MovieChat Forums > Sugar (2009) Discussion > Unsure Feeling About Ending (Spoliers)

Unsure Feeling About Ending (Spoliers)

posted 14 years ago by blair-harrington
20 replies | jump to latest

I'll start by saying that I loved this film up until the end. But the final 20 minutes left me scratching my head a bit.

Okay, so Sugar decides to leave his team (perhaps a combination of pressure, unhappiness being in Iowa, rejection from the white girl, etc). At the end we see Sugar playing in a lower level baseball league and happy with life. There was also this great moment at the end where Sugar simply pauses and reflects after pitching that first inning in NY.

However, seeing that despite his struggles he was having a lot of success in Iowa (until a recent slump), wasn't this film a bit of a downer in that he gives up and never returns to Iowa? Was that the point? Did Sugar never truly love baseball to begin with? Is he happier working in a diner, doing carpentry work at night, and playing baseball in a less competitive setting? The end of the film left me with a lot of questions. I understand that the point of the film was to show us how foreign players are groomed and how difficult the transition to American baseball is. But I kept waiting for the shop owner to talk him back into giving Iowa another shot. Or maybe that's the point? Foreign baseball players will give up on their baseball dreams for a variety of reasons? I'm really not sure.

[–] flimflamsam 14 years ago

i liked the ending, that reflective look that turns into a smile was great. he's playing because he loves the game and without pressure from everyone around him

laughs are cheap, I'm going for gasps

[–] Vespers1610 14 years ago

One of the many things I loved about the film was the way some cliches were avoided. Sure, Osvaldo (the shop-owner) could have talked Sugar into returning to Iowa, but that would have been a little cliched, no? Same with many of the characters -- the Higgins family could have been turned into cliched Bible-thumpers, instead they were three dimensional people. I think the ending is a bit ambiguous but also very real-to-life. I thought it was a solid ending.

[–] davejustdave 14 years ago

The point of the ending IMO was that he finally realized playing for the love of the game was the key and all the pressure he was putting on himself and killing himself over and how it was ridiculous and made him forget the reason he played in the first place.

Also he very well could have went back to baseball, the ending takes place as the season would have ended. Who knows? Maybe he did go back to playing. He would have missed a month or so of baseball. The point was that was the first time he seemed to enjoy the game again and perhaps that was the piece to making it in America or in baseball, it's up to our imagination.

I also found the scene when he tell his mother he's given up the game and she hangs up and walks to his younger brother playing outside and looks at him as if it was her last chance to have a son make it big. At least that's how I interpreted it. Not to say that she was cold or uncaring but there's such a tradition of ballplayers in the Dr that make some sort of living- even a AAA salary is enormous wealth there.

I do wish they had spoken more about the international draft and the many things that are wrong with it. They touched on it when the players all stated who they used to play for, but not really how these camps take young kids and prepare them for a career of baseball or bust. MLB needs to regulate what these teams do in the Latin America more instead of what happens now which are basically parents signing their 16 year olds over to teams. No one cares when they grow up into Hanley Ramirez but what about the thousands of others?

[–] IvanAtlas 14 years ago

I was left with many of the same questions as you, blair-harrington. This was a wonderful film, but the ending was somewhat questionable and depressing. Miguel was only 20 and the Royals gave him a $100,000 signing bonus. They weren't going to give up on him that easily and Miguel should have known this. I know some current lower level minor league ball players from the Dominican and these guys are still pursuing their dream even though they are 2-3 older than Miguel. They go through slumps and bounce back to have streaks of success. But, rarely do they just quit as Miguel did. I think this was a major flaw in the film because typically a player will be released or cut, and not just abandon his team. Miguel seemed to have lost his will or belief in himself after only 1 partial season in the minors and this is a highly atypical scenario for a foreign ball player. The writers/directors/producers seemed to want to make and mix in a larger discussion dealing with immigration to this country at the end of the film.

[–] TheRealDougal 14 years ago

I think you need to take the ending for it's full context, every player on the field during the final scene was a failed minor/major league baseball player from Latin America. Miguel realizes that happiness has come from the broadening of his world by leaving the Dominican Republic, despite failing in his larger pursuit of a payday as a professional athlete. I think he felt lucky to be around people he could relate to and now sees endless possibilities in NYC, especially when he looks over at the carpenter, with or without baseball. Either way I really enjoyed the movie.

[–] stu-neff 13 years ago

It's the first time he gets to make decisions for himself instead of being "treated like a horse." The whole time the power is the hands of the team owners, but by bailing, going to New York, getting a job, doing carpentry on the side - he's his own man.

We focus on how much money he could have had, but that money doesn't mean that you're free.

[–] FreakinFred 13 years ago

I agree with you, stu-neff. I think the reason he left the team was because he became disenchanted with the whole business side of baseball. That one time when he was talking to his sister on the phone and complaining that it was unfair for the organization to cut his friend just because he was slumping....and that his friend did so much for the organization in the past....and I think that was the point he alluded to the notion that they were being treated like horses.

[–] bingoboss 13 years ago

I got a completely different message from this film. Being an immigrant in a new environment, away from family, friends and your own culture is an incredibly isolating and depressing experience. Who cares if he had x amount of dollars in a paycheck? Under mounting pressure, he had nothing to fall back on. Slowly his few friends and connections were being chipped away from him.

Staying on that farm in Iowa was too creepy for words. He lived like a caged animal, with that too-nice Higgins family and that icky daughter blue-balling him. They didn't care about him. His only social outlet was sitting in church listening to old people sing hymns that he couldn't understand. I would have lost my mind.

The message I DIDN'T get was that he was a "quitter." His dreams of glory held him hostage. By the end, he was living a free life on his own terms, making friends with people he could actually relate to. AND he was still playing baseball and having fun. It's a real immigrant's story.

(Best movie I've seen in a while, btw.)

[–] grayto 13 years ago

I don't think it's fair to even call it an 'ending'. Yeah, it's the end of the movie, but it's not the end of his story. It's not about Sugar the baseball superstar, but Miguel Santos, the man, the boy. We see that he has a foothold in a new country and has tasted a small bit of belonging, we see possibilities for him and the movie ends. It's not all depressing or deflationary to me

[–] Hopper21 10 years ago

100,000 Bonus? Pretty sure at the beginning Alverez said he signed for 15 thousand.

[–] hacman00 14 years ago

Sugar tells his mom, "I didn't give up..."

I think his explanation to Jorge says it all.

"Yeah, but it wasn't just a slump...I wasn't gonna wait for them to throw me out."

He realized that he just didn't have what it takes to play in the majors and wanted to go out on his own terms. His real dream was to go to the States and help his family. (The Roberto Clemente quote) He might not be a professional ball player anymore but that doesn't mean he gave up on his dream. At the end of the film he's still in America and working to help support his family and didn't move back to play dominoes and sell broken phone chargers.

[–] guikrazy 14 years ago

What was the Roberto Clemente quote exactly?

[–] dullatron 14 years ago

I forget exactly what the Clemente quote was, but it was to the effect of: If you have a chance to help someone and you don't do it, then you've wasted your life. I thought it came up most when he was alone in his fleabag motel room and putting his ear to the door and hearing the woman in the hallway get beaten, presumably by her pimp, and he didn't do anything but just went back and sat on his bed. That was a big moment relative to that quote, but they didn't really revisit it again except when Osvaldo, whom he had told the quote to, took him in. Or did they revisit it again?

[–] dullatron 14 years ago

I didn't necessarily see Sugar as not having the talent to play, but I certainly thought that his heart wasn't in it, and the most talented player in the world is going to fail if he's not into it or sold on what he's doing. And if that was the case, then why not quit early and get the rest of your life started.

[–] Johnny0581 14 years ago

I'm sorry but I hated the ending. I know the film is supposed to have a deeper message about the choices we make in life as human beings, but the message that I received from this film was basically this one. It's ok to be a quitter, because at the end of the day, there's other losers out there just like you so it'll be all right. I'm sorry, but I was very dissapointed at the fact that he never got the girl, never became the baseball sucess he promised his mom and family back home he would be, instead, when the going got rough, he just ran to a different place and started over. I guess some people might say "oh, what he did is he took control of his own destiny and stopped doing what everyone else wanted him to do (mainly his family back in D.R.)" I guess so, but still, I wish the ending could've been a bit more promising, after all, he was a hard working dude and I think he deserved better.

[–] agnieszka01 13 years ago

I sort of like that the ending was ambiguous. As other have pointed out, it flouts the cliche of the guy returning to the league, being reluctantly taken back, and going on to the major leagues. This is an independant movie and they weren't afraid to take chances. Face it, it doesn't always work out; the majority of wannabe players never even get as far as the minor leagues like Sugar. I think he was questioning the limits of his talent. He was unsure about whether he really had what it takes to make it, when other players seemed to be excelling more than him, he was having difficulty with physical rigors, and felt he needed drugs to keep up.
You could tell in his discussions with Osvaldo that part of him regretted leaving the league. Maybe he'd try to go back? Clearly he has a love for the game. Or, as he'd been discussing with his fellow teammate, a Berkeley grad, maybe he'd pursue college and find something else he could be good at. This is the story of the underdogs trying to make it in the leagues.

[–] meghand_12 13 years ago

I never reply to posts on here, but I just had to reply to this one. At the risk of sounding patronizing, which I am not intending to be, I think that the fact that his favourite player ends up being Roberto Clemente has a lot of meaning. As much as Clemente was a great ball player, he was also very well known to be a humanitarian and he did a lot for his home country (though I can't remember which country he was from, may or may not have been from DR). The man used his success to give back to as many people as he could, and there is now an MLB award named after him in that vein.
I agree with what many are saying here. I think Sugar just decided that success for him was about more than major league baseball. He had loved carpentry and it seems as though he will be persuing that as he works at the restaurant.

And I do think he got the girl too. It seemed to be that he was getting the girl at the restaurant.

I did find the ending a bit sad, because all those men had presumable left their families hoping to be ball players. And I do think the smile at the end was mixed with a bit of regret, but hopefully we are supposed to believe that Sugar succeeds in other ways. This was an eye opening movie to me as a ball fan. I was never aware of the recruiting camps in Latin America and it's a subject I would like to learn more about.

[–] pwteatros 12 years ago

No, the ending doesn't fit with the rest of the story. It is a device to make this a serious movie.

[–] 12 years ago

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[–] MichaelDavid94 9 years ago

I didn't care for the ending at all. It's not like he didn't get treated fairly in Iowa. His coaches were good, and gave him all that he earned. Basically, he's a quitter, leaving his team behind when the going got a little rough. Now, he's just another illegal immigrant, criminal actually. So I guess the point is to quite when things get hard, not to work harder to get better, and become a criminal. Nice.