It would be simple to write off Half Nelson, Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden’s feature directorial debut, as a “fluke” but when the duo follow it up with a film as wonderful as Sugar, that initial thought is quickly dismissed.
Miguel ‘Sugar’ Santos is a young man whose life is baseball. Hailing form a small town in the Dominican Republic Sugar, as he is nicknamed, is called up for training camp in the US. Things go well for the talented pitcher who is then drafted into the minor leagues and shipped off to play baseball in small town Iowa, a place where everyone appears to live and breathe baseball. Sugar adjusts well to his new life and slowly, he begins to learn the language, the customs and he even becomes involved in some extra curricular activities but things start to fall apart. He suffers a minor injury, begins to lose focus on the field and eventually is relegated to relief pitcher.
Though the film focuses it’s attention mostly on Sugar’s rise and fall from grace, it also provides one of the best looks at the inner workings of baseball I’ve ever seen (or at least seen since I recently caught up with that long ago Kevin Costner film Bull Durham). We see the struggles faced by young players being drafted in far off places for a fraction of what their American counterparts are paid and outside of the common place knowledge that if you don’t work out, there’s a younger, better version coming up the ranks to replace you, there’s the added pressure of knowing that if you are replaced, you’ll be returning home. But while baseball is an integral part of the story, the true wonder is the character of Sugar.
