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Every
boy, including yours truly, grew up playing baseball. From the ages of 5-12, I played T-Ball &
then Little League. How talented was
I? Well, let’s just say there is a
reason I stopped playing at twelve and turned my attention to movies. But one of those great memories I have is
being 12 in the bottom of the sixth down a run with a runner on second &
one out. Under the lights, I swing at
the first pitch I saw and laced it into center field. Not a home run, but enough for a hit to
record my first (and only) double of my baseball life. The next batter, my brother, smacked grounder
passed the first baseman and I came in to score. Baseball, at that age – no matter how badly
the teams are skewed – is sports in its most pure form.
But
it didn’t used to be that way. Baseball,
as a whole, was pure. Baseball used to
be played. Baseball used to be king. Then money reared its ugly head. Money canceled the World Series. Money became the motivation. Money demanded that players’ performances be
enhanced. Baseball, for all the wrong
reasons, became European football: the rich run the joint and the smaller teams
just exist.
Like
I said, it didn’t always use to be that way.
BULL DURHAM shows baseball in its purest form: 1980’s minor league
baseball. The place is Durham, North
Carolina and the team is the Durham Bulls.
The Bulls have their passionate fans but none more so than Annie (Susan
Sarandon). Annie is the parish president
of the “Church of Baseball”. Every year,
she takes a different player “under her wing” and attempts to improve his game,
with the added benefit of sex. The two
prospects: Ebby LaLoosh (Tim Robbins), a young, slightly erratic pitcher with
sights on “The Show” and Crash Davis, an aging catcher who has spent most of
his career in the minors; Annie chooses Ebby.
Ebby, now nicknamed “Nuke”, has a second mentor in Crash, who is responsible
for showing “Nuke” the ropes of professional baseball, especially when it comes
to how to act in “The Show”. Will Nuke
make “The Show”? Can Crash get back to
his former glory? Can Annie & Crash
co-exist?
Luckily,
none of those questions is really an issue.
What we get is a real treat. BULL
DURHAM has three real people in a grown up movie. Not just characters, characters who could be
people you or I could meet in a minor league baseball town. Annie is a real fan of her team but not
afraid to criticize but in a constructive way.
But she is also a woman who is alone but not completely lonely. Nuke is unprepared & immature but he’s
not stupid. He knows what he has and
what’s missing from his arsenal but he never is afraid of nor acts negatively
towards change, just awkwardly reacts to certain tactics. And Crash knows who he is & what he is in
Durham for and does it. It is only after
he is no longer needed that he feels betrayed & angry. But he doesn’t seek revenge. Instead, he moves on.
BULL
DURHAM could not have been made today.
First, baseball, like I said above, has changed for the worse. But most importantly, with how Hollywood runs
today, nothing would fit together.
First, no studio on Earth would give a first-time director a medium-low
budget with total creative control for a baseball movie that is about baseball
as much as BOOGIE NIGHTS is about pornography (but I’ll get to that
later). Second, every cliché in the book
would be thrown in by script doctors.
Annie & Crash would hate each other at first. Crash & Nuke would turn on each other at
the end of the second act. The Durham
Bulls would be a rag tag team, brought together around young Nuke, until he is
sent to “The Show”. The Bulls looked
doomed until Crash rallies them just in time for “the big game”.
Luckily, none of this
happens. Instead, we get a movie about
three people at a real crossroads in each of their lives. A movie about how you’re never too old to
continue to grow up. And on the
outskirts, we get grown men and the joy they get from being together &
playing a child’s game. The same kind of
joy I got as a youngster on the outfield grass or batters’ box. The same joy I get every time the end credits
roll on a great movie, like BULL DURHAM.
****1/2
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