Born in the States, the other player understands baseball’s place in American culture, and has an education to fall back on. The other young man, a Stanford alum, attributes the play to luck, but he’s referring to Seneca’s definition-the outcome when preparation meets opportunity. But the crux of the story is the way in which Sugar’s involvement with organized baseball, and his growing awareness of the realities of the game, put him on the path to self-discovery, setting him apart in the process.ĭecompressing after a rare good day, Sugar congratulates a teammate on a great catch. The bulk of the film’s cast, including the winsome Soto, are amateur baseball players in real life, and this reinforces the film’s authenticity- Sugar could have been about any one of them. Pressure from home plagues his performance, as does the arrival of ever younger and hungrier recruits. Sugar is largely mute, isolated by language and location, both in Iowa and on the mound. They forget that the players are indivisible from the sport they claim to love. The diamond’s adjacency underscores baseball’s cultural status, but the fans believe that their passionate devotion to the game gives them the right to hurl insults at plays or calls they disapprove of. In a panoramic shot, a bridge looms over the team’s stadium, a symbol of the town’s wealth and settlement. The lush, patchwork surroundings back home give way to a bisected landscape of blue sky and green fields. When he’s drafted, he travels to the U.S., training first in Arizona before going on to pitch for a team in Iowa. Sugar’s access to legitimate ball makes him the village king, and he indulges everyone’s fantasy-including his own-that he’ll rise to the top in a discipline and a country he barely knows. On weekends he leaves the rigid environment of the camp and returns to the vibrancy and looseness of his hometown, where kids play baseball on a dirt pitch, worlds from the academy’s manicured diamond. The film opens on a U.S.-run, Dominican-based academy where Sugar learns regulation baseball and its English terminology. It centers on Miguel “Sugar” Santos (Algenis Pérez Soto), an amateur carpenter from the Dominican Republic with a promising arm. Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck’s expansive Sugar is an immigrant story framed by American baseball’s farm system.
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