We tell kids that baseball is just a game, and we try to say it with a straight face. Maybe baseball is just a game to the littlest of Little Leaguers, but to the grown men and women who devote three-plus hours to watching their team every night from April to October, baseball became more than a game long ago. For us, baseball is serious. Yet as seriously as we fans like to think we take the sport, baseball could vanish from existence tomorrow and we’d all find a way to get on with our lives. For many young men, baseball is more than serious. It’s their only shot.
Sugar, a film opening this weekend in New York and Los Angeles, follows the career of Miguel “Sugar” Santos, a pitcher from the Dominican Republic who signs a paltry contract with a major league squad at the age of sixteen in the hopes of someday earning a major payoff for himself and his family. The sprawling narrative begins in Santos’s native country and follows the young ballplayer across the United States.
The film is a work of fiction, but it might as well not be. Everything feels authentic from the start. The images from the DR—a truckful of chickens, a gardener working immediately alongside the baseball complex, all shot on-location—are some of the movie’s best. Although there is no evidence that Sugar had to use a milk carton for a glove, as Jose Reyes once did, it is clear he comes from extreme poverty.
Our protagonist trains in the Dominican baseball academy of a major league franchise. His instructors try to teach him key English phrases like “line drive” and “home run” and “I’m still working on the mechanics.” It is perhaps unfortunate that the academy’s director is played by Jose Rijo, who also served as a baseball consultant for the film. Rijo was recently fired by the Washington Nationals after a Dominican prospect Rijo found turned out to be four years older than he claimed. Still, Sugar’s world in the DR feels perfectly rendered, so maybe having Rijo around was a net positive.
Indeed, this perfect rendering of Sugar’s world draws the viewer in even more than the storyline. The plot does not follow the traditional arc; instead it unravels and takes u-turns, stopping and starting much as real life does. It is a credit to the film that I stayed invested throughout.
Without the stellar performance from Algenis Perez Soto in the lead role, everything would’ve crumbled. A Dominican who has played baseball since age nine, Soto has never before appeared in a film. His natural presence on screen works wonders. This is not an actor playing a ballplayer—this is a ballplayer. Sugar is drawn so true to life that the character never really learns English, instead showing only very slight improvement during his time in the U.S. In one fantastic moment, a woman asks Sugar to speak in Spanish so that she may try to understand him, and when he does the audience is not given subtitles for the first time in the movie. What better way to show us Sugar’s constant battle with the language barrier?
I suppose I’m glad I didn’t realize, as I watched Sugar, that it was the latest offering from writer/directors Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck. Boden and Fleck’s first full-length feature, Half Nelson, is probably my favorite film of the last five years. If I’d known the pair were turning their attention to baseball, my insanely high expectations would’ve doomed Sugar from the beginning.
To be fair, there were some disappointing moments. While the film typically relies on subtlety and puts its trust in the viewer, it does occasionally hit us over the head. There are three shots of Sugar hiding his head in a towel after he’s disappointed with his performance (we got plenty from the first shot), and there is a drawn-out shot of Sugar walking through an arcade which I guess is meant to symbolize his strange new world. These moments seem inconsistent with the stark realism of the other scenes. Additionally, a few entirely too predictable and unnecessary plot points make their way in, including the “and then he turned to steroids” angle which I was praying they’d avoid.
Quibbles aside, Boden and Fleck make splendid choices. The soundtrack features inspired selections, including a great cut from TV on the Radio, and a Spanish-language cover of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah.” The casting too, feels perfect. To contrast with all the Dominican coaches and players (who are all real-life coaches and players), the classically-trained actor Andre Holland gives a nuanced performance as Brad Johnson, the American college graduate with the big signing bonus, and stands out as the most compelling among the lot of very compelling minor characters.
Sugar feels much longer than its 114 minutes, but only because it gets more out of each minute than audiences have come to expect. The film has real weight, which it attains because Boden and Fleck know exactly when to cut a scene and when to let it continue. If you’re at all interested in either baseball or film, then you owe it to yourself to see this movie.
Pete Lappin (3)
How The Mets Could Improve By Addition
By Matt Matros on May 28, 2008 at 7:30 am
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Anthony, my colleague, recently suggested a few ways to improve the Mets by subtraction. I’m going to flip things around and suggest a few ways to improve the Mets by addition.
First, let me say that this Mets team is not as bad as its record. This team has enough talent to win the same 88 games it won last year. indeed Baseball Prospectus’s PECOTA-adjusted projections still had us winning 90 games before last night’s win, despite the 23-26 start, and the meager +1 run differential. There are a few reasons for this. We’ve played a tough schedule so far, with 27 road games and 23 home games, mostly against tough teams. We’ve gotten unlucky. I know everyone likes to attribute all the outs on the basepaths, the mistakes in the field, and the balls hit right into the defense on a lack of focus. Of course some of it is lack of focus. But a lot of it is luck. BP says we’ve been the second-unluckiest team in the NL so far (the Rockies are first), and that with normal luck our record should’ve been 25.4-23.6 going into last night’s contest. I doubt fans would be so panicky if we were over .500 right now. Also, we’re just not this bad. All of our regulars are hitting below their projected OPS with two exceptions. Oddly enough, one exception is Jose Reyes, who has come on at the plate lately. The other overachiever is, of course, Ryan Church. No one else has hit as well as they were expected to. Not only that, John Maine is our only starting pitcher who is overachieving. The rest of the rotation has underperformed relative to where they were projected. If just a handful of the underachievers could get their act together, the team will start to look a lot better.
Now that that caveat’s out of the way, it must be said that of course every team can improve, and certainly the Mets should try to better themselves over the next year. Here are two approaches they could take.
In a dream world, the Mets will look to build a team the way a certain Floridian franchise out of Tampa has—by stocking up with young talent, never taking on a bad contract, and locking up their superstars for many years at cost. With that philosophy in mind, here are three money-saving measures the Mets could possibly take to improve the franchise.
1) Hire minor leaguers to perform big league roles for low salaries. In the future, instead of spending millions on the likes of Jorge Sosa, Marlon Anderson, Matt Wise, and Scott Schoeneweis, the Mets should promote their most competent AAA players to do the same thing at one-third the cost or less. Honestly, how much worse could our best AAA guys be than these “proven” veterans? (Yes, I know Schoeneweis is pitching well this year, but his performance last season alone makes his contract laughable.) We could save a bunch of money this way with basically no loss in expected production, and with far more upside. Who knows, one of the AAA guys may actually turn out to be good! (See Ludwick, Ryan.)
2) Sucker a general manager into trading away young talent for some of our crusty veterans. This can be done. Giants GM Brian Sabean, for example, is known to overvalue veterans and undervalue young talent, so much so that he was rumored to be shopping phenom Tim Lincecum this offseason. Even Sabean isn’t dumb enough to part with Lincecum now, but Omar Minaya still might be able to pry away Matt Cain or Jonathan Sanchez for one of our expendable old dudes. Either Cain or Sanchez would give us a great young pitcher at cost, and Sabean just might be foolish enough to trade one of them. If he isn’t, there are other GMs around to hoodwink. It’s worth a try.
3) Draft Cutter Dykstra. The upcoming minor league draft is hugely important for our franchise, and I think drafting Son of Nails would be a great PR move with little downside. It would get the fans excited, and having an excited fan base would allievate a lot of the Mets’ headaches right now. Also Cutter is a top-tier prospect who projects to be a legitimate first or second rounder, and no one really knows how these picks are going to turn out anyway. Let’s gamble on a Dykstra with one of our three picks in the top 33 this June.
Of course, since the Mets are the Mets, and Omar is Omar, they probably won’t go the cost-effective route. Instead, they’ll probably try to spend, spend, spend in the offseason to create the team that will pay the most immediate dividends. Fine. Here are three strong options in the 2008 free agent class if you want to go on a buying spree.
Pat Burrell. This Met-killer has been underrated by Phillies fans (and their management, who tried to trade him) for years. He has a solid 855 career OPS, and he hasn’t posted an OPS lower than 890 since 2004. Yes he plays in a hitters’ park, but he’s still managed an 1106 OPS in 85 road at-bats during his current season (which has been a career one, to this point). If the Phillies don’t want him, the Mets should scoop him up. He’d be an ideal fit in left field.
Adam Dunn. Another beast of a player who’s underrated by his front office. The Reds were supposedly trying to trade Dunn as recently as last season. They’re going to try hard to trade him at this year’s deadline if the Reds are out of contention (which they certainly might be). Dunn is an even better hitter than Burrell, with a career 902 OPS. He’s hit 40 or more homers in four straight seasons, and is still only 28. If the Reds shop him, the Mets should be major players for Dunn. To say we need a first baseman is an understatement, and Dunn has logged plenty of games over there.
Mark Teixiera. He’ll probably be the best free agent available this winter, and that fact, combined with Scott Boras’s negotiating power, probably means he’ll be the toughest to get. Expect the Yankees to break the bank on this guy. But if they don’t, the Mets should try to swoop in and steal him. Teixiera has the same career OPS as Dunn and is the same age, but Teixiera is a significantly better fielder by most accounts, and wouldn’t cost prospects (just money). He’d be an amazing fit for the Mets, if he’s attainable at all.
Some of these ideas may not work, but I firmly believe a few of them could. The good news is that it’s not an either-or situation. The Mets could look for places to cut cost in-house, while at the same time spending in the free agent arena. They can be smart and rich at the same time!
It’s time for the Mets to try something different–to get people talking, to take the pressure off the slumping regulars, and to prove that they won’t overpay for the same mediocre veterans time and time again. Let’s get creative, Omar. Your job may depend on it.