After high school/college, it gets really hard to make friends. In Chicago, one of the great glue groups is the Chicago Sport and Social Club, which organizes rec sports across the city for the athletic guy or gal that doesn’t quite have the friend base they want. But what happens when the season ends? In Chi-town, you just join a winter sport. In Eephus? It’s a bit more worrisome.
We’re in a small Massachusetts town in the 1990s. On this day, Ed Mortanian’s (Keith William Richards) Adler’s Paint sponsored baseball team plays Graham Morris’s (Stephen Radochia) Riverdogs. On the surface this is just another day at Soldiers baseball field, and the two rivals are ready to battle on the diamond for rec league supremacy.
Our ball players? Eephus boasts a true ensemble movie. I recognized no one on this cast, including legendary director Frederick Wiseman and some Uncut Gems supporting players I learned later. As someone who watched and participated in rec league games, this casting is magnificent. We have maybe 10% of the guys are legitimately great players, probably here from an injury keeping them from playing at higher levels. You also have the hangers on: a mixture of old guys, soggy middle section middle men, and dads trying to impress their kids. Director Carson Lund edits this game together perfectly in the early innings, showing that these guys are longtime friends/rivals, and that their skills are decent enough to make you believe they want to come here week after week to play baseball. Like this is a normal game for Adler’s Paint and the Riverdogs.
Except this is not just a normal game. Carson Lund’s movie quickly tells us that this field is about to be bulldozed and replaced by a school. So, this isn’t just about rec league championships: it’s about something more to all these guys. As innings fly by, the score and strategizing becomes less and less about who’s gonna win, turning instead towards how the game can keep going. Each guy starts realizing what’s about to happen, and how they are going to deal with the end of an era. A few, like the umpires, are happy to get out of there ASAP. But one by one, each player gets pushed to their time limits, reluctantly slinking away while the game gets smaller and smaller. The slow transition to the game’s purpose is Eephus’s greatest trick, slowly revealing why say your dad CAN’T miss bowling on Sundays. Or your uncle is braving the rain to play Tuesday golf.
So here’s to the casual sports bro. Eephus sees you. And it’s got the namesake pitch ready to take your baseball movie loving self and turn you into a sobbing mess of a man. I do wish I remembered the final score; the middle school needs to know what legends Bobby Crompton and Bill Belinda did on this field.