Bull Durham (1988) is the Best Baseball Movie Because it’s Barely Even About Baseball

Perhaps the easiest entry into film criticism (or any art critique) is to question what the film is “about” beyond its surface-level characteristics. “Unpacking,” as my English teachers would say.

And let’s be honest, it’s pretty easy to unpack sports movies. Because if a sports movie isn’t “about” something beyond the sport it’s showcasing then it’s just…the sport itself. You’re just watching the games and matches at that point, or something like Hard Knocks at best. So yes, every sports movie is obviously about something beyond that sport, even if it’s something convenient like “perseverance” or “teamwork” or “community.”

But Bull Durham might be the sports movie that is the least “about sports” while still being about sports. And that’s why it’s the greatest baseball movie of all time (and possibly the greatest sports movie of all time—no, I will not debate you).

In fact, Ron Shelton deconstructs the game right in front of our eyes throughout the film. “This is a simple game,” the Bulls manager tells us. “You throw the ball, you hit the ball, you catch the ball.” And then Nuke LaLoosh repeats that sentiment at the end and adds a poetic echo to it: “Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, sometimes it rains.” Then Nuke adds a brilliant little coda at the end: “Think about that for a while.”

I love that line. In the moment, it makes Nuke look foolish by espousing faux wisdom that he hasn’t really considered beyond the surface. But it does actually encourage us to, you know, think about it. If not for a while, then at least for a minute.

Just like any sport, baseball is, of course, more complex than its most basic tenets. There’s the scoring, the penalties, the strategy, and the utter weirdness that accompanies a game with no clock and no roof. I don’t actually watch it much anymore, but it’s that last thing that I still find so endearing about baseball.

I am far from the first person to say or think this, but what I love about baseball is that it’s the sport that most closely mirrors real life.* There’s the wealth gap between the highest and lowest payrolls that almost always factors into the playoffs, if not the eventual championship.** There’s the fact that it’s outdoors and on real grass so you get things like squirrels and bees and exploding birds.*** And then there’s the absence of a time limit; you can run out the clock in most sports, but baseball is never, ever over ‘til it’s over.

And Shelton’s terrific script really nails the mundanity of not just the sport as a whole but life in the minor leagues. The story is so character-driven that we don’t even care if the Bulls are winning or losing—as Costner points out, success in the minor leagues is dubious anyway. The real successes of the story, then, are personal victories for the characters we’ve come to know, whether they’re enjoying emotional growth or falling in love or finding religion. And to Shelton’s credit, the narrative is presented from the point of view of Susan Sarandon’s character, which colors the perspective in a more complex and intelligent manner.****

So remember, reader. One team will win the World Series this year, and 29 teams will fall short of their ultimate goal. But maybe the real victory is the friends (and lovers) we meet along the way.

*I was picturing Dani Rojas saying “Baseball is life!!!” when I wrote this, and if you watch Ted Lasso, I bet you are now too.

**This year, the highest payroll in the league (the Los Angeles Dodgers) is more than nine times the size of the league’s smallest payroll (the Baltimore Orioles). Trevor Bauer is gonna make more in 2022 than every Oriole combined. “Think about that for a while.”

***Randy Johnson annihilating a bird with a fastball is still, to me, the craziest sports thing to ever have happened. The odds are absolutely astronomical.

****I’m not sure that Ron Shelton is a feminist exactly, but there’s a moment in White Men Can’t Jump that is one of the best instances, from my admittedly limited understanding, of a man providing genuine complexity for a female character.

Bull Durham is available on the Criterion Channel, Showtime, and Hoopla, and it’s available to rent elsewhere.