A Perfect Game: Eephus is Funny and Bittersweet

Music Box Films

4.5/5 stars

The history of "America's Pastime" is as interesting and contradictory as America itself. The sport is loaded with triumph, heartbreak, controversy, corruption, and personalities almost too wild to believe. Above all that though, baseball, more than any other sport, is the sport of working-class schlubs. Carson Lund heavily plays up the schlubby side of baseball with his film Eephus, a serio-comic look at the confusing and often absurd rules of baseball that also works as a brilliant look at the intricacies of male bonding and a lament over the loss of "third spaces."

In a small Massachusetts town in the mid-1990s, a lonely baseball field becomes the setting for a game between Adler's Paint and the Riverdogs whose longtime rivalry comes to an end the day before the field is demolished to make way for a new school. As day becomes evening and the innings pile up, this motley crew realizes that they are witnessing the end of an era.

Baseball makes the perfect sport for a hangout movie. Long stretches of boredom punctuated by a few seconds of excitement give us time to just exist with these characters, watching as their game becomes a meet-up between old friends and occasionally, an impromptu group therapy session. The result is extremely funny but always with a hint of sadness as these guys don't really want to let go of their hobby but know the game can't go on forever. It all comes to a bittersweet finale that ends, not with a grand slam, but a balk. Eephus is currently playing in select theaters and is also available on Amazon Prime, Apple TV+, Google Play, and YouTube.

Directed by Carson Lund // Written by Michael Basta, Nate Fisher, and Carson Lund // Starring Keith William Richards, Stephen Radochia, Bill "Spaceman" Lee, Ray Hyrb, Cliff Blake, David Pridemore, Keith Poulson, John R. Smith Jr., Pete Minkarah, Wayne Diamond, Theodore Bouloukos, Russell J. Gannon, David Torres Jr., Nate Fisher, Joe Castiglione, and Frederick Wiseman // 98 minutes // Music Box Films // Unrated (R equivalent)