Friday brings the return of interleague baseball to diamonds across the country. It also brings the highly anticipated debut of Homer Bailey, the 21-year old righthander who holds the hopes and dreams of Cincinnati baseball in his glove. There's little doubt that his name has something to do with why people are so pumped up about his future. There are dozens of great pitching prospects but there's only one who has a name that's as suitable for Hollywood as it is for Cooperstown. Homer Bailey! He's a Frank Capra character, an Everyman who can save the day because of his essential goodness. So we've written a treatment of such a film for the perusal of any producers reading these pages and looking for a feel-good story that will pack cineplexes full for years on end. We call it "It's A Wonderful Major League Life" and while the story is a bit derivative it packs a punch that we think you'll really enjoy.
Homer Bailey spent his life giving everything he had to the people of Cincinnati. He had opportunities to pick up his bags and move to New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and every other city in these great United States but he never did. He never picked up stakes because he had sworn to prevent the evil widow of the team he plays for, the Reds, from selling off their assets so she can move the club to more pleasant surroundings. Homer was the only thing that prevented them from doing so. His right arm, touched by the gods, kept all of Cincinnati enthralled and kept the Great American Ballpark full of people lustily rooting for Homer and the Reds.
But one by one the brave players who stuck by Homer retired or moved on. One fateful winter the evil widow trades away the few friends he had left and replaces them with Mexican League rejects and recently paroled pitchers by telling Homer that it’s the only way she can afford to keep paying his salary. His no-trade clause forbids her from moving him to another franchise but it can’t stop her from ruining the team around him. When the team breaks camp in April and begins the regular season the losses keep piling up. They are 15 games out of first before the month is out and on the days Homer isn’t on the hill they have no chance to win games. Homer realizes that the papers and the fans are holding him responsible. His contract is keeping the team from buying better players, or so the evil widow tells them on her team-owned cable network, and the decrepit bunch in the clubhouse with him is keeping attendance down and making it clear that this will be the last year of baseball by the Ohio River. Thinking of the city, all the kids that he’s touched with his play and his hospital visits and, finally, of the team that he seems to be helping to its premature demise he starts thinking that everyone would be better off if he just went off and died.
Contemplating suicide in the upper deck of the stadium one night, a guardian angel named Pete falls to Earth. He’s got problems of his own and needs to help Homer through this rough patch to earn his plaque in Cooperstown. He shows Homer what it would have been like if he had never come to Cincinnati. He shows him the children who grew up without a baseball hero to idolize and how they were forced to root for a bunch of delinquent football players instead. Pete shows him the stadium, falling down and filled with rats and used as a dumping ground for medical waste. He shows him the evil widow cavorting with the rich and famous in Las Vegas where she moved the team, wallowing in sex and sin in front of the soulless masses who crowd Haliburton-Cheney Stadium night in and night out. And finally he shows him sweet Melissa, the girl that Homer loves sweet and true. She’d battled back from rickets and gout because of Homer’s love but without him she has to resort to begging on the mean streets of Cincinnati for enough money to keep her elderly parents from being evicted.
Homer realizes that he’s had a great effect on the people of Cincinnati and that his pitching in many ways has kept the town alive. The trip has taken him far away from the ballpark, though, and he runs through the streets, alive again with belief in his worthiness. He finally makes it back to the ballpark, restored to its proper glory, just as the ninth inning is beginning against the Mets. The Reds are clinging to a one-run lead and they send Homer to the mound without warming up. His first pitch shatters a Met’s bat and sends a dagger out toward the mound which Homer ducks at the last second. He lays on his back, tears rolling down his face as the catcher trots out to see if he’s okay. He finds his pitcher laughing and crying all at once.
“Is everything okay, Homer.”
“Everything’s….great, it’s all great Spanky. Every time a bat breaks an angel gets his plaque.”
“If you say so Homer.”
Homer strikes out the side and the Reds bask in the glory of their renewed love affair with the Queen City.
And somewhere up in the heavens Pete finally gets his plaque.
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