'Bull Durham' has legs 20 years later

It's hard to believe that 20 years ago, few folks outside the Raleigh-Durham triangle of North Carolina had ever heard of the Durham Bulls.

Now the Bulls are virtually a household name, and to many baseball fans, they are synonymous with the Minor Leagues themselves. No team, with the possible exception of the Toledo Mud Hens, is so familiar to so many who otherwise might not know the Minors even exist.

This fall will mark two decades since cameras began rolling on the modest baseball movie that would become a standard-bearer for the genre, one that tops many lists of "greatest sports movies" and is often mentioned as the quintessential film about life in the Minors.

Bull Durham was written and directed by Ron Shelton, an erstwhile Baltimore Orioles farmhand who went on to a successful career off the diamond. After playing for the organization from 1967-71 and rising as high as Triple-A, Shelton found his calling as a writer-director specializing in sports films.

Bull Durham was his third screenplay to be produced and the first he would direct. His other hits include White Men Can't Jump, Tin Cup, Cobb and The Great White Hype, but it's a safe bet that Shelton's directorial debut will rank as his most popular effort.

Filmed in the fall and winter of 1987, Bull Durham combined the classic love triangle with life in the Minors.

In a nutshell: veteran catcher Crash Davis (Kevin Costner), who is gunning for the career Minor League home run title, is sent down to the Class A Bulls to tutor up-and-coming pitching prospect Ebby Calvin "Nuke" LaLoosh (Tim Robbins), ostensibly in baseball, but inevitably in life as well. Both Davis and LaLoosh -- the epitome of the "million-dollar arm and five-cent head" -- become involved with local groupie and woman-of-the-world Annie Savoy (Susan Sarandon).

The film combines the ups and downs of a season in the Minors, of veterans and rookies, of love and lust and universal wisdom. Some of its artistic license pushes the bounds of reality, but much of it rings true.

Shelton's own experience as a second baseman who never quite reached the big leagues gained him the respect of the local pro players who were brought in to serve as extras in the film.

"Ron Shelton was involved with baseball enough that he had a great understanding of what players had to do," recalls Butch Davis, currently the Orioles' roving outfield instructor who appeared in the film.

And it didn't hurt that Shelton also hired as "baseball trainer" and chief consultant a manager in the Atlanta Braves system -- a man named Grady Little, who lived in nearby Pinehurst, N.C. Little, coincidentally, would manage the Durham Bulls the next season and for three more seasons after that, so he had a front-row seat for what would turn out to be Durham Bulls mania.

But in the meantime, he helped recruit local players to join the cast, including Davis, second baseman Kelly Heath (who had one Major League at-bat with Kansas City in 1982) and left-handed reliever Wes Currin, who pitched for the Bulls that season.

But it was Crash Davis and "Nuke" LaLoosh whom the action centered around. LaLoosh was loosely based on former Orioles farmhand Steve Dalkowski, a career Minor Leaguer whose fastball was estimated to top 100 mph (in the days before radar guns). Their careers never crossed -- Dalkowski had already retired when Shelton turned pro -- but the legend lived on, mainly because Dalkowski was as known for his wildness as for his blazing fastball.

LaLoosh's 18 walks and 18 strikeouts in one game, both "league records," was inspired by a similar achievement of Dalkowski in a Connecticut high school game. During his 1960 season in the California League, Dalkowski struck out 262 and walked 262 in 170 innings.

The character of Crash also had roots in Minor League history as Shelton came across the name Lawrence "Crash" Davis while doing some Carolina League research. That former second baseman for the Durham Bulls in the 1940s was not a power threat, however; he just had a catchy name and allowed Shelton to borrow it for the film.

Even before the film was completed, it had a permanent impact on its participants. Robbins and Sarandon met on the set and 20 years later continue to be one of Hollywood's most stable couples. Not surprisingly, both list Bull Durham among their favorite films.

Bull Durham established Costner not only as a superstar and sex symbol, but as an actor adept at playing blue-collar baseball heroes. His next film was Field of Dreams, and a decade later he portrayed aging pitcher Billy Chapel in For Love of the Game. In between, he was twice named one of People magazine's "50 Most Beautiful People."

Supporting actor Robert Wuhl, who played coach Larry Hockett, went on to greater fame as the title character on "Arli$$" (a show that aired on HBO from 1996-2002). In Bull Durham, Wuhl was integral in one of the most memorable scenes -- the conference on the mound where he uttered the immortal line, "Candlesticks always make a nice gift, and uh, maybe you could find out where she's registered, maybe a place-setting or a silverware pattern. Okay, let's get two!"

For the most part, the roles of real-life players were limited to the background -- on the field, on the bus. But Butch Davis got an unexpected moment in the spotlight.

In one scene, a Bulls player was required to strike out, and the one initially selected was a local college player from the University of North Carolina. At the last minute, however, he was replaced with Davis, who swings and misses for strike three, prompting the PA announcer to say, "Too bad, Butch!"

Davis didn't realize until he saw the film, though, that he'd actually been mentioned by name.

"That was a surprise, a total shock," he said. "When I was coaching at (Double-A) Bowie, they would always play it on the video board. A lot of players there didn't know I was in the movie, so when they found out, they'd go and watch it over again and kid me, 'Too bad, Butch!'"

The strikeout notwithstanding, Davis loved the experience, one he was reluctant to do at first. One of the most surprising aspects of filming for him was how kind and down-to-earth the actors were. Costner, for example, rented a house in downtown Durham and frequently hosted parties for everyone on the set, including cast, crew and players.

"It was fun, really fun, and the cast was outstanding," Davis recalled. "I'd never been around movie stars and you'd think they wouldn't relate with us peons, but they made us all feel welcome."

The movie was officially released on June 15, 1988, including a special Durham premiere, but few could have anticipated just how popular it would become.

"When you're going through the process in bits and pieces, you're not really sure what to expect until they put it all together," said Davis. "I went to see it in the theater with my wife, and we were shocked how good it was."

The Durham Bulls organization itself, needless to say, was swept up in Bull Durham mania in the summer of '88. Though the only player on the team who was actually in the movie was Currin, all the players on that squad were treated like movie stars.

Theron Todd, who played in the Durham outfield from 1988-90, remembers it well.

"When the movie came out, there was a media frenzy -- people from all over the country, all over the world, came to see us," recalled Todd. "We were on 'Good Morning America.' We had Miss America come to town. There were a lot of people who wanted to come to the stadium and be a part of the whole thing because of that movie."

In those days at the old DAP (the club moved from Durham Athletic Park to a new facility in 1995), players had to walk through the stands to get to the clubhouses, and Todd estimates it would take 10 minutes to go just a few feet, due to the surge of autograph seekers every night.

While the initial intensity abated, the popularity of Bull Durham remained entrenched. Even after its first run in theaters, the movie's impact on viewers has persisted.

Rod Meadows, who is now the national marketing program director for Minor League Baseball, was the radio voice of the Durham Bulls from 1989-97, and even a year after the movie's release, the élan of being with that club lived on.

"It was a point of pride for everybody who worked there, that if you told your friends you worked for the Durham Bulls, everyone thought it was really cool," Meadows said. "Even when we went on the road, when the team bus pulled into the hotel and people waiting to check in saw it was the Durham Bulls, the name recognition was incredible."

Often, Meadows didn't even have to leave the office to see the impact the team had on the general public.

"Even in the middle of winter, people would literally pull off the interstate, come to the park, knock on the door and ask if they could walk around," said Meadows, who estimates he's seen the movie 15 or 20 times. "Not a week went by when that didn't happen."

Meadows also speculates that the popularity of the Bulls helped spawn a new trend in the Minors -- teams using unique nicknames and logos to help spark the sale of merchandise.

"When teams saw what Durham was doing with merchandise sales with their unique name, I think that kick-started the whole movement of teams having a separate identity," he said.

Bull Durham brought the Minor Leagues to the attention of baseball fans, many of whom may not have understood what life in the Minors was all about. And while many of the scenes took a fair share of artistic license (particularly those in the clubhouse), much of the film's message rang true -- even to the players themselves.

Ask fans to list their favorite scenes, and you'll hear about the "rainout via sprinkler system," the mound conference that discussed proper wedding gifts, the scene where Davis tells an opposing batter what pitch is coming, and dozens of other outrageous scenes.

But for Todd, who finished his playing career in 1992 and has been involved in coaching ever since, his favorite scene is not a comedic one.

"My favorite scene is the end," Todd said. "It's where Crash goes back to the house and realizes what he wants out of life, and is able to let go of that dream, which is hard to do. The stuff on the field, everybody can relate to that. But when it comes down to it, you have to make that decision [to retire] and it's very hard."