RI Native, Nate Fisher, Pulls Adler's Into his Latest Movie: ‘Eephus’ is a Home Run

‍‍Another Adler's story that expands our already far-reaching roots.

Like all great stories, brief human connections can mean so much. On a Friday at Adler's, a customer introduced himself to Marc Adler. The customer mentioned that Adler's Paint was the name used for baseball team, in a movie that a Rhode Island guy co-wrote.

Well, like any good mystery, Marc went on to find, watch and truly enjoy the movie! He wrote to one of the writers, Michael Basta, asking about this and Mike put Marc in touch with Nate Fisher. Providence native, Nate Fisher [@natemediagood], a Boston College grad who co-wrote the movie Eephus with Michael Basta and Carson Lund, did indeed choose Adler's Paint for the name of his on-screen baseball team.

Fisher wrote, "Yes! I chose Adler's because "it was the oldest business in Providence I could think of, and a staple of the East Side." He wanted to "give the impression that everyone and everything involved had been there for God knows how long. It was important to evoke things that most people, if they hadn't heard of the place, could sense that everyone involved had heard of the place. And this name was evocative - I've never heard of anything else called Adler's, and it looks good on a jersey."

Well, Nate Fisher, we love these stories !! At 107 years and counting, we never get tired of hearing how we connect to so many people!

The movie, Epephus, is about two recreational baseball teams, the River Dogs and Adler’s Paint, have been meeting on their New England field on Sunday afternoons for longer than anyone can remember. Set in New England in the 1990s, they're playing their last game ever because their field is set to be demolished to make way for a new school. The film’s title is the name for a slow-speed, high-arching pitch that can be effective for a pitcher because it’s unexpected and disrupts a batter’s timing.

Fisher also has an onscreen role in the film as Merritt Nettles, a player on the Adler’s Paint team who defines the eephus pitch to the uninitiated.

Eephus has been acclaimed by reviewers who have called it “the best baseball movie since Moneyball” (Associated Press) and a “grand and sentimental drama” (The New Yorker). In a review for Variety, Eephus was dubbed “a wry and lovely baseball movie that pitches slowballs of quiet wisdom.” The Daily Beast called it “a charmingly poignant portrait of the expiration of a unique and cherished world.” And the Washington Post said Eephus is “a tiny but nearly perfect baseball movie…[that] belongs with the great baseball movies not because of any major league ambitions but because it understands what the game has meant and still means in small towns, among average people and weekend players.”

Have you seen it?!