THE GREAT LEAP FOR SPORTS DREAMS IN PORTLAND

The Great Leap is on stage in downtown Portland, Oregon.

It’s a solid jumper, a score for the home team.

Who would have guessed four actors could show history so well?

And do a basketball game without players and made it feel as real as any last second drama.

No fouls called on this play.

Sports stories that make the stage or screen all start with trepidation for me.

Why? Because I’ve tried watching the movie Fear Strikes Out starring Anthony Perkins, the new sensation.

It was about Jimmy Piersall, a major league baseball player who struggled with bi-polar disorder.

He once stepped up to bat wearing a Beatles wig and playing “air guitar” on his bat, led cheers for himself in the outfield during breaks in play, and “talked” to Babe Ruth behind the center field monuments at Yankee Stadium. In his autobiography, Piersall commented, “Probably the best thing that ever happened to me was going nuts. Who ever heard of Jimmy Piersall until that happened?”

How did it create doubt about sports movies? It starred an actor that wasn’t athletic who had a funny looking throwing motion.

And he was supposed to be a Major League Baseball player? Since the movie was made in 1957 before we knew everything about everyone, he passed in spite of his non-athletic skills.

A few years later he played Norman Bates in Psycho. He was more convincing.

The Great Leap Felt Authentic From The Start

Was the basket ball player ripped and shredded and showed the work put in on the court and the gym?

No, but why would he? He’s an actor.

Instead, he used his acting skills, not his cross-over skills, to show he was who he said he was.

The kid could play.

More than that, he wanted to play against the sort of competition that would lift him above the local games he played and dominated.

He had dreams, big dreams, just like you and I and everyone else who goes out to see live theater.

My dream is seeing a story that hangs with me and encourages me to be a better writer.

This is your play if you have a similar dream.

What’s Your Sports Dream? Here’s One

A small town wrestler wanted to stand out from the other kids on the team.

Instead of the much respected brag of, “Yeah, I wrestled in high school,” the kid wanted to win a title, wanted more recognition that just showing up. He wanted to be ‘one of the guys.’

Except ‘the guys’ were state champions, Triple Crown winners, national champs, second in the world, D1 college wrestlers. It was a tough room to shine in.

The kid had the disadvantage of starting the sport late as a sophomore, not the kid wrestling programs from grade school.

But to his advantage, the wrestling coach was a well respected man who led national teams overseas.

The kid won his title, tried a year of college wrestling, then made his decision: He wanted to go big, or go home.

He joined the Army and wrangled a tryout with the All-Army Wrestling Team stationed in Fort Dix, New Jersey.

He was a nineteen year old trying to make a team with post-college athletes who wanted to keep kicking ass.

The kid didn’t make the team. He didn’t go big, but he didn’t go home. That’s not how the Army works.

The rest of his life he could say he tried out for the Army team instead of, “Yeah, I wrestled in high school.”

If there’s a moral here, it might be “Quit while you’re still ahead.”

But who does that?

The Great Leap playing at Portland Center Stage doesn’t quit.

It digs in and pays off.

Lauren Yea knows her sports dreams inside and out.

Yee says from the beginning, she just wrote about the “themes that I was interested in as a human being.” The Yale grad says her parents have always been supportive, helping her to fold programs and even building sets.

She estimates half her plays are about Asian American identity and the other half about topics that catch her attention. Both King of Yees and The Great Leap were inspired by her father’s life story.

I like writers who respect their elders, no matter their age. Being sixty-seven might have something to do with it.

If my kids were writers I would encourage them to write a story called the King of Gillaspies, but instead of being about their dad, it would be about their Grandpa G.

What about it, boys? Sharpen those laptops.

The Great Leap would help any writer.