"Ball of Wax"
is available
on DVD NOW!!!
"Short Careers"
Eric Bachmann's
soundtrack album for
Ball of Wax is available on CD
An evil baseball player turns the game into a blood sport by pitting his teammates against one other in violent competitions.
Short Synopsis
Bret Packard is the best baseball player in the world. Bret Packard is rich, famous, good-looking, and about to break the "all time most consecutive games played" record. But Bret Packard is bored. When a teammate is mysteriously stabbed during a ball field brawl, Bret is inspired to begin a new game. Bret convinces each teammate to compete in contests of violence and depravity. In return, he promises each of them their greatest desire: power, respect, or cold hard cash. Soon, the entire team is self-destructing, and Bret couldn't be happier. But with their lives and careers on the brink of devastation, Bret's teammates and family finally realize that they have to take baseball - and life - back from Bret Packard… once and for all.Synopsis
Chucky Blank, second baseman for the pro baseball team the Carolina Devils, has been stabbed during a ball field brawl. No one knows who did it… except all-star first baseman and American hero Bret Packard. And Bret Packard is definitely not telling.Bret is adored by the public and treated like a God by the media. Only Bret's best friend, pitcher Tod Ellis, knows the real Bret: a frighteningly intelligent, manipulative puppet master, who ruins lives as easily as he hits home runs. Ellis has recently fallen in love with a girl named June, and this relationship helps him finally see Bret for the monster he is. Ellis is determined to distance himself from Bret.
But after a fancy dinner with June and Nat (Bret's ice-queen wife), Bret brings up a sore topic to Ellis: the Devils' new pitcher, Ricky Sparks, is being primed to replace Ellis. Bret offers to get Sparks traded if Ellis intentionally hits more batters than Sparks this season. Although the offer is made casually, Ellis knows that Bret has the power to make good on his offer.
Bret strikes the same deal with Sparks: if he can hit more batters than Ellis, Bret will see to it that Sparks's secret arm weakness is protected by a multi-year contract. Bret doesn't stop there - he offers penniless rookie Dickie Gold a million dollars if he'll cheat on his wife. Meanwhile, Bret suggests to paranoid right fielder Sal Reilly how easy it would be to poison the team manager, Jimmy, who has been undermining Sal's reputation. While he's at it, Bret takes sexual advantage of Becky, his son's babysitter, for no reason other than he can.
With the team crumbling down around him, Bret couldn't be happier. But then Jimmy hires Bob Tower, a high-energy motivational speaker hell-bent on whipping the players into emotional shape. Against all odds, Tower's brand of new-age nonsense actually begins to work.
At a party, Bret discovers that Dickie has decided to cheat on his wife for the million-dollar prize - but Dickie has unwittingly slept with Ellis's girlfriend, June. Bret is troubled by this, but is unable to express himself to his wife, Nat. The power games played between Bret and Nat are revealed to be merely that - games. Neither one seems capable of expressing what is in their heart - a deep, desperate need for one another. There is an almost child-like way in which Bret touches Nat, speaks about his son, Andy, and longs for the friendship of his best pal, Ellis.
Ellis's life, meanwhile, is in shambles. Unable to shoulder the guilt any longer, Ellis tells the manager, Jimmy, about Bret's evil deeds. Later, Bret threatens the poison-weakened Jimmy, demanding to know who disclosed his plans. That night, Bret and Ellis face off in the locker room. It is here that Ellis learns the horrifying extent of Bret's scheme. It isn't the Carolina Devils that Bret wants to re-invent. It is the entire sport of baseball.
But Bret concedes to one request, and cancels the Ellis/Sparks hit-the-batter contest. When Sparks hears of the cancellation, he is thrown into madness, for Sparks is now one of the most hated men in baseball… and it was all for nothing? Deeply distraught and seeking some sort of redemption, Sparks pulls out a gun as he comes up to bat, and demands the pitcher throw the ball or else he'll shoot himself.
Unnerved by Sparks's actions, Bret returns home to find Nat attempting to flee with their son. Bret begs them not to go. "I'm so, so evil without you," he sobs, kissing the car window like a blubbering baby.
And finally, it is the day of the big game - the game wherein Bret will break the "all-time most consecutive games played" record. But sitting in the dugout, surrounded by those whose lives he has ruined, Bret is sickened. It is not only the biggest moment of Bret's career, but the deciding moment of his life as well, as his sins press in on him in a nightmare swirl of guilt, paranoia, and anger.
As Bret stomps toward the plate, it is the bottom of the ninth, the Devils are one run down, with one man on base, and two men out. And Bret Packard is straddling the thin line between madness and reality.