— For Bob Newman
Life is full of aesthetic pleasures. Warm sun and ice cream are everywhere. We’re in a time where everything appears to be attainable. It can be distracting.
Two aesthetic distractions I love are baseball and movies. I’m most alive when the light goes on in the dark or when a ball thwacks into a glove. We were put on this marble to love and I will wear that love on my chest until my contract expires.
Baseball movies are a different matter. Many are underwhelming and tough to watch. Even the ones that are considered to be good, like The Natural and The Pride of the Yankees, are ridiculous fantasies. Rarely does a movie get baseball right. But when it does you get Bull Durham.
Bull Durham is the best baseball movie ever made and one of the best movies ever made about anything. The film was released 35 years ago last week and it remains a fantastic and human piece of storytelling.
“I believe in the church of baseball.”
Those words, spoken in voiceover by Annie Savoy, open the show. Annie, played by a note-perfect Susan Sarandon, is the heart of this story. Literate, fashionable, and impossibly attractive, Annie is a superfan for her local Durham Bulls. Every season she picks one member of the team to get together with.
As her bed sits prominent in the frame, Annie continues, “making love is a lot like hitting a baseball. You just gotta relax and concentrate.” This isn’t a movie about big moments or speeches. Bull Durham is more concerned with genuine things like love, sex, and connection.
Annie literally takes us into the world of baseball as she enters the stadium. Her voiceover concludes, “The only church that truly feeds the soul day in and day out is the church of baseball.” Amen, sister.
The movie was written and directed by Ron Shelton, who spent five years in the minors. There’s an authenticity to the baseball that informs the frame. Everyday plays are shot to show off their beauty. Old, poorly-lit ballparks aren’t made to look pretty. They’re shot to look real.
Which makes it kinda funny that the first time we meet our next main character, he’s doing something apparently uncommon: he’s fucking in the clubhouse.
Ebby Calvin LaLoosh is a bonus baby pitcher with a sweet face and the kind of fun ignorance blessed only on the young. LaLoosh lives on talent which can only get you so far in baseball. You can only fuck in the clubhouse for so long.
LaLoosh, played by Tim Robbins in a true star making performance, is unconcerned with making his professional debut. He thinks he just needs a nickname. Annie christens him Nuke.
Which is why we need the last member of the love triangle.
After the game, the manager and Larry the pitching coach laugh about their rookie’s electric and wild performance. The sound of a door SLAMS. “Who the hell are you?” Larry asks.
“I’m the player to be named later.”
This is Crash Davis. He’s a western hero. He’s come into town on a horse, a Ford Mustang really, and he’s ready to save the world from evil before riding out again.
Crash is a journeyman catcher at the end of his playing days. The club isn’t concerned with his play. They just want him to “mature the kid.” He’s played by Kevin Costner with the actor in command of every frame of his performance. And he’s sexy as hell in this.
Annie, Nuke, and Crash come together in a bar. Here we get an example of a well-told story filled with subtext.
Crash sends a beer to Annie’s table where she sits with Max Patkin, “the Clown Prince of Baseball.” As Patkin waves Crash over, Annie appraises him and says, “He’s cute.”
Watch Annie as she delivers the line. She looks at Crash like a cobra looks at a mouse. Everything in Sarandon’s face and body language says “Tell me nice things forever that I don’t know.” But all she says is, “he’s cute.”
Annie asks Crash to dance to which he replies, “I don’t dance.” “How embarrassing,” her reply. The game is on. Young Nuke comes over and asks Annie to dance. Crash steps in, “She’s dancing with me.” Love triangle established in less than a minute.
Annie takes the boys back to her house. She puts on an Edith Piaf record, “La Vie En Rose,” a perfect love song.
Annie explains that she hooks up with one guy a season and Nuke and Crash are in the running. Crash takes exception. At this point in his career he doesn’t try out. Crash gives an all-time great movie speech before he exits. I won’t spoil it for you here if you’ve never seen it.
Thus we have the conflict at the heart of the movie. Annie is with Nuke when she really wants Crash. And Crash has to not only suffer in silence, he has to mentor the obstacle to his affections.
Bull Durham came out in a curious time. The late 80s and early 90s were a brief golden age for romantic movies. Moonstruck came out in 1987. When Harry Met Sally was released in 1989 and Ghost was the top grossing film in 1990.
We used to be a society where studios produced smaller movies about people. We used to make Midnight Run and sonuvabitch it was GOOD.
Bull Durham is the kind of movie that would never get a theatrical release today. Movie screens are too crowded with IP-saturated crap and comic book foolishness. Captain America is fine but how about a movie about people once in a while?
Back to the movie and things are rocky between Crash and Nuke. Their conflict comes to a head on the team bus where Crash rips into Nuke for not respecting the game. And for getting the words wrong to “Try A Little Tenderness,” an equally despicable offense. The boys are ready to fight but it’s broken up.
Which brings us to another great storytelling lesson from Bull Durham: you don’t need words to tell a story in a movie. Film is a visual medium so use the images to your advantage. Crash and Nuke find common ground in a basically wordless sequence.
The team is struggling and could use a day off. Crash bets a few young guys he can get the team a rainout for the next night. During a night of drinking, Crash takes the guys to the empty ballpark where he turns the sprinklers on full blast. Set to the bouncy east LA rhythms of Los Lobos “I Got Loaded,” the guys then play in the mud like kids.
Without any words being said, Nuke is starting to trust Crash.
“The women are really in charge in the south. I don’t know if you really figured it out yet.”
Susan Sarandon, Between the Lines: The Making of “Bull Durham”
Annie is the spiritual heart of this story and I challenge anyone to find me a stronger, more liberated character from her time. She’s sexually independent and damn proud of it too.
She articulates this when Millie is trying on her wedding dress. Millie’s a young woman that’s been with more than a few players herself, including Nuke in the clubhouse at the beginning of the movie. Millie asks Annie, “Do you think I deserve to wear white?” Annie answers, “Honey we all deserve to wear white.” There is no slut shaming in Bull Durham.
Nuke, with Annie’s suggestion, has re-channeled his sexual energy into his pitching. The results are he’s winning and so are the Bulls. This creates a dilemma for Annie as her beloved team is hot but she’s sexually frustrated. What makes it worse is it’s really her idea.
Things come to a head when Nuke confides to Crash he’s just gonna give in and sleep with Annie. Crash shakes his head, “Never fuck with a winning streak.” It’s a great line especially with the multiple meanings attached.
Annie steams over to Crash’s place after Nuke won’t give it up. She bursts in while he irons in his underwear drinking scotch. Then we get, in my opinion, the best and the most important scene in the movie.
The argument is laced with repressed sexuality, weariness, and wisdom that comes from adults in matters of the heart. It feels real. We learn Annie is a part-time English teacher at a junior college. After she quotes William Blake, a hilarious exchange follows:
CRASH: William Blake?
ANNIE: William Blake!
CRASH: William Blake? What do you mean, William Blake?
ANNIE: I mean William Blake!
Crash defends his actions and tells Annie what she already knows. You don’t fuck with a winning streak because they don’t come around too often. The reasons for his response are dubious (there’s that subtext again) but the point is sound. Anne finally vocalizes what the audience sees, “I want you.”
But the job’s not done. Annie is still committed to Nuke and Crash refuses to come in the back door. Annie, Sarandon really in an ad-lib, ends the scene with a perfect punctuation mark, “Well ain’t this the damnedest season. The Durham Bulls can’t lose and I can’t get laid.” She flips the ironing board over for emphasis.
But the decision’s been made. It’s over for Annie and Nuke. And again, it’s never said. You have to look for it.
Annie waits for Nuke. She puts on another Edith Piaf record “Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien.” The title translates to “No, I Regret Nothing.” The song describes a woman letting go of her emotional baggage. And it celebrates a new love that has allowed these things to fall away. Bull Durham has fucking layers.
Again, watch Annie before and when Nuke arrives. She’s going to end it with him but she never gets a chance to say it. The phone rings and Nuke gets the call every professional baseball player dreams of: he’s going to the Show.
Then in a wonderful snip of dialogue, Nuke’s father, a full-squared Bible beater, suggests they pray. “Let’s not,” Annie says as she ushers him out. Nuke insists he’ll come back. Annie has a perfect reply, “When someone leaves Durham they don’t come back.”
Nuke finds Crash drinking in a pool hall. Properly bitter and a little inebriated, Crash blows Nuke off. Words are exchanged and Nuke punches Crash giving him a black eye.
The next morning, Crash apologizes to Nuke as he packs his locker. “You have to play this game with fear and arrogance,” Crash tells him. Nuke replies, “Fear and ignorance, got it.” As Crash angers Nuke says he’s joking. The kid has matured. Job done, cowboy.
Crash is released by the club. In a simple, devastating shot, Costner gives you a lot with very little. The pain is all over his face. Shelton makes his point that baseball is not just a romantic game with a beautiful aesthetic and comfortable rhythms. It’s a job for these guys. Also, a life.
Crash goes to Annie’s. She’s heard about his release. Annie is dressed well with her makeup done. She’s clearly been waiting for him. Again, the movie is showing and not telling. Then Annie and Crash can do what we’ve been waiting for since the Orion Pictures logo rolled at the start.
Annie kisses Crash’s black eye to begin the love scene. It’s a symbolic act. She’s healing his pain. Then the sex scenes begin. They’re tasteful, erotic, and fun. Can you believe that the studio actually wanted to cut them out to save time? Hollywood, man.
Crash leaves in the morning to find another place to finish the season. He leaves Annie a note which she takes in stride. She knows his honor demands he finish out the season, even if it’s his last one.
The final scene takes place during a rainstorm. Symbolism again as the rain signifies a washing away of the past and a rebirth of the new. Crash is waiting for Annie on the porch.
He asks her if he’d make a good minor league manager someday. Annie, her voice breaking in just the right way, says he’d be great. Annie starts to nervously expound on linear thinking and Crash cuts her off. He tells her he’s got all time in the world for her theories. But right now he just wants “to be.” Annie, again holding back her emotion, says, “I can do that too.”
The movie ends with Annie and Crash dancing in her living room. It’s a callback to their first meeting when he tells her he doesn’t dance. That first line, clearly subtextual, is a promise to the audience. That promise is fulfilled with its final shot. Bull Durham, like any great movie and more than any other baseball movie, contains multitudes.
Bull Durham is available to stream with a subscription on MAX.
