revisiting bull durham (ron shelton, 1988)

I've watched a lot of baseball movies recently, 7 to be exact (for reasons which will eventually be revealed). Most of them are pretty good ... I like baseball ... well, The Bad News Bears isn't all that great, and I really don't like Field of Dreams. But while I don't expect greatness from baseball movies, I usually enjoy them. Revisiting Bull Durham was a pleasure. I think it's the best of all the baseball movies I watched.

First, writer-director Ron Shelton gets the baseball right. He played minor-league ball, and he knows the milieu. You don't have stuff like Shoeless Joe Jackson batting right-handed, or a drunken Little League coach teaching a kid to throw curveballs. Shelton relies on the ability of Kevin Costner to look like he knows what he's doing with a bat (he even switch-hits). It's not that you decide to watch a baseball movie because Kevin Costner looks comfortable with a bat, and you don't watch A League of Their Own for evidence that Madonna can't play. But since part of the charm of Bull Durham is its feel of veracity, Costner's skills help.

But Bull Durham isn't merely a good baseball movie. The three leads (Costner as an aging ballplayer, Tim Robbins as a rookie pitcher, and Susan Sarandon as a baseball groupie) are not just well-cast ... their performances, and Shelton's writing, raise all three characters above a stereotype. None of the three are "just" their labels ... the aging ballplayer knows a bit about life outside the game, the groupie has a brain and a philosophy, and the rookie ... well, he's kind of a dunce, it's true. The casting matters ... Kevin Costner has always been a handsome guy who looks good on the screen, but his screen persona is kinda vague. It helps when a script gives him direction. (Think of his Untouchables co-star Sean Connery. You could put Connery in anything, and he'd be Sean Connery, and we would recognize that. I haven't the slightest idea who Kevin Costner is, based on his acting career. If he were to play "Kevin Costner", what would that mean? Very little, compared to the presence of someone like Connery.)

And Susan Sarandon triumphs as Annie Savoy. You roll your eyes when Annie appears ... oh god, here comes another groupie with a hot body. But Annie is a real character, Sarandon does wonders with the part, and Bull Durham would be a lesser movie without her. Oh, she has the burden of passing along the "Church of Baseball" malarkey ... that's my least-favorite part of the movie. But she even overcomes that. (Fields of Dreams is uninterested in the playing of baseball ... it's solely concerned with the metaphysics of it all. Despite the Church of Baseball stuff, Bull Durham is about actual people who come together around the game of baseball. It's an important difference.)

Comments

[Diana]

I had a real thing for baseball movies as a teen. Compared them to Westerns in the way there's always a showdown (7th inning or not) with the people watching from the dugout paralleling the townsfolk in the street watching gunslingers.
To be fair, I gravitated to cheesy baseball so The Natural didn't hit my radar until my university years. Rookie of the Year, the Major League movies, Angel in the Outfield. Loved A League of Their Own so much. Field of Dreams was popular with my peer group, but baseball is just a conduit to some intergenerational healing. It could've been any sport that required mowing down a profitable cornfield.
And being a musicals fan, Damn Yankees is up there too even though I don't think you actually see any baseball on-screen. :)

[Steven Rubio]

"Any sport that required mowing down a profitable cornfield." A succinct description of that movie.

[Diana]

I do my best. ;)