Eephus (dir. Carson Lund)

By: Adam Freed

“Is there anything more beautiful than the sun setting on a fat man stealing second base?”  It is with a crass and comedic sensibility that  baseball romantics are sure to find a million things to love about Carson Lund’s Eephus.  The comedy is framed as an all in one day story about the final amateur men’s league game being played on a historic field that is soon to be replaced by a new junior high school. Shot beautifully in a small town in rural New York, Eephus gives the feeling that it may have been filmed a stone's throw from baseball’s Hall of Fame in Cooperstown.  The twenty or so men who congregate to play the final game in Soldier’s Field history represent two opposing clubs from the same place, who know one another intimately as it feels they have been playing against one since the dawn of time.

The film’s late autumn setting establishes the looming sense of finality to the contest that appears to mark the end of an era for most of the players who take the dusty community diamond.  What could’ve been presented as an unimportant matchup of old men, of diminishing physical abilities, instead feels like baseball’s last stand against a modern culture indifferent to the meaning of America’s oldest sport.  While many of the aging men on both teams openly question why they put their withering bodies through such pain and agony, it is apparent from the outset that baseball is a labor of love to these men, and a way of life. The film is framed beautifully as midday becomes dusk, and eventually twilight sets in upon their game, their careers, and their beloved stadium. 

So much of the power of Eephus, a film named after the mythologically “unhittable pitch,” is captured by Lund’s wise decision to not fill every moment with constant banter, rather to allow the shots of the methodically paced game to mirror the game itself.  Audiences witness aging men attempting to preserve the dying embers of their former athletic selves in their final at bats.  Even the eventuality of complete darkness, the common enemy of baseball players everywhere, cannot possibly short change the sanctity of completing the final nine innings at Soldier’s Field.  There is a relatability to Lund’s Eephus in which older audiences will likely remember desperately attempting to cling tightly onto their youthful passions as the world dispassionately moves on around them.

Target score 7/10. Eephus is funny and sentimental without ever overtly trying to be either.  Carson Lund’s ode to America’s pastime is rich in baseball history and adult male comradery.  There is something magical in witnessing the last embers of an era already past. 

Eephus is included in Movie Archer’s coverage of the 60th annual Chicago International Film Festival.