Eephus: A Baseball Movie Review

ROOT ROOT ROOT FOR THE ADLER’S PAINT!

Here’s my review of Eephus, the best baseball movie of 2025 (might be the only baseball movie of 2025 so far, but still.)

EEPHUS Cast and Crew:

Director: Carson Lund
Writers: Michael Basta, Nate Fisher, and Carson Lund

Cast
Keith William Richards as Ed Mortanian
Frederick Wiseman as Branch Moreland
Cliff Blake as Franny
Ray Hryb as Rich Cole
Bill “Spaceman” Lee as Lee
Stephen Radochia as Graham Morris
David Pridemore as Troy Carnahan
Keith Poulson as Derek Dicapua
John R Smith Jnr. as John Faiella
Pete Minkarah as Glen Murray
Wayne Diamond as Al
Theodore Bouloukos as Chuck Poleen
Joe Castiglione as Mr. Mallinari
Russell J. Gannon as Bill Belinda
David Torres Jr. as Dilberto D. Torres
Nate Fisher as Merritt Nettles
Chris Goodwin as Garrett Furnivall
Conner Marx as Cooper Bassett
Brendan “Crash” Burt as Bobby Crompton
Tim Taylor as Kevin Santucci
Ethan Ward as Tim Bassett
Jeff Saint Dic as Preston Red
Patrick Garrigan as Logan Evans
Ari Brisbon as Wilton Palacios
Johnny Tirado as Adrian Costa
Joe Penczak as Louis
Paul Kandarian as Clark
Isabelle Charlot as Melanie
Lou Basta as Howie
Timber Holmes as Linda Belinda
Annie Tisdale as Julie Belinda

Every once in a while, the baseball gods and cinema gods see fit to bless us with a heavenly collab. This year, it’s Ephus, a film that feels like it was made precisely for me. It’s my Dan Flashes, a film. That’s my exact style. This is a low-budget independent film about a group of mostly middle-aged guys who play in a wreck league in a small New England town. The film takes place on the last game of the year before the field they play on is set to be demolished. And that just about says it all. There’s no great drama here, no big character arcs. You basically just watch a baseball game, but a baseball game played very poorly. If that sounds unbearably dull, well, yeah, it’s slow like a baseball game, but it’s also very funny in parts. And I think anyone who watches this channel will get a kick out of it. If you’re anything like me, and I know that you are, you’ll enjoy the vibe here. I wouldn’t recommend this for everyone, though. Don’t think this would appeal to younger audiences. I’ve been watching this for an hour and I still don’t understand baseball. Not to be all old man yells at cloud here, but we are already living in a short attention span world, and it’s only getting worse with the advancements in AI that are coming. If you can watch a baseball game or follow an MLB team from spring all the way to fall, you are likely in the top.1% of worldwide attention span havers. And ephus does require that skill. That’s not to say that it’s boring, but the overarching baseball metaphor of the film, the ephus pitch, applies to the film itself. He’s pitch a type of curveball so unnaturally slow that it confuses the batter, makes him lose track of time. It’s kind of like baseball. I’m looking around for something to happen. game over. It’s like baseball. It’s like the movie Ephus itself. And it’s like life. That’s life. No, it’s all combat. Life, this game combat. It’s definitely a movie that will make you ponder. And as I’ve said, it will also make you laugh. One of the funniest parts is a cameo by none other than Bill Spaceman Lee, playing a mysterious walk-on for one of the teams named Simply Lee. He shows up out of nowhere to deliver some ephus pitches and some great lines, half of which you get the sense that the spaceman adlibbed on the day. They me throw the ephus. The other big cameo is also very telling. The voice of Apex documentarian Frederick Wiseman features prominently in between sections of the film. If you’re unfamiliar with Wisemen, he’s been making documentaries about American institutions since the 1960s, focusing on schools, mental institutions, welfare offices, municipal governments, and on and on. It would not be out of character for Wisemen to make a dock called Adult Wreck or something about a small town men’s baseball league in New England. And that’s sort of what Ephis is, but it’s fictional. Wiseman refers to his films as reality fictions as he assues the term people often apply to him, observational cinema. Wisman does attempt to mold a narrative in his films out of what must be an insane number of hours of documentary footage. Ephus, however, is scripted, but has the same sort of extremely subtle narrative nudge of a wiseman dock. So, as you might be surmising, this is not a Hollywood style film. In fact, it breaks drastically from narrative film orthodoxy. A lot of reviews have mentioned that the central premise here that a town’s only baseball field is going to be demolished would in a more traditional film feature a villainous real estate developer building luxury condos on the site. But here it’s to build a school. Not something any of these grumpy dudes can get all that riled up about. It’s a shame those pricks are building a school here. In that traditional film, there would be a narrative push to save the field, but here there are no villainous developers for the protagonist to vanquish. if there were even a protagonist, which there isn’t here. It’s just guys playing out the thread of their baseball quote unquote careers and of their makeshift community of friends and frenemies. Although some of these guys do have a bit of athleticism, most of them are falling apart. I need to be put down. As is mentioned several times, the next closest ballpark is two towns over and the field sucks. So, this game is likely to be the last time any of these guys play ball. You know, that might have been the last time the kid saw the old man come to the plate. They’re so young. They won’t even remember this. They’re 10 and 12. Then they’ll probably love that you struck out. And possibly the last time they hang out together. You don’t get the sense that these guys, even the teammates, like each other all that much. They’ve just congregated around this tradition that they all love. and getting all old guy yells at cloud again. Like most communal activities we used to share IRL, it’s all being offloaded to online spaces. And speaking of dying traditions, see this in the theater if you can. I’m a little bit late to the ball game here and it’s probably come and gone in your town, but if not, get the gang together, sneak in a few cans of beer, and watch Ephus. You know any movies out? No. [Music]