Review: ‘ Bronx Bombers’ adoringly looks at Yanks

NEW YORK — The first sign a major knuckleball is coming in the baseball play “Bronx Bombers” is when the smoke machines crank up.

Until then, Eric Simonson’s script is an unremarkable behind- the- scenes look at a moment in 1977 when the New York Yankees were in crisis. Their star player, Reggie Jackson, was brawling with the team’s manager, Billy Martin, and clubhouse morale was at a low point.

Then the central figure in this drama — Yogi Berra, trying to keep the team together as a coach — starts hearing ghosts in his bedroom and the swirling smoke kicks in. The Babe — Babe Ruth, naturally — then suddenly stands there in his pinstripes with a bat. Of course. Who doesn’t have this exact same dream?

If you’ve ever wanted to know what Mantle would tell Gehrig, this is the play for you. ( For the record, it’s “pleasure to meet you, sir. I, um, I came up just after you.”) The Yankee immortals all trade war stories, salary details, free agency tales and grouse over the increasingly invasive media. They eat potatoes. They continue to wear their uniforms, cleats and all.

“Bronx Bombers,” which opened Thursday at the Circle in the Square Theater, is the third sports- related play to make it to Broadway from producing team Fran Kirmser and Tony Ponturo, following “Lombardi,” about football icon Vince Lombardi, and “Magic/ Bird,” about the friendship between basketball legends Earvin “Magic” Johnson and Larry Bird.

Simonson, who wrote all three, this time also directs “Bronx Bombers,” and he does so with such reverence to the baseball franchise that it veers into fairy tale. Major League Baseball and the New York Yankees put money in the show, and it shows. The play played off- Broadway last year and has been tweaked since then, but not enough to make it more than Yankee advertising.

There’s a lot of hat- tipping, swelling moments and it seems like we in the audience should get teary and sentimental. “It’s about the people, not the building,” Berra says sagely. But it’s also about the drama, and, in this case, the play strikes out looking.