In ‘Eephus,' a day of baseball comes to life in all its loose-limbed, adult-league glory
Weekend warriors on their beloved Massachusetts field of battle, fighting a setting sun, form the warmly gruff, jersey-clad roster of 'Eephus,' Carson Lund's appealing beer toast of a baseball picture about a final small-town showdown on a soon-to-be-razed ballpark.
The title, pulled from the pastime's rich glossary, refers to an arced throw of such deliberately underwhelming velocity that it confounds the batter. What's been pitched here, however, has enough wonderfully lived-in bend, air and tempo to keep from straying off course.
Baseball movies are so often engineered for big-game glory moments, they've forgotten the part that's like an afternoon game of catch. (Something 'Bull Durham' filmmaker Ron Shelton got, admittedly.) Lund, making his feature directing debut after establishing himself as a noteworthy indie cinematographer (most recently on 'Christmas Eve at Miller's Point'), is fan enough of the recreation-league vibe to favor that atmosphere of sun, swigs and swats (the literal and the trash-talking kind) over some predictable competition narrative. His breezy, bittersweet hang of a movie is all the better for it.
Not that the visiting River Dogs, led by calm founder Graham (Stephen Radochia), don't want to crush home team Adler's Paint — and vice versa — on this last chance face-off before a school is erected on their cherished diamond. As a bright October day unfolds, the contest mingles with an unavoidable sense of inevitability, but not enough for these once-a-week chums to unnecessarily sentimentalize the situation. Especially when a proper taunt might give you an edge, or at least a good laugh.
It's a true ensemble: Altmanesque with a bit of Richard Linklater's eccentricity. The standouts include Keith William Richards, David Pridemore and Theodore Bouloukos in varying shades of appealing grizzledness, with a hilarious appearance by former Red Sox pitcher Bill 'Spaceman' Lee as an interloper who's like the guest turn in an old-school variety show. Lund directs Greg Tango's cinematography toward widescreen compositions and genteel tracking shots of autumnal poetry, allowing every weary soul a ruminative closeup to go with their sharply detailed micro-dramas about the finer points of game play, someone's annoying traits or life's general indignities.
'Eephus,' which Lund wrote with Michael Basta and Nate Fisher (also playing the reliever who explains the film's title, a lazy, hanging pitch) is set in the 1990s, but the only real clues are the cars and a boombox. The constant radio chatter — which includes the unlikely announcing voice of legendary documentarian Frederick Wiseman — doesn't give the era away, nor do the younger characters' hairstyles, since mullets and dreads endure. And that well-thumbed score pad, in which league habitue Franny (a memorable Cliff Blake) pencils in balls, strikes and runs from his fold-up table, could just be an old-timer's personal choice.
Elsewhere, the accouterments of middle age — paunches, unkempt beards, intransigence, teasing, a resigned air — are as timeless for human comedy as the melancholic notion that all things run out: daylight, a hired ump's hours, a 12-pack's buzz, an irritable player's patience. The rules of baseball, of course, defy time, and 'Eephus' embraces shagginess as a virtue, almost to a fault. Go grab a hot dog or drink mid-movie. Lund's no-rush, anti-narrative pacing encourages it. That's baseball too.
As is the risk, however, that you'll miss that homer or, in this case, that exquisitely framed shot or wonderfully exasperated glance. Maybe the most rewarding quality 'Eephus' displays as a first-ballot hall of fame sports movie is the dedication of Lund and company to just being what they are: no-nonsense celebrants of something ephemeral yet enduring. They just want to get a good long look at everything before it fades completely.
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