Bull Durham (1988)

directed by Ron Shelton

Danielle Gutierrez

Only 11 players in the history of MLB have hit three home runs in a single postseason game. The list includes Reggie Jackson, Albert Pujols, and Babe Ruth, the only guy to do it twice.

In October 2021, Chris Taylor joined the club, and I was at Dodger Stadium when it happened—Game 5 of the NLCS against the Braves. He hit three homers and racked up 6 RBIs, pushing us to an 11-2 win that night. After the game I ate tacos and kissed a boy. We got eliminated in Game 6.

Here’s the thing: I used to fall asleep in church, the Catholic variety. As a kid, I didn’t get it. I simply saw it as a place where you couldn’t laugh, it smelled like an old wooden chest, and they were always shoving too many words into verses. It was an unconvincing argument for the divine. But, you ever see a man hit three home runs? It’ll make you believe in God.

*

This is all very Annie Savoy of me, of course. In her sexy, adopted Southern twang, Susan Sarandon opens Bull Durham with a tribute to “The Church of Baseball,” calling it “the only church that truly feeds the soul.” A church worthy of the candlelit altar she keeps in her bedroom—right next to the rope she uses to tie hot, ball-playing men to her bedpost. (The altar might be a funny bit for me to try.)

You could call me a new recruit. It took being in a dark tunnel—namely fall 2020—for me to see the light in the form of the LA Dodgers. When you’re trapped in your desert hometown, unemployed, and waiting for things to happen in a world that’s losing hope, it’s easy to find it in baseball, a game full of magical moments, cosmic misfortune, and old-timey lore literally involving black cats. Baseball has a way of making you feel like the secret to life is pixie dust.

Actually, I’ve done the math (appropriate for a game that relies on decimals and fractions and probability), and at 162 games per season, roughly three hours per game, baseball is the only professional sport that’s asking fans to spend 20 days of their lives each year watching a bunch of guys bat around, doing Looney Tunes-ass shit like this. And that’s not even counting the postseason. Now that’s true, biblical devotion.

So fine, with all respect and admiration to my favorite player Chris Taylor, I don’t know that swinging a bat real good is proof of God. But it’s certainly proof of something—not just good mechanics and a clear head. Something to believe in whenever spring rolls around. Bull Durham is a movie most concerned with that “something.”

Through the steamy love triangle of Sarandon’s Annie, Tim Robbins’s Nuke LaLoosh, and Kevin Costner’s Crash Davis, the central question of Bull Durham is indeed, “What do you believe in?” For our trio, yes, it’s baseball. It’s sex. It’s superstitions that involve cutting the head off a live rooster. But I’d say that mostly, it’s romance—both the lovin’ kind and the everyday kind.

*

A couple of years ago, I said something self-deprecating to my boss about caring a lot about baseball. She responded, “No, there’s a poetry to baseball. Some get it, some don’t.” First off: bless her soul, but also, I’d apply the same to everyday romance. Some get it, some don’t.

I fear this would all be news to the guy who was very confused by the pie and coffee diner date I took him on. We made pleasantly dull conversation and he proceeded to leave me in the cold as I waited a whole, whopping three minutes for my Uber.

I’ve consulted several dictionaries in an attempt to find an accurate definition of this type of “romance.” Like all beautiful things, words don’t quite capture it.

Oxford says it’s “an air, feeling, or sense of wonder, mystery, and remoteness from everyday life.” Merriam-Webster calls it “an emotional attraction or aura belonging to an especially heroic era, adventure, or activity.” Dictionary.com describes it as “the attractive, partly imagined character or quality of something, that suggests adventure, heroism, excitement, glamor, and distance from the everyday.”

I didn’t want my romance to be the stuff of fantasy. So in the name of Annie Savoys and Crash Davises everywhere, I consulted one more reference: Urban Dictionary.

Amongst the definitions involving baby oil and carrying on “like rabbits” was one that caught my eye. In 2006, a user named ”ur more gay that robin” defined romance as “the most weirdest yet exiting feeling ever to be felt in this universe [sic].” I’d like to give “ur more gay that robin” a fist bump.

Crash understands everyday romance, the kind that exists all around us. He says as much in his famous “What Crash Believes” monologue. 

Finding herself attracted to both the himbo pitcher Ebby Calvin LaLoosh (later nicknamed “Nuke”) and the brooding catcher Crash Davis, Annie brings both home to decide who to take under her wing for the season. Obviously we’re thinking—wishing, hoping—“threesome, threesome, threesome!” But Crash sees himself out instead, not wanting to play her game. He doesn’t believe in it. What does he believe in, Annie asks?

“Well, I believe in the soul. The cock, the pussy, the small of a woman's back, the hangin' curveball, high fiber, good scotch. That the novels of Susan Sontag are self-indulgent overrated crap. I believe Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. I believe there ought to be a Constitutional amendment outlawing Astroturf and the designated hitter. I believe in the sweet spot, softcore pornography, opening your presents Christmas morning rather than Christmas Eve, and I believe in long, slow, deep, soft, wet kisses that last three days.”

And with that, he says goodnight and takes off into the evening. Scorpio behavior, if I’ve ever seen it.

*

I’d like to be a Nuke LaLoosh—born hot and talented and not “cursed with self-awareness.” What a luxury it would be to blissfully chew bubblegum and sing the wrong lyrics to Otis Redding songs. But despite having both a Moon and Venus in Leo, a 94% tendency toward introversion on my Myers-Briggs, and an affiliation with The Church of Baseball, I do think I’m essentially a Crash Davis, down to his pool-playing and whiskey-drinking. The earthbound romantic.

Because while God never caught on for me, I do believe in romance—of all kinds. The kind that exists in the very walls and seats of Dodger Stadium. Romance as something unquantifiable, a daily constant you choose to recognize as beautiful. It’s the underground train emerging from the tunnel, a handwritten note on the flap of a used book. It’s being near someone and desperately wanting to make contact with their left elbow. It’s the fact that if you succeed at home plate just 30% of the time, you’re in the Hall of Fame.

All of that’s been easier to believe in than what I’ve got floating around on Hinge these days.

*

Without quoting the other baseball movie I’m not currently writing about—and in a formal apology to the man who took me on a surprise (red flag) first date to a Yankee game before I was into the sport—I will reaffirm that when it comes to baseball, romance and gameplay are one and the same. (Remember the three home runs?) I don’t want to watch dudes tackle each other. I wanna see them run around a diamond, for god’s sake.

One of the more famous moments in Dodger history is the call Vin Scully made at the end of Game 1 of the 1988 World Series—Kirk Gibson’s walk-off home run. You might know the story: with two outs in the 9th, Tommy Lasorda brings in the injured Kirk Gibson to pinch hit. Gibson gets the count to 3-2, then swats a backdoor slider into the right field stands. Stuff you can’t write.

Yes, it’s Scully’s “in a year that has been so improbable” line that gets the most airplay. But after letting the scene play out, he follows with this:

“I said it once before, a few days ago, that Kirk Gibson was not the Most Valuable Player. That the Most Valuable Player for the Dodgers was Tinkerbell. But tonight I think Tinkerbell backed off for Kirk Gibson.”

Not to spread propaganda, but when a man says lightning bolt, poetry-as-language, spiritual awakening shit like that, how could you not make baseball a way of life? Every broadcast was a goddamn sermon with Scully in the booth.

*

So what do you do when confronted with the terrifying prospect of real, lovin’ romance? Not baseball, not the daily wonder of a speck of dust, but something decided.

If you're Crash Davis, you don’t have time for games. Having been burned by baseball enough times, Crash isn’t one to wait for stars to align. When the Durham Bulls are deep into a losing streak and in need of a night off and a pick-me-up, he doesn’t close his eyes and pray for rain. In maybe the hottest thing he does the entire movie, he manufactures a rainout by rigging the sprinklers. The team slip-n-slides the night away, bellies full of cheap beer. He’s the same way when it comes to the laws of attraction — it’s why he makes that dramatic list of favorite things speech.

It’s also where he and I part ways. I’m far too lazy to manifest things, romance especially. I’ll cry every 7th-inning stretch and make instant decaf in simply for the vibe, but when it comes to matters of the heart? I suppose Annie is more my speed.

Because if you’re Annie Savoy, you hide behind the stupid cosmos and say “nobody on this planet ever really chooses each other… it's all a question of quantum physics, molecular attraction, and timing.” Annie chooses Nuke for the season because he follows the rules she made up for her sex life — one guy per season, can’t hit under .250 unless he’s got a great glove, and could use her help both on the field and in bed. (“He fucks like he pitches. Sorta all over the place.”)

But Crash is the man Annie needs. He’s a little bitter, a little fiery. Still he challenges Annie intellectually and grounds her in reality while she can’t help gazing at the stars. They’re terrified of what it would mean to decide on each other because baseball is a safety net for both of them, a replacement for creating romance and magic of their own. It’s not until they free themselves from the game that they finally can.

And if you’re me? Along with browsing bookshops and sipping whiskey, you’ll do what you always have.

In passive pursuit of real romance, I’ll keep turning away fellas who won’t wait three minutes with me for a car. And wishing good tidings to the nice men who ask for my number in the deli section and listening to designer boys rattle off everything they know about typography and turning down the guy on the airplane who invited me to a gig and telling everyone about that one date who ate a banana at the bar. And I’ll keep ruining my week reading about twin flames and horoscopes.

But mostly, I’ll be waiting for spring to come.

Danielle Gutierrez lives in Brooklyn, where she writes about sound for a music company and reviews horror films for Downright Creepy. She spends most days thinking very hard about performance studies and the genius of Charles Grodin. @dmariegutierrez