In Eephus, Baseball Is a Metaphor for Life, But It’s Also Just Life

Photo: Music Box Films/Everett Collection

I’ve never been a baseball guy (God knows I’ve tried), but I do tend to enjoy baseball movies. Beyond its occasional cinematic qualities — the close-up drama of stoic pitchers versus watchful hitters and all that — the game does make an effective metaphor for life itself, with its many failed at-bats and fleeting glories, its constant tension between the big swing and the humble base hit. Carson Lund’s new film Eephus, which follows the course of a local baseball game one late autumn afternoon, certainly embraces that idea. It’s a studied miniature about time passing. Slowly but surely, you settle into its gentle rhythms, and before you know it, it feels like an entire lifetime has passed by.

The characters in Eephus are given brief introductions as they arrive for the game at a small New England park called Soldiers Field. The men are a varied bunch — some old, some young, some awkward and heavy, others fit and precise. A couple take the game very seriously, while others are barely there. There are the highly organized ones, and then there’s the guy who arrives so late that he has to run straight from his car to the plate. Even so, they’re not quite distinctive enough to stand out. Their rambling collective is the film’s many-headed protagonist. Alongside, maybe, the setting itself. The leaves in the trees are changing color, so the game is played against a backdrop of blue skies, creamy clouds, and kaleidoscopic forest canopies, all of which take on a twilight grandeur as the darkness gathers and the temperature drops.

The soft waning of the day reflects the soft waning of a pastime. Soldiers Field is closing down and will soon be replaced by a school. This is the last game these folks will ever play on this field. And because the only other available field is miles away and smells of feces, this is probably the last baseball game many of them will ever play, a thought that dawns on them as the day progresses. Some begin to wonder what exactly they’ll do for leisure after the game is over. Gently and gradually, Lund suggests that in a world where communal spaces and collective activities are slowly being taken away, this game is it for these men. Which maybe explains why they’re all so terrified early on when it looks like one side might have to forfeit because it’s one player short.

The “eephus” of the title (which I had not heard of before) refers to a high-arcing, low-velocity pitch that’s thrown as if it’s going to be fast, but moves so slow that it takes the batter by surprise. “He tries to swing at it like it’s normal, but it’s already past him,” we’re told. “The eephus makes him lose track of time.” Lund is too smart to try and coyly sneak this metaphor past us. Instead, he gives it an almost comical grandiosity. He highlights the moment with a slow dolly into a close-up of the seemingly possessed player explaining the dynamics of the pitch, and cuts to a slow-motion shot of a giant ball moving across the screen like some cursed glacier, as purple dusk starts to settle into the trees beyond the park. It’s very funny in its signposted obviousness, and yet somehow still moving — which is a good way to describe the charm of the film itself.

The metaphor, while touching, is almost — almost — a red herring. Because as Eephus continues, its symbolic qualities recede and it becomes about something more basic, about the simple fact of time spent in the presence of others, about getting to know people, getting to joke with them and about them and around them. That’s the film’s greatest surprise, its secret deceptive pitch. We keep looking for meaning while the world passes us by. We come to Eephus expecting a metaphor for life and instead we are faced with life itself.