"The Distinctive Baritone said: "And yes, this 100% comes across as an actor being bitter about his own career...a career that he, like so many others beforehim, has probably now ****ed up because of social media."
Idiot said: Exactly. Scream"I should have been cast in this and many other leading roles!" without saying it..... and we should all kill our socials in self defense."
Again, the character is Black in this version. You really think Hughes is jealous that a Black actor was cast as a Black character instead of him and thinks there was any way he would/could/should have been considered for it?
" this production, featuring a revised book by Doug Wright and Will Power and additional lyrics by Lynn Ahrens, updates the tale by swapping the 1950s (and their postwar buoyancy) for 2000 (and its pre-9/11 optimism). Our hero’s team has changed, too, with the Baltimore Orioles pinch-hitting for the Washington Senators. And Donica’s Joe Hardy has been reimagined as a Black character driven to live out the big league dream his father, a Negro Leagues standout, never could."
...
"In transporting the show forward in time, Wright and Power sought not just to open the door for color-blind or color-conscious casting but to entrench modern baseball’s diversity in the text. As they pondered the possibility of a Black actor playing Joe, the playwrights committed to reshaping the protagonist accordingly.
“To pretend that his experience would be the same as the White Joe in the original text would be disingenuous,” Wright says. “So I think it was an effort to substantiate the character as a Black American, and not just do a bit of creative casting.”
Power adds: “This idea particularly of the African American athlete within sports exploitation, being in the spotlight and public sphere, that was really interesting to me.”"
Updated On: 10/6/25 at 03:19 PM