Published: July 03, 2009 10:27 am      

Movie Review: ‘Sugar’ takes unique swing at America’s sports pastime

You’ve probably seen a few baseball movies. But you’ve never seen anything quite like “Sugar,” which depicts the journey of a young Dominican baseball pitcher whose killer curve ball becomes his ticket to the United States — and a way to pull his family out of poverty.

Sugar’s story is fictional, but it feels like an absolutely real slice of what life is like for many aspiring players in the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Puerto Rico or other places where Major League Baseball scouts and trains potential stars.

When the likeable, soft-spoken Miguel "Sugar" Santos (a completely believable Algenis Perez Soto, making his acting debut) is chosen to play for a Class-A farm team in America, one of the bottom rungs on the Major League ladder, he becomes a wide-eyed stranger in a strange land of a foreign language, unfamiliar customs and palaces of consumerism.

Based in Iowa and housed with an elderly, baseball-loving farm couple, he develops a shy crush on their lovely granddaughter, Anne (Ellary Porterfield).

Much of the movie’s Spanish dialog is subtitled, with the notable exception of one moment in one scene, when Anne asks Sugar about the scar on his head. As he falters to find the English words, she tells him it’s OK to speak in Spanish.

He does so, and Anne’s expression indicates she’s clearly moved by what she’s hearing.

We never find out what Sugar says, because there are no subtitles. Does Anne understand him, or is she connecting with Sugar on a level that transcends the spoken word? Perhaps she’s sacrificing her own ability to understand so that Sugar can express himself freely.

Regardless, it’s an intriguing moment, and “shutting out” the audience provides a glimpse into how it must feel to be someone, like Sugar, who faces a frustrating communications challenge at nearly every turn.

The movie follows its own path, defying stereotypes and avoiding just about every sports-movie cliché and fish-out-of-water convention, all the way to the end. Even the things that don’t necessarily come as a surprise — a scuffle with locals at a nightclub, or the relationship between Sugar and Anne — don’t go where you expect them to go.

This movie may be hard to find. But if it’s playing anywhere near you, it’s well worth the extra effort to see. It’s an eye-opening new way of seeing “America’s pastime.”

Dominicans make up the largest number of foreign-born players in America’s big leagues. The Angels’ Vladimir Guerrero, Albert Pujols of the Cardinals and Red Sox slugger David Ortiz are among the hundreds of players on current MLB rosters who came up through the Dominican system.

Watch “Sugar” and you’ll have a new appreciation for the long, hard, odds-defying road most of them took before they could ever step foot on the green, green grass of an American ball field.