Bull Durham (1988)

• Year: 1988
• Released: 15 Jun 1988
• Country: United States
• Adwords: Nominated for 1 Oscar. 7 wins & 6 nominations total
• IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094812/
• Rotten Tomatoes: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/Bull_Durham
• Metacritics: https://www.metacritic.com/movie/bull-durham
• Available in: 720p, 1080p,
• Language: English
• MPA Rating: R
• Genre: Comedy, Romance, Sport
• Runtime: 108 min
• Writer: Ron Shelton
• Director: Ron Shelton
• Cast: Kevin Costner, Susan Sarandon, Tim Robbins
• Keywords: sports, jealousy, love triangle, baseball, age difference,

	7.0/10
	73/100
	97% – Critics
	82% – Audience

Bull Durham Storyline

It’s the start of the minor league baseball season, and Annie Savoy, for who baseball is *the* religion, is going through the annual process of choosing the one player on her home team of the Durham Bulls of the Carolina League, he who she will take under her wings, sexual and otherwise, solely for the season, and who has always gone on to have his best year as a player. She has narrowed her choice to two recent acquires: Ebby Calvin LaLoosh, the wild neophyte pitcher with a wicked fastball – the pitch on which he solely relies – but can’t aim, the more he thinks about it, the more erratic the pitch gets, while he doesn’t appreciate anyone criticizing him or it in believing he knows best in his lack of self-awareness; and catcher Crash Davis, the veteran who has been around the minor leagues for twelve years and who was brought in solely to harness and reign in Ebby’s power. While Ebby would gladly accept Annie’s offer in seeing sex as an inherent part of his being, Crash, who is as philosophical in being a thinker as he is athletic, takes himself out of the running – the first player ever to do so – as, although attracted to her, does not see sex as the “game” she seems to treat it, especially as he knows he is nearing the end of his baseball playing career. Part of Annie’s initial transformation of Ebby is to give him that nickname he sorely wants – Nuke – to match his pitches. Thus begins Annie, Crash and Nuke’s three-way season-long relationship as they evolve because of it as baseball, sexual and human beings.

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Bull Durham Movie Reviews

The Best Baseball Film That Isn’t “Major League”

If you’re new to Earth and are wondering which Kevin Costner baseball film to start with, drive past “Field of Dreams” and take the exit marked, “Bull Durham.”

While both great movies, “Field of Dreams” requires a dream-like nostalgia for the era and aura of childhood in order to best feel that film inside your bones. “Bull Durham” edges it out by summoning outstanding character development across the board, and by supporting Coster’s terrific portrayal with elite supporting acting from juggernauts Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins.

This is a classic film, and possibly the best there’s been at conjuring the very nuanced American soul of baseball, as well as the unique characters and life-affirming truths our pastime evokes. – (Was this review of use to you? If so, let me know by clicking “Helpful.” Cheers!)

“You throw the ball. You hit the ball. You catch the ball. You got it?”

I sometimes get this movie confused with “Major League”; they came out within a year of each other and quite obviously, they’re both baseball films. Now that I’ve caught up again with this picture, I’ll probably be able to keep them apart well enough. “Major League” had that great ‘Wild Thing’ sequence going for it, and it would have helped if this one could have snared a catchy tune of it’s own. The closest it came was a brief snippet of Credence Clearwater’s ‘Center Field’ song, but it didn’t hang around long enough to make a lasting impression.

Of the three principals, Kevin Costner comes across as having the best character here, but I would have held him in higher regard if he didn’t let his libido get in the way when it came to Baseball Annie Savoy (Susan Sarandon). With all the sex and profanity in the film, there were times that it felt more like a locker room joke than a story about the national pastime. After Crash Davis (Costner) had his tumble in the hay with Annie toward the end of the story, I had to wonder whether General Mills did the right thing signing off on that box of Wheaties on her kitchen table. I don’t think the Breakfast of Champions had that kind of competition in mind.

When the film does broach the ‘love of the game’, the dialog raises the standard of the picture up a notch, as when Crash describes his twenty one days ‘in The Show’. I’ve heard the term used before, and it does seem to appropriately describe a reverence for making it to the Big Leagues. But then you have a scene in which Crash uses that one word that’s a no-no with umpires, and it drags the story back down to the gutter again, at least for this viewer.

As a corollary to my summary line above, uttered by team manager Skip (Trey Wilson) to his hapless team in the early part of the story, Ebby ‘Nuke’ LaLoosh offers up his own version later on when he eventually makes it to The Show himself – “Sometimes you win. Sometimes you lose. Sometimes it rains”. For me, this might have been one of those ‘sometime it rains’ pictures. Considering that Kevin Costner starred in the great Academy Award nominated “Field of Dreams” the very year following “Bull Durham”, this one more closely resembles a strike-out.

Doing her bit for the national past time

Bull Durham only received Oscar recognition in one category that of Original Screenplay. But that screenplay is the basis of the film that broke the mold for baseball films.

When you think of baseball films you think of heroic type films like the biographical stories of Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Grover Cleveland Alexander and Monty Stratton. Or some funny, but still reverential films like Kill The Umpire or It Happens Every Spring. None of these films will ever have a character like Susan Sarandon, a well known baseball Annie which is what the players have dubbed their groupies. You could never have a character like her with the infamous Code in place.

Sarandon is frank, she loves sex, she loves baseball and she sees herself doing her bit for the national past time. Her concentration this year is on Tim Robins who is a promising Sandy Koufax like pitcher before Sandy got control of his pitching and gave us five of the best seasons ever seen before announcing his premature retirement.

Also giving Robins his concentration is veteran catcher Kevin Costner hired specifically for that purpose by the Raleigh-Durham Bulls. Between Sarandon and Costner they turn Robins into someone fulfilling his promise. But baseball is a most unsentimental game as Costner knows and Sarandon’s avocation is also one with some heartbreak.

Best scene in the film is Costner describing what it’s like in the Major Leagues, ‘the big show’. As he says “the 20 best days in my life”. Like actors, athletes on team sports want to play in whatever major leagues there are. If not they’re like Costner, hanging on because of the love of the game.

Costner has the philosophy of Stan Musial who was quoted as saying he knew it was time to quit because the pain outweighed the fun of getting paid to play a sport. I suspect that Musial would have felt the same had he been a journeyman player like Costner rather than the Hall Of Famer he is.

No way that Christian athlete William O’Leary would have been a character in a film made under the Code auspices. Younger groupie Jenny Robertson makes a point of showing him what he’s missing.

Ron Shelton who was a minor league ballplayer drew from some rich memories of those times to give us Bull Durham. It’s both a serious and also irreverently funny look at those who participate in our national past time and the women who service them.