Eephus (Carson Lund, 2025)

[The Third Man]

Hey guys! Missed ya. Hope all are well. I'm doing okay.

Eephus! It's a new film by Carson Lund about the last day of a rec baseball league before their Massachusetts field is taken over by the construction of a new school. It's set entirely during the game, with the 90-minute runtime comprising the arrival and departure of a loyal elderly watcher and his folding chair/scorecard, and everything in-between, running from late afternoon to dusk as the sun sets literally and figuratively on the characters.

As somebody whose first love even above baseball has always been film, I've always thought that most of the beloved baseball films were - at best - better tributes to a halcyon ideal of baseball as a cultural and patriotic staple than they were tributes to the beauty of the game itself, let alone excellent films on the merits. Eephus is wonderful because it both better inhabits the spirit of baseball (its prosaic mundanity, its languid beauty, the space it offers for contemplation and consideration and low-intensity socializing) than most baseball films, while also being a wonderful work of art in its own right, something that sells the beauty of baseball and its mirroring of Life Itself to a non-fan.

If you've ever read Ball Four - and if you haven't, what the [expletive]? - that book is all but a spiritual guidebook to this film, and I would argue that it's closer to that masterpiece than any other film to capturing what makes baseball so unique and special. It channels the same sense of humor, the same sense of beautiful futility, and the same sense of thriving in what might seem mediocrity to an outsider. But we know better.

I should've made this post earlier, alas, because tonight's 7:30 at the Hi-Pointe was the final showing of its four-day run. But make sure to see it when you can.

[CardsofSTL]

Sounds like an interesting film; thanks for the recommendation and awareness!

[ghostrunner]

Yeah, this came to our local arthouse cinema and I missed it. Going to have to wait for streaming or Blu-ray, but looking forward to it.

[heyzeus]

Thanks for sharing, @thethirdman. I'll be on the lookout if it comes to Austin.

[thrill]

This is on my list. Chapo Traphouse/Movie Mindset was part of the production team.

[The Third Man]

This is on my list. Chapo Traphouse/Movie Mindset was part of the production team.

I hadn't realized but that explains why Will is so aggressively pushing it on twitter. Not that it doesn't merit the attention.

P.S. last time I was uninsured and had to replace my cochlear implant Will donated so he's cool with me.

[Radbird]

Bill Lee as in Spaceman is in it?