Writer-director Carson Lund’s feature debut, “Eephus,” is a film about passion, one that reconfigures the feeling of tedium through its production. Soldier’s Field, the film’s beloved local baseball diamond, is 24 hours from obsoletion. The site of the town’s adult men’s recreational league will soon be demolished to make way for the building of a new school. With their one final daylight, the men gather to play a full day’s worth of a baseball game to say goodbye. And even as the sun fades from light, the men remain to play, and “Eephus” becomes a timeless (literally and figuratively) dedication to sport and community.
Eephus is a pitch thrown in baseball, one of the rarest kinds, where the ball is thrown so inordinately slow that it throws the batter off his game. Lund’s film accomplishes the same, mirroring the pace of its titular pitch. This is not a high-octane blood, sweat, and tears sports film chock-full of exceptional athleticism or fashionable montages of base slides and cracks of the bat. It’s slow and deadpan, with long takes of sore legs trudging to the outfield and not-so-graceful (but sometimes successful) jump-slides into home base.
At the same time, it’s also not a lovingly saccharine tale of brotherhood via baseball. These men are united by one thing, a league whose expiration is quickly approaching. There’s a feeling to “Eephus” that suggests that not only does the demolition of the field signal the end of the recreational team but also predicts the conclusion of these acquaintances. “Eephus” is a slice of life story occupied by a gaggle of men who don’t even really get along very much. But it’s this lack of chemistry among the cast of characters that breeds believability.
The miscellany of the team, from a bright-eyed teen to a glib college ballplayer and a slew of variously jaded middle-aged men, provides much of the humor of the film and the heart. Despite the comedically annoyed dispositions from figures like Ed (Keith William Richards), beer-infused flippance from Troy (David Pridemore), or even the warm, refreshing sincerity of Cooper (Conner Marx) or Preston (Jeff Saint-Dic), everyone’s cleats are on the diamond. Despite rolled eyes, this matters to them all, and the proof is in their presence, even as the sun goes down. This is what makes “Eephus” heartfelt in its quotidian nature.
The film is an ultimate hangout tale. It’s never quite as funny as it intends to be, though quite a few chuckles slip through as the men stubbornly try to play in the moonlight or poke fun at each other’s lack of prowess. The pacing works referentially to its namesake and real-time ambition. Still, the characters aren’t quite interesting or engaging enough to sustain attention for the whole runtime, and the film’s crawl eventually wears on weary knees. However, the devotion and passion behind “Eephus” make up a few runs per walk. Lund’s feature adoringly wears its heart on its sleeve, and by the time the men (and the film) pack it up, you, too, feel a mournful twinge of disappointment.
