Baseball season kicked off last week. Like any other fan, I was excited, but it seemed a little late to me. I had already seen my first pitch of the year thrown and like most of the ceremonial tosses offered by small children or aging politicians, it didn't make its way into the intended mitt.

The main difference between my first pitch and the one most of you saw at home was that mine was delivered on a stage by a French actor in a show fittingly titled "Home Run." It was actually an adaptation of the film "Good Will Hunting" — the title was both a reference to the scene in which Robin Williams' character animatedly recounts Carlton Fisk's historic shot off the foul pole and, ostensibly, a larger metaphor for the story's upbeat ending.

Recalling a child's sports shirt I had seen in Italy that featured an assortment of unrelated baseball terms strung together to read something like "Grand Slam No-Hitter Double Play Home Plate Champion," I wondered if anyone in the audience would know what a home run actually was. But I was ready to find out.

The show bucked my traditional conceptions of a theater in a number of ways. When the opening scene depicted Will and his mother being abused by his father, the audience laughed — a move that some might consider a faux pas in the United States. The soundtrack featured two very strange uses of Don Cheadle's opening monologue from the film "Crash." This was probably not legal, but I don't think anyone was very concerned about it, considering the unlikelihood that the show itself was written and produced with the legal blessing of the proper authorities. There was a girl playing a guy, which is not nearly as uncommon in amateur productions as the decision to costume the character in question in a tank top.

For me, the best moment came during a scene in which two characters were supposed to be casually tossing a baseball back and forth. The effect was undermined by the fact that both actors involved looked utterly lost with a ball and a mitt. Their throws were awkward and from the elbow. They positioned their gloves harmlessly above their heads, attempting to cradle the ball in as it bounced to the floor. It was meant to be an inspirational scene in which Will finally lets his guard down and begins to learn to trust again. Instead, I found myself going between laughter and a desire to run up there and correct their dismal fundamentals.

I knew it wasn't their fault. I knew that nobody had ever told them as children to square up the glove in front of their bodies or to bring in a pop fly with two hands. I knew baseball was as foreign to these people as gender-specific nouns would be to the average Dodgers fan. And to be honest, I appreciated the effort. It's easy to feel like an outsider in a foreign country, and seeing a little baseball — even atrocious baseball — in the flesh was a nice touch. And so I watched, laughed and mused about how I was probably the only person in the audience who appreciated the situation.

And when the actor recreating the Fisk scene launched into an enthusiastic mock run around the bases through the auditorium, I didn't have the heart to tell him he was running them backwards.