Team Building of a Baseball Team

In the movie "Major League, the hapless Cleveland Indians are inherited by an ex-show girl from her late husband. She wants to move the team to Miami and, in order to get out of the stadium lease, needs for attendance to drop below 800,000. As a result, the widow puts together a ragtag team of over-the-hill players, a pitcher who has a rapid fastball but no control, and a team which is overall comprised of movie stereotypes, with the result that the prospect of assembling a winning team seems next to impossible.

This being the movies, Lou Brown, the manager (played by James Gammon) is challenged to bring out the best in his players. As the team realizes the owner's intent to move the team (but not necessarily the players) to Florida, they begin to come together. The pitcher learns control (after being fitted for eyeglasses), Willie Mays Hayes makes a game-saving catch, and a Cuban player who practices voodoo (Pedro Cerrano) hits a strategic home run. As the team begins to coalesce into a winning organization, attendance at the games goes up, not down, and the team realizes the once impossible goal of reaching the championship.

Although strictly a Hollywood fantasy, the use of the Cleveland Indians name, logo and even stadium lends an air of reality to the film (particularly since the real-life Indians are as hapless as those in the movie). Charlie Sheen, who plays the myopic pitcher, also attended a baseball school in his youth, with the result that he is able to le

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, teamwork is successful in part because of the focus it places on people. The Hackman-Oldman model of job enrichment identifies five characteristics which are inherent in any job, to some extent (Galagan, August 1992, p. 22). Skill variety is the extent that the job calls for different skills and talents. Task identity is the level to which a job is handled from beginning to end, producing an identifiable and complete outcome. Task significance is the extent to which the job has an effect on others or on society in general. Autonomy is the freedom and discretion associated with the job in terms of planning, organizing, scheduling and performing the work. Feedback is the degree to which clear and direct information about performance and effectiveness exists. Each of these components is part of the various positions on a baseball team. Each individual must have a variety of skills (for example, fielding and hitting), and each individual is responsible for playing his position completely. Task significance is present because each player's actions affect other players, and each player must plan and perform the task at hand. Feedback comes in the very direct form of feedback from the manager, the coach and from other players

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