Double Play

“Rounding Third,” a two-man baseball play by Richard Dresser, doesn’t address the big problems of Major League Baseball.

Instead, it plays small ball.

“Rounding Third,” which opens at Interplayers with a preview tonight, is about two men who are thrown together as coaches of their kids’ Little League team. You might think of them as the “Odd Couple” of youth baseball.

One of the men, Don, is a tough, blue-collar, beer-drinking guy who believes that winning is the only thing that matters.

The other, Michael, is a sensitive, educated, Starbucks-drinking executive type who accepts the old adage that it’s how you play the game.

The Interplayers production features local actors Tony Caprile and Reed McColm. Maynard Villers directs.

Both coaches address the audience with various pep talks and exhortations, as if the crowd were the Little League team.

According to previous accounts of this 2003 off-Broadway comedy, their differences result in plenty of comedic and dramatic conflict, followed by the realization by both men that they have something in common after all.

It was based on Dresser’s own experience as a Little League coach.

“I think of myself as a Michael,” Dresser told Seattle Times critic Misha Berson in 2006. “But I discover my inner Don when I’m coaching.

“And I see an odd nobility in Don. He wants to really give something to kids. But his exterior is very gruff, and he can drive them too hard.”

The play had its world premiere in Chicago, followed by runs at the Old Globe in San Diego and the Laguna Playhouse in California in 2003.

“What makes Don and Michael’s journey to mutual understanding worthwhile is a script that’s funnier than it really has a right to be,” critic Sharon Perlmutter of the Talkin’ Broadway Web site wrote about the Laguna production.

She added: “It isn’t uncommon for a play to switch from comedy to drama and back again, but Dresser’s script is uncommonly good at switching back to comedy so quickly and effectively.”

“Rounding Third” had a two-month off-Broadway run in New York in 2003 starring Matthew Arkin and Robert Clohessy. New York Times critic Bruce Weber called it an “amiable, toothless new comedy.”

However, the show has gone on to a number of productions in regional theaters, including a 2006 run at Seattle’s Intiman Theatre. Joe Adcock of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer called it “strong on fun” and “strong on innocence.”

This is perhaps Dresser’s best-known work, although he has written a number of other plays. He also has written a number of TV screenplays, including episodes of “The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd” and “Madigan Men.”