Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden's debut Half Nelson was one of the highlights of 2006, a nuanced look at a young teacher in an inner-city school who dismantled the inspirational teacher-movie cliches with just a toke of his crack pipe.

The writer-director team's next film, Sugar, gives the same hard-nosed, heartfelt treatment to the story of a young baseball player -- once again finding new ground in a genre so well-covered, you could put a monkey at third base and still make a "been there, done that" movie.

Sugar follows a 19-year-old Dominican pitching prospect as he leaves home and struggles through a season with a single-A minor league team in Iowa. The movie screened once during the AFI Dallas International Film Festival a couple of weeks ago, and it's opening at the Angelika Dallas today.