Police Chief Thorne Chancellor. Loyola baseball player Ridge Glass.

These are just two of the characters Cassedy Bass plays in one of his feature-length movies, “Suicide Squeeze.”

He now squeezes his time between coaching first base for the ‘Pack at the Alario Center and making movies.

But Bass didn’t start out as a feature filmmaker. The native New Orleanian started playing baseball for the Carrollton Boosters when he was five years old. He continued to play baseball, eventually playing for De La Salle High School in New Orleans, until Loyola recruited him to play for the Wolfpack in 1999.

“I wasn’t heavily recruited during high school, but I always wanted to stay a part of the game,” Bass said.

It was in his senior year at Loyola that he first became interested in film. In his senior year, baseball coach Gregg Mucerino gave each player a Championship Word, which is a presentation about any characteristic of the team.

Friend and fellow player David Grien decided to make a video for his presentation and enlisted the help of Bass to craft it.

“The team loved it,” Bass said. “So, we did it again the next year, and the team loved it. And from there, that’s when we decided that we wanted to make a movie.”

The pair met in Loyola’s library each week for an hour and a half to write a script for “Switch Hits,” which later became the first feature that Bass and Griener wrote, produced and starred in.

The film, which took seven months to film around Loyola’s campus, chronicles a fictitious Loyola baseball player from Hattiesburg, Miss., whose father coaches rival team William Carey University.

But the young player was never good enough for his father, so he moved to New Orleans to play baseball at Loyola to prove that he was good enough to play all along for him.

Since the pair, along with friends Steve Trauth and Christian Brierre, were limited when it came time to cast, they were forced to play the main roles of multiple characters in the film.

“Surprisingly, Cassedy can really act,” Grenier said, laughing. “Cassedy played multiple characters, and I must admit, he was the finest one of all of us.”

Bass later graduated from Loyola in 2003 with a degree in mass communication but decided to keep writing and producing on the side with his buddies, who formed the informal production group Flyboys Productions.

The name comes from when they used to play at Carrollton Playground. One day the playground underwent some construction, so they relocated and played at The Fly and thus became known as The Flyboys.

When Katrina hit in 2005, Bass was in the middle of finishing his master’s degree in communication. He was also and filming the second Flyboys production, “Suicide Squeeze,” which follows the same team but with different characters.

“It was hard enough already getting everyone’s schedules coordinated, because we all have jobs and this is just a hobby that we take seriously,” Bass said.

“And because of Katrina, it took over two years to complete.”

But despite the long delay, the second saga proved to be a hit.

“I thought it was hilarious,” said baseball player Brian Mason, accounting senior, who just broke the Loyola career hits record with 227 hits. “Cassedy was really funny.”

Since production wrapped on his second movie, he has become the assistant coach for Loyola’s baseball team and has worked as a production assistant on several independent movies that were filmed around New Orleans, such as “Glory At Sea” and “The Zeppelin Parable.”

Both have yet to be released.

He was also an extra in “Deal,” a film starring Burt Reynolds that chronicles an ex-gambler who guides a young, promising Texas Hold ’em player into Las Vegas competition.

“I enjoy being the assistant coach because I get to stay in the game,” he said. “But I learned a lot working on those films in the summer. I hope to continue this in the future.”

Bass plans to re-edit both films to enter into the Los Angeles Film Festival in October 2009, while staying on the team to coach first base and remain close to baseball.

“(Cassedy) has a great spirit,” head coach Gerald Cassard said. “The players really enjoy being around him and he’s a great asset to the team. He teaches the kids on and off the court and he’s very knowledgeable about the game. And even though I haven’t seen any of his movies yet, I’m looking forward to seeing them.

“Everybody loves them.”

Briana Prevost can be reached at [email protected].