If you’ve been in Salt Lake City’s art community over the past two decades, you’ve probably run into Lane Richins. Maybe at Weller Book Works, in Trolley Square, where Richins has helped stage countless readings. Or you might have seen him at Salt Lake Acting Company, or Plan B, Pygmalion or The Grand.  He has worked in various capacities with several theatre companies in the Salt Lake Valley over the past two decades. Never, however, as a playwright. Until now.

“In the midst of COVID, I had the bright idea to return to school to finish my BA at the University of Utah after a 20-year interval,” Richins says.” I never intended to become a playwright … never considered it, really…” As part of his course work, he took a playwriting course from Tim Slover where he had to write a 60-page play. Richins adapted Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” which was workshopped at the U the following semester. “I dug that play, but it was a little cold for me,” he says. “I needed to write it … to get the hang, to explore the unknown, to emerge from the shutdown, to grow. But it felt cold. I was hooked on writing, though, and made a goal of writing my next piece about something happy, or, at least, hopeful. I was missing hope, and I was missing light. I needed to write something that made me feel good.”

Enter “Near Mint,” which premieres at Pygmalion this month. “Cracker” Jack Patterson’s life is baseball. After playing for a decade as the third-string catcher on half the teams in the majors, he now hosts a baseball call-in radio program and owns a baseball card shop. But something, he feels, is missing. With the help of his baseball-scout best friend, a precocious 11-year looking for a father, the woman next door he’s crushing on and Dodgers legend Sandy Koufax, he goes searching for that missing something. “Near Mint” is a comedy, Pygmalion’s promotional material says, “about living the game, loving the game, and leaving the game.”

“When I think back on my life, I think of the joy baseball has provided me,” says Richins, who is currently pursuing his MFA in Playwriting at the University of Idaho. “As a child, I’d go to the local little league field with my sister and partake on 25-cent snow cones. Once I was old enough to play, I did, and loved it. I wasn’t ever really any good, but I loved it. It provided me with great joy in a sometimes difficult youth, giving me a soft lens to view a hard life with. As I grew older, baseball, and baseball cards, were a place to take refuge, somewhere to escape to. Somewhere constant and familiar. Nostalgic. Warm. Generational. I hoped to somehow impart these feelings. Or, at least, impart my feelings about these feelings.”

“This play really couldn’t be more different from ‘Mountain Meadows,'” says Daisy Blake, who plays various characters in the show and was also in Pygmalion’s most recent production about the infamous massacre in southern Utah. “I’ve had a great time researching this uplifting Valentine to baseball.”

“One of the coolest things about the play is it can appeal to everyone” says Barb Gandy, who directs.  “Baseball is the major backdrop – both major league baseball with its cachet, and youth baseball in all its earnestness.” Gandy first encountered “Near Mint” at a staged reading of the play at Pygmalion in February 2022, and was hooked. “I so like this script because not only is it well-crafted and multi-layered, it has wonderful, nuanced characters and tells relatable and heart-warming stories. I like these characters; I wanted to meet them and get to know them – and now I am.”

Calbert Peck plays “Cracker” Jack Patterson. Image credit: Robert Holman

Calbert Beck, who plays Patterson, was hooked by personal connections. His grandmother was a catcher for the first female professional baseball team, the Utah Shamrocks. His grandfather was the coach. (Romance ensued.) “Baseball, catcher specifically, is my family’s heritage so to speak. Another grandfather was a pitcher in the league, mostly triple A, but he did pitch for the Chicago Cubs a bit,” Beck says. And, like the majority of young kids in America, Beck “had dreams of being a professional athlete. Taking upon this role might be the closest that I ever get to experiencing that.”

“Near Mint” also features Natalie Keezer, Ali Lente, and Tom Roche, with sound design by Mikal Troy Klee and lighting design by Savannah Garlick.

Just a month into Major League Baseball’s regular season, Lane Richins’ “Near Mint” promises a reprieve for a weary world. “Right now, the public is bombarded every day, every hour, every minute with information and ‘news’ which may or may not be accurate, tragedy, division and rancor at every turn, and it is disheartening and exhausting,” Gandy says. “‘Near Mint’ will hopefully restore some faith in humanity, give the audience 90 minutes of warmth and rest.”

Lane Richins’ “Near Mint,” Pygmalion Productions, Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center, Salt Lake City, Apr. 28 – May 13

Shawn Rossiter

The founder of Artists of Utah and editor of its online magazine, 15 Bytes, Shawn Rossiter has undergraduate degrees in English, French and Italian Literature and studied Comparative Literature in graduate school before pursuing a career in art.