Sugar

Sugar

114 Minutes





I'm in the process of trying to sell my boyhood baseball card collection. Yeah, I have some valuable ones, but the glut of my collection comes from the late-'80s, a time when everyone saw cards as an investment and bought up complete sets. Back then cards like Wade Boggs and Jose Canseco could yield some good dough, but everyone squirreled cards away and the bottom has fallen out of the market. These guys retired and value dissipated. Other big names, such as Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Darryl Strawberry and Mark McGwire, have been disgraced. Then there is the legion of other guys: the ones who made the Majors but never became heroes. They played for a few years, quietly did little and then vanished back into obscurity. Ever wonder what happened to Sid Bream or Hensley Meulens?

Sugar isn't about any of these guys. Sugar is about the guys who never made it out of Single-A ball. You see, baseball is like an ant farm, intricate levels of play are set up before guys even breathe the fresh air of the majors. Heard of the Toledo Mud Hens? Okay, how about Beloit Snappers or Quad Cities River Bandits? See what I mean?

Most baseball films are about underdogs making good on big dreams. But what about the flameouts? What about those who cannot handle the pressure and just disappear back into regular life? Isn't that the truth more often than not? Sugar kills two birds with one stone: it's a baseball film that also chronicles the immigrant experience. Miguel "Sugar" Santos (Algenis Perez Soto) is a 19-year-old pitching prospect from the Dominican Republic is selected by the Kansas City franchise to come to America to pitch in its farm system. Going first to Arizona then Iowa and then New York, Sugar is first elated, then defeated not by the game, but struggles to assimilate in a society where he does not speak the language or understand the mores.

Writer-directors Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck could have created a cliché-ridden film about a young ballplayer overcoming hurdles and becoming a star. But the pair (who also made the teacher drama Half Nelson), are more concerned with humanism than proving that dreams do come true. As Sugar moves from the Dominican baseball academy where he and classmates must learn English vocabulary like "I got it" and "fly ball," to the United States, he is not only beset by the expectations of team management, but the specter of his family at home, who hope that they will ride his arm to riches.

Though life in Phoenix is far from easy (Sugar's difficulty with language only allows him to order french toast when he's eating out), the move to Iowa and its corn-fed Anglos proves to be too much. Living with an elderly couple that speaks no Spanish, we can feel Sugar's isolation. What is particularly frustrating is the lack of support on the team for non-English speakers. When Sugar finally loses his killer pitches, he gets nothing more than lot of hollow speeches in a language he does not understand.

The film's final third follows Sugar after he abandons his team and tries to make his way in New York City. Though this final section does not have the urgency of the first two parts, it is here Boden and Fleck's deeper notions of the immigrant experience come into play. It's not the ball game that provides him with a home or community, he soon discovers. Those things come from a much deeper place.

As I boxed up my old cards, a line by Morrissey rang through my head: "All those people/ All those lives/ Where are they now?" Whatever became of Juan Berenguer and Don Carmen? And these are the guys that made the Majors. Sugar will explain what happened to the countless others.

by David Harris