The story of George Edward “Rube” Waddell has a chance to become a motion picture — again.

Five years ago, former WPXI-TV sports producer Dan O’Brien finished third out of 1,986 entrants in a national screenplay contest with the hopes of his work “Rube” being produced in cinema. That never came to fruition.

Now W.L. Braund, Toronto, Ontario-based author of “Rube Waddell — King of the Hall of Flakes,” has just completed a 123-page screenplay based on his book and is submitting it to Hollywood.

“His story needs to be told on the big screen,” Braund said. “It’s fascinating.”

Waddell, a Baseball Hall of Famer who won 193 games over a 13-year career from 1895 through 1908, was born in Bradford and spent his teenage years in Prospect. He pitched for numerous semi-pro teams in Butler County and was inducted into the Butler Area Sports Hall of Fame in 1991.

Waddell died in 1914 at age 37, of complications from pneumonia and tuberculosis. He incurred those diseases while helping to fight a deadly flood in Kentucky.

“This man was about so much more than baseball,” Braund said. “He saved at least 13 peoples’ lives during his lifetime. He’d hear a fire engine going by during a game he was pitching and immediately exit through the center field gate to help fight the fire.

“Rube was a more experienced firefighter than most firemen in the given town he was playing in. His help was always appreciated.”

Braund played amateur baseball himself until he was 39. He later worked as an instructor for the Toronto Blue Jays at that franchise’s summer camp for teenagers.

Now retired from an education career spanning several years, Braund is a baseball history buff and has studied biographies of several legendary players. He had never written a book before.

“A good friend of mine in big in radio in Toronto and has a couple of contacts in Hollywood,” Braund said. “I’ve got some pretty high hopes for this.

“Frankly, most of the personalities of baseball legends, guys like Walter Johnson and Joe DiMaggio, just aren’t very interesting,” he continued. “But, Rube, he was a character. Baseball books and movies are always popular, but his story crosses over into many different genres.”

Waddell once “nailed a steak to the wall of a hotel restaurant, it was so bad,” Braund said. He said he rarely stayed in his room during road trips and was always attending vaudeville shows.

He rode a farmer’s ostrich without permission and once jumped out of the second floor of his hotel room “to prove that he could fly.”

Waddell played in an era of big ballparks and slap-hitters, when strikeouts were a rarity. Yet he fanned 302 hitters in 1902 and 349 in 1904. No other pitcher approached those figures at the time.

“That would be like Nolan Ryan striking out 550 in one season,” Braund said.

Philadelphia A’s manager Connie Mack brought in stellar defensive catcher Ossee Schreckengost because few catchers could handle Waddell’s array of pitches, which included a blazing fastball, knuckleball and back-up curve ball.

“Those two hung out together and did all kinds of crazy things,” Braund said. “Rube’s way of speaking was always colorful. He once said he was ‘as nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs.’”

Braund termed his book as factual, based on research, with some scenes written through assumptions of how Waddell would have handled a situation or what he would have said.

His book is 350 pages and is available online.