A Feature Length Documentary Film in Production
A SECOND CHANCE AT A BIG-LEAGUE DREAM
Ray Chang was the most accomplished baseball player ever to represent China—the world’s most populous nation -- and he was headed for the American major leagues.
Chang had taken a most unusual route. His parents had immigrated to Kansas City from China – which barely plays baseball -- and opened a restaurant called Princess Garden. As a child, Ray helped in the kitchen.
The American game of baseball was his passion, but he was undrafted when he signed a free agent deal with the San Diego Padres in 2005. Improbably, Chang – who had led Team China to its first World Baseball Classic victory over heavily favored Taiwan in 2009 – kept advancing through the American minor leagues until receiving word after six years that he was being called up by the Minnesota Twins.
On May 28, 2011, Chang was to play his last minor league game for the Rochester Red Wings before rising to the big club – the fulfillment of a life’s dream.
As if to celebrate, he hit home runs in his first two at-bats. But in the sixth inning, Chang drifted from his shortstop position into left field to catch a pop fly. The left fielder, also trying to catch the ball, was charging in. There was a collision.
Chang lay crumpled on the field with a broken leg. He never got the call from the big leagues.
Nearly nine years have passed since that night. At 36, Chang’s own major-league aspirations are over but he is trying to make that big dream come true for young players in China as part of a
little-known Major League Baseball cross-cultural experiment chronicled for the first time in our film.
Now a scout, teacher and head of player development for MLB in China, Chang is trying to find and develop the first player from The Mainland ever to play in the U.S. big leagues. Chang himself was Missouri-born but represented China in international play because his parents are Chinese immigrants.
China has 1.4 billion people – a tantalizing number for Major League Baseball, which is investing tens of millions of dollars to find a player with the talent to unlock the massive marketing potential of a nation that shows as much interest in baseball as the United States does in cricket.
This is a story about the biggest of dreams -- not only of Chang and other Major League Baseball officials seeking the Yao Ming of their sport, but of young Chinese kids leaving their family homes to try to make it in what is for them an exotic sport in a faraway country – the United States.
The film's story of the hunt for the ballplayer who will change everything contains archetypal elements of longshot quests akin to that portrayed in “Million-Dollar Arm," the dramatization of two players discovered in cricket-obsessed India.
It takes film audiences for the first time not only on baseball scouting trips in vast China but inside Major League Baseball's dormitory-style academies where prospects as young as 12 adjust to their new lives. The academies are fascinating American-Chinese hybrids, teaching the cultures of both nations. We are chronicling what life is like there for the kids.
Portions of the story are told by Cal Ripken, the Hall of Fame player who is one of the most recognizable ambassadors for the sport in the world. Ripken appears in exclusive interviews discussing -- among other topics -- his own trip to China to promote baseball.
China's baseball push comes as the sport is about to return to the Olympics, where it will be on display in Japan in 2021.
The film will follow the dramatic arcs of young prospects under Chang's tutelage -- what are their dreams, what obstacles do they face and how are they progressing?
There is a compelling cast of characters to follow, including Xu Guiyuan (aka “Itchy Xu”) the first player signed from one of the three MLB Development Centers in China to a professional (minor-league) contract by an American club (Baltimore Orioles). Xu is engaging, hard-working and likable, an underdog audiences will root for. We had exceptional access to Itchy at his first spring training in Florida in 2016, chronicling his ups and downs on the field and his adjustment to American culture.
Seven players have since followed Itchy to the minor league systems of major-league clubs -- including three signed by the Milwaukee Brewers on the same day in February 2019. All of these players are trying to become the first Chinese player by birth and ancestry to make it to the majors.
The story circles back to the resilient, inspirational Chang for whom this is above all a redemption story. He never made it to the big leagues - that dream ended instantly, in a freak collision in short leftfield. One day, a baseball player born in China will live that very same dream. It will be a player discovered, mentored and cheered on by Ray Chang.
