EEPHUS (Carson Lund, 2024)
Baseball as a sport doesn’t really exist in Ireland. After watching Eephus I wish it did.
The film follows the final game at Soldier’s Field, a small town’s local long-standing pitch, soon to be demolished for a new school. It’s the least baseball-centred baseball film ever made, despite following the game in what feels like real time, which worked for me as someone who doesn’t know anything about baseball. Instead, the focus is on the jokes and stories told in the dugout, the conversations between strangers at the pizza van, and the autumnal landscape slowly turning from midday to dusk, to pitch black night. Before you’ve realised it, you’ve been hit with a punch in the gut of deep wrenching sadness, sadness for this baseball field that we, as the audience, have only existed on for 90 or so minutes, and more than that, sadness for the men that have played there and don’t want to leave.
For some of the men, this will be the last game of baseball they ever play, as they tell themselves and each other throughout. In one particularly heartbreaking moment, one man’s wife and children are about to leave, and he asks them to stay to watch him bat. In any other sports movie, he would’ve hit a home run, his children set to forever idolise him, but Eephus isn’t any other sports movie, and as ever grounded in reality, he doesn’t hit any sort of spectacular ball, he doesn’t win the game. In the dugout, he sadly reminds himself that was the last chance to show his children their father playing baseball. At least for him, his children came to watch him play, the only other spectators at the field are one older long-time baseball fan who leaves early, one player’s new girlfriend who leaves early, and two skateboarding teens who make fun of the players and also leave early. One of the men on the team also leaves early, Ed, played by Keith William Richards of Uncut Gems fame, is forced to leave for his niece’s Christening, picked up by Wayne Diamond, also of Uncut Gems fame. Ed, as the captain of the team, does not want to leave but is told if they push the Christening back his niece will then be too old.
Ed is not the only player on the field who does not want to leave, in fact, both teams stay well into the night, keeping the game going. Baseball is a game that can go on forever until someone decides to end it, and no one wants to end this game. They go as far as to play in the pitch black night before driving their cars onto the field, using the headlights to illuminate the game. While no one says it, no one wants the game to end as it will be the last, and more than that, it seems like it will be the last time the men ever hang out with each other. Despite all playing together for years and drinking together during every game, the men can’t cross the barrier to create plans outside of baseball. They won’t drive a few towns over to another field they could play at, and when one player suggests they all meet up in the winter for a drink, he’s met with a chorus of “maybes”.
This is the very loose plot of the film, the emotional foundation it’s based on, why is it so hard, particularly for adult men, to make friends? On Letterboxd, co-writer of the film Nate Fisher left a review saying that for three years he and director/writer Carson Lund would both attend the Harvard Film Archive regularly, and despite being the only people there under fifty, they would never speak. Finally, they connected, and Eephus was born, particularly out of this feeling that both of them had experienced, that making friends is impossible as a grown-up man. In a more basic sports film, the team would have left the pitch with weekly dinners planned for the rest of eternity, or in fact, they would have played the game of baseball forever so that the ‘evil’ developers wouldn’t have been able to build on the field, thus they wouldn’t have to go separate ways. Once again, Eephus is grounded in realism, and when the game finally ends in the middle of the night, the men all drive home, possibly to never meet up again. Even the firework display, which one player has been hyping up for the entire film, is grounded in this sad realism, instead, the camera turns to watch the lone player left in the dugout, as the fireworks light up his face. Eventually, he turns and leaves too before the display has finished.
For me, the beating heart of the film was the cast, an ensemble made up of characters who feel completely familiar. Each actor plays their role perfectly, grounded in reality and truth, they completely make the audience feel at ease. I felt as though I was there, on the team, at the field, with the players, and it barely took a second to get to know them. The one stand out is Cliff Blake, who plays Franny. Franny is not a member of either team, instead there to keep score. He’s the only person there not on a team who stays until the end, in fact, he fills in for the umpire when the umpire leaves. Franny is the first one to show up to the field for the game, and he knows the players as well as they know each other. This is as heartbreaking for him as it is for anyone else there and as it is for us in the audience.
Eephus is the name of a particular style of pitch in baseball. The ball is thrown high and slow, confusing the batter who either swings too early, or doesn’t realise the ball has passed by already. The pitch transcends time, so to speak, it feels like the ball has been in the air forever, but then suddenly, it’s passed. The name is perfect for the film, in which the game seems to last forever until it doesn’t anymore, that the field the men play on has been there forever, until suddenly, it’s not anymore, that we as the audience has been there forever, until we aren’t anymore. I wish I could live in the world of Eephus forever, to live in the throw before it passes, I’m sure that’s what these players wish too. Unfortunately, that isn’t how life works, but it’s made a great film.
