A stressedout Little League coach motivates his team at an important practice.


ROUND THE HORN is used with permission from Matt Nelsen. Learn more at https://mattofnewyork.com.


Brad Coffey is the coach of a Little League team. He loves the sport and still wears the championship jacket he wore during his own younger baseball days. He tries to motivate them, but in Brad's case, that means dwelling on his triumphs as a Little League player in the late 90s.

But when practice starts and one of his young players emerges as a top athlete, Brad realizes his days as being the best in the field have truly come to an end.

Directed by Matt Nelsen from a script cowritten with Brad Howe, who also plays the coach, this affectionately goofy comedy short is a snapshot of a grown man whose arrested development gets a big kick in the pants. We first meet Brad as he's giving a pep talk to his team before an important practice. They're on the eve of a big tournament, and he's trying to hype them up. But as he talks (and talks and talks) in a monologue baroque with nostalgia and delusion, Brad seems more interested in reliving his glory days as a baseball player when he was young.

As practice goes on, we see Brad does less coaching and more playing, captured in an energetic extended sports montage reminiscent of nostalgic sports films like The Sandlot. Playing against kids, Brad revels in his skill and talent. But during practice, one boy starts outplaying the coach, hitting and pitching better than the mentor, much to Brad's frustration. As an actor, Howe excels in conveying a man who never grew up and is holding onto past glories in the wake of grownup life's mundanity. He's stroking his ego, but underneath the nostalgia and boastfulness, there's a haplessness in the performance that gives it a bittersweet tinge. By the time practice ends, Brad realizes that his days of being the best in whatever league he can find are over.

Concluding with an awkward yet poignant acceptance of Brad's glory days ending and a final image that's both melancholy and comedic, ROUND THE HORN ends with a postscript that details his eventual fate, which is as funny, wry and illconceived as his coaching. Some people can never quite let their glorious youth go, creating a midlife crisis that compounds one quixotic life choice with another. We can peak too soon, never quite moving on to other mountains to conquer.