Jamie Lee Curtis and Ryan Murphy, Scream Queen co-creator, will be working together on a Netflix limited series based on the first-ever recorded high five which happened back on October 2, 1977. According to Deadline, Curtis revealed this news on Deadline’s Hero Nation podcast:
Ryan is producing a project I’ve been trying to get made as a producer for over ten years. I’ve had the rights to a project of the life of the man who invented the High Five.
Along with Jamie Lee Curtis and Ryan Murphy producing the Netflix limited series, writing this will fall upon Robert O’Hara, who just recently was nominated for a Tony award for Best Direction of Slave Play. The project currently has the tentative title of Outfielder.Â
Let’s Meet The Outfielder
The story at hand revolves around a baseball game in the fall of 1977, when current Houston Astros manager, Dusty Baker hit his 30th home run in the 6th inning on the very last day of the 1977 season, ironically enough it was against the same team he is currently managing. This home run put Baker and three other teammates in the history books by becoming the first team in history with 4 different players that have hit 30 home runs in a single season. That’s when Glenn Burke, a 19-year old outfielder for the Los Angeles Dodgers, who was waiting on the on-deck circle made history by giving Baker the very first recorded high five.
Burke was also the first-ever openly gay MLB player, that should lend itself to a lot of drama and stakes for writer, Robert O’Hara, especially since Burke is quoted in the New York Times as saying:
Prejudice drove me out of baseball sooner than I should have. But I wasn’t changing.”
Burke would go on to compete in the 1982 Gay Olympics after his professional baseball career. Sadly Burke died of AIDS in 1995 and was one of the first inductees into the National Gay and Lesbian Sports Hall of Fame.
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