Cru Jones Society

Every Wednesday between now and the end of baseball season the Cru Jones Society brings you a new baseball movie examined for both overall entertainment value and treatment of our favorite game. To suggest a film, email us at staff [at] crujonessociety.com. Otherwise, pour yourself an $8 beer, crack some shells, and let’s play ball.

Date Released: July 17, 1988
Box Office Total: $50,888,729
Team Featured: Durham Bulls

“I’ve tried ‘em all, I really have, and the only church that truly feeds the soul, day in, day out, is the Church of Baseball.” – Annie Savoy

If Field of Dreams is baseball heaven, Bull Durham is baseball earth – flawed, foul-mouthed, unfair, glorious game-a-day reality. Bull Durham tackles life as a minor league ballplayer as we peek in at two players intersecting at opposite points of their careers and the local vampy sexpot who tries to seduce them both.

Plot Synopsis

Ebby Calvin “Nuke” LaLoosh is the new hotshit prospect assigned to the Double-A Durham Bulls. He’s got “a million dollar arm and a five cent head.” In lieu of warming up before their first game, he instead takes a ride on Millie, the cute young town bicycle whose daddy donated the scoreboard to the team. Once Ebby finally takes the field, he walks 18, strikes out 18, hits a sportswriter, the public address announcer, and the mascot twice – all league records.

Enter Crash Davis, the “player to be named later” in some obscure trade made by the big club. He’s been busted down from Triple-A to “the bus league” to help LaLoosh’s development and cultivate whatever brains he’s got in that five cent head.

The two meet for the first time at Mitch’s Tavern and fight over the attention of Annie Savoy, the local cougar who chooses one player each season to bang and promises that player he will have the best season of his professional career. As they take it outside, Crash offers to let LaLoosh hit him in the chest with a baseball from about 10 feet away, but LaLoosh, wild as he is and inside his own head, naturally misses and breaks a tavern window. Crash then dings him in the face with a left hook.

Crash and Ebby are chosen as this year’s finalists for Annie’s affection, which Crash kindly turns down offering a hilarious recitation of the things he believes in on the way out. Among them: the cock, the pussy, high fiber, good scotch, that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone, that there ought to be a Constitutional amendment outlawing Astroturf and the designated hitter, and long, slow, deep, soft, wet kisses that last three days.

We then follow the Bulls as they progress through the season and things unfold in a familiar way. First they can’t win, then they can’t lose, then they reach a crisis point, and we reach our resolution. Meanwhile, Crash has grown jealous of Nuke and Annie’s relationship and urged Nuke not to sleep with her while they’re on a winning streak – a fine bit of mindfuckery that serves a dual purpose: it’s a fine nod to baseball superstition, and it keeps Nuke from plowing the woman he’s crushing on.

The winning streak finally ends, Nuke heads to Annie’s house for a little of the old high and inside, but before they get down to business, he gets a call from the manager and finds out he’s headed to the show. Virtually simultaneously Crash finds out he’s been cut as we see the resolution of our two careers.

Nuke heads to the majors and spouts off the clichés Crash taught him (more on that in a second), Crash finds work with the Asheville Tourists (Single-A ball), hits his 247^th homerun – a career minor league record – calls it a career, and ends up with Annie with only the small hope of managing Visalia next year.

Treatment of Baseball/Quality of Baseball Scenes:

ESPN is set to air a documentary series called “30 For 30″ featuring 30 serious Hollywood directors making 30 different documentaries about a subject of their choosing. Guess what subject Bull Durham director Ron Shelton is tackling… If you guessed Michael Jordan’s excursion to Double-A baseball during his first basketball retirement, award yourself a shiny gold star.

Ron Shelton spent five years as a player in the Orioles’ farm system during the late 60s and early 70s, and his experience there emerges in his loving attention to detail in creating Bull Durham. From the cheesy ass promotions like “Hit the bull, win a steak,” to the interminable bus rides between po-dunk former Confederate towns, to Crash Davis’s loving descriptions of not having to carry your own bags and ordering room service in “the show,” virtually every inch of Bull Durham feels authentic. In one particular stroke of genius, Crash teaches Nuke the important clichés to spout off while getting interviewed. Considering no one you know outside of some lame motivational speaker your company hires to talk at the staff meeting speaks in as many clichés as pro athletes, you had to figure someone taught them all this bullshit. Now we know.

The action itself is above average as well. Shelton films the action reasonably wide giving us a good sense of each player’s individual ability. Costner has some outstanding baseball pantomime exhibited best during his confrontation with Susan Sarandon at the batting cages. He ropes a pitch from the automated machine with one hand at the last minute like he’s been doing it his whole life – just the way a career minor leaguer should.

The one problem lies with Nuke LaLoosh. The main problem? Tim Robbins throws like he’s 11 years old, yet we’re supposed to believe he’s a grade-A prospect with a million dollar arm. Additionally, his control problems make Rick “Wild Thing” Vaughn look like 1995 Greg Maddux by comparison. I suspect his exaggerated wildness is done for comedic effect, but in a movie that gets all the tiniest details right, this excessive embellishment feels wildly out of place.

Otherwise, all the foul-mouthed charm, starry-eyed dreams of players on the rise, put-upon weariness of career minor leaguer Crash Davis, and unyielding heat of baseball in the summer in the South are all fully on display here and ring true with pitch perfect clarity.

Annoying Romantic B-Story/Stifling Spouse?

The love triangle between Crash, Nuke, and Annie rests at the heart of our story and serves as one of the primary drivers of the action. So, in that sense, it wouldn’t make sense to refer to it as the “b-story,” but considering our thrust with these reviews is to evaluate primarily the baseball action, love stories take a backseat.

In this case, Susan Sarandon doesn’t detract from the story, she actually adds to it. Her monologue about the Church of Baseball at the beginning is enormously fun to listen to, and gets right to the heart of every baseball fan. Her character is an obvious baseball expert as she encourages Nuke to bend his back on his follow through resulting in his immediate improvement. She connects baseball to spirituality which is something baseball haters never understand, but fans always immediately relate to.

Near the end of the movie, we get a nearly 5 minute sequence of her and Crash doing the nasty all over her house, which, despite this scene primarily involving Susan Sarandon and showing no nudity (I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention you see nipple for about ½ a second though), is ridiculously hot. I’ve never found Sarandon particularly attractive, but damned if I didn’t wish I were Crash during that marathon lovemaking session.

I think we’re supposed to be happy that Crash ends up with Annie at the film’s conclusion, but I would have personally rather seen him get another crack at the show. There’s a ton of cool women in the world, but only one show. And if Annie really were so deeply into Crash, she’d have gone with him anyway.

Final Thoughts

I’m ashamed to admit I hadn’t seen Bull Durham until I watched it for the Summer Homestand series. And I’m now sorry that it took me so long because this movie is uproarious fun. The first two-thirds in particular are fantastic as we get a first hand view of life in the bus leagues complete with all the profanity, all the absurd superstitions, and all the trappings of spinning your wheels while chasing long since past dreams.

The movie races to its resolution a tad hastily, but not unnaturally. The problem is that we’ve built to a climax that comes in the form of a one-sided phone call. It’s a bit unsatisfying, and everything that comes after that feels tacked on because Shelton realized he still had two other characters to resolve and only 15 minutes to do it with.

But that criticism is minor as Bull Durham rivals the first Major League movie in terms of entertaining profanity and exceeds it in quality of baseball scenes. If you’re a schmuck like me and haven’t seen Bull Durham in the 21 years since it was first released, get off your ass, Meat, and don’t bring me that weak ass shit.

Ruling from the Scorer: As Drew Goodman would say, “Take a good look because you won’t see it for long.” This one’s off the foul pole and outta here.

edagger@crujonessociety.com