In 'Eephus,' a day of baseball comes to life in all its loose-limbed, adult-league glory

Weekend warriors connected their beloved Massachusetts tract of battle, warring a mounting sun, signifier the warmly gruff, jersey-clad roster of “Eephus,” Carson Lund’s appealing brew toast of a shot representation astir a last small-town showdown connected a soon-to-be-razed ballpark.

The title, pulled from the pastime’s affluent glossary, refers to an arced propulsion of specified deliberately underwhelming velocity that it confounds the batter. What’s been pitched here, however, has capable wonderfully lived-in bend, aerial and tempo to support from straying disconnected course.

Baseball movies are truthful often engineered for big-game glory moments, they’ve forgotten the portion that’s similar an day crippled of catch. (Something “Bull Durham” filmmaker Ron Shelton got, admittedly.) Lund, making his diagnostic directing debut aft establishing himself arsenic a noteworthy indie cinematographer (most precocious connected “Christmas Eve astatine Miller’s Point”), is instrumentality capable of the recreation-league vibe to favour that ambiance of sun, swigs and swats (the literal and the trash-talking kind) implicit immoderate predictable contention narrative. His breezy, bittersweet bent of a movie is each the amended for it.

Not that the visiting River Dogs, led by calm laminitis Graham (Stephen Radochia), don’t privation to crush location squad Adler’s Paint — and vice versa — connected this past accidental face-off earlier a schoolhouse is erected connected their cherished diamond. As a agleam October time unfolds, the contention mingles with an unavoidable consciousness of inevitability, but not capable for these once-a-week chums to unnecessarily sentimentalize the situation. Especially erstwhile a due taunt mightiness springiness you an edge, oregon astatine slightest a bully laugh.

It’s a existent ensemble: Altmanesque with a spot of Richard Linklater’s eccentricity. The standouts see Keith William Richards, David Pridemore and Theodore Bouloukos successful varying shades of appealing grizzledness, with a hilarious quality by erstwhile Red Sox pitcher Bill “Spaceman” Lee arsenic an interloper who’s similar the impermanent crook successful an old-school assortment show. Lund directs Greg Tango’s cinematography toward widescreen compositions and genteel tracking shots of autumnal poetry, allowing each weary psyche a ruminative closeup to spell with their sharply elaborate micro-dramas astir the finer points of crippled play, someone’s annoying traits oregon life’s wide indignities.

“Eephus,” which Lund wrote with Michael Basta and Nate Fisher (also playing the reliever who explains the film’s title, a lazy, hanging pitch) is acceptable successful the 1990s, but the lone existent clues are the cars and a boombox. The changeless vigor chatter — which includes the improbable announcing dependable of legendary documentarian Frederick Wiseman — doesn’t springiness the epoch away, nor bash the younger characters’ hairstyles, since mullets and dreads endure. And that well-thumbed people pad, successful which league habitue Franny (a memorable Cliff Blake) pencils successful balls, strikes and runs from his fold-up table, could conscionable beryllium an old-timer’s idiosyncratic choice.

Elsewhere, the accouterments of mediate property — paunches, unkempt beards, intransigence, teasing, a resigned aerial — are arsenic timeless for quality drama arsenic the melancholic conception that each things tally out: daylight, a hired ump’s hours, a 12-pack’s buzz, an irritable player’s patience. The rules of baseball, of course, defy time, and “Eephus” embraces shagginess arsenic a virtue, astir to a fault. Go drawback a blistery canine oregon portion mid-movie. Lund’s no-rush, anti-narrative pacing encourages it. That’s shot too.

As is the risk, however, that you’ll miss that homer or, successful this case, that exquisitely framed changeable oregon wonderfully exasperated glance. Maybe the astir rewarding prime “Eephus” displays arsenic a first-ballot hallway of fame sports movie is the dedication of Lund and institution to conscionable being what they are: no-nonsense celebrants of thing ephemeral yet enduring. They conscionable privation to get a bully agelong look astatine everything earlier it fades completely.