The ConMan

The ConMan (Based on a true story) Since he was seven years old, Conor Nash’s life held a single purpose—to pitch in the Major Leagues. Over a sixteen-year professional baseball career, he persevered through failure, disappointment, petty vendettas, betrayal and a crippling psychological malady called the yips. At last, after earning a precious nine months in the Majors when he is a decade too old, he finally confronts an obstacle he cannot overcome. His wife Kate has been Conor’s rock of faith and support over every step of this journey, but as he claws his way through three failed shoulder reconstructions, he becomes a distant, brooding stranger. He avoided the trap of alcohol and drugs to which many teammates succumbed because baseball was his addiction. And Kate doesn’t understand how it feels when an addict realizes he’ll never be that high again. At the lowest run on the minor league ladder, Conor and three other players purchased a bottle of champagne in an Idaho Falls liquor store and formed a last-man-standing pact. The final player to be excommunicated from baseball would get to drink the champagne. Against all odds, three of the four make it to the Majors. Conor outlasts them all. The bottle in his refrigerator, though, becomes a Grim Reaper. To finally drink the champagne is an admission the only life he has ever known is over. Kate challenges Conor’s selfish depression. She tells him he can finally be a husband and father. She reveals that, over all the years of frustration and disappointment, she’d never forced Conor to choose between family and baseball, “because I was never quite sure you’d choose us.” Conor is shocked. Not once had he doubted Kate. It hadn’t occurred that she might have doubted him. Conor takes his champagne and on a late October afternoon of 1992, climbs Camelback Mountain in Phoenix where he will drink, watch the sun set, remember all the people and events that, for better or worse, forged the crooked path of his career, and confront the question: who is Conor Nash if he can’t pitch? As the night grows longer and the champagne bottle emptier, Conor meets both an angel and a ghost who help find his answers. He stumbles down the mountain, back to his family and the life that lies ahead.