Courage Wears Two Uniforms
Baseball's Greatest Heroes
In Partnership with the National Baseball Hall of Fame
The Series Opening
It's a fighter plane, from the pilot's eye and it's flying over Korea... slow and sunny and then bang! Wham! Boom! The biggest g--damn explosion you ever saw... and then it goes dark. Dark! For maybe 10 seconds... And then when it comes back, there's the ballpark. And the crowd. Roaring. And that's how it's supposed to begin. Ted Williams to Richard Ben Cramer
This is how HOME & AWAY begins.
The Opportunity
A four-part premium limited series for America's 250th anniversary.
The never-before-told stories of 70 Baseball Hall of Famers who served in wartime — from the Civil War through Korea. In partnership with the National Baseball Hall of Fame. The America 250 window doesn't come again for 250 years.
What we need: The voice.
The Constant
The one constant through all the years has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It has been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. James Earl Jones, Field of Dreams
The Series
Ten stories drawn from the 70 Hall of Famers who served—with every name honored through roll-call interstitials and plaque medallion reveals. From a Civil War Christmas to a burning cockpit over Korea. Branch Rickey’s decisions echo across every generation between. Restored archival footage. Living archive photography. The voices of those who were there.
Episode One — League Championship Series Premiere
Yogi Berra • Jack Buck • Joe Garagiola
The pattern begins in 1862: baseball spreading through Civil War camps, binding a broken nation. Morgan G. Bulkeley, 13th New York Militia, survives to become first president of the National League. The only Civil War veteran in Cooperstown. France, 1918: Branch Rickey commanding Ty Cobb and Christy Mathewson in the Chemical Warfare Service. Mathewson inhales mustard gas. Dead at 45. War changed them all. Elizabeth Avenue, St. Louis. Italian immigrant neighborhood. Yogi at 5447, Joey at 5446, playing catch across the street. A thousand miles away in Cleveland, a kid named Jack Buck dreams of a life in baseball—not knowing a German bridge will connect him to this street forever. Rickey lowballs Yogi at the Cardinals tryout. The Yankees match. His mistake sends Berra toward pinstripe immortality. But history wasn't done with Rickey.
Episode One — Continued
June 6, 1944 — Utah Beach
Then Pearl Harbor. Jackie Robinson is on the SS Lurline when the crew starts painting the windows black. Draft notices. Enlistment lines. Ballplayers signing up. And on D-Day, a 19-year-old catcher named Lawrence Peter Berra mans a machine gun on a 36-foot LCSS rocket boat at Utah Beach. The crews called them Landing Craft Suicide Squad. "Being a young guy, I thought it was like the Fourth of July." Fifty years of silence followed. The philosopher of baseball earned his wisdom in horror. The man who saw humanity at its worst chose joy anyway.
Episode Two — World Series Games 1-2
Jackie Robinson • Larry Doby • Hank Greenberg
Three men who faced prejudice in their own uniforms before facing the enemy abroad. Jackie Robinson refused to move to the back of an Army bus at Fort Hood. Court-martialed. Acquitted. The courage forged in that courtroom changed America. Larry Doby integrated the American League eleven weeks after Jackie, with none of the fanfare. Hank Greenberg hit home runs against Hitler. And the man who signed Jackie: Branch Rickey. The same WWI veteran who commanded Cobb and Mathewson. War taught him what sacrifice looked like.
Episode Three — World Series Games 5-6
Warren Spahn • Monte Irvin • Engineers at War
Two future Hall of Famers. Same theater. Different wars within the war. Warren Spahn, combat engineer, Battle of the Bulge, wounded at Remagen Bridge—the only intact crossing over the Rhine. The only MLB player to receive a battlefield commission. Monte Irvin, 1313th Engineer General Service Regiment—a Negro Leagues legend assigned to a segregated unit, denied the combat role his talent demanded. Same hell, different cages. Jack Buck returns. The voice we met in Episode 1 was wounded at the same bridge. The threads of this tapestry weave tighter.
Episode Four — Veterans Day 2026
Ted Williams • Jerry Coleman • Marine Pilots
We return to where we began. Ted Williams. Called to serve twice. Thirty-nine combat missions in Korea, more than half as wingman to John Glenn. February 16, 1953: his F9F Panther takes heavy fire. Plane on fire. He belly-lands at 200 mph. Watching from the runway: Jerry Coleman. Yankees second baseman. The only MLB player to see combat in both World War II and Korea. As Williams emerged, Coleman called out: “Hey Ted, that’s a lot faster than you ever ran around the bases!” The explosion that began our story finds its answer in one defiant crack of his bat.
Talent Targets
Every element is in place. The Hall of Fame partnership. The Emmy-winning team. The once-in-a-lifetime premiere windows. What we need is the voice that brings these stories to life.
Priority Talent — WME
The Perfect Fit
From Field of Dreams to the fields of Normandy. Nobody in American cinema understands what baseball means to this country better than Kevin Costner.
Costner has spent 35 years building the cultural vocabulary for baseball nostalgia. HOME & AWAY is the logical evolution. Not fantasy fields in Iowa, but real heroes who traded bats for rifles and came home to play again. "The one constant through all the years has been baseball." James Earl Jones said it in Costner's film. This series proves it.
| Baseball | Field of Dreams, Bull Durham, For Love of the Game — the defining baseball movie actor of his generation |
| Americana | Yellowstone proved he owns American frontier mythology. Dances With Wolves showed he carries epic scope. |
| Patriotic | The Postman, Open Range — stories about American sacrifice and honor |
| Current | Horizon: An American Saga demonstrates appetite for epic, legacy-defining projects |
Priority Talent — WME
The Prestige Play
Two-time Oscar winner. The definitive voice of military honor and American sacrifice on screen. No one commands attention like Denzel.
HOME & AWAY isn't just about baseball players who served. It's about men who fought two wars: one overseas, one at home. Jackie Robinson was court-martialed for refusing to move to the back of a military bus before he ever stepped onto Ebbets Field. These are Denzel stories.
| Military | Glory (Oscar winner), Courage Under Fire, A Soldier's Story — the canon of Black military heroism in American cinema |
| Justice | Malcolm X, The Hurricane — portraying men who fought systems and won |
| Gravitas | His narration would define this as a premium documentary event. Selective and legacy-focused. |
Priority Talent — WME
The WWII Authority
Saving Private Ryan. That's the film that defined the WWII generation for modern audiences. Matt Damon was at the center of it.
The opening of HOME & AWAY: Ted Williams' fighter jet screaming over Korea. The crash. The darkness. Then the roar of the ballpark. This is the same tonal territory as Private Ryan. The horror of war and the grace of homecoming. And Ted Williams was a Red Sox legend. For a Boston kid, this is personal.
| WWII | Saving Private Ryan, The Monuments Men — he IS the face of Greatest Generation cinema |
| Baseball | Lifelong Red Sox fan. Born in Boston. Fenway is personal. |
| Narrator | The Martian proved he can carry a story with just his voice and presence |
| Production | Artists Equity (with Affleck) — producing ambitious prestige projects |
The Format
We are actively packaging talent in parallel with sponsor and distribution conversations. Talent attachment is part of closing the financing and platform path.
The Ask
WME likes options. Here are three tiers of talent involvement.
| Tier | Role | Time | What It Looks Like |
|---|---|---|---|
| Narrator | Voice-over narration | 2-3 sessions (~3 days) | Read from script, record in your city, minimal travel |
| Narrator + EP | VO + Executive Producer credit | Same + name on project | Low-impact schedule. Prestige America 250 project. |
| Host + EP | On-camera + narration + EP | 3-5 shoot days + VO | Visit historical sites. Fenway. Cooperstown. Fort Hood. Walk where they walked. |
We are packaging talent and distribution in parallel. What follows is a proposed framework for a non-binding Letter of Interest—long-form terms and compensation finalized upon financing and distribution.
| Roles & Scope | |
| Narrator | Voice-over services for (4) 60-minute episodes. Includes initial scratch track (remote), final recording sessions (2 days max), and reasonable pickups. |
| Narrator + EP | All narrator services, plus non-exclusive Executive Producer credit. Meaningful consultation on scripts/cuts; no day-to-day production responsibilities required. |
| Host + EP | All above services, plus (5) shoot days maximum at key locations (Fenway, Cooperstown, Fort Hood). |
| Compensation | |
| Fee | Customary premium documentary episodic fee, payable MFN with top-tier talent. Talent attachment is the principal element triggering distribution negotiations with identified platform targets. |
| Structure | Payment schedule commensurate with production financing closing and delivery of services. |
| Back-end | Applicable pool participation in net proceeds, consistent with EP stature. |
| Commitment & Schedule | |
| Window | Production dates TBD pending Series greenlight. Target: Spring/Summer 2026. |
| Flexibility | Services scheduled on a stop-and-start basis to accommodate talent’s primary motion picture/TV schedule. |
| Location | VO services performed remotely or at a studio in talent’s city of residence. |
| Rights & Credits | |
| Credit | Single card, main titles. Position and size MFN with other EPs. |
| Name & Likeness | Approved for marketing, promotion, and publicity of the Series (subject to pre-approved photo kill rights). |
| Exclusivity | Non-exclusive documentary voice-over; standard exclusions for commercial endorsements. |
| Next Steps | |
| Execution of standard non-binding LOI to formalize attachment for package sales. Long-form agreement triggered only upon Series financing/greenlight. | |
The terms outlined herein are non-binding and intended solely for the purpose of discussion regarding a potential talent attachment. No legal obligation shall exist unless and until a formal written agreement is executed by all parties. Compensation and production commencement are subject to the Producer securing third-party financing and distribution.
The Team
What’s Locked
This project corrects the legend when the truth is more powerful. Every quote verified. Every claim sourced.
The Close
When you sit down in the theater and the lights go off... what's the first g--damn thing you see? Ted Williams to Richard Ben Cramer
70 Baseball Hall of Famers served in wartime. Their stories have never been told at this scale. The Hall of Fame is in. The America 250 window is open. The Navy named a warship for them — USS Cooperstown, “America’s Away Team.” Four episodes. LCS through Veterans Day.
All we need is the voice.