Jim Sheridan, the man behind films like My Left Foot and In America, has signed on to helm an adaptation of Gary W. Moore’s Playing with the Enemy, Deadline reports. The nonfiction book, published in 2006, is officially described as follows:
It was true in the 1940’s, and it is still true today: if you have talent, someone will notice. In Gene Moores case, that someone was the Brooklyn Dodgers.
Gene Moore was a farm boy living with his family in Sesser, Illinois, a town so small even map makers ignored it. As a teenager, when he wasnt in school or helping his Pop on the farm, slopping the hogs and doing other chores with his older brother Ward and five sisters, Gene was playing baseball with the guys on the town team.
Some were twice his age. The older fellows didnt mind having the Moore kid on their team because he could hit the ball farther than anyone else, he was the best catcher anyone had ever seen, he could throw men out from his knees, and not a ball ever got past him. Gene was 15 years old.
Word quickly spread across the United States about the country boy who could hit the ball a country mile. The Dodgers wanted to take a look at this farm kid, barely old enough to shave and still awaiting his first kiss, but brash enough to call the pitches from behind the plate and motion to the infielders and outfielders as to how they should position themselves for certain hitters.
Headed for baseball stardom with the Brooklyn Dodgers, Genes destiny was interrupted by Pearl Harbor. After playing ball for the Navy in the Azores and North Africa, Gene and his team were sent to the States for a specialand top secretmission: guarding German sailors captured from U-505. Unable to field a team, Gene convinced his commander to allow him to teach the enemy how to play baseball while he and his teammates waited for the war to end so they could be called up into the Major Leagues. But Genes future changed irrevocably in Louisiana. His life… and maybe our national pastime …was forever altered.
Sheridan will produce alongside Tom De Santo and David Ranes with Wayne Duband and Grace Oppenheimer serving as executive producers.
