Movies - Bull Durham

Home > Listing Index > Movies > Bull Durham

	Movies - Bull Durham

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. 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/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...

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...

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Bull Durham ]

Movies - Bull Durham

Summary

Cultural Impact

Quotes

Searches on eBay

Related searches on eBay