Old Globe’s world premiere play ‘Under a Baseball Sky’ is about much more than the sport

The team that brought José Cruz González’s Under a Baseball Sky to the Old Globe Theater includes not only the playwright himself and director James Vásquez, but also two longtime members of San Diego’s Mexican-American community.

One of them is Maria Garcia, who lives in Logan Heights and showed González the neighborhood that inspired his play about “two wounded souls who find something in common when they throw a ball and play tag.” Their “amazing record of community history,” González said, reflected the important role the quintessentially American game of baseball played in its growth and culture.

The other contributor is director Vásquez’s father, Pedro Ortiz Vásquez, a poet and activist who has been a high school baseball coach for 40 years. The senior Vásquez served as the baseball fundamentals coach for the production, which premieres February 11 at the Globe’s Sheryl and Harvey White Theater.

“I didn’t understand baseball until my kids started playing,” González said. “Mr. Vasquez was fantastic. He nailed things for me – all that knowledge of baseball but also a metaphor for life, something like ‘Keep your eye on the ball.'”

James Vásquez said that as a little boy he heard his father say this phrase many, many times – “Keep your eye on the ball”.

“I grew up in Chicano Park,” said James Vásquez. “I remember how the murals were painted. From an early age I had a connection to the energy of community. Baseball is the all-American sport. There’s something really beautiful about these immigrant communities finding their place in America through this sport. There’s something about their ability to play this that makes them feel like “I belong here”. ”

“Under a Baseball Sky,” commissioned by Old Globe, was first heard in a Zoom reading as part of the Powers New Voices Festival taking place virtually in 2021. It was rehearsed live at the Colorado New Play Festival in Steamboat Springs last year.

A few months ago, González and Vásquez read “Under a Baseball Sky” at the Logan Heights Library and were encouraged by the audience’s response.

“They used to tell us their baseball stories about their parents or grandparents,” said González, who also wrote “American Mariachi,” a musical that premiered at the Old Globe in 2018 and was also directed by Vásquez. “It really touched her. They were just so moved and excited.”

“Under a Baseball Sky” follows a friendship that develops between young Teo and elderly neighbor Eli O’Reilly that is intertwined with baseball’s cross-generational presence in their Mexican-American community, a community that includes Logan Heights in San Diego is not unlike.

“Basically,” González said, “it’s just two people playing ball.”

Whether it’s novels like Bernard Malamud’s The Natural, WP Kinsella’s Shoeless Joe (which became the film Field of Dreams), or plays like Under a Baseball Sky, America’s national pastime has consistently served as a vehicle for deeper storytelling.

“There’s Americana in there,” González said of baseball. “You’re playing against this other team, but they’re getting bigger than you. To me, there’s something heroic about it.”

Vásquez said some of the cast of “Under a Baseball Sky” said they never realized how much baseball was like theater.

“It has an ensemble,” he said, comparing the two. “There are missions. There are obstacles to overcome. There is a beginning, a middle and an end. There are breaks in the act.

“Baseball is a form of theater in its own right,” Vásquez said.

“Under a Baseball Sky”

If: Previews begin February 11th. Opens February 16th and runs through March 12th. 7 p.m. Tuesdays and Wednesdays; 8 p.m. Thursdays and Fridays; 2pm and 8pm on Saturdays; 2pm and 7pm on Sundays

Where: The Sheryl and Harvey White Theater of the Old Globe Theater, Balboa Park, 1363 Old Globe Way, San Diego

tickets: $33 and up

phone: (619) 234-5623

On-line: theoldglobe.org

Coddon is a freelance writer.