OCR Text |
Show Tk fcun Hum Inside TV A batboy's in the 'Clubhouse' as CBS drama series debuts By Jay Bobbin Zap2it America's favorite sustain a TV series? Baseball has tried before, in both comedy ("Ball Four") and drama ("Bay City Blues"), but hopes are high as executive producers Mel Gibson and Aaron Spelling give the notion another shot. A family saga as well as the story of a ball club, the sweetly CBS drama "Clubhouse" gets an advance premiere Sunday, Sept. 26, two nights before settling into its regular Tuesday slot. The team in question is the fictional New York Empires, whose" pinstripes were magically (or, more precisely, digitally) removed from the pilot episode after New York Yankees executives reportedly found the uniforms' look too close for comfort. The players include near-myththird baseman Conrad Dean (portrayed by former TV "Superman" Dean Cain), and they have a new batboy in Pete Young (Jeremy Sumpter, "Peter Pan"), an impressionable adolescent awed at his good fortune in getting the job. Pete doesn't want his highly protective single mother (Emmy winner Mare Winningham) interfering, so he keeps his job a secret as long as possible. That's of the way roughly first through the script, since police catch him driving an Empire's flashy car that Pete doesn't know contains drugs. Debating whether to take the fall or tell the truth, he's counseled by the team's Can ic two-thir- equipment manager (Emmy ner Christopher Lloyd). win- . Kirsten Storms, who recently left the role of Belle Brady on the NBC daytime serial "Days of Our' Lives," also stars in "Clubhouse" as Pete's wild-chil- d sister. While John Ortiz and JD Pardo play other members of the Empires, Sumpter is happy to have landed the pivotal part of the team newcomer, especially knowing something about the sport himself. Tve played baseball all my life," he says. "I grew up in Kentucky, and I was actually on a team that went to the state championship and won. When I came out to L.A. to act, I had to give that up a bit. Just being out there, having a bunch of people r--: i lit , v watching you play a game, gives you a thrill. I'm on a men's-leagu- e Softball team with my dad; we lose every game, but we always have fun playing. I love the sport. You feel part of something when you're playing the game." Participating in sports also is second nature to charismatic Cain, who couldn't wait to get to a CBS press party at Dodger Stadium in July so he could try to belt one out of the park. The football player actually was on the Buffalo Bills' roster for "an hour and a half," he jokes seaof his lone, short son. "I was carried on the team 'til November, although I was on injury reserve starting at the end of July. Just before our first preseason game, I had surgery. I just sort of floated for that period of time, and I never got healthy and had to retire." Still, the experience gave Cain pro-footb- Dean Cain, Christopher Lloyd, Jeremy Sumpter, Mare Winningham and Kirsten Storms (from "Clubhouse," a CBS drama series about a professional baseball team that debuts Sunday. a real sense of being part of a clubhouse. "There is that camaraderie, that sort of family-unfeel, and that's really important for the chemistry and makeup of a team. When I got to Buffalo, half the people - OK, 98 percent of the people - didn't know me by name. They just called me it 'Princeton.' "There were a lot of initiation rites we had to do as rookies, like standing up on a table and singing our alma mater in a spe- It wasnt really flatterwas a lot of fun. It's a but it ing, cific pose. feeling-ou- ACAD6HY 3 fx i process; then the t Of Htf VBStClN n Spanish Fork , J NOW ENROLLING NEW STUDENTS Receive00 Off Any Kdrcut In our fuST wrvlco saton 756-1635793-0- mm ." . " , star in team will grow together and either be successful with the chemistry or unsuccessful." The baseball sequences for "Clubhouse" are filmed partially on a set with a "virtual stadium," and sometimes on location at Blair Field in Long Beach, Calif Executive producer Ken Topol-sk- y ("Party of Five," The Wonder Years") maintains the series never will be "strictly a show about baseball, but we had to put enough in so that it had a sense of reality. We don't have to have a full play run, just enough so it meets the dramatic needs of the script. I think we want to create a reality that works for our audi- -' important thing - her kids," the actress reflects. "She took a job where she could spend time chauffeuring them, and she struggles to hold down the roles of both mother and father. "This baseball team has all the qualities she would want for her ence." "Veronica Mars" and ABC's As announces (fs second location at the MATC CamfHJS In American Fork left) son; a great, sort of innocent kid meets up with a hero. On the other side, she's got her wayward teenage daughter, who takes up a lot of her energy. They're two counterpoints for her to struggle between." Gibson's Icon Productions is entering TV in a big way this season, also turning out UPNV plete Savages." Topolsky says Gibson "gives us feedback on the scripts and the cuts, the same as a mother of grown children, Winningham (returning to CBS after last season's "The Brotherhood of Poland, New Hampshire") knows how real her "Clubhouse" character's domestic dilemmas are. "She has made a lot of sacrifices to make her life fit the most "Com- . Mr. Spelling does. We're grateful to Have someone with that expe- rience, and who also has a sense of an audience that we may not think of off the top of our heads." |