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Sports on film and sports on stage are two very different ballgames.

Classic sports films like “Field of Dreams” trade in sentiment. They celebrate overcoming adversity and long odds. They seek a nostalgic connection with a past that may not have ever existed.

Plays, on the other hand, tend to tackle sports like other subjects — as a means of realizing a greater truth about who we are. Warts and all.

“I think the expectations between a sports film and a sports play are very different,” said playwright Ken Weitzman, whose “The Catch” opens Thursday in its world-premiere staging by the Denver Center Theatre Company.

“Filmmakers know you go to movies for the literal game action, for inspiring speeches and for come-from-behind victories, so that’s what they give you. Whereas in the theater, I hope, we’re looking for meaning about who are we as human beings and as a country.”

No surprise then, that, unlike the bountiful canon of loved baseball films, there have been only a handful of hard-hitting plays about America’s pastime. Plays like “Take Me Out,” which used baseball as a means of looking at homophobia in a new way.

Perhaps that’s because, unlike film, game action just looks silly on a stage. Or that the audience for sporting events and live theater can be vastly different.

Or maybe it’s because, when it comes to baseball, grown men wear blinders affixed with Elmer’s glue. Like a dripping, messy hot dog, baseball has always been wrapped up in a kind of nostalgia that’s steeped in denial and historical contradiction.

Old-timers talk about the good old days of home-run king Babe Ruth —when the Chicago White Sox were throwing the World Series. Their sons talk about the good old days of Lou Gehrig and Joe DiMaggio winning America’s hearts in the 1930s — a decade before blacks were allowed to play alongside them. Their sons talk about the good old days of Hank Aaron — when he got racially motivated death threats for breaking Ruth’s home-run record in 1974.

And in 1998, fathers, with sons perched on their laps, wept openly as Mark McGwire crossed home plate, breaking Roger Maris’ single-season home-run record. When the slugger scooped up his own son, it was a moment as cinematic as it gets.

And it was based on a lie.

Every era of baseball has been accompanied by scandal. This one was the biggest: Dozens of the game’s biggest stars, including McGwire, had been boosting their numbers with banned performance-enhancing steroids for years.

So by the time insufferable anti-hero Barry Bonds broke McGwire’s record in 2001, and then Aaron’s all-time mark in ’06, no one was crying. Except, perhaps, for the death of our love for baseball.

Oh, who am I kidding? More than 73 million people attended major-league baseball games last season — the same year McGwire admitted to taking steroids, and Roger Clemens was indicted for lying about steroids before Congress.

Baseball, it seems, has an unshakable place in the hearts of fathers and sons, and in the foundation of American society. And it’s powered by a kind of sentimentality that films have masterfully perpetuated for a century.

Into this cultural fray now comes “The Catch,” one of the most anticipated plays on the Denver Center Theatre Company’s season. Weitzman’s comedy explores the nature of baseball’s emotional clutch on America’s hearts, while introducing one of the most brazenly original characters to hit any stage. He’s Darryl Love, a brash-taking, truth-telling, performance-enhancing home-run king who serves as the play’s one-man chorus.

He is most definitely a product of his times: He’s arrogant, uneducated, ungrateful, unapologetic, a cheater … and worth hundreds of millions. So when calls come down for his record to be marked with an asterisk, his answer, laced with fury, is, “fine.”

As long as you put an asterisk next to every record set before Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in 1947.

“I’ll be the poster boy for all that’s wrong with the American pastime, with America in general,” Love says in the play. “But I’ll tell you a secret: I don’t mind.”

So in Love, the greatest beneficiary of the rags-to-riches potential that American sports can offer, Weitzman is telling us that it’s a culture built on a myth: Spun yarn that’s now coming undone.

“There’s a ’50s nostalgia that people tend to go into culturally,” he said. “We idealize certain eras of our nation’s history, and baseball does the same thing. It’s a mirror.

“But there is always an underside to that nostalgia.”

Observers are already calling Love a composite of Bonds, Darryl Strawberry and other notorious sports jerks. Weitzman says a better comparison is Muhammad Ali.

“He’s someone who is going to speak the brutal truth, to say the outlandish thing — and do it in such a charismatic way, that it’s fun,” said Weitzman. “You may not like what Muhammad Ali has to say — but you sure as hell enjoy hearing him say it.”

While Weitzman was preparing “The Catch” for the stage, more baseball players were appearing before Congress than home plate. And audiences obliviously ate up simple, sentimental new sports movies like “The Blind Side” and “Secretariat.”

“I think that’s because with films, there’s such a bottom line of making money,” he said. “And by making a movie that celebrates the positive view of things, and the nostalgia of the sport, that’s probably going to bring in more income than a story that takes a more complex view.”

Weitzman, you should know, is not here to tear baseball down. “Oh, absolutely not. I still love baseball passionately, regardless of what’s happened,” he said. “But you can still look at it in a complex way and love it all the same. I know I do.”

That’s clear enough in “The Catch,” which focuses on an unemployed, sad sack of a man who maintains a labored optimism, even though life keeps dumping on him. He gets it in his head that if he can catch — and sell — Love’s coming, record-setting home-run baseball, it will salvage his finances and his personal life. But when it comes to pass, and ownership of the ball is disputed, we see how the elusive American dream plays out from several cultural perspectives — and through a definite 2011 lens.

“Certainly, in the play, steroids are a metaphor for our economy,” Weitzman said. “We’ve reached a point where these players being on steroids is like Horatio Alger on steroids or Willy Loman (‘Death of a Salesman’) on steroids.

“The very things that made us a nation of inventors with that ‘can-do’ attitude can be a tragic flaw, as we have seen with the dot-com bust or the housing bubble or with Enron. It pervades our culture, and it pervades our economy.”

And yet, we Americans maintain an inherent optimism. In the play, that’s Gary.

“This is a guy who thinks this one baseball — and baseball in general — can change his life for the better,” Weitzman said.

That’s baseball.

John Moore: 303-954-1056 or jmoore@denverpost.com

Watch the Denver Center’s “10 Minutes to Curtain” episode”

“The Catch”

Drama. Presented by the Denver Center Theatre Company at the Space Theatre, Denver Performing Arts Complex. Written by Kein Weitzman. Directed by Lou Jacob. Starring Ian Merrill Peakes, Mike Hartman, Nicoye Banks, Pun Bandhu, Makela Spielman and Wai-Ching Ho. Through Feb. 26. 6:30 p.m. Mondays-Thursdays; 7:30 p.m. Fridays; 1:30 and 7:30 p.m. Saturdays. $10-$67. 303-893-4100 (800-641-1222 outside Denver) or

This week’s theater openings

Opening Thursday, through Feb. 26: Denver Center Theatre Company’s “The Catch,” at the Space Theatre

Opening Friday, Jan. 28, through Feb. 19: Buntport Theatre’s “Kafka On Ice”

Opening Friday, Jan. 28, through Feb. 20: Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center’s “The Producers”

Opening Friday, Jan. 28, through Feb. 19: Byers-Evans House’s “Love”

Opening Friday, Jan. 28, through Feb. 26: The Avenue’s “The Good Body”

Opening Friday, Jan. 28, through Feb 27: Heritage Square Music Hall’s “Loud: This Is It” Golden

Opening Saturday, Jan. 29, through Feb. 26: Paragon Theatre’s “Reasons to Be Pretty”

Opening Saturday, Jan. 29, through March 6: Bas Bleu’s “Looking for Normal” Fort Collins

Opening Saturday, Jan. 29, through Feb. 12: Longmont Theatre Company’s “Lucky Stiff”

Saturday and Sunday, Jan. 29-30: ARCH’s “Medal of Honor Rag,” at Denver Civic Theatre at Su Teatro

Saturday, Jan. 29, only: Stories on Stage and Modern Muse’s “Cuentame un Cuentito (“Tell Me a Story”) at Denver Civic Theatre at Su Teatro

This week’s theater closings

Today, Jan. 23: Union Colony Dinner Theatre’s “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat” Greeley

Today, Jan. 23: Jesters Dinner Theatre’s “A Grand Night for Singing” Longmont

Sunday, Jan. 30: Town Hall Arts Center’s “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee” Littleton

Sunday, Jan. 30: PHAMALy’s “The Diviners,” at the Aurora Fox

Sunday, Jan. 30: Evergreen Players’ “Story Theatre”

Video podcast: Country Dinner Playhouse demolition

We take you to the scene at the first day of the demolition of the Country Dinner Playhouse, which began on Tuesday, Jan. 18. Video by John Moore, The Denver Post.

Photos of the demolition of the Country Dinner Playhouse that began on Tuesday, Jan. 18, 2011. This slideshow will be updated with additional photos as the demolition continues. Photos by John Moore, The Denver Post.

Most recent theater openings

“The 39 Steps” In this quirky British sendup of Alfred Hitchcock’s 1935 spy thriller, four actors play more than 50 roles, retooling the classic thriller into a hilarious comedy that still manages to be faithful to the movie. Through Feb. 20. Lake Dillon Theatre, 176 Lake Dillon Drive, 970-513-9386 or

“Boeing Boeing” In this popular French farce set in the 1960s, Bernard is a Parisian architect with three stewardess fiancees, each convinced she’s the only one. It all works perfectly, until an old school friend arrives. By Marc Camoletti. Through Feb. 13. Presented by TheatreWorksat the Bon Vivant Theater, 3955 Cragwood Drive, Colorado Springs, 719-255-3232 or

“Bye, Bye Birdie” This musical satire of 1958 American middle-class society was inspired by the phenomenon of Elvis Presley’s induction into the Army. In it, Elvis knockoff Conrad Birdie comes to Sweet Apple, Ohio, to kiss a random girl goodbye before reporting to duty. Songs include “Kids” and “Got a Lot of Living.” Through March 20. Candlelight Dinner Playhouse, 4747 Market Place Drive, Johnstown, 970-744-3747, 1-877-240-4242 or

“Circle Mirror Transformation” Touching story of a community theater drama class in New England that finds a misplaced entourage of outsiders in the hands of their teacher, Marty. As they experiment with theater games and group exercises, hearts are quietly torn apart and tiny wars of epic proportions are waged and won. A tender human fragility underscores this witty story of transformation, both subtle and monumental, in an unsuspecting group of strangers. By Annie Baker. Directed by Christopher Leo. Through Feb. 26. 1080 Acoma St., 303-623-0524 or and here’s

“Extremities” In the aftermath of an attempted rape, a woman turns the tables on her attacker. This is the debut staging by the Edge, previously known as the E-Project. Through Feb. 20. 9797 W. Colfax Ave., Lakewood, 303-232-0363 or

“Map of Heaven” In this world premiere drama by the Denver Center Theatre Company, Lena’s painting career is on the rise. Her maps of places real and imaginary are poised to take New York by storm. But when her radiologist husband makes a mistake, Lena’s life is upended. Michele Lowe’s contemporary relationship story explores the consequences of a single lapse in ethical judgment. Through Feb. 26. Ricketson Theatre, Denver Performing Arts Complex, 14th and Curtis streets, 303-893-4100 or and here’s

Complete theater listings

Go to our complete list of in Colorado, including summaries, run dates, addresses, phones and links to every company’s home page. Or check out our listings or

The Running Lines blog

Catch up on John Moore’s roundup of theater news and dialogue.

Video podcast: Afterthought Theatre at Kent Denver School

In preparation for Martin Luther King Day, Afterthought Theatre came to the Kent Denver School to present “The Meeting,” which imagines a meeting between Malcolm X and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Video by John Moore, The Denver Post.