Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Carson Lund
Starring: Keith William Richards, Cliff Blake, Ray Hryb, Bill "Spaceman" Lee, Stephen Radochia, David
Pridemore, Keith Poulson
No sport is better suited to film than baseball. Where other sports
simply move in straight horizontal lines that can be covered with
nothing more than a single pan, baseball requires multiple cameras to
capture its action, to convey the nuances of the individual decisions of
its players. The standoff between pitcher and batter gives a filmmaker
the opportunity to do their best Sergio Leone imitation, the camera
focussing on close-ups of both men's eyes as they suss out their
opponent's intentions and hope their reactions don't fail them. It's
fitting that when an Italian filmmaker decided to dabble in America's
great movie genre, the western, he inadvertently channelled America's
greatest past-time (the arrangement of the three protagonists in the
Mexican standoff that climaxes The Good, the Bad and the Ugly looks for all the world like they're preparing to dash to the
next plate).
Baseball also has much in common with America's great musical genre.
Like jazz, it requires its players to improvise, and to be in tune with
the improvisation of their teammates. It's easy to see why it's
considered more American than other American sports. In baseball the
otherwise largely mythical values of America continue to thrive. You can
have a hundred flaws but one strength can earn you a place on the mound.
Can't pitch? Maybe you can bat? Can't bat? Maybe you can run? Baseball
will find a place for ya. A game lasts long enough that an early mistake
can be forgotten by the ninth inning. America likes to think of itself
as a place that allows for reinvention, and at third base you can find a
second chance. Perhaps the most romantic aspect of baseball is how it
lacks the Darwinian ruthlessness of other sports. You don't have to be
in great shape to play baseball, which means it opens its arms to those
usually excluded from field sports. In the world of sports, baseball is
the great melting pot.
In Carson Lund's directorial debut Eephus, huddled masses converge on a New England baseball field for one final
"beer league" game before the field is demolished to make way for a
school. The teams - Adler's Paint and the Riverdogs - are clad in red
and blue, but those colours don't signify any political rivalry, simply
a sporting one. The players are a mix of the young and the aging, the
fit and the wheezing. Some take it deadly seriously while others sip
from cans of cheap beer. Small talk is made between teammates and rivals
alike. Jokes are cracked in an attempt to disrupt opponents. An elderly
man keeps track of the game's progress in a scorebook, one of many you
suspect fill his home.
Like an Altman ensemble drama, the amount of characters on screen seems
initially overwhelming but we gradually get to know enough about each of
the men to tell them apart. We aren't made privy to anyone's backstory.
We know nothing of their lives beyond this game, only what they bring to
the mound, no more than any of their teammates or rivals. Unlike
traditional sports movies, we're not motivated to root for either team.
One team is no more likeable or unlikable than the other. They both
consist of sound heads and jackasses. It's no surprise then when the
game is tied and the men decide to keep playing, the film taking a turn
towards absurdity as the light fades and the men keep competing despite
being barely able to see their noses in front of their faces.
Tyler Taormina is one of Eephus's producers, and the film plays like a cousin of his great offbeat
coming-of-age movie Ham on Rye. If that film was about the official end of childhood, Eephus is about its unofficial end, when you hear your mother's voice
calling you in for your dinner and you realise you're 50 and you buried
her a decade ago. These men spend their Saturdays playing the same game
they did as kids, and with a lot of the same players. They don't want it
to end. Using their car headlights to illuminate the field when darkness
fully descends, they literally rage against the dying of the light. When
someone dares to ask why it's so important to finish the game, the reply
is "so we can say we did," but we sense some of the men are hoping they
can stretch the game out indefinitely.
While we're caught up in the romanticism of this last bout, we can't
help but wonder if maybe baseball has proven a distraction for some of
these men who may now benefit from focussing on the adulthood they've
avoided. It's telling that the field is being dismantled not to make way
for some villainous capitalist venture, but for a school. The game is
played in late October, the last time of the year when there's enough
light to allow you to fool yourself into thinking it's still summer, but
when the sun goes down and the autumnal chill descends, you know it's
time to pack away the barbecue.
Eephus takes its title from a particular curveball pitch that moves so
slowly it unsettles the batter, who watches it glide through the air for
so long that he's surprised when it whizzes past his ear. It's the
perfect metaphor for Eephus, a film whose laidback rhythm means its ostensibly low key drama hangs
in the air for so long that you're taken aback when it eventually hits
you in the gut. You don't have to understand or even like baseball to
relate to these men shuffling around the mound one last time. We all
have something in our lives that we fear may disappear some day, but
maybe we'll grow up when it does.
Eephus plays at the 2024
Belfast Film Festival on November 3rd.
