Review of Sugar (2010) by Barb F — 09 May 2009

A penetrating exploration of the hardships that Dominican baseball recruits (and other Hispanic cultures as well, on a broader scale) face in making to the major leagues, Ryan Fleckâ??s SUGAR has highs, lows, and plenty of emotions in between. Itâ??s easy for casual and die-hard fans alike to assume that José Reyes or Johan Santana are the norm, but reality paints a different picture; the vast majority of signees flame out early, succumb to injuries, find themselves overmatched, or get lost in the shuffle. In SUGAR, we follow the journey of Miguel Santos (better known as Sugar; natch), a flame-throwing righty for the fictional Kansas City Knights. From the start, Fleck zeroes in on the weight that these kids, often no older than 15 or 16, carry on their right arms or bat speed. Parents sacrifice everything for a glove or spikes, and when a whiff of success is in the air, the blood-thirsty sharks emerge from the woodworks, pretending theyâ??ve been there along. Sugar pokes fun at a pot-bellied ex-farmhand who claims he used to touch 98 MPH, convinced itâ??s little more than bullshit, but he soon learns first-hand why so many balleyhooed prospects crash and burn. The peaks and valleys of the lifestyle are staggering; after receiving the exciting news that heâ??s been selected to join the Knightsâ?? A-Ball affiliate in rural Iowa, Sugar is placed in the hands of a baseball-obsessed Evangelical family with firm instructions to watch over him and keep his mind focused on baseball and off alcohol, women, and other such tomfoolery. Extreme culture shock ensues, as Sugar finds himself surrounded by a host family who doesnâ??t speak Spanish (their rare attempts to communicate in his native tongue are comically bad) and few teammates whom he connects with. Despite all of this, he starts off with a bang, consistently mowing down opposing batters, but loses his mechanics after spraining his ankle, overcompensates, and finds himself getting pounded with regularity until heâ??s demoted to the bullpen. Unaccustomed to failure, Sugar loses control of his emotions time and again until, ashamed and mentally exhausted, he gets on a bus to New York City, leaving a rough year in the rearview mirror.

In many ways, the storyâ??which begins with such optimism, such energyâ??is universal and tragic. The moment a ligament pops or velocity dips, the players are treated like replaceable parts. And when theyâ??re sent back home, what can they do with themselves? Since a young age, these kids have been viewed through the prism of baseball. If they fail at that, theyâ??re considered to have failed in a much more general senseâ?¦even by those closest to them. The aforementioned beer-bellied washout is unfortunately all too common, and Fleck does an outstanding job of illustrating both the mountains these prospects need to climb and ways to emerge from disappointment with a large portion of their pride intact. If the first 2/3â??s of the film are about Dominican baseball progression, the final third is about self-discovery beyond the game; after arriving in New York, Sugar heads to the Bronx (Yankee Stadium, after all), where he begins working at a diner. He meets a beautiful girl. He reconnects with another former baseball hotshot, now with a pot-belly of his own but a big, relaxed grin to match. And he takes up the equivalent of an unpaid internship in woodworking under the kindly Osvaldo. Raised without a father and with sky-high expectationsâ??burdened upon him because of nothing more than a lethal-but-unrefined fastball/knuckle-curve combinationâ??the 20-year old Sugar can finally unwind and be himself. The wide smile that we see in the early sequences in the Dominican Republic returns in New York, and a poignant final sequence at a community baseball league finds Sugar enjoying the game in a way he clearly hasnâ??t in years. He may never fulfill his dream of pitching on the mound in Yankee stadium (or perhaps he will; comebacks are plentiful in the world of baseball), but for the first time, he has new dreams, dreams of his own that arenâ??t weighed down by extraordinary pressure.

SUGAR would be nowhere near as compelling without Algenis Perez Sotoâ??s first-rate lead performance, which should certainly earn him some nice future paychecks. He disappears into Sugar, from lonely, small-town Iowa to the bubbling New York, and at times, itâ??s easy to forget that weâ??re not watching a documentary. The supporting performances are all strong as well, and the pacing and editing are superb, with very few wasted moments in the entire script. SUGAR ends on a wistful-but-happy note, and thatâ??s fitting for the turbulent journey the title character has been (and still is) on. Itâ??s a journey thatâ??s well worth taking with him.

77/100.