“Sugar,” More Than Eye-Candy

A wonderful new baseball movie “Sugar,” has been premiering in large cities this past week.  The main character, Miguel Santos, is an aspiring young Dominican ballplayer.  He is marked from the beginning as a cut above the other young prospects at the baseball Academy in San Pedro de Macoris.  He seems certain to make it, to pitch in the major leagues. 

The 19-year old Santos, nicknamed Sugar, moves quickly from academy to his first spring training in Arizona.  His talent stands out among the spring hopefuls and he is jumped to low A-ball in Bridgetown, Iowa.   His working class family is ensconced in poverty and when he leaves for the mainland, they throw a party that that brings out every distant cousin and friend.  It is clear how much his opportunity means to the suddenly expanded family. 

In Bridgetown he is introduced to a wonderful slice of the heartland, the Higgins family with whom he lives during the season.  The family gives Santos a regular place at the dinner table and he tries to blend in, but the language divide cannot be bridged completely. 

Writer and director, Ryan Fleck, is a baseball fan who partners on his projects with writer/director Ann Boden.  Fleck says that his goal was not a story about the Dominican stars like Sammy Sosa and Juan Marichal, players who make it.  Rather Sugar examines the trials every Dominican ballplayer endures, the isolation and loneliness they confront in a strange new land.  

Among the early scenes at the baseball academy old hands move around what looks remarkably like a paddock.  Then you see the young hopefuls running wind sprints and high-stepping in the outfield and you cannot help but see them as young colts training for a life as race-horses.  The film makers seem to contend that major league clubs do not provide enough resources for new DR players and see them at times as little more than commodities. 

Santos himself has a lone connection to the DR in Iowa.  Jorge Ramirez is a middle infielder on the team who came up through the same academy and hails from Miguel’s hometown.  Early in the season, Ramirez’s minor league career is undone by injury.  He is given a ticket back to the DR but decides to bolt instead for the big city.  He leaves on a bus to New York giving Santos his telephone number, saying to call when Santos pitches for the first time in Yankee Stadium.  Santos protests that the club has not given him a chance to prove himself after the injury, saying ”We are not horses.” 

Santos’ star shines brightly and it breeds easy friendships among his team mates, even the first round draft choice from Stanford who regards Miguel as a blue chip prospect with the talent to make it.  Santos is living the dream until he is injured in a cover play at first base.  When he returns several weeks later, the spike is not as sharp on the knuckle curve and the fastball doesn’t run as much.  He is shelled every time he takes the mound.

Failure quickly undermines the weak structure of support that exists for Latin ballplayers.  Unable to find the old magic, Santos is overcome by aching loneliness and doubt that he cannot shake.  He leaves the team just weeks before the end of the season and sets off for New York City to find his Dominican friend.

Baseball movies rarely scratch beneath the surface of heroic myth-making.  Many people prefer baseball and its movies to be entertainment pure and simple.  Sugar, however, is not for escapists.  The movie sets the life of Latin ballplayers within the context of the overall American immigrant experience.  Ballplayers may come to America with a job and a work visa, but Sugar reveals just how tenuous a hold they have in their new land.  

Spoiler Alert!!  Sugar does not cop out to the heroic.  Santos finds his happiness ultimately, but it is not on a major league mound pitching in Yankee Stadium.  He finds it on a Bronx playground in the shadows of the stadium.  He finds work in New York City but is one step ahead of homelessness until he is befriended by a cabinet maker who is impressed by the young man and his wood-working skills learned from his deceased father. 

Santos finds his old friend Ramirez and they join a group of former Dominican minor leaguers like themselves, each of whom knew the same great promise.  Now they are all part of the shadow economy of illegals for whom baseball proves only an entry point for life in the United States.  The movie ends with Santos blowing the old spike curve past his new friends, in love with the game all over again. 

There is the sense that Miguel Santos with his health and confidence back might be able to return to his career the next spring.  Fleck and Boden leave the viewer wondering.  Even if he settles for the life he has made in the city he has made one that is genuine and real.  Which way Santos goes doesn’t much matter, Sugar is about the journey, not the getting there.  But that story is a winner all the same.  Fleck and Boden have made it to the “show” for sure.