.

The film's baseball park stood far from Hackensack. It was a set originally built for Bay City Blues, a short-lived NBC television series about a fictional minor league team, located at the LADWP Valley Generating Station in Sun Valley, California. The smokestacks of the power plant are visible behind center field in every shot, and the set was demolished in 1989.

Brewster's Millions received mixed reviews and made modest money ($40 million domestic against an undisclosed budget). Critics felt the film had smoothed away Pryor's trademark edge. But the film has endured as a cable staple and a genuine cult favorite. Its depiction of life at the bottom of professional baseball, the empty stadiums, the bus rides, the bar fights, the camaraderie between men who know they'll never make the majors, has a warmth that the plot doesn't require but the film is better for having.

Pryor and Candy never made another film together. Candy died in 1994 at 43. Pryor died in 2005 at 65. The Hackensack Bulls exist only on screen, but for two hours in 1985, they felt as real as any team in baseball.