Alaska Employment Law

It’s not often the hard-to-impress crowd at the Kendall Square Theatre in Cambridge spontaneously applauds at the end of a movie, but they did when the credits rolled for Sugar, a fictional tale about a young Dominican kid named Miguel Santos, known as Azúcar (Spanish for sugar).  Santos, a skinny pitcher who must be about 19 years old, is one of countless aspiring baseball players in the DR who hope to impress American scouts enough to get a chance to play in the US. 

Invited to spring training for the fictional Kansas City Knights, Santos ends up being assigned to the Knights’ single-A farm team, the Swing, in Bridgetown, Iowa.  Barely able to speak English, he lives with an elderly couple on a farm in the heart of corn country, missing his family and calling home when he can.  Language problems seem to doom both his ability to order in restaurants (when the only words on the menu you know are “French toast,” you eat a lot of French toast), as well as his social life - but then people are sometimes kinder than we remember.

What is so amazing about this movie is that it avoids all of the cliches about baseball and immigration and assimilation.  What happens is utterly convincing.  At the same time, the depictions of baseball are completely perfect.  There are no slow motion pitches, there is no rising music when Miguel does something good on the field.  It’s minor league baseball in the hot summer (if you’ve seen minor league baseball, maybe you have an idea).

The cast is terrific.  Sugar is played by Algenis Pérez Soto, a nonprofessional actor who was actually a young infielder in the DR and had to spend some time becoming a pitcher in this role.  Sugar sees what’s around him; he has a marvelously expressive face, but nothing is overdone; nothing is telegraphed.  He makes some decisions, and the movie changes gears - it’s a surprising change, and it’s not.  It’s what Sugar would do.  I cannot recommend this film enough.  You do NOT have to be a baseball fan; it’s just a great film.