In his classic comedy routine comparing football and baseball, George Carlin notes, “Baseball has no time limit. We don’t know when it’s gonna end. We might have extra innings!” Eephus, the feature directorial debut of Carson Lund, brings that threat of an eternal game to a dusty diamond in a small, New England town. A collection of mostly middled-aged men gather at a baseball field that is soon to be plowed under for a real estate development, just another casualty of capitalism’s relentless march. This will be their last game there, and they shuffle into the contest with the weariness of life itself. The game progresses in a raggedy fashion. Some resentments emerge and the sports contest’s ability to continue is threatened more than once, but the stakes of the film are modest. These athletes take their at bats and field the ball. Mostly, they hang out together and collectively feel the soft sorrow of the world moving on. Lund is amused and observant in his depiction of the drama, shaping Eephus with a style akin to that of a more melancholy Richard Linklater. The film is wry and slyly profound. Set at a vague point in the nineteen-nineties, it offers a lament for a sense of community that has eroded away almost entirely. As the game stretches deep enough into the dusky hours of evening that the participants need to draw on improvised solutions to illuminate the field, Eephus becomes pleasingly literal in its consideration of a group of people in a slump-shouldered, semi-resigned raging against the dying of the light.