Sugar

I should probably preface this by saying that I’m pretty much of a geek for baseball movies. I’ve even watched crap like The Rookie, For Love of the Game, and Major League 2. You don’t, however, see baseball art movies very often, especially (mostly) foreign language ones. And so last night - after five commercials and five coming attractions trailers - we got down to the business of a Dominican kid called Sugar, who wanted more than anything to get that call to come play professional baseball in the United States.

The film opens with Sugar playing for A-ball scouts from the States, and learning how to throw a “spike curve,” a type of curve ball where the knuckle of the index finger is bent, generating a break more akin to a knuckleball in degree and timing, though it’s thrown like a standard curveball. He also spends time comparing notes with his friends about guys they know who have been signed and who have gotten that call to go play in the States. Sugar eventually gets the call, but there’s little suspense surrounding this plot point. The telling part of this early segment of the film is how quickly the Dominican kids get called up - and how quickly they can get sent back home when things don’t work out in the United States.

These kids see getting the call to play ball in the States as the ultimate achievement of their dream, but they are in no way prepared for the vagaries of life as a professional athlete - even at the level of A ball. For a Dominican kid who has practically nothing in the world, it’s a huge step up, of course; but there is no guarantee of permanence, no magical door that they pass through into some enchanted kingdom. It’s more like a revolving door, and some of the kids barely set foot on the other side of the door before they get shoved back into it and sent home.

Seeing this happen to one of his closest friends on the Class A Bridgetown (Iowa) Swing is but one of the many things that Sugar has to figure out - largely on his own - how to deal with once he’s gotten the call to go to the States. He also has to figure out how to speak English, how to communicate with the Higgins family (an ultraconservative elderly couple who are, oddly, forward-thinking enough to host a new foreign player every season in their farmhouse), and how to order breakfast at a restaurant.

The breakfast scene was maybe my favorite scene in the movie (a close second is when Sal waves from the bus window), and even though it was tender and heartfelt, it didn’t come off as corny. Sugar meets up with some Dominican kids he knows when he arrives in the States, and there is a scene at a Denny’s-style restaurant where they all sit there not knowing what to say when the waitress asks what they want to eat - until one of the guys asks for French toast. Then everyone else at the table also asks for French toast - in unison. Later, Sugar returns to the same restaurant and tries to order eggs, but doesn’t understand what the waitress means when she asks how he wants them cooked. She tries to explain, but he still does not understand, and so - with apparent frustration and in a defeated voice - he just orders French toast. After he gets his order, the waitress comes back with a plate of eggs - one each in the scrambled, over easy, and sunny side up style - and uses the visual aid to show Sugar what each means. Then she leaves the eggs for him, telling him they are on the house. Sugar’s English improves throughout the film, but he doesn’t become fluent and has difficulty expressing himself even if there are more and more things he can say. We have to read his expressions in his eyes, and it’s clear in this scene that he is both humbled and appreciative when he thanks the waitress for her kind gesture.

And yes, I know - it’s fiction; but unlike temporal causality loops and transporter beams, this kind of fiction shows us things that could actually take place in the real world. And this scene is a good example of what can happen when people care enough about other people to try to bridge the gaps between cultures - rather than just stare at each other across those gaps while scowling and holding a pistol and talking to their god on a two-way radio.

And we’re still in the baseball section of the film. I sort of hate to say anything more about where the story goes, because the way the story unfolds is one of the more captivating things about this very fine film. All stories need some element of conflict as their motive power; and typically, a series of smaller conflicts leads to the resolution of a larger conflict at the story’s climax, before the falling action ties most or all of the ends up in relatively neat little pieces. Sugar doesn’t quite work that way, and is a better film because of it. Those little conflicts are there, but they never erupt. What we see is Sugar himself struggling with how to deal with those conflicts; and the larger conflict is mostly a silent one - that of the cumulative impact on Sugar of all the little near-conflicts.

Like most of the kids in the Dominican who dream of playing baseball in the bigs, Sugar sees (if not always clearly) a specific trajectory that his life must take if he his to achieve his dream; what he does not - or, more likely, cannot - anticipate are all the little things along that trajectory that, when they take place, wind up pushing him farther and farther away from the original trajectory. What he never loses sight of is what he truly wants to be, and ultimately this is the story of a boy who has the courage and strength to adjust to extraordinary circumstances on his own terms - no small feat for a stranger in a strange land.

In addition to how well the story is presented, the movie also gets the baseball parts right. Major League Baseball is nice and all, but it’s not really what baseball is about. To really get what baseball is about, you have to look at the minor leagues, at the nomadic existence these guys live, all for the glory of getting out there under the lights to play for literally hundreds of fans in the sometimes sweltering midsummer Midwestern heat. It ain’t glamorous, but it’s real. While I was writing this little piece, I came across this article on the website for Minor League Baseball. It talks a bit about the movie, but more about how the filmmakers put in the work to get the baseball parts right. Have a go at the article, and then definitely have a go at Sugar - although I’m terribly sorry to say that you’re probably only going to have the one week to do so.