Play ball! Bloomington premiere of film about blind baseball, 'THUNDER ROLLS," is Dec. 3

Bloomington's premiere of "THUNDER ROLLS! The World of Blind Baseball" comes Dec. 3 to the Waldron Arts Center auditorium. This free and non-ticketed screening tells the story of the Indy Thunder beep baseball team (the baseballs and bases, made for the blind, emit beeps) and their exceptional coach and general manager, Darnell Booker, as they compete for the world championship.

What is the Indy Thunder Blind Beep Baseball team?

Plenty of athletes with disabilities do play sports, and technology plus a little tweaking of game rules helps.

The Indy Thunder Blind Beep Baseball team consists of athletes who are visually impaired or fully blind. Indy Thunder recruits sighted volunteers to help improve sight-challenged participants' self assuredness, while strengthening relationships among the sighted and the sight-impaired.

Athletes team up to play together and to design fundraisers to finance the world series (and regional) tournaments.

"Our goal is that no blind or visually impaired person is to be denied the opportunity to play this sport even if they are economically challenged," says the group's website, thunderbeepball.org.

Blindness, sports, world championships, daily lives — it's all here

The full-length documentary film, by Bloomington's Robert Arnove and Susanne Schwibs, covers both sports and blindness in general as Indy Thunder blasts through their second of five straight championship seasons. (And it's actually almost six, considering 2020, when they were 10-0, and COVID-19 struck out the official World Series.)

"THUNDER ROLLS!" premiered this year at the Heartland International Film Festival and follows the Indianapolis Beep Baseball team, the Indy Thunder, as they win their second (yes, of five) world championship.

More than a story of winning a championship, it's about the people — and their daily lives — who made the winning happen.

The film's production called for a vast number of hours and research. The result is a tour of blind adult athletes, their friends and families, and the film crew as they all evolve into a bigger sort of family. In one section, footage reveals what it's like for a sighted person to train one who's not.

Viewers will watch and perhaps gasp as a fully sighted man, wearing a blindfold, gets guided by his blind instructor: they walk through the middle of a busy street. The sighted student must learn what it's actually like not to see, for instance, when his path is unexpectedly closed for construction.

Film appeals to non-sports types, too: cooking blind

Production cameras had followed the Thunder team during 2017 and captured significant game footage. Producers spent years and thousands of dollars developing their project.

(This film is not a version of nonfiction author David Wanczyk's "Beep: Inside the Unseen World of Baseball for the Blind." After writing about unusual sports, Wanczyk became interested in beep baseball.)

"THUNDER ROLLS!" producers ensured that the film would rivet even non-sports people. Viewers see the baseball fields, the general assembly, umpires and scorekeepers, a blind person cooking a chicken. They see, too, the generosity of Coach Booker, who rises most mornings around 5 a.m. to make certain his team will have what they need that day.

It never hurts to bring doughnuts or a T-shirt

"These are the best doughnuts in the city," Booker tells his early morning driver in the film. He has risen at 5 a.m. to ensure enough doughnuts for that day's athletes and volunteers. He's been known, too, to have T-shirts made for team members.

Screenwriter Arnove, whose cousin was a pitcher for the Boston Renegades, has always liked baseball. He said, however, that's not why he decided to make "THUNER ROLLS" with Schwibs.

"In 2016, I had just finished some projects," he said. "And then. They (Indy Thunder) won five world championships!"

Roasting a chicken blind, shedding shame

Arnove and Schwibs started peeking behind the ordinary sports-scene ideas. They met, for instance, a blind woman, Jean, who tests her roasting chicken's temperature by feeling vibrations on an inserted fork. Then there was the family that has three boys, all going progressively blind.

One player had been shot coming home from a sports game, rendering him blind for life. Now he plays beep baseball. A man from Pakistan describes how he had been considered a pariah in his country; in Indianapolis he has found beep baseball fame. One day, Schwibs met a blind woman who cooked a five-course dinner.

"In sports, you must work together to succeed," Arnove said. "Now the athletes can compete at very high levels." The film shows many types of moves, in addition to blind athletes running to (column-like, soft) bases — which, like the balls, beep.

"They play by ear," Schwibs said. "It's like walking around your house in the complete dark. You get to know where things are."

No second base and a new way for teamwork

Naturally, it's hard to run to bases if one is sight-impaired. The two (first and third) bases get moved outside the playing field, to avert player collisions. Second base doesn't exist, for much the same reason.

"Two sighted spotters call out positions," Schwibs said. Players hear a voice shouting, "Ball's heading your way."

In blind baseball, the catcher, pitcher and batter are on the same team. The pitcher pitches to where the swing is, and the athletes eventually adjust to one another's styles. All players wear (non-peekable) blindfolds, to give everyone the same visual vantage point.

Who produced "THUNDER ROLLS!"?

Arnove is chancellor's professor emeritus of educational leadership and policy studies at Indiana University. Schwibs, senior lecturer in the IU Media School, specializes in documentaries dealing with the arts, music, history and the American landscape.

Arnove directed, coproduced with Schwibs and wrote the screenplay. Additional producers are David Gudaitis, Anna Strout and Henry Malone.

Tyron Cooper, associate professor, folklore and ethnomusicology and director of Archives of African American Music & Culture at IU, composed the original music for the film.

Screenings are selling out

Two October screenings elsewhere in Indiana have already sold out, prompting the addition of a third. At Bloomington's screening there will be a Q&A afterward.

Indy Thunder's coach and general manager, Booker, will participate in the Q&A at the screening the following day at the Indiana School for the Blind, where he first became involved with athletics.

Huh? Pitching and catching blind?

For those who keep wondering, yes, the pitcher and catcher can be fully sighted, and the team comprises a variety of vision levels.

"Blindness is just one aspect" of the people who are sight-impaired, Arnove said. "After awhile, the 'THUNER ROLLS!' viewers have said they begin to forget the blindness in the film."

After his "best" doughnuts have been delivered at 9:30 a.m. one day, Coach Booker, well known for his eat-sleep-breathe focus on beep baseball, calls out to his team: "Get down and get dirty. Someone will do your laundry!"

If you go

WHAT: Free and non-ticketed screening of documentary film "THUNDER ROLLS!: The World of Blind Baseball," a Heartland International Film Festival pick and the Bloomington premiereWHEN: 1:30 p.m. Dec. 3WHERE: Waldron Arts Center Auditorium, 122 S. Walnut St.

This article originally appeared on The Herald-Times: Play ball! Bloomington premiere of film about blind baseball is Dec. 3