I’m a huge baseball fan. I follow the Boston Red Sox to my detriment at some points in my life. Lately, they haven’t been good, but the previous 15 years, they were great. Winning 4 World Series titles. I’m also a fan of baseball movies with Pride of the Yankees, Field of Dreams, and Bull Durham as some of my favorites in the sub-genre of sports films. The latest baseball movie, Eephus, is one of the most original yet realistic takes on this sport I’ve ever seen. It definitely has to be seen to be believed. 

The premise of Eephus is that a group of men from a small town in New Hampshire around Nashua get together on a Sunday afternoon to play the last adult wood bat baseball game on the beloved Soldier’s Field. They have umpires and an old man who keeps a record of the game in his score book or scorecard if you will. Some families come out to the game, and locals walk by the nearby wooded field to see what’s going on. This is the last game at the field before it’s bulldozed over to turn it into a school.  What happens in this game is akin to any small town group getting together. 

We all have a group of friends we hang out with or family for that matter. and more often than not, while at family gatherings, parties of other functions we give each other crap for one reason or another. Well, take that theory and put it into a sports setting and turn up the noise a little bit, maybe a lot. That is what you have here with this baseball film. Twenty men who give each other crap for little over an hour and a half. Separated into segments like a game would have innings. It’s some of the funniest banter I’ve ever seen.

Without spoiling the entire movie, there are sequences where the camera is just pointed at the various teams, Adlers Pain & The Road Dogs, dugouts. Capturing rude comments, bickering with each other, giving the guys on the field a ribbing, and being themselves away from their wives and children. Guys, being guys, if you will. These scenes are priceless! Even though I don’t know these men, I know this type of situation quite well. I used to play a lot of pick basketball with the same guys all the time, and things were very similar to this situation, just not as organized. A softball league would probably describe this more accurately. 

One moment in particular I liked was when the red team, ill use red and blue to describe the two teams from here on out, started seeing a song in the middle of the game to give the blue team, specifically the guy at bat a hard time. This was brilliantly done, and I laughed out loud at this sequence in the film. The movie is filled with moments like this. Each one is better than the next. Despite all of this stuff, the movie had a heart to it, though. As it progresses, viewers will see this side of it. I cared more and more about these men and this game the further it went along.

Without talking about the entire cast, I have to point out a few performances I liked. Kieth William Richards (Uncut Gems) plays the manager/pitcher for the red team. He was really in a fatherly fashion. He was tired after pitching a few innings and, in a hilarious moment, had to leave the  game to go to his niece’s confirmation at their church.  He went in his baseball uniform. Chris Goodwin played Garrett Furnwall. He shows up late and goes to bat, wearing sets over his uniform and trips when he gets a hit. He supper to be the best player on the blue team, but even he messes up that why these guys aren’t playing big-time baseball. He has some good lines in the film, though. Last but not least is an actual real-life ex-baseball player Bill “Spaceman” Lee, who plays a version of himself. He comes in for one inning and professes he can get three outs and does just that in street clothes. He was awesome to see pop up in this movie.  The cast of relative nobody’s was quite good. They had me in Stitches more often than not.

The “Eephus” pitch is an unnatural pitch in the game of baseball. One particular player has mastered this movie. That’s not why the film is called that. A pitcher acts like he’s throwing a regular fast ball or whatever and disguises the slow over the top  eephus pitch to get the batter to swing early or late. That’s the premise of this movie. You think you’re getting a regular baseball film but instead your getting a satire on the game of baseball and all its history and the idiosyncrasies of the pastime that is the greatest game that has ever been played.  It’s brilliantly directed by Carson Lund and acted by a relative bunch of unknowns. I laughed constantly, and I’m sure many other baseball fans, ex-players, or anybody who spent any time around the game will love this film. It’s a one of a kind gem you rarely see these days. It’s one of the best sports movies I’ve seen in recent years.

4 stars

Dan Skip Allen