The best sports films and what others fail to capture

Irish Examiner

5 days ago

There is a special subgenre in sport of gloriously slow deception. A weird trick that exists to catch an opponent off-guard and make them look foolish. Think of football's Panenka or a tennis drop shot during heavy baseline rallies. Baseball has its own version too, although it is rarely seen in the professional game anymore.
An Eephus pitch is a few degrees short of a dummy. The ball is thrown incredibly slowly, with a high, floated arc that is intended to confuse the batter. It is the opposite of a fastball and therefore an oddity in a sport that is increasingly focused on power, efficiency and data-driven precision. Modern baseball, like much of life, has little room for something that simply floats.
That kind of pitch is the perfect namesake for a small, independent movie called, 'Eephus,' a sports film about a Sunday league game between a bunch of casual players in Douglas, Massachusetts, the last one before the diamond field is bulldozed. Adler's Paint and Riverdogs adult-league teams have played regularly at Soldier's Field, the public pitch serving their small town. Now the road is taking them away from this place.
A sleepy crackle of a local radio broadcast opens the film, listing the accident report for the local county and the breaking news of a coyote that had been terrorising local dogs had been killed.
There is the unfortunate development that the Topbury candy corn eating competition is cancelled because the whiz kid who could count really fast to tally all the candy corns had moved away. Then comes confirmation that the vote to repurpose central county land has passed. The home of Douglas baseball is the casualty. There are no plans for a replacement field.
Part comedy, part elegy, Eephus is a quiet delight. The story takes place over the course of a single day. It feels destined to take its place among the baseball films that have become part of the sport's cultural heritage. What boxing has been to literature, baseball has been to cinema. Bull Durham, A League of Their Own and Moneyball have another partner.
It also belongs in another category. The movies where nothing really happens. Ones not really about anything but also everything. The men range from those just starting work to those close to retirement, from lean to comfortably padded. The arc begins as they arrive and ends soon after the final inning.
Eephus (2025)
It is about the people who turn up for the love of the game or simply through habit. Those who play just so they can light fireworks at the end. The ones who come to drink. The Italian player on a diet who is met with a volley of jibes about pizza and cannoli. The onlooking teens who rightly see them as simply 'plumbers and shit.' Those that smile and nod in agreement at one of the film's many philosophical questions:
'Is there anything more beautiful than the sun setting on a fat man stealing second base?' Co-writer Nate Fisher plays the pitcher for Adler's Paint and he makes sure the central metaphor is clear.
The star component is in the dialogue. In how it shows men who do not want to talk about certain things yet find ways to talk about them indirectly. In how the old gives way to the new and sometimes you cannot even be angry about it. A school will be built on the site. The only other diamond is far away and stinks. For many of these players, this is their last ever game. Gradually they begin to realise it.
It makes you stop. Stare. Think. Consider how sport has a curious ability to run alongside life. It is not only an outlet. It's not the point in itself. It is the space between those positions.
Remember the early weeks after moving to Australia and searching Ticketmaster for a single ticket to afternoon AFL matches simply to have something to do. Remember looking around the back bleachers and noticing the other men doing the exact same, the realm of the solitary and the searching.
Reminisce on how sport itself was the most reliable mechanism to make friends in the subsequent weeks. How bad we can be at properly talking to those friends.
It is a tribute to wistful nostalgia, even when we know it can be overly-sentimental or impractical. To low-stakes shoot-the-shit toss-arounds. To embracing those toss-arounds while we still can, even if it means scouring woods for errant balls or illuminating the field with car headlights when darkness descends.
And how the world is changing all around us. It is not right to say this decade of sports movies have been barren. King Richard, The Iron Claw, The Way Back were all above decent.
But the landscape is dominated by corporate promos like Air or the unfocused slog that is Happy Gilmore 2.
Watching Eephus from Ireland is a challenge in itself. You can read your favourite critic's review of it, but streaming is another matter entirely. The official website lists five platforms for digital viewing, none of which work in this region.
It becomes another example of the familiar frustration with modern film distribution, the way the system so often feels broken, how anyone who follows the conversation can be left waiting months for the film many are talking about, left with the creeping sense of FOMO.
Why it is often so difficult to see the titles that fill the annual best-of lists? In the year of 2025, they are still somehow getting it wrong. Sometimes, it feels like it is getting worse.
Eephus is a shining example of show, don't tell. It explores the gap between the sunrise and fall, in the rituals that vanish quietly, the games that happen not for glory but our own sense of belonging. This is a sports film that leaves you with a sense of why these moments matter and an unspoken farewell to the stuff that is slowly fading away.