‘Eephus’ is a wonderful movie about baseball and time
Pitch, pitch against the dying of the light
“Eephus” is playing at a special presentation in Madison at 5 p.m. Saturday, July 19 at the Bartell Theatre, 113 E. Mifflin St. Tickets are $10. It’s also available to rent or own on VOD.
Just what is an “eephus,” anyway? A baseball pitcher explains in Carson Lund’s movie of the same name that his eephus is an ultra-slow pitch that just seems to float in the air.
“You get bored watching it,” the pitcher says of the batter. “I get bored.” But while the batter is lulled into complacency and lowers his defenses, the ball slips past him.
It’s sort of an in-joke between Lund and the audience about “Eephus” itself. Another one is that voiceover narration is provided by 95-year-old documentary filmmaker Frederick Wiseman, whose films like “Ex Libris” and “La Danse” seem to sit and observe for three or four hours. That guy’s been throwing eephuses his whole life.
“Eephus” is a fictional film, and a very entertaining one, full of funny lines, poignant asides and performances as broken in as an old glove. But it’s not like any other baseball movie you’ve ever seen. It doesn’t care about the score, it doesn’t have any comeback kids or other sports cliches.
Instead, watching “Eephus” feels like watching a baseball game on a fall day, your attention wandering from one player to the other, from the outfield to the dugout, tuning in and tuning out of the actual game. Once you lock into its rhythms, it’s the gift that keeps on giving, and it’s one of my favorite movies of the year.
This isn’t just any game. It’s the final game for an amateur baseball league somewhere in New England, sometime in the ‘90s based on the cars. Soldiers Field, the ballpark they play, on is being torn down. But just when you think “Eephus” might be some sort of earnest parable on a changing America losing its community spaces, we learn the reason. The town is building a much-needed middle school on the property. Even the crustiest old players on the team have trouble complaining about that.
So, on the last day of the season, the Adler’s Paint team squares off against the Riverdogs one last time. The teams are a vibrant mix of capital-C characters, from young former college phenoms who never made the big leagues to old men whose knees ache when they round the bases.
There’s the dad whose two kids dutifully show up to watch every game, largely alone in the stands. The guy who serves as amateur record keeper, dutifully recording every strike and ball. There’s the good ‘ol boy who can’t wait to set off fireworks at the end of the game that he proudly promises will “look like an angel puking.” You love them all.
The screenplay by Lund, Michael Basta and Nate Fisher is full of funny exchanges, as the players dryly bust on each other, complain about their ailments and, every once in a while, express uncertainty about what life will be like without their weekly games. Will these guys be friends without the ritual of the ballgames? Would they ever have been friends without it? Unknown.
As daylight slips away and there are innings left to play, the men keep playing, doggedly pitching and fielding even when they can no longer see the ball. It’s a pointless and utterly affecting exercise that’s a metaphor for growing old, hanging onto things that brought you joy even when they no longer make sense.
Life, like an eephus, seems to hang there forever. And then slips past you when your guard is down.