At a recent play festival, a young guy who looked vaguely familiar introduced himself to me. It turns out that the previous year he played Bobby Sinclair, a rookie shortstop, in my one-act play "A Place that Looks Like Davenport".
He told me that he's been using a speech from that play as his audition monologue for the last year. At that moment I felt full of gratitude for having chosen the path of playwriting. In fact, I was so surprised and touched by his remark that I forgot to ask him whether or not he's landed any roles.
Although I don't know for sure, my guess is that this is the speech he used:
"Pardon me for interrupting, but there’s something I need to tell you folks. You seem like such nice people, nicer than I could have ever imagined. And Jeffrey: well, when I saw his picture in the newspaper last month, it nearly broke my heart. The thing is...I ... never should never have taken that pitch in the first place. The count was 3 and O, as you know. We were ahead, five to one. That pitch was high and a bit outside. All I had to do was watch the pitch go by and I would have walked. You could say, ‘Well, maybe he thought that ball might sink into the zone,’ but everyone in the Midwestern League knows that Carl Brandt couldn’t throw a sinking ball to save his life. I had no business taking that pitch in the first place. I only wish I could take it back, ma’am. Sir. Please believe me. "