Simmons as Frank Perry Rick Reed as Home Plate Umpire Bill Murdy Michael Papajohn as Sam Tuttle William Newman as Fitch Bill E. Rogers as Davis Burch Bob Sheppard as himself Daniel Dae Kim as E.R. Doctor Greer Barnes as Mickey Hart Larry Joshua as Yankee fan in bar Gerald Friedman as Yelling fan The pitching coach who prepared Costner for this role was former New York Yankees/Milwaukee Brewers middle reliever, Mike Buddie. Buddie also had a small speaking role in the film as the character Jack Spellman, the starting pitcher for the Yankees. The Yankees manager is played by Augie Garrido, then head coach of the University of Texas Longhorns. Garrido was previously head baseball coach of California State University Fullerton, which is Costner's alma mater. Production Sydney Pollack was originally slated as the director, with Tom Cruise cast in the part of Billy Chapel. Armyan Bernstein, chief of Beacon Pictures, got Kevin Costner interested in the film. The studio wanted to keep the film's budget to $50 million, so Costner helped out by waiving his usual $20 million salary in exchange for a bigger percentage of the film's gross; Costner was also given the generous rights of final cut privilege (normally only given to the producer or director, if anyone) and director approval. Director Sam Raimi, who had previously only done low-budget films, later explained why he agreed to take on the big budget project: "I was simply moved by the screenplay. It was moving and simple and I love baseball. I love baseball and I thought it hadn't really been put on film and I wanted to see it on the wide screen format. I thought that would be exciting for the audience, like being at a game. I get so excited by some baseball games I wanted to see if I could put some of that into the picture. And I simply liked it and wanted to try something different." The actor playing Billy Chapel as a child in the opening credits is also Costner; the footage is actually old home movies of Costner and his father. J.K. Simmons later joked about the fact that he was only nine days older than Costner, despite being cast as a 63-year-old. During post-production, a handful of lines (amounting to roughly 10 seconds of film) were edited or cut in order to prevent the film being given an "R"