Bull Durham Is The Best Baseball Movie And One Of The Best Movies Ever
While writing this baseball movie series, I had a great conversation with a friend on Facebook about what movie is purely about baseball. We threw out a few different films we thought fit the bill and Bull Durham was one of those in the discussion. I contend that there are movies that are more about just the game of baseball, but I believe that Bull Durham is the best baseball movie of all time and among the best films ever.
For those who have not had the extreme pleasure of watching the film, it follows the life of minor leaguers playing for the Durham Bulls. Long before becoming part of the Tampa Bay Rays farm system and getting a new ballpark, which is amazing by the way, the Bulls were a scrappy team in the Carolina League. Up-and-coming pitching prospect Ebby Calvin “Nuke” Laloosh, played by Tim Robbins, is being prepped to move up to the major league squad and in need of some seasoning.
That’s where Kevin Costner’s character, “Crash” Davis, comes into the picture. A well-traveled veteran, Crash is in the twilight of his career, bouncing around the minors just to keep playing the game. He begrudgingly takes on the task of mentoring the “totally tubular” rookie (it was the 80’s, give them a break), and antagonizes him into becoming the player he needs to be.
Crash is not the only one taking on Nuke as a project, however. Local baseball groupie Annie Savoy, played by Susan Sarandon, chooses a new prospect every year to mentor and sleep with, Nuke being the player chosen that year. Crash wants Annie for himself, but as a veteran in the league and life he says he doesn’t try out for anything and leaves her to Nuke.
The rest of the film follows the trio, and the rest of the team to a lesser extent, throughout the season and gives an insight to the lives of minor leaguers that can be appreciated by any viewer.
Why It’s The Best Baseball Movie
There have been plenty of baseball movies that came before and after Bull Durham that have captured parts of the game exceptionally well. Moneyball envelopes us in the statistics of the game, which over a 162-game season can have large effects even with small differences. Field of Dreams captures the pure emotional attachment many have to game and the role it plays in so many relationships.
Where Bull Durham is different, though, is that we get an insight into nearly every facet of the game through different characters in the film. Nuke is a wet-behind-the-ears rookie who doesn’t respect the game yet. Crash is a grizzled veteran who has been up and down the system many times over. Annie is a super-fan who loves the game and attends the “Church of Baseball”, as she puts it.
While we never get too far into the weeds with them, various other characters show us the roles of foreign-born players, minor leaguers who wash out, hard-nosed managers, and eccentric coaches have in the system. There are players dealing with slumps, those who think they have a curse on their glove, and those on the verge of setting records. Every character’s story adds to the dynamic nature of organized baseball, all in the pursuit of making it to The Show.
There’s a scene where Crash and Nuke get into an argument on the team bus and Nuke asks why Crash doesn’t like him. Crash tells him it’s because he doesn’t respect himself or the game; Nuke was given a gift at birth and is throwing it away with immaturity. Nuke pushes back and asks Crash what he knows about what he needs. That’s when the veteran catcher lets everyone in on the fact that he has been in the majors:
“Yeah, I was in the show. I was in the show for 21 days once — the 21 greatest days of my life. You know, you never handle your luggage in the show, somebody else carries your bags. It was great. You hit white balls for batting practice, the ballparks are like cathedrals, the hotels all have room service, and the women all have long legs and brains.”
The team is enthralled with his story, images of what life will be like when they finally catch on with the big league team dancing through their head. Crash quickly brings them all back to reality with what they can expect in the majors:
“The pitchers, they throw ungodly breaking stuff in the show. Exploding sliders. You could be one of those guys. Nuke could be one of those guys, but you don’t give a f***, meat.”
That’s the thing about Bull Durham. As much as it’s about the journey to make it to the majors, it’s about the reality of the majority of players. Even if you’re lucky enough to make it, there’s no guarantee that you will stick around. For every star in the show, there are thousands of players who never even made it and had to give up on their dream one day.
That’s what makes the lessons that Crash and Annie are trying to teach Nuke so important. Even if they are able to mold the rook into a great pitcher, it takes more than a great fastball to stick around. Things like pitch selection and opponent scouting are quickly brought up in passing, but they are shown to be important in a scene where Nuke wants to “announce his presence with authority” against a player that Crash says is a first-ball-fastball hitter. Nuke doesn’t care and promptly gives up a towering homerun.
Annie tries to get the scatter-brained and scatter-pitched rookie to get out of his own head through various methods, including wearing women’s garters and breathing through his eyelids “like the lava lizards of the Galapagos Islands.” She ties him up and reads him Walt Whitman. She withholds sex and tells him to channel that energy to the playing field. All this in exploration of the mental intricacies that go into being a big league pitcher.
With everything that the film throws at you about baseball, it’s the emphasis really on the little things about the sport that put it above the rest. Whether it’s about needing a day off and praying for rain out, learning clichés for the press, or keeping your shower shoes clean, they’re all important to the game in their own way. The little things that Bull Durham lets us in on make a world of difference, emphasized by one scene in particular.
Nuke has just been called up to the majors and Crash is off feeling sorry for himself and getting drunk, when he says:
“Know what the difference between hitting .250 and .300 is? It’s 25 hits. 25 hits in 500 at bats is 50 points, okay? There’s 6 months in a season, that’s about 25 weeks. That means if you get just one extra flare a week — just one — a gorp… you get a ground ball, you get a ground ball with eyes… you get a dying quail, just one more dying quail a week… and you’re in Yankee Stadium.”
That’s why Bull Durham is the greatest baseball movie of all time.
Why It’s Among The Best Movies Ever
A bold claim, I know, but one that I stick by.
The film is able to be about baseball and life at the same time, with grand themes of expectations, failure, romantic and platonic love, and aging running throughout. They aren’t hidden from us, so much as they are presented in ways we don’t expect from a baseball movie.
The relationship between Crash, Nuke, and Annie is a convoluted mess of lust, love, mentorship, and friendship. Nuke’s sexual lust for Annie is only matched by his lust for making the big league squad. Crash and Annie lust after each other in unfulfilled flirtations as their roles as mentors must take precedent. Crash’s role as mentor to Nuke leads to a brotherly friendship that begins to border on father-son tones.
These aren’t groundbreaking themes by any stretch, but each one is given time to breathe separate from the others and be fully fleshed out. They will occasionally bump into one another, but they are each given their due respect in their importance to the plot of the film. What could easily become a messy love triangle of emotion and jealousy is instead a well-plotted story of relationships.
The individual character’s stories are just as important to the themes of the film and the way that they inform us about the game. Crash’s journey through the various levels of the game has left him within striking distance of the minor league home run record, a dubious honor according to him. Setting a minor league record means you’ve been there long enough to do so and have failed to live up to expectations as a major leaguer. He must live with his failures in his successes as he finally leaves the game behind.
Nuke is immaturity personified. The loud, brash youngster is all over the place and is as directionless as some of his pitches. As he is able to mature under the guidance of Crash and Annie, his pitching improves drastically and he is able to get to the next level. His journey is as much about the growth of a person as it is a ball player and we see the new person he has become as he peppers a reporter with the clichés that Crash taught him earlier in the film.
The transformation of lust and desire to love is played out by Annie. A sage mentor to a revolving door of players, she lusts not after the men she beds, but the game itself. She’s always at the games and is essentially an extension of the team. She finally meets her match in both wisdom and attitude with Crash and the evolution begins. At the end of the film, Crash’s hero’s journey is complete and he returns to Annie, both ready to shed their lust for the game for love of one another.
While the main cast moves the story along, the supporting cast of characters gives us some breathing room with some serious and not-so-serious moments that pay off later on in the film. Where introduced to Jose, the token Latino on the team, when he is rubbing a rosary over his bat for good luck and another player whose slumping tries to get in on the action. In a later scene, the superstitious Jose says his girlfriend put a curse on his glove in one of the funniest scenes in the film.
We also catch up with the slumping player when he is called into the manager’s office and told to shut the door. “This is the toughest job a manager has,” he says as he informs the player that he’s being cut from the team. At the end of the film the same scene plays out with Crash as he is let go from the team now that his job of coaching up Nuke is complete. Moments that seem off-handed or B-roll fodder let us into the world that much more.
And it’s things like that which make Bull Durham such a great film. Much like the game of baseball itself, there are little to no wasted moments. Quick scenes that feel random at times end up being important for character development down the road. It’s like pickoff attempts with a runner on first. It feels like wasted time until the batter grounds into a double play and the runner going to second can’t break it up because he didn’t get a good enough jump.
We are let into the lives of complex people in a world most have never been in, but we never feel like we’re out of our depth even if you aren’t a fan of the sport. Heavy themes of life are allowed to play out and drive the story forward without losing the entertainment of it all. There is no grand ending like The Natural, but that’s not what’s needed for this kind of film. Sometimes just playing the game itself is enough.
Like Nuke says at the end of the movie:
“This is a very simple game. You throw the ball, you catch the ball, you hit the ball. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, sometimes it rains.”
