December 2055… a baseball-fanatic, 101-year-old man, dies and goes to heaven. Beyond blessed by being reunited with loved ones who have gone before, and meeting the two Guardian Angels who ushered him during his time on earth, he is embraced by The Other Side's peaceful, gentle, majestic, comforting, loving, and awe-inspiring beauty.
As wonderful as it all is, including seeing Beethoven & Hendrix perform together on stage (John Prine the opening act), to paddle endless winding rivers with a back that never aches, play in baseball games that joyfully run for days yet never tire, it is the opportunity to be sent back to earth by Saint Peter for a decade-long (1911 through 1920) "human experience" that is most intriguing: with the opportunity to see, arguably, the greatest baseball player of them all, Ty Cobb, in action - viewed by a Tiger fan born 3 decades after Cobb retired.
"Almost Heaven" takes you back to the 1910s, a decade that began with major league baseball teams constructing the first steel & concrete stadiums to replace their old wooden ballparks, and ends as the dead ball era of Detroit Tigers Ty Cobb & Wahoo Sam Crawford begins its metamorphosis into the live ball era of home run king Babe Ruth. The dead ball era (through 1919) was an era noted for its scientific / small ball approach, when teams played for one run at a time by out-thinking the foe, bunting, stealing bases, "hittin' 'em where they ain't", creating a mental hazard for the opposition by doing the unexpected – and Ty Cobb was its leading practitioner.
