I'm wondering if I need to start writing with pen and paper again. I redid my interview with the main character in my baseball story screenplay and I came out with a totally different interview. I was thinking of changing my story, thinking I needed to make my baseball player a minor league player instead of a major league player. My baseball guy wasn't coming across as a very likable character. He was too brash, too arrogant and I wasn't sure if a regular person would relate to my spoiled baseball millionaire character.

But if made my baseball guy play in the minor leagues, I would have had to take Pac Bell park out of the story and I don't want to do that. Pac Bell park was such an inspiration for my screenplay that I can't bear to take it out. I need Pac Bell park to be in the story to be a symbol for renewal, old fashioned values and that simply all baseball players started out with a parent playing catch with them in the backyard.

So, I decided to make my baseball player less brash, more of a utility player, a journeyman type of player, who has good numbers but was never a star. He's still 38 years old and he's still on the last leg of of his career, but he's batting .250 maybe .200 and he's seriously thinking about retirement. I made him more resigned, tired and older. He wants to give up the game, but baseball is the only thing he knows and if he quits at 38, what the hell else is he going to do with his life. I made him more ordinary, but I think this new characterization makes him more sympathetic to an audience.

I want him to be an everyman in a sport like baseball, which is becoming full of players who are increasingly removed from ordinary people with their arrogant attitudes and their multimillion dollar salaries. I see my baseball player as a hold out from a different era. He's never been on a team that's won a world series. He's played the sport because he was good at it, he loved it and it was better than becoming a construction worker or painter like his dad and brother.

He still has a troubled relationship with his father, which became exacerbated when he left home at 18 with his college baseball scholarship. His father supported him, pushed him into baseball early on and then when he became successful, the father started to resent his success because of his own failure in the sport. My baseball guy feels that he would have been a better player if his father had behaved differently. Doesn't every child think this? And now that his father is dying, my baseball guy has tried to make up with him, but can't cross the chasm of time and bitterness that's developed between him and his dad.

I think this story is better, closer to my original short story idea. I think in the first draft of my screenplay I got caught up in the fact that my main character played baseball. But really, the story is about a father and son struggling to resolve their differences before time runs out for them. The fact that my main character plays baseball is incidental to the story, I think. I liked the idea of my main character being a baseball player only because I see sports as one of the few ways that men and their sons bond together from a very young age. Sometimes, I think sports is the only way men bond.

I think I have to interview all the other characters in my screenplay and then I'll be ready to write. I'm still debating about writing by hand versus computer. For the interviews, writing by hand is definitely the way to go beacause I can't sensor my thoughts when I write by hand. By the time I write the screenplay, I will be following my new outline so I'm hoping writing by computer doesn't make that much of a difference. I hate writing by hand because I have really unreadable handwriting and transcribing my own work is such a pain in the wazoo. But, I'll guess I'll to wait and see what comes out when I finally sit down and start writing.