Kevin Costner and Susan Sarandon in “Bull Durham.” (Courtesy of MGM Home Entertainment) I love a lot of things about the Fourth of July, among them fireworks, the opportunity to celebrate the things that are great about the United States, the fact that I finally own a grill and will be making many slabs of ribs on it, and the opportunity to make bourbon punch and sip it slowly all day. But this year, because July 4 comes shortly after the release of the truly dreadful “Independence Day: Resurgence,” I’ve found myself thinking about what to tell you to watch if you’re in the mood for a patriotic movie, something that doesn’t reduce the idea of America to punching an alien in the face (or, for that matter, peeing on an alien spaceship). And for this particular moment, at which America really collectively seems to need a break, I can’t think of a better movie to watch over this particular long weekend than “Bull Durham,” Ron Shelton’s 1988 movie about Annie Savoy (Susan Sarandon), a minor-league baseball fanatic who, over the course of a season, finds herself torn between veteran catcher Crash Davis (Kevin Costner) and promising rookie pitcher Ebby Calvin LaLoosh (Tim Robbins). Yes, I know baseball isn’t really the national sport anymore. But “Bull Durham” is a delightful eccentricity of a movie, one that reminds us that feminist intellectuals live in small towns, that professional athletes can have opinions about Susan Sontag just as well as they can be dopes, and that great sex and deep religious belief can be perfectly compatible. It’s an argument that the best way to life your life — or to play the game of baseball — is “with fear and arrogance,” which is about as good an approach to the American idea as I can imagine. And it has perhaps the greatest, most surprising locker room pep talk scene in all of sports movies. If you have kids, I’d hold off until they’re in their early teens: “Bull Durham” is frank about sexuality, and even a little kinky. But if you’re looking to worship at the Church of Baseball or just to spend a couple of hours loving America in all of its complexity and silliness, you can’t do better than to revisit “Bull Durham,” or to watch it for the first time. |
