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Bull Durham is a 1988 American movie about love and baseball. It is based upon the minor league experiences of writer/director Ron Shelton. Bull Durham stars Kevin Costner, Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins. It depicts the players and fans of the Durham Bulls, a minor league baseball team in Durham, North Carolina. Also featured are Robert Wuhl and Max Patkin, the "Clown Prince of Baseball."
Summary
Costner stars as "Crash" Davis (the name based on an actual baseball player), a veteran of countless years in the minor leagues unwillingly sent down to single-A Bulls for a specific purpose: to educate a hotshot rookie pitcher "Nuke" LaLoosh (Robbins, playing a character loosely based on Steve Dalkowski) about being a major-league talent, and to get Nuke to control his haphazard pitching. Crash immediately begins calling Nuke by the degrading name of "Meat", and they get off to a very rocky start.
Thrown into the mix is Annie (Sarandon, the character named for the "Baseball Annies" groupies), a life-long spiritual seeker who latched onto the "Church of Baseball" and has, every year, taken on a prospect with the Bulls to be a lover/student. Annie flirts with Crash and Nuke but Crash walks out, noting he's too much a veteran to 'try out' for anything, although before leaving he and Annie share some sparks of mutual interest.
Annie and Crash then work, in their own way, and with a lot of animosity from Crash, to shape Nuke into a big-league pitcher: Annie by playing mild bondage games, reading poetry to Nuke, and getting the rookie to think in alternative ways; Crash by forcing Nuke to learn "not to think," by letting the catcher make the pitching calls (memorably at two points telling the batters what pitch was coming after Nuke had shaken off Crash's calls), and lecturing to Nuke about the major leagues with both the pressure in facing big league hitters that can hit Nuke's "heat" (fastballs) and the pleasure of enjoying life in 'The Show' that Crash briefly lived for "the twenty-one best days of my life" and has tried desperately for years to get back to. Meanwhile, as Nuke matures the relationship between Annie and Crash grows, until it becomes obvious that the two of them are right for each other, except for the fact that Annie's with Nuke now...
Along the way, Annie asks Crash what he believes about life, and Crash delivers a spectacular harangue (see "Quotes", below)..
After a rough start to Nuke's career, he becomes a dominant pitcher by mid-season thanks to the coaching of Annie and Crash. By the end of the movie, Nuke is called up to 'The Show' and the Bulls, now having no use for Nuke's personal mentor, release Crash. This incites jealous anger in Crash, who is frusterated by Nuke's failure to recognize all the talent he was blessed with. Nuke leaves for the big leagues, effectively ending his relationship with Annie, and Crash overcomes his initial jealously to leave Nuke with some final words of advice.
Eventually Crash, an experienced and skilled hitter, joins another team and breaks the minor league record for most career home runs, achieving a personal milestone that he has strived for. Annie wants to tell The Sporting News about it, but Crash swears her to silence. Crash then retires as a player and returns to Durham to begin a life with Annie. He tells her that he will accept a baseball coaching job. Foreshadowing suggests that he'll succeed both in this coaching role and in his life with Annie. Both characters end one phase of their lives and begin another. We see Nuke one last time, being interviewed as a major leaguer, where he recites some answers to questions which he practiced earlier in the movie with Crash. This indicates he finally 'gets it' and understands the advice Crash had been trying to give him.
Cultural Impact
Bull Durham became a minor hit when released, and has since been considered one of the best, if not the best, sports movie ever made. It became a major career moment for the lead cast members. Costner especially would later play baseball players and fans in other movies, especially Field of Dreams. After Durham came out Hollywood began releasing more sports, and especially baseball, movies after the genre had slipped from view.
Many quotes and scenes have become popular, including the scene where the team's manager berates the players as 'lollygaggers' in the shower, Crash's reciting to Annie a list of things he believes in (including a belief that Oswald was a lone gunman), the scene where Crash creates a "rain-out" so his teammates can have a day off a grueling road trip, and the pitching mound scene where the entire team gathers to discuss how to fix all the curses and bad luck they're having, as well as figuring out what to get a fellow teammate for his impending wedding.
Most of all, it revived interest in minor league baseball, which had been stagnating in small-town areas for decades, to where minor league teams achieve decent attendance and are even subject to relocation/bidding wars between communities. The Durham Bulls team itself in real-life has become one of the most famous minor-league teams in the United States (topped only by the Birmingham Barons during the years Michael Jordan tried baseball), and has moved from A (Single-A rookie) level to AAA (players who are one call away from 'The Show') status, complete with a larger stadium built in the 1990s to accommodate the growing crowds and the shift to AAA as a minor league affiliate to the Tampa Bay Devil Rays (during the film's time period, the Bulls were with the Atlanta Braves).
Quotes
- ''"This... is a simple game... you throw the ball... you hit the ball... you catch the ball!" -- Manager
- "Bad trades are part of baseball; I mean who can forget Milt Pappas for Frank Robinson for gosh sakes." –Annie
- "What am I doing back in A-ball? Fuck this fucking game! I fuckin' quit! ... ... Who do we play tomorrow?"
- "Why's he calling me meat? I'm the one drivin' a Porsche!" –Nuke LaLoosh
- (Crash, after Nuke brags about his signing bonus and his car with a quadrophonic Blaupunkt stereo) "You don't need a quadrophonic Blaupunkt! What you need is a curveball! In The Show, everybody can hit a fastball!" (Nuke: "How would you know? You've been in The Show?") "Yeah, I been in The Show. I was in The Show for 21 days once, 21 greatest days of my life. You get white balls for batting practice. The ballparks are like cathedrals. Nobody handles their own luggage in the show. Somebody else carries your bags. It was great. The hotels all have room service. And the women all have long legs and brains!"
- "Don't think: you can only hurt the ball club." –Crash Davis
- "Well, I believe in the soul, the cock, the pussy, the small of a woman's back, the hanging curve ball, high fiber, good scotch, that the novels of Susan Sontag are self-indulgent, overrated crap. I believe Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. I believe there ought to be a constitutional amendment outlawing Astroturf and the designated hitter. I believe in the sweet spot, soft-core pornography, opening your presents Christmas morning rather than Christmas Eve and I believe in long, slow, deep, soft, wet kisses that last three days." –Crash Davis
- Batboy hands pine tar rag to Crash Davis, who is thinking about Annie and having trouble concentrating...
- Batboy: Get a hit, Crash!
- Crash: Shut up!
- (During a player's conference on the mound): "...candlesticks always make a nice gift, and uh, maybe you could find out where she's registered and maybe a place-setting or maybe a silverware pattern. Okay, let's get two!" –Larry
- Crash argues a close play at the plate loud and long...
- Radio announcer: Crash Davis has been ejected, and frankly, folks, he used a certain word that is a no-no to umpires!
- Millie (listening to radio with Annie): He probably called him a cocksucker!
- Annie (sighing): He's so romantic!
- Crash Davis, frustrated with Annie:
- Crash: Who are you, anyway? Do you have a job?
- Annie: I teach English part-time at Alamance Junior College!
- (The owner of the real-life Bulls also owned the Burlington team, of Alamance County).
- "This is a simple game. You throw the ball; you hit the ball; you catch the ball" -- Nuke LaLoosh, to reporter in "The Show".
- (The owner of the real-life Bulls also owned the Burlington team, of Alamance County).
Trivia
- The filming was done after the close of the regular season, during September and October of 1987. The length of the shadows during the day games subtly give away the time of year. Durham Athletic Park was, of course, used for most of the baseball action. There were also scenes filmed in other Carolina League cities, although one establishing shot of War Memorial Stadium in Greensboro, North Carolina was erroneous, because Greensboro's club was and is in the South Atlantic League.
- The Durham Bull sign, once a staple at ballparks everywhere, was built specifically for the movie. Once filming was done, the bull was retained as a decoration, albeit in foul territory, and with a simple "Let's Go Bulls" instead of "Hit Sign Win Steak". Like the Hollywood Sign, this Durham Bull was not originally intended to be a long-lasting artifact, and was eventually replaced by a sturdier version. The new Durham Bulls Athletic Park also features the Durham Bull.
- In a case of life imitating art, during a long rain delay that interrupted (and ultimately postponed) the Chicago Cubs' first night game in August, 1988, several Cubs players came out and slid on the tarp, imitating a scene in this movie. Cubs manager Don Zimmer, an old-school, no-nonsense type, reportedly was not amused, and saw to it that all of the "perpetrators" were soon traded away from the Cubs.
- During his famous rant, Crash Davis comments that he believes ". . . Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone . . ." in the JFK assassination. In 1991, Kevin Costner appeared in JFK as a District Attorney determined to indirectly prove Oswald was part of a larger conspiracy.
- Crash yells at Nuke about messing up the lyrics to "Try a little tenderness". In the movie "Upside of Anger", Kevin Costner plays a former baseball player. At a wedding the singer starts singing "Try a little tenderness", after singing the first verse, the singer looks like he forgets the words and starts humming.
See also
External links
"Bull Durham"