EEPHUS (A) - There is one thing in this life that I know down in my bones, and that is baseball. It is the one through-line going back to as long as I can remember. And I've never seen a more perfect baseball movie than "Eephus," a low-budget, low-key ragtag pickup game of a movie. If you've ever chosen up sides at the local field and called balls and strikes on the honor system, or played right-field-out, then this film is for you.
"Eephus" follows a day in the life of a men's recreational league, marking the final game at a local field in New England that is facing demolition (making way for a school to be built there). These guys have been toiling away at this for years, most of them approaching middle age, except for a few young ringers who still harbor hopes of finding a professional league someday. They banter and bullshit for an hour and a half on screen, and then, like every game around nightfall, they're done, and they haul their creaky bones back to their families.
This is the debut of writer-director Carson Lund (he was the cinematographer for "Ham on Rye"), and along with two other writers, they leg out scratchy dialogue, from random bits and pieces, no doubt assisted by the cast's occasional ad-libs. And the minor-league crew of no-name actors bat around arch observations and aphorisms like old pros. None of this should really work well; everything does.
Like kids pushing against a weekday curfew or old men facing the autumn of their lives and careers, these old rivals look to wring every moment they can before sunset shuts the door on an era. They are assisted by a Greek chorus or two of observers, some trained, others baffled at the spectacle. The left-fielders for each team are especially philosophical.
The heart of the film is old Franny (Cliff Blake), the diligent scorekeeper who eventually fills in as umpire (making calls from the pressbox) after the proper umpire refuses to cover extra innings. Franny is the voice of tradition and fairness and the keeper of history (his scorebook entries, in pencil, are meticulous). We also hear snippets from radio broadcasts, which could be emanating from the men's childhoods, as well as wise baseball maxims borrowed from the likes of Yogi Berra and Babe Ruth, intoned as chapter headings by the documentary veteran Frederick Wiseman.
Some players come and go -- one arrives just in time during the first inning to save his team from a forfeit, and one team's pitcher/manager runs off mid-game to his niece's communion. And there is a mysterious interloper, who seems familiar to a few of the guys, though no one can identify him beyond the name Lee. It is Bill Lee, the former Boston Red Sox lefty, playing himself. After bragging that he can still sling his stuff, he heads out to the mound in his street clothes to show it off -- including the famous high-arcing eephus pitch that gives the movie its name. Lee was known as a hippie goofball in the '70s, but now, settling in to old age, he fits in as one of the guys.
And it is the arc of time, the decades, that lingers in the air throughout "Eephus." Observing the slow-pitched balloon ball intended to throw off batters' timing, one of the players notes, "It stays in the air forever." And that's just what the sport -- the idea -- of baseball does. It lingers over a lifetime. Each game, as George Carlin famously observed, could conceivably last forever, and here that's just what threatens to happen.
In the end, there are more empty beer cans scattered about the dugouts than gloves or balls. And frustration among the players: "Let's just finish this thing to say that we did." Base hits will disappear into the dusk, like Gabby Hartnett's homer in the gloamin', legging a single into a double, turning a middle-aged base-runner into a kid again for a moment. Though in the daylight, things often are not pretty. (The players display all levels of talent and skills, just as you'd expect.) After one sloppy play, one of the men observes: "Is there anything more beautiful than the sun setting on a fat man stealing second base?"
No, it turns out. It all seems perfect in the moment, and it always has.
WHO KILLED THE MONTREAL EXPOS? (B-minus) - A friend from Chicago has a go-to line that we both find infinitely funny: "Didn't your dad used to pitch for the Expos?" The fact that the Montreal Expos moved their baseball operations to Washington, D.C., in 2004 somehow makes that reference feel even more quaint.
I was aware (barely) in 1969 when the Expos joined the National League, the first year each circuit split into East and West divisions, the Montreal gang providing a cushion to the Chicago Cubs against a last-place finish, at least for a few years after expansion. (We won't go into the childhood trauma involving the Cubs and the year 1969; been there, done that.)
This Netflix documentary waxes nostalgic over the perennially snakebit team and laments the eventual betrayal of Montreal fans by the owners. However, its emphasis on ownership drama over the years makes this more inside-baseball than actual baseball. The old players get short-shrift; instead, it is a series of executives who get the bulk of the air time here.
So if you are looking for a nostalgia ride with Tim Raines, Gary Carter and Andre Dawson, you're out of luck. And the original squad that included Le Grand Orange, Rusty Staub? Ghosted. Would you settle for Larry Walker (probably known more for his Colorado exploits) and beloved manager Felipe Alou? They, Pedro Martinez and Vladimir Guerrero Sr. get face time here, but not as much as the bean-counters do. The filmmakers make other odd choices, as well; for example, it is hinted at but not mentioned that Jackie Robinson played with the Montreal Royals minor-league team the year before he broke the color line with the Brooklyn Dodgers. Dennis Martinez's perfect game is barely sneezed at. Actual game clips are fleeting. In sum, you do not get a sense of players' accomplishments that drew the loyalty of fans.
From the start, the club was stuck with unfortunate stadiums and then saddled with a local ownership group ill-equipped to deal with baseball's free-agent era of the 1980s, which left small-market franchises at a competitive disadvantage. The franchise finally put it all together in 1994, widely recognized as the best team in the Major Leagues that year, only to have the playoffs canceled by a players strike. A fire sale proceeded the next year and they finished last in 1995.
The team finally gave up on local ownership around the turn of the century and sold to art dealer Jeffrey Loria, who failed to sell Quebec on a locally funded stadium, and at one point the team did not even have local TV broadcasts. Loria would move on to the Florida Marlins, and, after a period of receivership in the hands of MLB, new ownership moved the team to D.C., where the Nationals took over in 2005 (and would win the World Series in 2019). Loria's stepson David Samson shows up to take his lumps and defend himself as the clueless executive vice president during that time.
This Netflix production has a cheap quality to it. The quick cuts and subtitles for French speakers can make it hard to follow everything on the screen. Especially in the wake of "Eephus," and maybe something gets lost in translation crossing the norther border, but this documentary just doesn't feel like a labor of love produced by baseball fans.
BONUS TRACK
From the closing credits of "Eephus," Tom Waits with "Ol' 55":
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