Do Cubs Need Phil Brickma? Actor Campaigns to Bring Back (Fictional) Pitching Coach

The 1990s was a golden era for baseball movies, from sentimental favorites, like Major League, A League of Their Own and The Sandlot, to films that should never had been made, such as Major League II, Major League: Back to the Minors and Ed, which paired Matt LeBlanc with a pitching chimp.

Baseball movies were so popular during that decade that they even spawned a very specific sub-genre: films featuring kids on pro baseball teams. One of the first movies in that mold was Rookie of the Year, a 1993 family film about how a 12-year-old boy's freak arm injury turns him into a star pitcher for the Chicago Cubs.

With the Cubs' pitching staff being a key to the team's success this season, Daniel Stern, the director and one of the stars of Rookie of the Year, thinks its time for Chicago to call up Phil Brickma, the fictional Cubs pitching coach he played in the movie. Stern made his, er, pitch to the North Siders in a video he posted to his Facebook page Sunday night.

What do you think? Do the Cubbies need Brickma giving advice to 2015 Cy Young winner Jake Arrieta before he takes the mound? Can the coach get Aroldis Chapman to throw his record-setting 105-mph fastball just a bit faster? Maybe Stern/Brickma should see if Cubs good luck charm Bill Murray has an extra ticket for the next game at Wrigley Field.

Fortunately for Cubs fans, the Rookie of the Year star looking to join the Cubs was Stern and not another actor who played a pitcher in that movie. Could any major league clubhouse survive a visit from Gary Busey?

Daniel Stern as Chicago Cubs pitching coach Phil Brickma in 1993's "Rookie of the Year." (photo via 20th Century Fox)

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