The 2008 movie Sugar is a coming of age story. Miguel "Sugar" Santos (Algenis Perez Soto) had a dream of coming to America to play professional baseball. Eventually he's given the opportunity to play for the Kansas City Knights. While he's there, he lives with a host family who's claimed to have hosted other great players. Even though he struggles to speak English, he becomes sort of a small town celebrity during his time on the team.
When his friend Jorge Ramirez (Rayniel Rufino) is kicked off the team due to injury, Sugar realizes he can be easily replaced. From there, he decides to leave the team and go find his friend in New York. This is a big decision for him because he's basically giving up on his dreams knowing his family at home is rooting for him. At this point, he has no other options but to get a job at a diner. I think this decision shows that he's still grounded after being on the road to becoming famous.
Eventually Sugar finds Jorge and joins a baseball team for people who've gotten injured or left other teams. When he's playing with this team you can tell he's much happier then when he played for the Knights. Because of this scene, I think Sugar is a coming of age story. We see Sugar go from a guy in The Dominican Republic just trying to make it big in America, to a guy who's found happiness in a sport he loves without having to be signed to a team.
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