Quartile rating: 6.5/10 · 1 rating
Since 1912, baseball has been a game obsessed with statistics and speed. Thrown at upwards of 100 miles per hour, a fastball moves too quickly for human cognition and accelerates into the realm of intuition. Fastball is a look at how the game at its highest levels of achievement transcends logic and even skill, becoming the primal struggle for man to control the uncontrollable.
Fastball (2016) is a competent sports documentary that digs into the science and mythology of baseball's most elemental pitch. The subject matter is genuinely interesting — blending physics, neuroscience, and player interviews to explore how batters perceive and react to a pitch faster than human cognition can process. The interviews with legends like Hank Aaron and Sandy Koufax lend credibility and nostalgic warmth. However, the film follows a fairly conventional talking-heads documentary structure, and while its scientific angle adds some distinction, it doesn't break new ground in terms of cinematic craft or documentary storytelling. The ending resolves somewhat predictably, wrapping up its thesis without a particularly memorable or resonant final beat. Solid mid-tier sports documentary fare.