High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Off the Black is a 2006 American drama film starring Nick Nolte and Trevor Morgan. It was written and directed by James Ponsoldt, who also has a small role in the film, and is his feature directorial debut. Ray Cook (Nolte) is a bitter, disconcerted high school baseball umpire and chronic alcoholic who, after a series of unusual events, crosses paths with Dave Tibbel (Morgan), a high school baseball player seeking revenge after Cook's questionable calls cost his team the most crucial game of the season. Over time, an unlikely bond forms between the mismatched pair, and Dave agrees to pose as Ray's son for the old man's forty-year high school reunion. The film is a story of two wandering lost souls, one an adolescent boy struggling (along with his younger sister-a sad lonely Sonia Feigelson) with an absent mother and a father (played brilliantly by Timothy Hutton) who has entirely checked out, and the other an older man, who has seen thecurve balls life can throw at you and continuously struck out in his struggle to be the man he wishes to be.