Spring Training

A young man wakes up in a Florida ballpark, having been mugged, remembering only his first name: GEORGE. He's diagnosed with traumatic brain injury and sent to a TBI treatment facility. There he meets a young African American man, with amnesia from a brain tumor that remembers only his first name: JOSH. George also meets two women: ELAINE, the psychologist who runs the facility, and a patient, ANNA, who is suffering from traumatic brain injury so severe that she experiences seizures and blackouts.

Josh is “sweet” on Elaine, who can’t admit she returns his feelings. George falls for Anna, who thinks he’s making fun of her because he thinks she’s beautiful despite the scars on her face from the accident that caused her brain damage.

Josh, found wandering the streets a year before, had his tumor removed and is a fitness fanatic. He enlists the beer-drinking George into working out. The TBI facility holds a picnic and friendly baseball game. Josh and George hit the ball a mile and are noticed by TOM, an ex-major leaguer angling for a coaching position in the Bigs. He already coaches DOUG JACKSON, a steroid freak, but hopes Josh and George can cement his return to the majors. He trains all three for a tryout at the Yankees spring training camp, tries to talk George and Josh into taking steroids, and brings them to a sophisticated sports physiology lab where Frank, a doctor of physiology, does DNA tests on them to try to find the reason for their amazing abilities.

Elaine discovers that George and Josh are considering taking steroids. She shows them online photos of Babe Ruth and Negro League legend Josh Gibson, and the resemblance is undeniable. They realize that there is too much evidence to deny it: they are Babe Ruth and Josh Gibson, travelled through time, leaving their memories behind them. Elaine then takes them to a hospital, showing them young patients hospitalized because of steroids - steroid-induced cancers, suicide attempts (often successful) from steroids’ depressive effects, victims beaten by youngsters suffering “roid rage,” and other horrible side effects.

Tom gets the Yankees to agree to let George and Josh tryout, but Anna has a seizure that puts her in a coma. Instead of attending the tryout, George sits by Anna’s bed, 24/7. Josh refuses to attend the tryout without George. When Tom pressures George, George accuses him of being no different than any other kind of drug dealer, endangering kids who take steroids to be the next Barry Bonds. Tom vows that neither Josh nor George will ever tryout for any major league team.

Anna passes away in the middle of the night and George is devastated, drinking himself into oblivion. Elaine and Josh try to convince him that Anna would have not have wanted him to give up. Elaine tells Babe that he can show the world, especially the kids, that you don’t have to take steroids to be a star.

Frank, the physiologist, calls Josh, George, and Elaine into his office and reveals that the DNA tests, and an old fingerprint of Babe Ruth, prove that George is Babe, and Josh is “the black Babe.”

The Yankees organize a home run derby the last day of Spring Training between George, Josh and the steroid-soaked Doug Jackson.

Josh and George struggle against 100 mph pitching and Jackson's steroid power, then revert to the heavier bats they're used to, and easily outdistance Jackson. Now it's just Babe and Josh, in the greatest home run contest ever. Josh hits the most homeruns, Babe the longest.

The Yankees fly them to NYC for their home opener, but at the site of the old Yankee stadium, George says, "This is the house that Ruth built," then points at the new stadium. "That's Josh Gibson's house. I belong here." George fades away as Josh and Elaine watch, shocked, unable to stop it.

Josh plays his first game, as the outfield scoreboard plays old footage of an old, sickly Babe making his final appearance at Yankee stadium. Josh hits the first pitch, which flies into the sunny skies.

We flashback to the 1920s. A bus of Negro League players including Josh Gibson and Satchel Paige stop to offer help to another stranded team bus stranded on the side of the road. The second bus contains the New York Yankees, including Babe Ruth, and the two teams spontaneously have a baseball game, flouting the racist laws that kept the races and the game's two greatest players from playing each other.