Kevin Costner once dueled TCU AD in a New York Yankees-Detroit Tigers game
TCU director of athletics Mike Buddie once pitched against Kevin Costner in a Major League Baseball game called by Vin Scully that was played at Yankee Stadium.
The new TCU AD has a few obscure details to his career that are unique to people in his position:
1. He is one of the few power conference athletic directors to have played a major league sport.
2. He “starred” in a major Hollywood motion picture.
Buddie was the Yankees pitcher in the 1999 movie “For Love of the Game,” starring Costner and John C. Reilly.
“I had to join the Screen Actors Guild. We shot for seven weeks, and I was on screen for maybe two seconds,” Buddie said in a recent interview in his office. “I still get those residual checks. Once a year, I get about $60. I’m still raking it in.”
Buddie pitched 12 seasons as a professional, including five in the Major Leagues. He was a reliever for the Yankees in 1997 and ‘98, and spent the final three years of his career with the Milwaukee Brewers.
As great luck would have it, he has a World Series ring for his time with the Yankees during the 1998 season, the same year the team participated in the filming of another Costner baseball movie.
How Mike Buddie became a Hollywood pitcher
Buddie was the first alternate pitcher for the Yankees during the 1998 postseason. He spent the Yankees’ postseason at their spring training facility in Tampa, Fla. pitching simulation. The plan was that if a Yankees pitcher sustained an injury, he would take their spot.
No Yankee pitcher suffered an injury. Buddie watched his Yankees win the World Series from a sports bar in Tampa.
During that October, Buddie was asked to share a room with first round rookie draft pick, pitcher Ryan Bradley, to show him how to be a pro’.
Bradley was offered the part to be in the movie, which then Yankees owner George Steinbrenner insisted that if they were to film it at Yankee Stadium, the extras had to be played by current, or former, Yankees wearing the pinstripe uniforms on screen.
Bradley was scheduled to get married at the same time production at Yankee Stadium could still be filming. He had to decline the role, and Buddie asked if he could take the part. They were both right handed pitchers, and both Yankees.
All Buddie needed was to provide a head shot. The only thing he had was a baseball card.
“The World Series ended, and my agent called and said they need you (for filming) the next day,” Buddie said. “They put us in the Waldorf Astoria hotel for seven weeks.”
Making ‘For Love of the Game’
Every morning a van would come by the hotel to take Buddie and his teammates to Yankee Stadium for filming. In the film, Buddie was the Cy Young caliber starting pitcher for the Yankees who pitches against Detroit Tigers veteran pitcher, Billy Chapel, played by Costner.
It took about a day for Buddie to learn that making a movie is not nearly as exciting as watching one. Skull crushing boredom.
“The game is supposed to be in September, but (during filming) it’s the middle of November in New York. We are wearing short sleeves, and it’s really cold. My shoulder started to get sore from it,” Buddie said. “We would sit there and some days we would jog off and on the field. Some days they would shoot; some days we had had to wait for the same color sky.”
Waiting for the perfect light was not Buddie’s greatest challenge. The bigger problem was pitching to actor John C. Reilly, who played Costner’s catcher for the Tigers.
“I was pitching to him and all I am trying to do is to hit his bat with the ball,” Buddie said. “He was not an athlete. He was what you would expect. Really nice guy, but he was just scared to death.
“I was throwing maybe 75 m.p.h. I had to aim the ball. We had to huddle with John, and tell him, ‘Listen, you are not going to get hit. I have enough control that I am going to throw it right down the middle, or the outer half of the plate. All you need to do is swing.’”
Good coaching, but actors are actors for a reason. Most of them drift towards the stage as kids because they’re not coordinated, or interested in sports.
“I’d throw the ball, and he’d ‘step in the bucket,’” Buddie said of Reilly’s front leg immediately stepping away from the pitch. “I get it. It’s the first time you’ve ever done it. You are 38 and you’ve been to Julliard or whatever.”
Costner was a different story. He’s a bit more of an athlete who has convinced audiences that he knows how to handle a golf club, or baseball bat, just as easily as a six-shooter.
“He treated me very well,” Buddie said. “The rule we had during filming was that the only people who were allowed in the Yankees’ clubhouse was if you played in the big leagues. Costner we let in to use the training room, and the few of us got a lot of time with him. He would come up to me and ask, ‘Would a Major League player do this? How would a pitcher hold the ball for a slider?’”
In the end, Chapel pitches a perfect game and Buddie’s character takes the loss.
And on the topic of favorite baseball movies, Buddie cannot lie.
“The most accurate baseball movie is ‘Bull Durham,’” he said, “but the baseball movie I enjoy the most is ‘Major League.’ It’s not ‘For Love of the Game.’”
He might feel differently had he been on the screen for more than two seconds.
This story was originally published July 25, 2025 at 9:19 AM.
