“It’s going…going…gone!” Such words are usually said about baseballs soaring up into the sky, never to be retrieved by even the best outfielder. This phrase, though, aptly sums up the impending fate of Soldiers Field. As Eephus begins, this staple of a tiny Massachusetts town is set for demolition. This will make way for a new middle school. Important progress for parents not wanting to drive their kids so far away for education is devastating news for folks who use the area for baseball.
Such individuals are the heart of Eephus, which chronicles two baseball teams playing one final game the day before this field's incineration. The Adler's Paint home team contends with the visiting Riverdogs to see who will claim the last ever victory at Soldiers Field. Regular attendees of this game, like Franny (Cliff Blake), sit by and witness everything with impeccable attention. Writer/director Carson Lund (Michael Basta and Nate Fisher also penned the script) divides this day up into chapters as these men take a seemingly frivolous game all so seriously. None of them wants this era to end. But they can’t stop the sun from setting just as they can’t halt that construction equipment from demolishing the field.
It's always bizarre when you finally see an aspect of your reality filtered through a movie. Like Ebenezer Scrooge suddenly being transported to his childhood boarding school days, a small moment in Eephus had me instantly recalling sunny Texas days in the 2000s. Specifically, there’s an Eephus shot where, in the background, a small child is just running through leaves, absorbed in their own world fully divorced from the game occurring just few feet away. That was totally me attending my younger brother’s soccer or basketball games. My adolescent attention was locked in on the most trivial nearby elements rather than a competition that the participating players take oh so seriously. When sports transpire, endless conviction and wandering psyches exist all in the same domain.
What an amusing experience to see this childhood memory realized in a movie. This little background gag is a microcosm of Lund and crew's insightful gaze into human behavior. All throughout Eephus, these characters exhibit traits ripped straight from life’s most throwaway moments. We’ve all grown so accustomed to certain tiny details in how people sit or start conversations that they no longer stand out as strange or amusing in everyday existence. The intricately detailed Eephus restores humor to those facets while also enhancing the believable humanity of its central players (no pun intended).
That attention to tiny details reflects why Lund and cinematographer Greg Tango’s Eephus visual scheme is so impressive. This dry, grounded comedy often manifests through grand wide shots effortlessly emphasizing elements like awkwardness in cringey comedy beats or relationships between characters. Shot of various Adler’s Paint or Riverdogs players sitting on a dugout bench especially benefit from this visual motif. Within a wider canvas, differing player personalities are more apparent than ever just in how many different types of body language exist in a single image. They all wear the same team colors, but the roomy framing makes it clear to viewers that the Adler’s Paint and Riverdogs players aren’t just carbon copies of one another. The subtly illuminating staging here is just exquisite.
It's also fascinating how these wider images emphasize the larger world these angsty Massachusetts denizens inhabit. At one point, the camera lingers on a man who runs a pizza-based food truck that always parks near this baseball diamond. This fellow is lamenting to two customers about all the unfulfilled ambitions he has in his life and how much he doesn’t like his job. As this guy’s pouring his soul out in this unbroken shot, another employee of the food truck pokes out just behind this orator and hands a grateful customer their slice. It’s a deeply amusing gag, juxtaposing a transaction against such a vulnerable soliloquy. However, it’s also an apt visual distillation of how Eephus is about people grappling with melancholy in an unyielding world.
You can play baseball forever or eternally talk about what’s aching your soul. The planet keeps spinning. Change is unstoppable. And pizza will get sold. It’s a crushing aspect of reality that Eephus explores so thoughtfully.
Such richly devised personalities are exquisitely executed through the terrific Eephus ensemble cast. Whoever was in charge of casting Eephus (no person is credited, as near as I can tell, for this position) should really score the first Oscar for Best Casting next year. Everyone in Eephus leaves an impact and conveys a profound lived-in reality. The assembled performers deftly communicate a much larger existence for their respective roles that goes far beyond the Eephus screentime. Even after the credits stopped rolling, I could easily see these various individuals carrying on with their ordinary lives. This quality is why small moments like that pizza food truck scene prove so impactful.
That facet also makes Eephus deeply entertaining to watch. The assembled actors aren’t just good at exuding lived-in auras. They’re also terrific when it comes to comic acting. These performers lend extra hysterical life to inspired lines about “pizza on ham” or just the facial expressions of two troublesome teenage onlookers. Much like how the Spider-Verse movies crammed visual gags into even the opening studio logos, Eephus uncovers possibilities for laughs in even background elements like local advertisements blaring on the radio. The business and wares hawked in these auditory promos are so specific, so exactly what you’d hear on FM radio in the 90s, you just have to cackle. Despite the contemplative melancholy tone, Eephus also had me in stitches all throughout its runtime. How could it not when Lund and company are so observant on everyday sources of levity?
Happily, these gags aren’t about making fun of these characters from afar. Eephus is not a film encouraging folks from beyond the borders of Massachusetts to point and laugh at “oddballs.” The humor's rooted in audiences firmly existing in their baseball-centric world. This obsession with a frivolous game on Soldiers Field is strange, sure. However, Eephus makes audiences very aware of why this baseball skirmish is so important to the Adler’s Paint and Riverdogs players. The comedy arises from specific interactions between the team or precise visual gags, not mockery.
Others may see a bunch of dirt and plastic mounds where Soldiers Field stands. For the men at the heart of Eephus, Soldiers Field has always been so much more than that. It’s a place for bonding, escape, and feeling like Babe Ruth for even a moment. What we bring to locations to is so much more important than what they look like externally. Every time I drive by the husk of a building that once was my go-to Movie Trading Co. store as a kid, I feel that pang of loss as memories come soaring back into my body. There’s an endless abundance of other Movie Trading Co. locations in Texas. But that particular domicile is where I carved out indispensable memories.
Maybe it was just another store on a map to some corporate bigwigs. For me, that place was infinitely more important than that. I know next to nothing about baseball, yet Eephus absorbed me in its humorous yet thoughtful portrayal of how hard it is to say goodbye. This is a movie all about “America’s pastime” (its title even comes from a famously slow pitch), yet it’s about something more universal. Eephus is an alternately humorous and aching exploration of bidding farewell to the places that made us. Whether it’s a Movie Trading Co. or Soldiers Field, locations personally important to a person never last forever. Eventually, they too will be “going…going…gone!”, like a baseball soaring beyond the outfield.