Confluence

THE STORY: Visiting his young fiancée, who is acting in a summer stock company, Chuck Janola, a former Pittsburgh Steeler, and now a prosperous businessman, picnics with her in a rural park, overlooking the confluence of three Pennsylvania rivers. When the girl goes off to a rehearsal Chuck stays behind, both to contemplate the view and because he knows that the park is also the favorite haunt of Earl Douchette, a former baseball star and Hall of Famer, now living out his final years in a wheelchair. Wary when they first meet, Earl gradually warms to the younger man, who idolized him as a boy, and soon both are swapping tales of their glory days, and commiserating at the wrenching sadness (which only other pros can understand) that comes when time robs them of the unique excellence that set them apart from others. Poignant and beautifully understated, the play reverberates with echoes of the past—the future—capturing the nuances of a special world which only the few may know and fully share.