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.
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) about being a major-league talent, and to get Nuke to control his haphazard pitching. Thrown into the mix is Annie (Sarandon, the character named from the 'baseball Annie' 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/teacher. 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 one point telling the batter what pitches were coming when Nuke shakes 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 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...
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 coach berates the players as 'lollygaggers' in the shower, 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 interested 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 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
- "Sometimes you win, and sometimes you lose. And sometimes... it rains. [pause] Think about that." –Nuke LaLoosh
See also
External links
