Eephus

It’s about time. Eephus, that is. And also Eephus. The title of this spare, featherlight ramble of a feature debut from filmmaker Carson Lund refers to a low-velocity baseball pitch. As one of the male locals partaking in the weekend pastime of recreational baseball waxes lyrical on this rare throw, one senses a statement of intent being laid out for the audience. In its slow-arcing way, eephus possesses the power to stop time altogether. Boredom is all but assured, we are told, but also necessary, the better for the ball to make its way to where it’s going. In its lackadaisical way, Eephus unfolds with a similar patient intent. 

Over the course of a single day on a single Massachusetts baseball field, an onslaught of behatted men congregate in the same green space to share in the camaraderie and gentle competition of the game. One might briefly be put in mind of a decades-later college reunion of the lovable fools that populated Richard Linklater’s Everybody Wants Some!!, older and perhaps wiser too. Still, Lund and co-writers Michael Basta and Nate Fisher largely refrain from filling in too much detail of the men’s lives off the field. Talk is terse, with polite inquiries after family and work dovetailing into only the briefest exchanges. There are occasional, brief intrusions from the outside world, but baseball is where their focus remains. It will be left to the novices of the sport in the audience to decide how clearly its details are communicated.

To this particular crowd, Lund’s film is sure to extend an olive branch. At multiple junctures, Eephus checks in with bewildered bystanders, who declare that after an afternoon’s worth of observation, they understand baseball about as well as they did before. Instead, their attention gravitates elsewhere, namely to the alternating seriousness and frivolity of the game for its players. As Eephus advances through its loose chapter structure, the long game of this off-speed pitch gradually reveals itself. A construction project casts a shadow over what may be the field’s last day. As the finality of the occasion dawns on the audience, an encroaching sense of melancholy sets in.

Come the time the field is abandoned, the sun fully set, one may wish for a greater emotional outpouring. Instead, the loss is almost imperceptible, but this may be what rings truest in Eephus. It’s hard to imagine this low-key, well-observed debut not testing the endurance of those wholly on the outside of its world to some degree. Still, for those nostalgic for their own weekend escapes, wiling away the afternoon in comfortably cantankerous disharmony with their cohorts, it may strike a resoundingly bittersweet note. As the men disperse, the ineffable personal importance of these games they’ve played may not even be wholly apparent to them.

Thomas Messner

Eephus does not have a release date yet.

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