Inspired by a remarkable true story
CURVEBALL
When the world counted him out, he stepped up to the plate.
She refused to let the world count him out.
He showed the world what it had failed to see.
Inspired by the remarkable true story of a mother who fought to change the future predicted for her blind son — and the boy who ended up changing everyone around him.
It started with a statement.
“He’ll never play baseball.”
When Kristin Smedley learned that her infant son Michael was blind, the diagnosis came with predictions about everything he would never do.
One of them stayed with her:
“He’ll never play baseball.”
At first, Kristin believed the experts.
Michael didn’t.
His enthusiasm for life eventually forced his mother to question everything she’d been told about blindness — and launched them both on a journey neither could have imagined.
She started out trying to change his world.
He ended up changing hers.
Then someone gave him a chance.
A coach was willing to try.
With adaptations, audio cues and teammates willing to play differently, the kid who couldn’t see the baseball stepped onto the field.
And something unexpected happened.
The struggling team started winning.
Then winning again.
Until eventually…
They became champions.
The Championship Season
Michael Smedley and his teammates celebrate their Little League championship with their coaches and trophies.
But the championship isn’t why we’re making this movie.
Nearly twenty years later, teammates, coaches, parents, teachers and families still talk about what happened that season.
Michael didn’t just show everyone what he could do.
He changed what everyone around him believed was possible.
One story sparked a film. Imagine what 300 could spark.
Join us as we bring Curveball to life and build a movement around stories of possibility.
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This story is becoming Curveball.
Pre-Trailer
Curveball Pre-Trailer
Fierce Pharma / Digital Health Network
Fierce Pharma / Digital Health Network
Kristin Smedley on why the stories we tell about blindness matter — and why Curveball needs to exist.
Watch the Pre-Trailer
The Curveball Pre-Trailer
Coming Soon
The Story Behind Curveball
A conversation with Kristin Smedley about the true story, the film, and the movement it can ignite.
The film is the catalyst.
The movement is the legacy.
Curveball begins with one blind boy and one baseball team.
But we’re building something much bigger around it.
Find Families.
Accelerate Cures.
Change Expectations.
Unite a Community.
We believe the universal language of baseball can take an unheard-of rare disease into the global spotlight — and change how millions of people see blindness, possibility and one another.
The kid they counted out?
He grew up.
The Little League championship wasn’t Michael’s happy ending.
It was evidence of what can happen when opportunity replaces assumption.
Michael went on to graduate summa cum laude from Penn State University and earn an MBA from Purdue.
Today, Michael is living and working his dream in Florida as an Audio Imagineer with Disney Imagineering.
And Michael wasn’t the only one.
His younger brother Mitchell was also born blind — and raised with the same expectations of access, independence and possibility.
Today, Mitchell is building an extraordinary career and independent adult life of his own.
What if their success isn’t the miracle?
What if the opportunity was?
The world counted him out.
A mother refused to accept it.
A coach gave him a chance.
A team learned to see differently.
A blind boy became a champion.
And nearly twenty years later, the people who were there still haven’t forgotten what he taught them.
Now it’s time to tell the world.
Be part of what happens next.
We’re bringing together extraordinary people from entertainment, baseball, business, philanthropy, science and the blindness community to help bring Curveball to the screen — and build what comes after it.
If this story moves you, makes you think of someone we should know, or makes you see a way you could help move it forward:
We want to talk.
Join the Curveball Movement
One story sparked a film. Imagine what 300 could spark. Join us as we bring Curveball to life and build a movement around stories of possibility.
Curveball