Calgary Underground 2025 Review: EEPHUS, Where Baseball Contains Multitudes

Eephus, Carson Lund’s wonderful ode to small stakes baseball and gruff Americana, needs its odd title explained: The Eephus pitch is a throw that is so unnaturally slow that it confuses the batter. It makes him swing too early, or too late. It works like a curveball, but with no power. It looks like it stops in midair. It stays in the air forever. You get bored watching it hang there. So does the hitter. The Eephus makes him lose track of time. It is a poetically goofy pitch, not used in major league play, more a curious bit of the sports minutiae than a real thing, a conversation to displace the silence while sitting in the dugout waiting to bat. 



 

In other words, Eephus is not just the film's title, it is a mission statement.

 

One of my favourite novels, a book I take deep comfort in on an ill day, is Robert Coover's The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop. The title may be cumbersome, but the prose is sharp, dense, and even. A lonely accountant, J. Henry Waugh, sits in a delicatessen eating smoked meat sandwiches, and throwing dice. In his mind, and for the reader, he spins a detailed narrative about the players, managers, their families, and various hangers-on, of an entire baseball league. His own creation built from randomness and culture.

 

It is a perfect demonstration of how fully immersive is the drama of baseball, on the field and off; real or imaginary. Of all the sports depicted on screen, soccer, hockey, Formula 1 racing, nothing seems to consistently achieve the poetry, and philosophy of life, quite like baseball. While Coover's novel has never been formally adapted into a film (I believe this would be most difficult), I will take the bet, with odds, that Eephus is the closest an adaptation will ever come. 

 

Opening with a slow fade in, and radio static, a gravelly voice of a radio broadcaster begins with a number of community events. These, much like the film itself, are low-stakes tales and people’s lives that exists beyond the frame of the sunny late October afternoon where the final match up between the Riverdogs and Adler’s Paint is about to happen on Soldier’s Field. The voice is the legendary, fly-on-the-wall documentarian (and nonagenarian) Frederick Wiseman, who, after a spell, eventually gets to the heart of the matter: Soldier’s Field is being shut down to build a new school. 

 

Wiseman's ghostly presence is equally a mission statement of the how the narrative will play. Sprawling, but arriving. Eventually. 

 

Small town, working class men leisurely make their way to the field. They are plumbers, college students, military vets, and municipal managers. Mensch, all. They arrive to play one last game. They all know each other, and have years, some decades, of history together. There are guts protruding, easy crude banter (“Is there anything more beautiful than a fat man stealing second base?”) and the promise of fireworks when the game ends.  



 

The entire film is that game playing out -- almost in real time -- with all its quirks and conflicts ("combat") given both measure, and time. Deceptively simple and in no hurry whatsoever, it makes Eephus one of the great ‘hanging out movies.’ Lund also edited the film, and the passage of time measured by the rhythm of innings is near perfection.

 

Static shots of idle men in the dug-out or outfield, amusing themselves by pushing one another's buttons while waiting for something to do, are intertwined with slow zooms and understated dolly shots during bursts of play. This is all in service of revealing (and revelling) the geography of the field, and by extension, the relationships of the men, the teams, and the myriad of onlookers.

The latter consists of a couple of smart ass skaters, an old man who has seen perhaps too many games but still likes to enjoy a good hot dog, the bored wife and kids of one of the Riverdogs players, and another kid who takes the coach's money to buy smokes and sneak a puff in the forest. Franny, the league's booster and scorekeeper, with his TV tray, and fold-out binoculars murmurs, to himself mainly, well-worn quotes from baseball greats like Lou Gehrig and Yogi Berra ("It's getting late early") to himself while working his well-worn pencil on a paper score book.


 

This is what world-building looks like in slow cinema.

 

The wonderful sound design is subtle. There are always multiple narratives, many just outside the visual frame, but coherently heard on the soundtrack. Church bells and passing trains (going by but never seen), join the ASMR of the cleaning brush on home plate, or Franny's eraser changing the score. Local ads on the radio crackle in the background, and occasionally take over the foreground, to note the transition of time, along with the waning of daylight.

 

The film delights in losing focus, or rather putting focus elsewhere, while the plays on the field and the chatter in the dugout continue on the audio. This may not be the blunt artistic-thesis of Jonathan Glazer’s Zone of Interest, and yet, it is quietly of that calibre.

 

The film is kind of a perfect day, in America’s big back yard, that stretches deep into the evening. Worn middle class pick-up trucks and Iroc-Z sports cars use their headlamps to keep the gaming going, before the men have to go back to their real lives, without the promise of baseball or their holy place to practice it.

 

Eephus is not overtly sad or precious about this; rather, the film delights in the rough-around the edges men, many with short fuses, and messy lives off the diamond. Their compulsive need to get together with people they otherwise would not hang out with, drink a few too many beers, and push their bodies (“The worst part of this sport is the running!”), eventually leads to fumbling about in the dark to keep the game going as long as they can.
For all the chaos and seeming decline of America right now, this film makes a restrained argument for the what is worth saving.  

 

Franny, the diligent, nerdy scorekeeper, fully embodies the spirit of J. Henry Waugh. He closes his notepad, breathes in the cold night air, and then, with nary a further fuss, gently walks off into the crisp October night.

 

One of the best films I have seen this year, Eephus is a vibe. One where baseball contains multitudes.