←Recommendations of The Baseball Gods

A beautifully written play about two young friends dealing with hardships they don’t understand or deserve, but who manage grace and goodness through their baseball-fueled connection. So many highly “physical” plays are about violence in one form or another; this one is about love.

I had the opportunity to watch a virtual reading of this play through the Landing Theatre New American Voices Festival 2021. It's a lovely, heartbreaking story of childhood friendship, the pains of growing up, and the losses we face in the process. I found it to be incredibly moving, and the shifts back and forth through time created this wonderful portrait of the friendship. I came away both devastated and hopeful. Can't wait to see it on stage!

A heartbreaking story of friendship as the audience watches two friends grow and bond over the game of baseball. As their pitches get stronger and harder, the life lessons and trauma they face develop as well. They learn to cope with adolescence, family, life while dreaming of making it the Majors.

This play just touched me deeply! An exquisite combination of hilarity and humanity that explores huge topics like cis adolescent male masculinity, friendship, mortality, and family trauma entirely through the intimate and fully-realized relationship of Jamie and Sam. Huffman's use of shifting chronology, the theatricality of baseball, and the performativity of masculine friendship all come together beautifully in a piece that I would love to see onstage. Lovely and subtle work.

This is a naturalistic, clever, hearty home run! A delightful examination of masculinity and an ambitious way of bringing baseball to the theatre sphere. I was quickly and pleasantly surprised by the nuance of their relationship. The writer has captured how best friends develop insight into each other's lives over time, particularly when parents are abusive in any way. I love what Jamie and Sam provide for each other.