And he could tell a joke.”įormer major league pitcher Jose Rijo also worked with Boden and Fleck while filming in the Dominican Republic. He was playing a pickup game with friends. We met Algenis at a field in San Pedro de Macoris. “We would drive to baseball fields and interview players. “To cast the film we traveled everywhere in the Dominican Republic, including cities and extremely rural areas,” said Fleck. The host homes, the awkward encounters with small-town America, the shame of ordering the same meal as someone else just because you overheard them say it and you don’t know the language well enough to order anything else - it’s all captured in the film.įleck and Boden filmed scenes from the movie in Iowa, Arizona, New York City and in the San Pedro area of the Dominican Republic, but they scoured the entire DR to find locations, actors and ballplayers. As long as he performs on the field, he’ll continue to be shuffled along, in a country he doesn’t know, surrounded by a language he doesn’t speak. Soto portrays Sugar as a man carrying the burden of expectations, thrown into a brand new environment with barely enough guidance to function. We wanted to tell the more common story.” We met players who made it all the way to the big leagues, but they were rare. “The script is based on all the interviews and research we conducted - not one player’s story, but a tapestry of many. “It just seemed like the honest story to tell,” said Fleck. Flack and Boden take pains to remind viewers that Sugar, played by Dominican actor Algenis Pérez Soto, is also a human being. Sugar’s father passed away when he was a kid, making Sugar’s dream of America and Major League Baseball one of the few options he has for a comfortable life.Īfter signing a deal with Kansas City (and getting schooled in the sport’s nuances via an academy), Sugar flies to Phoenix for tryouts and gets assigned to a Single-A affiliate in Iowa.Īmong most baseball fans, a player of Sugar’s ability and background wouldn’t be discussed unless he had some major upside maybe he could be a trade chip or help with a rebuild. Already a legend in his small town outside of San Pedro de Macoris, the aspirations of his entire neighborhood weigh heavily on his shoulders. The response to those two movies is a symbol of the ways baseball fandom has changed in the 21st century.ĭirected and written by Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden, “Sugar” tells the fictional story of 19-year-old Miguel “Sugar” Santos, a pitching sensation from the Dominican Republic. The other tells the story of what happens to that diamond when life gets in the way. One tells the tale of finding diamonds in the rough and using the market to your advantage to beat an opponent. Three years later, “Moneyball” would gross $75.6 million. “Sugar,” which debuted at the Sundance Film Festival in January of 2008, grossed just over $1 million at the box office. Sometimes, there is just the day-to-day grind, and the realization that a dream might shatter, but life still goes on. Using a white cake base may allow these flavors to show through more clearly.A decade ago, a very different baseball movie, released not long before “Moneyball,” showed that sometimes there was no big triumph, no magic. If you are making a yellow cake with butter, and egg yolks, they may be competing and masking the flavor. You can probably reduce the sugar by about 20 to 25% without completely altering the nature of the recipe, although the crumb may suffer a little. That being said, most recipes have a certain amount of tolerance. Sugar plays a very important role in creating the structure and bite of cakes, and also helps to retain moisture and inhibit spoiling, so you cannot simply reduce the quantity without limit to control the sweetness. So, if we're building a recipe with 1 cup sugar, we'll need about A cup of sugar weighs aboutħ ounces, and a cup of all-purpose flour weighs about 4-1/2 ounces. Remember that this is weight, not volume. The sugar should weigh the same as, or slightly more than, the flour. According to Shirley Corriher, as reported in Fine Cooking, the sugar should weigh slightly more than the flour:
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