My dark, dirty past is coming out this week. Well, I guess it depends on your definitions of “dark” and “dirty,” but the event under question here is my less-than-starring role in the movie Major League II.

My friend Ben was a bit of an actor in high school, so much so that he actually had an agent. One of the gigs Ben got was to be an extra in this movie, and he brought me along. Ben’s dad drove us up to Baltimore from DC, and we got to Camden Yards sometime in the morning on a Saturday or Sunday. We didn’t finish filming until about four in the morning, when they would’ve had to start paying us overtime if they’d kept us any longer (we did exceed the amount of time they were allowed to keep us without feeding us, though, so we chowed down on some Major League donuts).

Most of the scenes were wide-angle, most-of-the-crowd type shots, but somehow Ben and I were selected to be in the closeup shot at the very end of the movie. The director must’ve reshot the scene a good fifty times, and actually thought he might want to do more the next day. Well, Ben & I couldn’t make it back for the other shooting, so they borrowed our shirts and gave us MLII shirts as loaners. For a while, I even kept the stationery they used to write us thank-you notes when they returned our shirts. They either didn’t end up reshooting or used the footage from the first day, ’cause we’re in the movie, as you can see below.

Somehow, this all came up in conversation the other day with my co-worker. She was astonished that I didn’t actually own the movie (it’s hardly worth the media it would come on), and promptly paid a visit to Blockbuster to rent the DVD. Courtesy of Kerry, here are two screen shots of my brilliant on-screen appearance:

Yep, that’s me in the upper left above.

Me and Ben on the far right.

Two things to note. First, I have no recollection of what the heck I was doing with my hands in the first picture. Second, I swear, big glasses were all the rage back then.