Broadway Bound NATIONAL PASTIME Makes First Pitch At Hall Of Fame 5/1

National Pastime, the new musical comedy about a fictitious, unbeatable baseball team, will have a pre-Broadway bow on vaunted soil. Algonquin Theater Productions, which is developing the show for a Broadway production targeted for the 2011 season, has been invited to present the show at the Grandstand Theater in the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown on May 1st, 2010. 

The musical tells the story of WZBQ, a radio station in 1933 Iowa, which is on the verge of bankruptcy. To spark ratings, the station re-invents a long-defunct local baseball team and WZBQ begins to broadcast phony baseball games as though real.

National Pastime is the brainchild of two baseball fanatics, playwright Tony Sportiello--a lifetime baseball fan--and composer Al Tapper, whose collection of baseball memorabilia includes the home plate of the original Yankee Stadium and the cleats Ted Williams wore in his last game.

The May 1 engagement marks Sportiello's return to the Hall of Fame where his play, Contract Time, was presented in 1992. The new musical will reunite Algonquin and Tapper, who previously collaborated on Off-Broadway's Sessions and An Evening at the Carlyle.

The Cooperstown performance, directed by Tom Herman with musical direction by David Wolfson, will precede a regional tryout of National Pastime, which has yet to be announced.