Talk:Bull Durham

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Contents

[edit] Extras

I'd like to see an entry for real minor leaguers that were extras in the film. WillC 23:50, 29 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Cultural Impact

The assumptions in this section are absurd without documentation. "Best Sports movie ever"? Maybe a candidate when it first came out and again when it hit cable TV, but it has been eclipsed by many others since then. Resurrected interest in minor league baseball? Says who? A much-greater argument can be made for oddball promotions than for BD. I quote BD all the time but I rarely hear it quoted by others--whereas I hear Office Space, Animal House and Jerry Maguire frequently. This section has the look of a fan's homage to his/her favorite--and therefore is very POV. Also, just info, but AAA is not one step away from the show. Follow baseball for any length of time and you will see that almost all callups now come from double-A ball.--Buckboard 06:55, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

  • "Best Sports Movie ever" is rather overhyped. But since you brought it up, name three that are better. Wahkeenah 12:36, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Who is to say either the Durham Bulls or the Birmingham Barons are the most popular teams in minor league baseball? I imagine they may be the best-known but the numbers in attendance and merchandise would say otherwise in terms of popularity.

[edit] Quotations

I'm pretty sure that all of the quotes cited in the article are already listed in the Wikiquote link located at the bottom of the article but if some are missing, here is the section cut from the article. --J.D. 20:36, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Quotes

 This article or section contains too many quotations for an encyclopedic entry.
Please improve the article or discuss proposed changes on the talk page.
You can edit the article to add more encyclopedic text or link the article to a page of quotations, possibly one of the same name, on Wikiquote. See Wikipedia's guide to writing better articles for further suggestions. (April 2008)
  • "This . . . is a simple game. You throw the ball. You hit the ball. You catch the ball." –Joe Riggins
  • Crash (upon finding out why he was traded to the Bulls):
"So my AAA contract gets bought out so I can hold some flavor of the month's dick in the bush leagues! Is that it?!? Well, fuck this fucking game! I fuckin' quit, mmm? I quit."
(leaves the clubhouse office, slams the door. Pauses, shakes his head in disgust, and re-opens the office door)
"Who we playing tomorrow?"
  • "Why's he always calling me Meat? I'm the one drivin' a Porsche." –Nuke LaLoosh
  • Nuke brags about his signing bonus and the high-end stereo in the new car he bought with the money.
Crash: "Jesus Christ, you don't need a quadrophonic Blaupunkt! What you need is a curveball! Huh? In The Show, everybody can hit a fastball!"
Nuke: "Well how would you know? You been in the Majors?"
Crash: "Yeah, I've been in the Majors . . . I was in the majors for 21 days once - the 21 greatest days of my life. You know, you never handle your luggage in the show, somebody else carries your bags? It was great. You hit white balls for batting practice, the ballparks are like cathedrals, the hotels all have room service, and the women all have long legs and brains.!"
  • Nuke:"How come you don't like me?"
Crash:"Because, you don't respect yourself, and that's your problem. But you don't respect the game, and that's my problem."
  • "Don't think: you can only hurt the ball club." –Crash Davis
  • "Your shower shoes have fungus on them. You'll never make it to the bigs with fungus on your shower shoes. Think classy, you'll be classy. You win twenty in the show, you can let the fungus grow back on your shower shoes and the press'll think you "colorful". Until you win twenty in the show, however, means you're slob." –Crash Davis
  • "Well, I believe in the soul, the cock, the pussy, the small of a woman's back, the hanging curve ball, 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, soft-core pornography, open your presents Christmas morning rather than Christmas Eve and I believe in long, slow, deep, soft, wet kisses that last three days. Goodnight." –Crash Davis
  • Batboy hands pine tar rag to Crash Davis, who is thinking about Annie and having trouble concentrating...
Batboy: "Get a hit, Crash!"
Crash: "Shut up!"
  • "Relax, alright? Don't try to strike everybody out! Strikeouts are boring, and besides that, they're fascist. Throw some ground balls, it's more democratic." –Crash Davis
  • (During a player's conference on the mound): "...candlesticks always make a nice gift, and uh, maybe you could find out where she's registered and maybe a place-setting or maybe a silverware pattern. Okay, let's get two!" –Larry
  • Crash argues a close play at the plate, and is ejected from the game.
Radio announcer: "Crash Davis has been ejected, and frankly, folks, he used a certain word that is a no-no to umpires!"
Millie (listening to radio with Annie): "Crash must've called the guy a cocksucker."
Annie (sighing): "Mmmmm, he's so romantic!"
  • Crash Davis, frustrated with Annie:
Crash: "Who are you, anyway? Do you have a job?"
Annie: "I teach English part-time at Alamance Junior College!"
(The owner of the real-life Bulls also owned the Burlington team, of Alamance County).
  • "This is a simple game. You throw the ball; you hit the ball; you catch the ball" -- Nuke LaLoosh, to reporter in "The Show".
  • "Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, sometimes... it rains. [pause] Think about that." –Nuke LaLoosh
  • "Walt Whitman once said, "I see great things in baseball. It's our game, the American game. It will repair our losses and be a blessing to us." You could look it up." –Annie, last line of the film. Oddly, Whitman never exactly said this: the quote combined two separate statements the writer mentioned regarding baseball.
  • After Nuke declines to take the first swing at Crash, Crash tauntingly tosses Nuke a baseball.
Crash: "Alright then, hit me in the chest with that."
Nuke: "I'd kill you."
Crash: "Yeah? From what I hear, you couldn't hit water if you fell out of a fucking boat. Come on. Right in the chest.
Nuke: "No way.
Crash: "C'mon, Meat. You're not gonna hit me, because you're starting to think about it already. Huh? Thinkin' about how embarrassing it would be to miss in front of all these people, how somebody might laugh. C'mon, rook. Show us that million dollar arm. Cause I gotta . . . oh I gotta good idea about that five cent head of yours."

Nuke throws the ball at Crash, and misses badly.

Crash: "Ball four."
Nuke then charges at Crash, who drops him with one solid punch to the face. Crash bends over to help Nuke up off the ground.
Crash: "I'm Crash Davis, I'm your new catcher, and you just got lesson number one: don't think. It can only hurt the ball club."
  • Nuke has just shaken off Crash's pitch sign. Frustrated, Crash tells the batter what pitch Nuke is going to throw. The batter then hits a home run.
Crash (running out to the pitcher's mound): "Well, he really hit the shit outta that one, didn't he?"
Nuke: "I held it (the ball) like an egg..."
Crash: "Yeah, and he scrambled the sonofabitch. Look at that, he hit the fuckin' bull! Guy gets a free steak!"
  • Nuke: "God, that sucker teed off on that like he knew I was going to throw a fastball!"
Crash: "He did know."
Nuke: "How?"
Crash:"I told him."
  • "Charlie, here comes the deuce. And when you speak of me, speak well"–Crash Davis, to the hitter after Nuke once again starts shaking off the signs.
  • "Man that ball got outta here in a hurry. I mean anything travels that far oughta have a damn stewardess on it, don't you think?"–Crash Davis
  • "Isn't this just the damnedest season that could be? The Durham Bulls can't lose, and I can't get laid!" –Annie, after being turned down by both Nuke and Crash.
  • Crash calls for a curve ball, but Nuke shakes off the pitch twice.
Crash: "Hey! HEY! Why are you shaking me off?"
Nuke (getting in Crash's face): "I want to bring the heat and announce my presence with authority!"
Crash: "Announce your fucking presence with authority? This guy is a first ball, fast ball hitter! He's looking for heat!"
Nuke: "Well he hasn't seen my heat!"
Crash: "All right, Meat, show him your heat."
Crash walks back towards the box.
Crash (to the batter): "Fast ball comin'."

[edit] Unsourced Trivia

I'm moving this section here until this stuff can be integrated (if possible) in other sections. -J.D. 23:57, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Trivia

  • During his famous rant, Crash Davis comments that he believes ". . . Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone . . ." in the JFK assassination. In 1991, Kevin Costner appeared in JFK as a District Attorney determined to indirectly prove Oswald was part of a larger conspiracy.
  • Crash yells at Nuke about messing up the lyrics to "Try a Little Tenderness". In the movie "The Upside of Anger", Kevin Costner plays a former baseball player. At a wedding the singer starts singing "Try a Little Tenderness", after singing the first verse, the singer looks like he forgets the words and starts humming.
  • In the scene in which the bat boy gives Crash the pine tar rag and tells him to "get a hit", Kevin Costner ad-libbed the line "Shut up." The actor playing the bat boy wasn't expecting the line, thought Costner was being serious, and burst into tears.
  • The note that Crash writes to Annie actually reads "Let's fuck sometime," not "I want to make love to you", as Millie reads. It can be seen over Crash's right shoulder when he writes the note in the dugout.
  • The movie states that Crash Davis has 227 minor league home runs and needs twenty more to break the all-time minor league home run record. After hitting home run number 247 (but not with the Durham Bulls), Davis leaves baseball. However, the actual minor league home run record is 484, held by Héctor Espino, who played for 24 years in the Mexican League between 1960 and 1984. Espino played in the American minor league system briefly in 1964, but was offended by racial discrimination and returned to Mexico to finish his career there. (He hit no major league home runs.) Even discounting Mexican League players, Davis's 247 minor league home runs wouldn't put him in the current top ten list of all-time minor league home runs.
  • Although the Durham Bulls were a farm team of the Atlanta Braves when the movie was filmed, Nuke's "major league" interview takes place in Arlington Stadium, the former home of the Texas Rangers.
  • In a famous sex scene, Costner lifts up sarrandon's dress and unsnaped her stockings that Robbins failed to do earlier, a second later Costner unbuttoned the back of her dress and viewers saw that Sarrandon was wearing black Jockey Panties. People did not know if she was wearing a bra or not 'Cause the unbuttoning of the dress was edited down from 10 seconds to 5 seconds.

[edit] IMDB info

As per the comments in the Peer Review, I've removed the Production info that was lifted out of the IMDB and placed it here until it can be properly sourced as info in the IMDB is notoriously unreliable.--J.D. (talk) 17:46, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

According to the Internet Movie Database, filming was done after the close of the regular season, during September and October of 1987. The length of the shadows during the day games subtly give away the time of year. Durham Athletic Park was, of course, used for most of the baseball action. There were also scenes filmed in other Carolina League cities, although one establishing shot of War Memorial Stadium in Greensboro, North Carolina was erroneous, because Greensboro's club was and is in the South Atlantic League. Also, Nuke's Major League interview at the end was shot in Arlington Stadium, the former home of the Texas Rangers.

The Durham Bull sign, once a staple at ballparks everywhere, was built specifically for the movie. Once filming was done, the bull was retained as a decoration, albeit in foul territory, and with a simple "Let's Go Bulls" instead of "Hit Sign Win Steak". Like the Hollywood Sign, this Durham Bull was not originally intended to be a long-lasting artifact, and was eventually replaced by a sturdier version. The new Durham Bulls Athletic Park also features the Durham Bull.

Aside from the sliding routine, the "rainout" scene was based on an actual event. In the late 1960s, Shelton played minor-league ball in the Texas League. Shelton's team was in Amarillo, Texas for a season-ending series. The night before the final game, Shelton, some teammates and some Amarillo players were out partying and decided to go to the stadium and turn on the sprinkler system, thereby flooding the field and ensuring a "rainout." However, the Amarillo team owner rented a helicopter, dried the field, and the game was played.