Eephus screened at the BFI London Film Festival and Belfast Film Festival and is set to arrive in cinemas nationwide in 2025.
Eephus is a term for a particular pitch in baseball. It’s an overhand throw that, despite its high arc, has deceptively low velocity, which throws off the batter. The slower speed of the throw also generates excitement for the fans, as it adds anticipation to the game, leaving them on tenterhooks as they wait for the batter to strike. That Carson Lund’s sports drama, Eephus, is named after this throw is a deliberate reflection on both the film’s adopted structure and the deeper themes the story shares.
Beautiful simplicity is the best way to describe the premise of Eephus. Set in a small Massachusetts town in the 1990s, the local baseball stadium is slated for demolition to make room for a new school. The film takes place over the course of a full day as two separate teams – Alder’s Paint, led by Ed (Keith William Richards), and the Riverdogs, captained by Graham (Stephen Radochia) – meet at the stadium for one final game. As they play well into the night, occasionally greeted by various onlookers within the town, the two teams clash and fight for victory, all with a melancholic sense of finality.
Lund has cited the 2003 Taiwanese drama Goodbye, Dragon Inn as an important influence for Eephus. That was a film about a closing cinema, its final screening, and the lives of the people surrounding that one seemingly insignificant moment. Eephus would make a compelling companion piece to Goodbye, Dragon Inn, as, despite taking place on the opposite side of the globe, it also captures universal feelings of existentialism and how they can arise from seemingly ordinary sources. The closing of a cinema or a baseball field might not seem like much in the grand scheme of things, but it’s still a public space where people can come together and share an experience that makes them feel alive. Its significance lies in the memories it contains and the connotations of the emotions experienced while in that space. Losing those places, in a way, feels like losing a friend or a loved one.
This is where the dramatic weight of Eephus makes itself known. On the surface, this is a simple conflict between two baseball teams who have one last brawl for glory. But it’s not about who wins as much as it’s about having that friendly game with others at a time when such prospects are becoming less possible. The men playing are a colourful bunch with a vast range of ages, physiques, attitudes and, possibly, political opinions. They probably wouldn’t interact with each other in any other environment, but their shared love of baseball brings them all together. Their verbal exchanges ring with a sardonic authenticity – the men regularly jesting and even insulting each other, yet still sharing earnest pride or insecurities in the process – creating a true-to-life feel reminiscent of movies like 45365. As time trundles along and environments change – the baseball stadium environment literally being replaced with something new – moments of escapism, such as playing ball with others, are beyond precious.
Lund and team find creative ways of highlighting the sentiments underneath the mundanity. One character expresses the view that baseball might not seem terribly exciting, but that it’s over before you know it. The film’s structure follows suit, as despite many sequences of characters sitting around waiting to pitch, bat or run, the pacing never lulls, maintaining an electric sense of immersion throughout. Close-ups of the characters’ faces revel in their dedication to the game or their ambivalence towards the stadium’s nearing end. The film was shot on location at Soldiers Field Stadium in Douglas, Massachusetts, a small stadium overlooking a small football (soccer) field where a group of boys play during the film. Contrasting this game with that of the baseball game further highlights the blast from the past appeal that baseball has to the characters. Sometimes, playing a game is all it takes to feel young again.
That the stadium is being replaced with a school, a place that’s just as essential as a sports field, gives the emotional disgruntlement of the film a fitting complexity. If the stadium were replaced with a factory or a shopping mall, it would be easier to create a villainous person or movement to blame. But because it isn’t, the film has a pensive undercurrent, growing in power as the game proceeds long into the night. Eephus is about the cruel, mercilessness of time as things that we once adored are replaced or forgotten. Yet it is the brevity of time that makes looking back on our favourite sports, teams and activities so special. That Eephus recognises and plays with this notion through its editing, character dynamics, and direction lends it a deceptively mighty emotional resonance, one that takes hold of you as you grow accustomed to its structure and find yourself deeply invested in the themes of nostalgia and camaraderie that the movie champions.
I recently watched my first game of American Football with my friend and fellow film critic Billie Melissa. She discussed how her love of the sport comes from the different narratives one can discern from even the simplest of games. Watching Eephus, I was reminded of her words and saw how their truthfulness can be applied to sports of all kinds. Eephus takes a seemingly trivial story about a common baseball game and layers it with such sincerity in regard to character and existentialism that I found myself wholly swept up in it. It’s a small-time feature that echoes universal truths about life, companionship and nostalgia, a celebration of mundanity that’s right at home next to Goodbye, Dragon Inn and Jim Jarmusch’s Patterson. Don’t let its minimalist plot fool you – this is an emotionally resonant experience and a triumph from Lund and team. Few movies have understood the emotional and storytelling appeal of sports so succinctly.
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