Baseball Movies: Eephus (2024)
Now playing in a theater near you.
Spring has sprung and baseball is back.
I originally saw Eephus at the 2024 New/Next Film Festival, and it’s now playing in cinemas for you to finally check out as well. Here’s my original review, edited and updated, rerun just in time for the return of baseball and of baseball movies:
As the 2024 Major League Baseball season came to a close, memorials began to pop up for one of its thirty cathedrals - the Oakland Coliseum, (now former) home of the Oakland Athletics. Team owner John Fisher, at his core a ruthless businessman and emotionless bastard, is moving the team out of Oakland (and eyeing Las Vegas) because he wanted a shiny new ballpark. It’s been particularly painful for the team’s fans because the Coliseum, despite being one of the league’s oldest parks and the least flashy, was beloved regardless of its flaws.
When asked about playing the final game before leaving town, A's outfielder Brent Rooker said, “There's no frills, right? I think a lot of stadiums have, whether good or bad...have kind of become less about the actual baseball game and more about an entertainment product. I think what The Coliseum offers is 'here's just a bunch of seats and here's a field and there's gonna be a baseball game happening' and that's why everyone is here and that's really cool."
To be honest, I thought that was a pretty lousy tribute. You like the ballpark because…it sucks?
That was until I saw Eephus.
The new film from director/co-writer Carson Lund tells the story of the final day of a rec league ballfield before it gets torn down and replaced by a school. There's nothing particularly special about this field that distinguishes it from any other, it's the same metal bleachers and well-used dugouts and patchy grass you can find anywhere. But it's special to these men, many now haggard and slow, because it's their home today and it won't be tomorrow.
In the post-screening Q&A at New/Next, co-writer/actor Nate Fisher referred to the movie as "Field of Dreams in reverse," because instead of "If you build it, they will come," Eephus is more like, as he called it, "If you knock it down, they will all leave." And, just like with the spirits in Field of Dreams, Eephus speaks to the ghosts of the sport and what happens to them, to us, to the game, when the historic grounds are taken from us.
I liked the movie quite a bit, though I might have to push back a little on the claims that “it’s one of the greatest baseball movies,” but I will agree that it’s probably “the best baseball movie since Moneyball.” Though there isn’t a lot of competition, to be fair. It’s a hangout movie through and through, and if the score doesn’t really matter, you can’t really compare it to most other baseball stories. Unlike the movies about our greatest players or champion teams or underdog stories, Eephus is about handwritten scorecards and chewing tobacco and old uniforms and beer bellies and smack talk and how hard it is to hit a good pitch but how much harder it is to hit a bad pitch.
Baseball makes for the best movies. I write about them all the time and it’s not just because I’m both a baseball fan and moviegoer - it’s because baseball has the most interesting stories, the wackiest personalities (Red Sox fans will eye the eternal Spaceman Lee and the recently retired broadcaster Joe Castiglione), and the most kismet anecdotes. It's a game of symmetry, of perfection, of the difference of inches, and the baseball cinema canon reflects that conversation.
And Eephus is about the places where we play the game. And why they matter to us. "Why do they care so much?" asks a young girl watching the game. "Don't they have more important things going on?"
No, no we don't.