Hitting Home

HITTING HOME

Stay Updated One Heck of a Game

In the summer of 2019, writer and director Karen DeLuca Stephens presented a short documentary chronicling the true story that inspired her feature-length screenplay, Hitting Home.

After ten years of research and development, the screenplay for the full-length feature film, Hitting Home, is now moving into pre-production.

They can hit; they can field; they can steal bases.

The McKay Pals are better than the other teams from their Jeffries Point neighborhood, and maybe all of East Boston.

They have to win every game to compete in the citywide championship in Fenway Park.

No other team from Jeffries Point has ever gone that far.

To go all the way they need a pitcher, someone who’s hard to hit. They need Babe, a left-hander who throws a screwball, one of baseball’s trickiest pitches.

But they have to convince him since Babe’s not sure he can trust some of the guys on the team. He doesn’t like the way they treat his brother and he has enough problems with his own family.

His father, Enrico, is a broken man. After the bank repossessed his business and home he is forced to return with his family to the immigrant neighborhood he was proud to leave years before. To add to his humiliation they must live with his wife’s sister. His rage seethes below the surface of an impenetrable demeanor and hangs over his wife and children, especially Babe whose passion for baseball infuriates Enrico.

In spite of his father, Babe pursues his own dreams and joins the McKay Pals. The team wins one game after another getting closer to the championship.

After an explosive confrontation with his wife and Babe, Enrico throws eleven dollars, his entire worth, on the kitchen table.

“I’m leaving and I’m never coming back,” he says and walks out.

The responsibility of his family now falls on Babe’s shoulders. He stops playing baseball.

The championship game approaches. Babe insists he has no time to play baseball now that he is hustling as a shine-boy in Boston to make money for his family. His mother asks her son to explain baseball to her one day after he gives her his day’s earnings.

“I no understand this baseball. They tell me your team wins when you pitch. Why you more important if so many boys play?” She asks.

“I was the pitcher. I throw the ball so the other team can’t get a hit.”

“There’s no other one who can throw the ball like you?”

“They’ll find someone else, ma,” Babe mutters.

“Ah, so it’s like my piecework. When I no sew the sleeve on the jacket, no one buy the jacket because it has no sleeve and the ladies who ask me to help, they have no money now because I no do my part,” she says and gestures to the garment on her sewing machine.

Babe is stunned by her comparison and is quiet as she turns away and bends over the whirring of her sewing machine.

“Amedeo, you no quit your team,” she says.

Babe rejoins his team and pitches the championship game in Fenway Park.