River Cats owner Savage’s story inspires ABC pilot — and a ‘Housewife’s’ TV return
The story of Susan Savage and her Sacramento River Cats baseball club could be the stuff of a new ABC baseball comedy based in the capital city with a headline-grabbing star.
And, suddenly, it seems, Sacramento is on a roll.
It began with Greta Gerwig’s 2017 hometown love letter, the acclaimed award season favorite “Lady Bird.” Then came 2018’s “Brad’s Status,” Ben Stiller in the lead as a man who runs a nonprofit — very Sacramento — while grappling with middle age and the expectations he’s laid out for himself.
Actor-director Michael Cera just went ahead and called his picture “Sacramento.” The buddy road flick starring Cera and “This Is Us” star Michael Angarano is set to shoot in 2021. The film chronicles two friends’ unplanned road trip from Los Angeles to Sacramento, their spontaneous journey north revealing new facets of their friendship.
Now Hollywood pays its NorCal cousin another visit with the yet-untitled ABC sitcom inspired by Savage’s compelling story of helming the Triple-A minor league franchise after her husband, team owner Art Savage, lost his battle with cancer.
The early-stage project is a career reboot for Felicity Huffman as the River Cats’ owner in her first role since the 2019 college admissions scandal that briefly landed the “Desperate Housewives” star in federal prison on fraud charges.
Deadline.com broke the story on the ABC project and Huffman’s return to television on Monday.
With the pilot, Huffman returns to the network where she won an Emmy Award for “Housewives,” for her role as Lynette Scavo in the hit series that aired from 2004-2012.
Penned by writer Becky Hartman Edwards, the half-hour project also marks a rare television return to a Sacramento setting.
CBS’ The Mentalist (2008-2015) used Sacramento as the backdrop for the men and women of the fictional California Bureau of Investigation and the crime consultant of the series’ name.
Longtime viewers will remember ABC family favorite “Eight is Enough,” (1977-1981) set in Sacramento and the Bradford family — newspaper columnist Tom Bradford (Dick Van Patten) and his brood — modeled after real-life newsman Tom Braden’s 1975 book about his eight children.
“There is still a long way to go, but it is truly exciting to be at this point,” Savage said, as posted Monday on the River Cats’ website. Savage was not available for an interview, River Cats officials said Wednesday. “I am so proud of what we have been able to accomplish as a family, but along the way there are plenty of goofs and gaffes that we can laugh at now. Add to that our favorite fans, cheeky players and quirky promotions and I’m sure there is something everyone can laugh at and relate to.”
What results, through the eyes of writer Hartman Edwards, is what Deadline called “a funny, surprising and occasionally heartbreaking half-hour about love, loss, family and Triple-A baseball.”
Huffman, as Savage, navigates “grief, local politics and the business of sports, learning not just to adjust, but to thrive,” Deadline writes.
Today, the River Cats are a minor league baseball powerhouse on the field and at the ticket office with three Triple-A championships including the 2019 crown and five Pacific Coast League pennants.
The Savage story will assuredly mine the quirks and colorful characters that are part of the atmosphere surrounding a minor-league baseball club.
But the tale comes out of a family’s grief and loss — and a husband’s dying wish.
Art Savage brought the River Cats to the capital from Vancouver prior to the 2000 season, returning minor league baseball to Sacramento for the first time since the long-departed Sacramento Solons last took the field at Hughes Stadium in the mid-1970s.
Success — and championships — soon followed. With it, one of minor league baseball’s most loyal fan bases and a West Sacramento ballpark considered a jewel of the game. Then came tragedy.
Art Savage, the team’s majority owner and CEO, died Nov. 21, 2009, nine years after bringing the ’Cats to California. The cause was complications of lung cancer. Savage was 58.
But before he died, Savage asked Susan, his wife of 40 years, to hold onto the team and take over the River Cats’ reins as majority owner and CEO. Susan Savage kept the club and, with sons Jeff and Brent, went to work.
“When Art passed away, there were a lot of questions and I didn’t have the answers,” Susan Savage said this week, recounting the experience for the River Cats’ website. “However, this team was his dream, so I jumped right in alongside my boys and we were going to figure this out one way or another.”
Savage did something else, too. She began to write.
“Over the years, whether in an executive meeting or simply talking with one of our longtime fans, something uniquely funny would happen and we would always say that someone should put it in a TV show,” Savage said. “Well, I decided to write it down and here we are.”
This story was originally published December 3, 2020 at 10:18 AM.
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