I May Not Love Sports, but This New Baseball Film Is Absolutely One of the Best Movies I’ve Seen All Year

“How can you not be romantic about baseball?” Asks Billy Beane (Brad Pitt) in Moneyball, and he’s not wrong. Not only is it America’s pastime, but it has been the focal point of so many great movies! It’s hard not to well up when Robert Redford hits the ball out of the park in The Natural, feel nostalgic watching the kids in The Sandlot play their endless game, or be moved to patriotism by James Earl Jones’s speech in Field of Dreams. One could, and video essayist Patrick H. Willems has, argue that baseball is the sport best suited for movies and the proof is the quality of baseball movies. In addition to the previously highlighted titles, movies like Major League, 42, Bull Durham, The Pride of the Yankees, and A League of Their Own have remained classics for years and all succeeded at making their audience feel “romantic about baseball.” But the recently released independent feature, Eephus, may be the first movie to truly capture the experience of baseball even if you don’t care about sports!

‘Eephus’ Feels like Watching a Baseball Game

In Eephus, two teams of mostly middle-aged men get together for an amateur game that will be the last they will ever play on their regular field. With the field set to be paved over, the teams try to make this last game a special one, even if that means playing into a cold October night and relying on the headlights from their cars to see. Not unlike Dazed & Confused or Nashville, Eephus follows a large ensemble of characters and their narratives that come in and out of the film and sometimes cross over. There are no major stars (minus Boston sports legends Joe Castiglione and Bill “Spaceman” Lee) nor any traditional narratives or character archetypes. Eephus simply asks its audience to observe the players, and to anyone that regularly attends or watches baseball games, the experience will feel similar.

While the stakes are never high, the drama ebbs and flows throughout Eephus. Some moments pick up and soar while others linger and become monotonous, much like an actual game of baseball. The joy comes from the little moments of seeing the players interact, a pitcher striking out three players in a row, and arguing whether the umpires made the right call. Director Carl Lund told Mark Asch at Defector that traditional baseball movies weren’t his “reference points.” Lund said that baseball is “a game that privileges meditation, moments of mundanity and distraction, and just socializing in the dugout before something eventful happens. That, to me, is closer to slow cinema, or a feeling like pure time.” While this may test some audiences’ patience, the excitement and humor of Eephus is enough to keep the right crowd engaged, and there’s even something for non-sports fans.

‘Eephus’ Isn’t Just About Baseball

While baseball is central to Eephus, the film also uses the game to tap into larger themes. With this being the last game the two teams will ever play on this field, there is a persistent melancholy throughout the film. Much of the conversation the players are having is about what’s to come, what they are doing next, or simply reminiscing on the past. Rather than targeting a societal issue like gentrification, Eephus is simply mourning the passage of time and the process of getting older. “There’s always a generation behind you. It’s about dealing with mortality and change in that way,” Lund told Isaac Feldberg in an interview for RogerEbert.com. Lund continues, “It’s more that environments will change in the flow of time, no matter what. This population will grow large. Green space eventually has to be repurposed in certain places. These are inevitabilities.” The true tragedy is the loss of a community.

While Eephus is set in the early 1990s, there’s a timelessness permeating the film. Whether it’s the analogue score keeping, the lack of cellphones, or the vintage esthetics, Eephus feels like a film taking place in a bygone era. At the heart of Eephus is a group of people coming together for a common purpose and the genuine human connection they share. All the players have a familiarity with one another that has been built up over years of playing on the same teams and the actors capture that history with ease. In their downtime, the players are talking to one another and sharing stories or building friendships, as opposed to being on their phones. It longs for a time when people were getting together and connecting, forming a community, that the pervasiveness of tech has robbed people. While never directly addressed, there’s a tinge of sadness not only about this being the last game, but perhaps the last time many of these people will see one another. Eephus is a longing for more communal activities that seem to be rapidly fading.

What’s an Eephus?

Baseball movies are easy to love, and Eephus joins a remarkable canon, but the title is admittedly niche. What does Eephus mean? It refers to a type of pitch that warps the batter’s sense of time, feeling so slow until it rushes right past the player. It’s a metaphor key to the film—with one character directly comparing it to baseball itself, but it also speaks to the film’s larger themes. Even when life feels like it is at its slowest, that can shift rapidly before you even notice. Even something slow and seemingly meaningless can have a greater effect down the line. And sometimes, it’s not about winning or losing, just getting together to play the game.