On Jan. 5 at 7 p.m., Lake Theater is going to show a documentary chronicling OPRF baseball’s run to the supersectional round of the 2019 state playoffs.
“Forget About Yesterday,” which is 37 minutes long, was produced by 2019 Huskie grad Jake Fine. According to Fine, there have already been 200 tickets reserved for the private event in theater seven.
“Every time I watch it, I take away something new from it,” said OPRF baseball head coach Joe Parenti. “It really shows how great high school baseball is and how these guys came together as a team. One person might take one thing away from it and the next might take another thing.”
Heading into last season, Parenti wanted to take a different approach with the student manager position. Instead of having someone lug around equipment and handle scorebook responsibilities, Parenti brought in Fine to manage the team’s social media account (including creating a hype video for the squad).
Going into the season, Fine didn’t plan on creating a documentary. However, after accumulating an abundance of footage that ranged from the 2018 offseason to the last game of the 2019 season, he decided to turn the expanded highlight reel into something bigger.
“If you ask [Joe] Parenti, he will tell you that team was special based on how talented they were, but especially how close they were,” said Fine. “When I figured all of that out, I knew there was a story to tell no matter win or lose.”
According to Fine, the 2019 team’s seniors went to elementary school together, played on the same travel teams, and hung out outside the baselines of the Main Field. There was more to this team than what was happening in-games, which fueled Fine to get inside team huddles, batting cage sessions, and interviews with the players going over the storylines of the season as it was happening.
“We put a lot of trust in him since we didn’t know what the final product was going to be or what angle he was going to take,” said Parenti. “He understood the trust between us, and we let him fly with it.”
With winning the state finals in mind heading into the season, there was a chance that Fine’s behind-the-scenes work could create a distraction around the team. After some adjusting at the beginning of the season, the team learned to roll with Fine and his camera.
“It kind of was weird at first, but it wasn’t a distraction,” said Parenti. “We had moments where we would laugh being in front of the camera, but Jake did a good job with interviewing and made it more like a conversation rather than a formal interview. He just turned the camera on, and we started talking.”
Fine is hoping to use the event to promote his new documentary production company, Thooosi, aimed to make multimedia content for businesses. He decided to not go to college after graduating from OPRF last spring so he could pursue being an entrepreneurial film maker.
Since Fine organized the event at Lake Theater, OPRF won’t make money off ticket sales. However, Parenti is happy with how the documentary turned out and what it’ll do for his program.
“I think people are going to see how Jake did a nice job, and hopefully they will leave feeling good about OPRF baseball and potentially having their kids be involved with the program,” said Parenti. “I’m excited for the kids to see it.”
Since Fine hasn’t shown anyone on the 2019 team the final product, they will congregate at Lake Theater on Jan. 5 to see how Fine documented their season.
