‘If you wreck it, they will leave': Why the new baseball movie ‘Eephus' is the reverse ‘Field of Dreams'
'Eephus' is set in the 1990s and takes place during a single game between two amateur men's baseball teams on the last day before their beloved field gets razed for a new school.
There's not a plot, per se, just banter and bickering between players and among the onlookers (a mix of the passionate and the bored) and, naturally, the game itself. It's a wry and funny yet elegiac look at the way men connect and express themselves (or don't) and at the inevitable passage of time.
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'It's a movie about the collective spirit and about a bunch of people coming to terms with a loss in their lives and feeling powerless because time and change happens,' Lund said during a recent video interview.
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Nate Fisher, left, and Carson Lund attend the "Eephus" screening during the 62nd New York Film Festival at Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Center on Oct. 2, 2024 in New York City.for FLC
Co-writer Nate Fisher sees the film as a 'love letter' to community institutions that are eroding and a 'manifesto' about making an effort with friends and neighbors. 'It's very easy for social fabric to break down if it's not maintained,' he said.
The catch is that these grown men can't fully express themselves, says the film's other co-writer, Michael Basta. 'They do so in subtext.'
The unusual title comes from a rarely used novelty pitch, one thrown so slowly as to confound the batter, to wreck his timing and perhaps even his understanding of time itself. 'The film is trying to reorient your sense of baseball, of aging, of community, of America and of time,' Lund said.
Keith William Richards, left, and Jack DiFonso in "Eephus."
Courtesy of Music Box Films
The best-known fictional example of the eephus comes
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Before shooting began in October 2022, Lund checked out a hundred ballfields (about half in person), eventually discovering Soldiers Field in Douglas. 'Most places had aluminum bleachers and fences — this was all wood with chipped green paint that had been there for decades,' he said. (The field even once hosted a
Lund, Fisher, and Basta wrote the film as a box score, plotting the action and then figuring out where to show players chatting in the dugout or onlookers commenting on (or ignoring) the action.
The on-field highlights include a diving catch, a play at the plate, and a home run where the batter's body language will be familiar to anyone from Red Sox Nation. (See
But there's also a pop-up that seemingly disappears into the sky; a player who gets so caught up in his joke of being his own third-base coach that he gets picked off; players drinking too much between innings and hunting for lost foul balls in the woods; and a final inning completed in the dim glow of car headlights.
It's baseball of and for the people.
Cliff Blake, Tim Taylor, Jeff Saint Dic, and Ethan Ward in "Eephus."
Courtesy of Music Box Films
'Eephus' features two familiar faces for Boston fans. Joe Castiglione, the longtime radio voice of the Red Sox, plays a food-truck owner. 'I think they did a good job of capturing the players' love of baseball,' said Castiglione.
Lund says once they'd decided to name the movie 'Eephus,' he just had to track down the pitch's most famous practitioner.
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'I love amateur ball players, people who just want to play for the love of the game,' said Bill Lee, who played at Soldiers Field in bygone days. 'I said, 'As long as I get to pitch, I'll come.''
Lee, 78, has never really stopped pitching, joining senior leagues and even hurling a complete game win in an independent minor league at 65.
He plays a 'ghost of baseball's past who emerges for an inning and then disappears,' Lund said, a vanishing that recalls 'Field of Dreams.' (Fisher calls this film a 'Reverse 'Field of Dreams' — 'if you wreck it they will leave.')
Lund is uncertain that Lee read his pages, and Lee acknowledged that 'I don't stick to scripts. I just have the ability to say what they really want to say in my own words.'
While we only see one inning on screen, Lee says he faced 12 batters during filming. 'I cut down those guys — there was only one tough out, and I got him pretty good, too,' he said. 'I had good stuff. I wanted to play more.'
But the film returns to the local guys, many played by Lund's friends, with a mix of local actors. 'This is not a film about excellent players . . . I just needed them to look like they've played before,' Lund said, adding that he had to 'reshape the script on the fly at times, based on what certain actors were capable of athletically. But I'm proud of how it feels like a mix of real New Englanders.'
Keith Poulson, Ari Brisbon, David Pridemore, and Chris Goodwin in "Eephus."
Courtesy of Music Box Films
Fisher, who never really pitched before and wasn't that good at baseball, plays a reliever. 'Some of my better pitches made it into the final cut,' he said.
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Like Lee, the actors were also allowed to improvise. 'The movie's 80-percent scripted,' Lund said, 'but everyone was living together in a cabin in the woods [near the field], and playing baseball every day, so by week three they were teammates with such incredible chemistry that I felt we had to let some spontaneity in.'
While the dialogue is frequently funny, the film carries a certain poignancy.
'There's an impending melancholy throughout,' said Lund, 'because this is about a bunch of people trying to avoid talking about that thing that's hanging over them.'
It's kind of like the eephus pitch, said Basta: 'Things feel like they're going slow, and then — boom! — you're suddenly shocked by how much time has passed.'
Stuart Miller can be reached at
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