Because only in America could you find this scenario: a canon-armed but inexperienced hurler nicknamed Nuke (Tim Robbins) on the pitcher’s mound, going into his windup, eyes rolled up in the back of his head because he’s trying to breathe through his eyelids like the lizards of the Galapagos.
Crash, Nuke, and Annie
After 12 tough years as a catcher in the minor leagues, “Crash” Davis (Kevin Costner) gets shunted to this single-A, Durham, North Carolina, farm team to tune up rookie pitcher Ebby Calvin “Nuke” LaLoosh, who’s got “a million-dollar arm and a five-cent head.” Nuke’s got focus issues; his scorching 96 mph fastball is more likely to bean the umpire or the Bull mascot than sizzle over home plate.Annie Savoy is the team’s self-appointed, unofficial trainer. To label her what she really is (a glorified baseball groupie) would be to oversimplify things and also be so devoid of imagination, romance, and fun, that it would be un-American.
Annie, a self-styled serial monogamist, picks herself a summer baseball boyfriend to mentor each spring, giving him the wisdom of her life experience, tweaking his field-of-dreams skill set, and sending him on his merry way at season’s end—hopefully to “The Show” (lingo for the major leagues). As she says, “I know things.”
After Crash and Nuke have an alpha bar-fight for Annie’s attention (actually, Crash is just using the dust-up as a teaching piece to let Nuke know he’s a dimwit in need of mentoring), Annie has both of them over to her place for a boyfriend interview.
Crash is dealing with the fast-encroaching reality that his own dreams of being in “The Show” have been usurped by gigs like his current one.
And while this job of being responsible for transforming a cocky pitching prospect (whom he delights in calling “Meat”) rankles, Crash takes it because of his profound love of every aspect of the lifestyle: obviously, the magic crack of a wooden bat on horsehide, the smell of cut grass, and the glowing dusk bathed in stadium lights.
The Good Stuff
The real fun of “Bull Durham” is the unique artifice of using nonstop inner and outer monologues that put us directly inside Crash and Nuke’s heads when they’re facing down enemy pitchers: “You’re not gettin’ that cheese by me, Meat” (Crash calls everybody who annoys him “Meat”) or running their private self-pep-talks and hilarious, snarky putdowns of opposing team members, or trying to outguess each other from the strike zone and the mound, respectively.Ultimately, it’s these hysterical on-field scenes of the ongoing education of Nuke, by Crash, that constitute the brilliance of “Bull Durham.”
The Heart of the Matter
Men love this film, but the ladies do too: the reason for that being that Costner’s Crash is the classic, cocky (but sensitive) alpha; and a well-read, very funny, mysterious, hard-to-get, soulful, experienced-in-the-game-of-love, wise, dedicated, manly beard-stubbled baseball jock. Very swoon-causing. He also carries that enticing, thoughtful sadness (because he knows he is not destined for greatness). Very irresistible.
“I tried all the major religions and most of the minor ones. I’ve worshiped Buddha, Allah, Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva, trees, mushrooms, and Isadora Duncan. I know things. For instance, there are 108 beads in a Catholic rosary, and 108 stitches in a baseball. When I learned that, I gave Jesus a chance. But, it just didn’t work out between us; the Lord laid too much guilt on me—I prefer metaphysics to theology. See, there’s no guilt in baseball. … I’ve tried ‘em all, I really have, and the only church that truly feeds the soul, day in and day out—is the church of baseball.”
They both know their time is up (his fading athleticism and her fading beauty). As they cozily (and with a shared sense of the ridiculous) discuss why people always think they were famous people in their past incarnations, one gets the feeling that by the conjoining of their intellects, curiosity, and quest for excellence, these two seekers, sooner than later, will discover things like why 108 is a sacred number in Buddhism too.
And why the guilt that Annie fears and avoids is essential to belief: Without it, people won’t learn the laws that govern human existence, and so they must return ad infinitum to painful, meh, Joe-schmo incarnations. They'll have to move beyond the Church of Baseball to figure that out. One gets the sense they eventually will.
