I'm Caleb Bissinger, and this is a special episode of the next big idea.

Every summer when I was a kid, I used to make a bucket list of all the things I wanted

to do before I went back to school.

And the list would change from year to year, but there were always two constants.

First, I wanted to go to a baseball game, which now that I think about it is kind of odd

because I was not much of a baseball fan, and I certainly was not much of a baseball player.

I remember one time after practice in middle school, my coach pulled me aside and said,

we ever had your eyes checked?

But whatever the reason, I loved going to games as a kid.

I think it was the atmosphere, the sounds, crack of the bat,

chortle of the organ, the food, hot dogs, cotton candy,

that irritable energy that pulses through this stadium when your team is doing poorly,

and the way it's instantly transformed in a rock-as-glee when they miraculously turn things around.

It was all magical to me then, and it still is now.

And the other constant on my summer bucket list was going to the movies.

It was a chance to escape the dull drums of summer afternoons.

It was also a chance to escape my un-air conditioned house

and spend a few hours in the cinema's cool darkness.

So going to a game and going to the movies.

To me, those are the essential summertime activities.

And that's why I wanted to talk with filmmaker and retired ball player Ron Shelton,

because Ron found a way to combine those two summary activities into one.

...