This one's a total cutie. America's two favorite pastimes, baseball and sex, combine in Bull Durham, a delightful romantic comedy with a real-life happy ending.Susan Sarandon, in her totally adorable heyday, plays a baseball groupie with a tradition of having an affair with a different player of the Durham Bulls each season. This season, the lucky man has been chosen, but what happens when a new, handsome, charming, sexy coach shows up and throws a wrench in her plans? What a love triangle! Susan Sarandon torn between Tim Robbins and Kevin Costner—get ready for some steamy scenes! And how darling is this: Susan and Tim became real-life sweetie-pies during this movie and became one of the most famous acting couples in America.Between Susan's adorable North Carolina accent and a smart, sexy, and hilarious script, Bull Durham is a must-see. Just make sure to put the kiddies to bed first.Kiddy Warning: Obviously, you have control over your own children. However, due to some pretty steamy sex scenes and language, I wouldn't let my kids watch it.

This is right there with The Natural and Long Gone as one of the three best baseball movies ever made(Ken Burns Doc as well if you were 'counting-it').It's perfect casting all-around. Susan Sarandon, Tim Robbins, Kevin Costner, Trey Wilson, Robert Wuhl, and Jenny Robertson all deserve a mention. All the actors do a great job here.The film captures the small town feel, and to a somewhat regretful yet satisfying degree in terms of movie-enjoyment, the insignificance of minor league baseball.The love triangle between the three stars acts as the backbone for a hilarious script. The road-trip moments, the bar scenes, and the baseball action all seem quite believable/real, and the ending, while somber, works as well.Infinitely re-watchable, funny film about America's pastime, at what for me as a fan is a level that is just as intriguing if not more interesting and intimate than the "big" leagues. Truly great sports movies are few and far in between. This is a pillar.87/100

Bull Durham only received Oscar recognition in one category that of Original Screenplay. But that screenplay is the basis of the film that broke the mold for baseball films.When you think of baseball films you think of heroic type films like the biographical stories of Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Grover Cleveland Alexander and Monty Stratton. Or some funny, but still reverential films like Kill The Umpire or It Happens Every Spring. None of these films will ever have a character like Susan Sarandon, a well known baseball Annie which is what the players have dubbed their groupies. You could never have a character like her with the infamous Code in place. Sarandon is frank, she loves sex, she loves baseball and she sees herself doing her bit for the national past time. Her concentration this year is on Tim Robins who is a promising Sandy Koufax like pitcher before Sandy got control of his pitching and gave us five of the best seasons ever seen before announcing his premature retirement.Also giving Robins his concentration is veteran catcher Kevin Costner hired specifically for that purpose by the Raleigh-Durham Bulls. Between Sarandon and Costner they turn Robins into someone fulfilling his promise. But baseball is a most unsentimental game as Costner knows and Sarandon's avocation is also one with some heartbreak.Best scene in the film is Costner describing what it's like in the Major Leagues, 'the big show'. As he says "the 20 best days in my life". Like actors, athletes on team sports want to play in whatever major leagues there are. If not they're like Costner, hanging on because of the love of the game.Costner has the philosophy of Stan Musial who was quoted as saying he knew it was time to quit because the pain outweighed the fun of getting paid to play a sport. I suspect that Musial would have felt the same had he been a journeyman player like Costner rather than the Hall Of Famer he is.No way that Christian athlete William O'Leary would have been a character in a film made under the Code auspices. Younger groupie Jenny Robertson makes a point of showing him what he's missing.Ron Shelton who was a minor league ballplayer drew from some rich memories of those times to give us Bull Durham. It's both a serious and also irreverently funny look at those who participate in our national past time and the women who service them.

Some kind of classic, "Bull Durham's" an unconventional baseball movie from writer/director Ron Shelton.Unlike most films in the genre, "Bull Durham" lacks a gauzy, sentimental tone, has no time for nostalgia, doesn't overly romanticise the game, is narrated by a woman and focuses on the day-to-day drudgery of life in the minor league circuit. And whilst a disturbingly high number of baseball films indulge in hokey, metaphysical subplots (angels, destiny, vague spiritualism, baseball-as-religion etc), "Bull Durham" parodies such things with conversations about quantum physics, new age religions and its cast of silly, superstitious players.The plot? Susan Sarandon plays Annie Savoy, a teacher and baseball groupie who's stuck in a kind of perpetual adolescence. Trying desperately to prolong the glory days of life on campus, she has a habit of hooking up with young, up-and-coming baseball stars. In this regard she takes Ebby "Nuke" LaLoosh (Tim Robbins) under her wing. Problem is, Nuke is also being groomed by Crash Davis (Kevin Costner), a veteran player who attempts to mould the kid into something special.Costner and Sarandon create a couple of memorable characters. Legs always agape, and with the vampish hunger of a Bette Davis, she's a Southern firecracker who overwhelms men with her sexuality. Opposite her is Costner's Crash. Armed with wit, Cosnter's trademark khaki trousers with pleats, and an endless knowledge of everything from baseball to garter belts, he's a burnt out middle ager who, like Annie, tries to live vicariously through Crash. The film then ends with Crash and Annie, products of a very 1960s credo of eternal youth, turning their backs on the "young man's game". They stop living through surrogates and abandon their hopes of reaching the big leagues.It's an odd way for a sport's film to end. Whilst most in the genre build up to a climactic showdown, "Durhum" sees its heroes fading into anonymity, giving up on eternal youth, appreciating the power of quiet wisdom and sliding into a quiescent, mature relationship. Unsurprisingly, writer/director Ron Shelton played minor league baseball himself during the 1960s.8/10 – Worth two viewings. See "Moneyball".