‘Eephus’ is a home run
Eephus, a new baseball movie co-written by 2015 Boston College graduate Nate Fisher, is a home run. Lauded by critics and shown at several film festivals, the independent film opened this month in theaters across the country.
Set in New England in the 1990s, Eephus is about two recreational baseball teams, Adler’s Paint and the Riverdogs, playing their last game ever because their field is set to be demolished to make way for a new school. The film’s title is the name for a slow-speed, high-arching pitch that can be effective for a pitcher because it’s unexpected and disrupts a batter’s timing.
Fisher shares writing credits with Michael Basta and Carson Lund, who directs the film. Fisher also has an onscreen role in the film as Merritt Nettles, a player on the Adler’s Paint team who defines the eephus pitch to the uninitiated.
Eephus had its world premiere last year at the Directors’ Fortnight, an independent sidebar at the Cannes Film Festival. It won the Best Screenplay award at the Silk Road International Film Festival in Xi’an, China. It was screened at the Munich International Film Festival and New York Film Festival.
“Eephus has resonated with audiences around the world,” said Stephen Radochia, an administrative assistant in BC’s Art, Art History, and Film Department who stars in the feature film as Riverdogs player/captain Graham Morris. Morris's story is complicated by the fact that he works for the company that is tearing Soldiers Field down to build the new middle school.
"After meeting the talent behind the camera and the cast of characters seen on camera I knew early on that this film was different and special," said Radochia, who has had acting roles in local theater productions. His lead role in the short film Ephemeral was an official selection in the 2018 Festival de Cannes Short Film Corner.
Eephus is being screened at about 100 theaters in more than 30 states nationwide, with new theaters being added regularly.
"I hope the audience will get some laughs and be able to escape their busy lives for 98 minutes," said Radochia, "but I also hope they can relate to the 'end of an era' we all experience at some point in our lives whether it is the loss of a loved one or a physical place that is special to us."
Eephus has been acclaimed by reviewers who have called it “the best baseball movie since Moneyball” (Associated Press) and a “grand and sentimental drama” (The New Yorker). In a review for Variety, Eephus was dubbed “a wry and lovely baseball movie that pitches slowballs of quiet wisdom.” The Daily Beast called it “a charmingly poignant portrait of the expiration of a unique and cherished world.” And the Washington Post said Eephus is “a tiny but nearly perfect baseball movie…[that] belongs with the great baseball movies not because of any major league ambitions but because it understands what the game has meant and still means in small towns, among average people and weekend players.”
Fisher graduated from BC with a bachelor’s degree, triple majoring in film studies, history, and philosophy. In a Q&A with GQ, Fisher talked about how the game of baseball is an inspirational backdrop for a writer. The game, he says, is “a big field of guys standing around and waiting for something to happen, and that sort of suspended moment really opens the door for a lot of strange things to happen. That stillness is so unnatural—especially in modern industrial life where the work is the thing, and the sense of being duty bound to time and toil is such an important part of day-to-day life—this is why it's weird and this is why it's compelling. The other aspect of it that I really latch onto is, we have 150 years of [baseball] history. So, it's not really a coincidence that baseball, even at minor levels, is played by the weirdest people in the history of humanity.”
Filmed in Massachusetts, Eephus will appeal to Red Sox fans—there are cameos by famed radio announcer Joe Castiglione and pitching legend Bill “Spaceman” Lee.
An additional BC connection? The young girl who sings "Take Me Out to the Ball Game"—which begins the movie’s trailer—is Annie Tisdale, the daughter of BC School of Social Work alumna and part-time faculty member Sandee Tisdale, M.S.W ’04, Ph.D. ’12.
The film is being distributed by Music Box Films; visit their website for information on theaters screening Eephus.