Dustin Bronson and Kendra Mueller Photo by Alyssa Kristine Photography

Artistry is giving us a romantic comedy that, to sweeten the deal, incorporates sports metaphors and a few legendary (at least in baseball circles) stories from the annals of the great American game: baseball. Love and Baseball is a delightful ninety minute-long two-character romantic comedy without an intermission, but a pause between each of the innings, er, scenes. The show is mounted in Artistry's Black Box Theater, the first time it's being used for a public production since pre-COVID, and the venue perfectly suits this baseball-mitt sized play.

Love and Baseball is by Jerry Montoya. It premiered in 2016 at the B Street Theatre and Sofia Center for the Arts in Sacramento, where he serves as artistic producer. Since then, it has had a modest production history. I was able to track down production two years ago at Acadia Repertory Theatre in Mount Desert, Maine and last year in Mishawaka, Indiana and the University of Idaho. However, shortly after the premiere, Montoya must have scored a movie deal, because Love and Baseball came out as a feature film in 2021–same plot and the same length, meaning no padding from stage to screen. The movie was a low-budget effort and, within that context, a modest success. Maybe you saw it. I did not, though I remember seeing trailers for it and thinking, "That looks cute."

Love and Baseball onstage is indeed cute, and I would add that it is funny and thoroughly enjoyable. The plotting requires some suspension of disbelief, and some allowance for bad choices made by the two characters, each of whom intend to be good people.

Will (Dustin Bronson) is Michael's roommate in a house in Los Angeles. Michele (Kendra Mueller) lived with Michael before Will. The conversation about whether they were "just friends" or not is kind of dodgy, but in any case, she and Michael are still friends, so Michele shows up at the house to wait for him, having made plans to go to a movie together. Because Michele still has a key to the house, she has let herself in. Will charges into the house, desperate to both take a pee and turn the TV on to the Dodgers playoff game. He spots Michele, a total stranger, freaks out, and picks up the baseball bat he keeps near the door in case self-defense proves necessary. This is how Will and Michele meet.

Love and Baseball follows the logic that you get three strikes before you're out, or three outs before your team goes down. This meet-cute scene is Will's first time at bat, though it is Michele who leads off, making the pitch by openly flirting and toying with Will's mix of awkwardness, uncertainty about the current state of affairs between this woman and his roommate, and indecisiveness about whether to watch the game (the playoffs!) or see if he can get on base with this enigmatic woman, a philosophy professor no less. Will is a documentary filmmaker, his fall-back career choice when pro baseball player didn't work out.

The first at bat, or scene, ends with Will enacting a legendary baseball story: Kirk Gibson's pinch-hit home run, with two severely injured legs, to score the winning run for the Dodgers over the Oakland Athletics in the first game of the 1988 World Series. If you are not a die-hard baseball fan, this may mean nothing to you, but Will's enthused enactment, as performed by Bronson, is a treasure. At the end, Michele looks up and says, "I think that's the most adorable thing I've ever seen," adding after a short pause, "in a manly way." You know for sure, then, that you are in rom-com land, and for all the unlikeliness of the set-up and the speed at which things develop, it is easy to have a delightful time.

Will gets two more at bats, each two years apart, and each having him return like an eager mascot to undermine Michele's resolve to leave the field. In his second time at the plate, Will outdoes his enactment of the Kirk Gibson story with a dramatization of "Merkle's Boner," a chapter in baseball history that dates back to 1908. In the course of doing so, Will does something so boorish and thoughtless, one expects Michele to be through with him for good. And yet ... there is a charm she cannot deny and an attraction she cannot avoid. There are developments, some that are a surprise, some that are predictable, and both Michele and Will make some unadvised choices. Montoya manages to end the game in a way that feels like neither a grand slam nor a shut-out, which, for all the times the play stretches credulity, leaves us able to leave thinking, "This, I can believe."

Will and Michele both have flaws that might keep a person from wanting to pursue more than a casual friendship with them. To Montoya's credit, the dialogue is snappy enough to keep us interested in spending time with them. To director Eric Morris' credit, the pacing, blocking, and energy between the actors keep us engaged from the cry of "Play ball" till the final at bat. To the credit of actors Bronson and Mueller, we believe these characters. We sometimes shake our heads at their choices, thinking "how could you?," but we can believe that they did. Bronson's forte is puppy-dog geniality, while Mueller's is conveying a protective coating to shield her from disappointment–no doubt an artifact of her childhood, which she has occasion to reveal–but beneath that outer crust is an active yearning for a connection that she has never been able to make good on.

Katie Phillips' set design offers an authentically lived-in apartment, cluttered with apt props, also designed by Phillips. Grant E. Merges' lighting design matches the mood, from subtle moments of near-intimacy to the glare of the Polo Grounds, while Richard Graham's sound design brings us the backdrop of a stirred-up crowd to accompany Will's baseball stories, and music with awesome fidelity to justify Will's obsession with high-end stereo equipment. Samantha Fromm Haddow's costumes are well suited to the characters' situations from scene to scene. In a nice touch, between scenes we see the actors change costumes standing behind baseball-backstop fencing at either side of the stage, a device that serves well to mark the passage of time.

Love and Baseball is an appealing play. It is wonderfully funny–the answer that Will gives to Michele's question, "Why don't boys become men, instead of just boys who grow older?" may, alone, be worth the price of admission–and Artistry's production excels in every way, covering all the bases. It doesn't have the energy of a big brash musical, the intellectual heft of an "issues" play, or the emotional workout of a heavy drama. It does, with great panache, what romantic comedy is meant to do: make us laugh, feel good, and raise hope that sometimes, in spite of all the foul balls, the home team wins.

Love and Baseball runs through July 28, 2025, at Artistry, Black Box Theater, Bloomington Center for the Arts, 1800 West Old Shakopee Road, Bloomington MN. For tickets and information, please call 952-563-8375 or visit artistrymn.org.

Playwright: Jerry Montoya; Director: Eric Morris; Scenic and Props Design: Katie Phillips; Costume Design: Samantha Fromm Haddow; Lighting Design: Grant E. Merges; Sound Design: Richard Graham; Production Manager: Katie Phillips; Technical Director: Will Rafferty; Stage Manager: Samantha Smith; Assistant Stage Manager: Grace Czywczynski.

Cast: Dustin Bronson (Will), Kendra Mueller (Michele).