内容摘要：If everyone reading this column planted one extra row and donated its harvest, together we could have an impact on hunger.

If everyone reading this column planted one extra row and donated its harvest, together we could have an impact on hunger.

The title comes from an unnaturally slow pitch not slung but lobbed toward home. When I was a kid pitching, I liked to uncork one from time to time, much to my coach’s dismay. The metaphor isn’t hard to grasp. One player describes it as a pitch you can get bored watching, even making you lose track of time.This image released by Music Box Films shows Cliff Blake in a scene from “Eephus.” (Music Box Films via AP)

This image released by Music Box Films shows Cliff Blake in a scene from “Eephus.” (Music Box Films via AP)Much of the same applies to “Eephus,” which drifts player to player, play to play, less as an ensemble piece than like a roving spectator. The guys, themselves, have no more than a handful of fans, including the diehard scorekeeper Fanny (Cliff Blake)., the great documentarian whose films chronicle nothing so much as institutions kept alive over time, is the voice of the announcer.

I earlier called Lund’s film an ode, but it’s not a sentimental movie. Time’s passage, which no ballgame or perfectly thrown eephus can halt, grows increasingly disquieting as the afternoon light gives way to nightfall. That, to finish the game, they play into near-total darkness, with only headlights to see the ball, is a sign of desperation as much as it is commitment. After all, one guy in the dugout is listening to a radio broadcast of a ballgame, from 1972.What’s being lost? It’s not a strip mall the field is to be turned into but something harder to quibble with: a school. They could drive half an hour to another field, but that’s said to be half Little League, half farmer’s market. They aren’t a collection of pals, either. They don’t hang out away from the diamond. Things they don’t talk about: work, families, politics. Things they do: eyecare for the ump.

In the annals of baseball movies, “Eephus” doesn’t belong in the Hall of Fame with “Bull Durham” or “A League of Their Own.” The closest it gets to the big leagues is an appearance by Bill “Spaceman” Lee, the 1970s southpaw and eephus adherent.

But “Eephus” is just as deserving of a place in that hardball pantheon, only in some minor ball realm, well below single A. Here, they don’t throw “high cheese” but such meatballs that, as one player riffs, you could call it pasta primavera. To call this a field of dreams would be pushing it. But it’s a lovely way to pass some time., but Putin has effectively rejected it by imposing far-reaching conditions.

Commenting on a possible Trump-Putin meeting, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov appeared to indicate that momentum for such a summit is building. He told reporters that top-level talks were “certainly needed,” but added that preparing a summit would take time.Russia, meanwhile, is preparing

, Ukrainian government and Western military analysts say.Russian Defense Minister Andrei Belousov was in Minsk to discuss