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SPRING TRAINING
By Rob Tobin

GENRE: Drama, Fantasy, Sports
LOGLINE: What happens if Babe Ruth shows up for spring training… in 2014… with Josh Gibson?

SYNOPSIS:

A young man wakes up in a Florida ballpark, having been mugged, remembering only his first name: GEORGE. He's diagnosed with traumatic brain injury and sent to a TBI treatment facility. There he meets a young African American man, with amnesia from a brain tumor that remembers only his first name: JOSH. Josh, found wandering the streets a year before, had his tumor removed and is a fitness fanatic. He enlists the beer-drinking George into working out. The TBI facility holds a picnic and baseball game. Josh and George hit the ball a mile and are noticed by TOM, an ex-major leaguer angling for a coaching position in the Bigs. He already coaches DOUG JACKSON, a steroid freak, but hopes Josh and George can cement his return to the majors. He train all three for a tryout at the Yankees spring training camp. A sports physiologist does DNA testing of the two men to find out why they're such naturally powerful hitters. The head of the TBI facility, ELAINE, finds photos of her baseball prodigy patients online and shows them to Josh and George. The photos are of Babe Ruth and Josh Gibson, the "black Babe." The likeness between the photos and George and Josh are exact. Tom tries to force Josh and George to take steroids but it's moot: the photos, DNA tests and an old fingerprint of Babe Ruth prove who George and Josh are. The Yankees organize a home run derby the last day of Spring Training between George, Josh and the steroid-soaked Doug Jackson. Josh and George struggle against 100 mph pitching and Jackson's steroid power, then revert to the heavier bats they're used to, and easily outdistance Jackson. Now it's just Babe and Josh, in the greatest home run contest ever. Josh hits the most homeruns, Babe the longest. The Yankees fly them to NYC for their home opener, but at the site of the old Yankee stadium, George says, "This is the house that Ruth built," then points at the new stadium. "That's Josh Gibson's house. I belong here." George fades away. Josh plays his first game, as the outfield screen plays old footage of Babe Ruth making his final appearance speech. Josh hits the first pitch, which flies into the sunny skies. We flashback to the 1920s. A bus of Negro League players including Josh Gibson and Satchel Paige stop to offer help to another stranded team bus stranded on the side of the road. The second bus contains the New York Yankees, including Babe Ruth, and the two teams spontaneously have a baseball game, flouting the racist laws that kept the races and the game's two greatest players from playing each other.

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