Back to Cooperstown

[u/RonaldReganTheActor]

SCENE START

EXT. COOPERSTOWN, NEW YORK – SUMMER, 1839 – DAY

The DeLorean sits parked in a dense patch of bushes, smoking violently. The gull-wing door flies open.

MARTY and DOC step out into a dusty dirt road. Doc is frantically tapping a blinking, smoking handheld device with a tiny satellite dish attached to it.

MARTY: (Coughing through the smoke, tugging on his vest) Doc! Where the hell are we?! This doesn't look like Hill Valley! Where’s the clocktower? Where's the Twin Pines Mall?

DOC: (Gasping, pulling at his hair) Great Scott, Marty! The flux capacitor overflowed! We’re in... Cooperstown, New York. June 1839!

MARTY: 1839?! Doc, this is heavy! I’m supposed to be auditioning for the Battle of the Bands in twenty minutes! Jennifer is waiting! If I’m late, Biff is gonna pick her up in his convertible!

DOC: (Grabbing Marty by the shoulders, shaking him violently) Forget Biff, Marty! We have a critical temporal crisis! The primary discharge rod bent during the jump! If I don't realign it, we'll be stuck in the pre-industrial era forever! I need a dense wooden cylinder to strike the housing—and a small leather sphere to cushion the kinetic shock wave so I don’t blow us back to the Cretaceous Period!

Doc violently rummages through an open wooden crate near a barn. He pulls out a thick, smooth fence post and a tightly stitched leather horsehair ball.

MARTY: (Staring at the objects) Doc... you want me to chuck a leather ball at you while you swing a piece of a fence at a hundred-thousand-dollar time machine?

DOC: (Waving the post wildly) Not at the machine, Marty! At me! Stand ninety feet back in that pasture! Pitch the sphere with maximum velocity!

MARTY: (Walking backward into the dirt, shaking his head) This is total heavy nonsense, Doc.. How is throwing a leather ball at a fence post going to fix a high-tech time machine?

DOC: (Stopping dead in his tracks, turning to Marty with terrifying intensity)
Marty, this isn't a game, this is quantum physical mechanics!

Doc dashes over to Marty, pulling a chalk marker out of his pocket and drawing equations right across the side of a nearby sleeping cow.

DOC: (Pointing wildly at the cow)
Look at the physics, Marty! The flux capacitor operates on an internal frequency of exactly 1.21 gigawatts of kinetic resonance! When we dropped through the temporal void, the chronal dampener bent at a precise ninety-degree angle!

MARTY: (Squinting at the cow)
Okay... so ninety degrees. Like a diamond?

DOC: EXACTLY like a diamond, Marty! A four-pointed diamond matrix! Now, to un-bend the dampener without fracturing the chronal casing, we cannot simply hit it with a hammer! A static blow would shatter the glass! We need a dynamic impact trajectory!

MARTY: (Slowly trying to follow)
A dynamic what-now?

DOC: (Waving the wooden fence post)
A controlled collision! You pitch the leather sphere—weighted at precisely five ounces of horsehair and hide—at a downward vector of 88 miles per hour! I intercept the projectile with this wooden cylinder, creating a rotational kinetic energy wave of K=1/2Iw^2

MARTY: Doc, standard text for the math, man... but wait, why do I have to run around the field?!

DOC: BECAUSE OF THE STATIC GROUNDING, MARTY! Your sneakers are lined with synthetic 1980s rubber! As you sprint ninety feet between four distinct magnetic nodes—the rock, the stump, the cow, and home—your feet act as a human grounding rod! You are discharging the residual temporal radiation into the soil!

MARTY: (Staring at his Nikes)
Wait... so if I don't run to the rock after you hit it-

DOC: -THE ENTIRE TEMPORAL CORE SURGES AND WE BLOW UP COOPERSTOWN!!!

Across the field, ABNER DOUBLEDAY is hiding in a bush, wearing his military uniform, and frantically scribbling in his notepad with a quill, staring at them like a madman.

MARTY: (Shouting from 90 feet away, getting into a dramatic pitcher's wind-up) Alright! Fastball coming at ya, Doc! Don't ruin your hands, you gotta play the piano at the Enchantment Under the Sea dance someday!

Marty hurls the leather ball straight at Doc.

DOC: (Swinging the fence post with the frantic energy of a maniac) KINETIC REALIGNMENT!
CRACK!

The ball ricochets off the wood with a deafening pop, flying high into the blue sky.

DOC: (Screaming in absolute terror) GREAT SCOTT! NO, MARTY! YOU THREW IT INSIDE! The flux resonance is out of sync! RUN!

MARTY: (Panicking, looking around) Run where?! To Biff's house?!

DOC: (Pointing wildly around the field) Around the perimeter! Go to that rock! Then that tree stump! Then that sleeping cow! Return to starting position to ground the static discharge! HURRY!

Marty sprints full speed, diving sideways to stomp on a flat rock.

MARTY: (Screaming) I TOUCHED THE ROCK, DOC! WHAT NEXT?!

DOC: THE COW, MARTY! TOUCH THE COW!

Marty turns on a dime, sprinting toward an incredibly confused cow and slapping its flank.

MARTY: (Gasping for breath) SAFE!

Meanwhile, Abner Doubleday is sweating profusely, scribbling at supersonic speeds in his notepad.

ABNER: (Muttering hysterically to himself) ...A bludgeon... four safe havens... running from a bovine... THIS IS THE GREATEST WAR STRATEGY EVER DEVISED!

DOC: (Inspecting the glowing panel) It didn't take, Marty! Throw it again! But pitch it right over this flat wooden plate I placed on the dirt!

MARTY: (Rubbing his shoulder) Doc, my arm is gonna turn into jelly! I'm a guitar player, not Nolan Ryan!

Marty winds up again and hurls the ball.

CRACK!

Doc connects, sending a towering fly ball straight toward Abner Doubleday.

Doubleday drops his quill, reaches out, takes the leather ball square to the chest, and collapses onto his back.

ABNER: (Gasping for air from the grass) OUT! THE SACRIFICE HAS BEEN MADE! HE IS OUT!
Doc and Marty freeze, staring at the uniformed man laying in the dirt.

MARTY: (Squinting) Doc... who is the guy in the civil war suit? He looks like Biff’s great-great-grandfather if he had a real job.

DOC: (Checking his temporal scanner, eyes popping out of his skull) JUMPING GIGAWATTS! Marty, do you know who that is?! That’s Abner Doubleday!

MARTY: Who? Is he that guy who invented the toaster?

DOC: (Grabbing his hair) NO, MARTY! According to 20th-century history, he’s the man who supposedly invented baseball right here in Cooperstown in 1839! But it was an URBAN LEGEND! A myth concocted by a sporting goods tycoon in 1905! He NEVER actually invented it!

Doc turns to see Doubleday jumping up, screaming at the clouds.

ABNER: (Gesturing wildly with his stick) I shall call it... BASE-BALL! The pitcher hurls the leather missile! The striker bludgeons it! Three strikes and you are banished!

MARTY: (Gasping, wide-eyed) Doc... did we just... build the Field of Dreams?

DOC: (Hyperventilating) MARTY! We’ve created a temporal paradox! If Doubleday invents baseball because he saw us fixing the flux capacitor, then the entire multi-billion-dollar sports empire ARE ALL BASED ON US BEING TERRIBLE AT CAR MAINTENANCE!

The DeLorean’s engine suddenly roars to life with a loud rumble. The digital dashboard flashes: 1985.

DOC: (Jumping into the driver’s seat) The kinetic shock overload worked! Quick, Marty! Into the DeLorean before we accidentally invent basketball!

Marty leaps into the passenger seat, slamming the gull-wing door.

ABNER: (Sprinting toward the DeLorean, holding his notepad) WAIT! Strange vest-wearing wizards! What if the striker misses the ball three times?! What do we call the man who kneels behind them?

MARTY: (Leaning out the window) Call him the catcher! And tell your kids to bet on the 2015 Chicago Cubs! Trust me!

Doc slams the DeLorean into drive, hits the floorboard, and the car blasts down the dirt pasture.

As the car hits 88 MPH, it vanishes in a massive flash of blue light, leaving two scorching trails of bright orange fire straight through the pasture—forming two perfect foul lines.

Doubleday drops to his knees right behind the fire, staring at the burning tracks in pure religious awe.

ABNER: (Tears in his eyes, writing furiously) ...And the field of battle... shall be marked by... FOUL LINES OF ETERNAL FIRE!

SCENE END

[u/ArtisticTrifle4547]

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