I can’t trust somebody who says Bull Durham is unrealistic.
At my undisclosed job in an undisclosed location in the South, I have a boss who fancies himself an amateur film critic. There are a couple of folks in the office who love discussing movies in rich detail beyond just the plot. They analyze the composition of films, the cinematography, the brilliance of Roger Deakins, among other topics – including how Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice turned the Caped Crusader into a meat-headed roided-out mass murderer while simultaneously rendering Batfleck unable to determine that the White Portuguese isn’t a goddamn alias but a ship docked in Gotham Harbor (this was a real conversation).
One day, my boss Siskel and another self-styled Ebert were talking about the 1988 classic starring Kevin Costner, Susan Sarandon, and Tim Robbins in their prime. The details aren’t important, but a few lines stood out.
“The Annie Savoy character is just obnoxious,” Roper-lite said. “And I don’t find the movie that realistic to how baseball actually is.”
“Yeah, I don’t get the sense that this is what baseball is actually like,” remarked Siskel, agreeing that the film didn’t capture the essence of the game we all love.
Now, I make these two out to be overly pompous and high-brow but in reality they’re quite smart men with dumbfounding opinions on one particular film that I (and the majority of actual baseball players) happen to adore, but whom I otherwise respect in terms of their baseball and movie fandom.
Then again, I did work in the minors for seven months.
I know enough to say with confidence that Bull Durham, while still Hollywood, isn’t too far off the mark.
During my stint in the minors deep in the heart of #MAGA Land, I lived the life of a poorly paid “assistant” which meant I was an intern with a monthly stipend. I barely made enough money to cover the rent on an apartment that was actually one elderly couple’s moldy basement with an infestation of crickets. Of all the insects in the world, I wish I had kept them in exchange for the current roach issues I deal with today.
But I digress.
My brief time in the league gave me an insight into the game that I had dreamed of gaining access to from the time I could start walking. And what I found was a lot of that same wonder I enjoyed while watching baseball with my father during my youth.
I also learned that the game I hold so dear is wasted on the saddest bunch of dullards one could possibly think of, and worse.
My boss was from west of the Mississippi, where he had worked before arriving to our club. He’d had experience working on the west coast, so ownership brought him in to run their newly-acquired team. He was a solid guy, generous with buying his employees drinks at company outings, and was (is) a generally decent man.
He was also a fucking jag-off of a manager.
Anytime I saw him at his desk, he’d be in the same position: feet up, chair leaned fully back, staring at his phone. Now, it’s safe to assume he was reading emails and important notes from meetings, phone calls, etc. Along with his tendency of swearing like a sailor, it just gave off the wrong vibe, a message of nonchalance that never sat well with me. I believe the main problem with Popeye was his brash swashbuckling style rubbing the locals the wrong way. These fans, if you could bestow upon them such a moniker, had an issue with getting rid of general admission seats in favor of new numbered assigned seating throughout the stadium. Despite being literally cheaper, they complained.
The team toyed with the idea of changing the name of the club ahead of a redesign. Merely flirting with re-branding nearly caused a…
Well, let’s face it, these “fans” were too fickle to care that much about the colors or the team for that matter. The Facebook comments on our post announcing the name-change poll were hilariously over-the-top, but it wasn’t like the office was getting inundated with a steady stream of death threats. And that’s precisely due to the fact that the city didn’t really like the team. Never mind that a local college was buying up acre after acre of the town to re-fashion in its own image. The people who went to the stadium bitched and whined and moaned about the change, claiming that it was all a cash grab, trying to rob them of their hard-earned money. The most venom we received was from a season ticket holder who was offended that our on-field MC had her hands folded behind her back during the National Anthem. She wasn’t even kneeling, but this woman would have you believe our colleague was Che Guevara. This was the type of unimportant shit that riled up the natives.
I concussed myself running on the slick tarp at the end of a miserable rain-drenched week of rainout after rainout after rainout. I missed the entire weekend thanks to this poorly-timed (and incredibly mild) brain injury. But with an attorney in the family, I was advised to take worker’s comp for the lost days of work.
Popeye didn’t appreciate this.
“Are you SERIOUS?! Really? How much?”
To be clear, the team was insured. This wasn’t coming out of his pockets, and even if it did, it wasn’t more than a thousand dollars. On the whole, I didn’t even cost $7,300, worker’s comp included. I was paid a fixed income of $750 a month, no minimum wage or overtime during the 8-12 hour days on homestands or the regular 9-5s when the team was on the road. I was but a drop in the bucket for this small-town club with brand-new bigwig owners of multiple minor league franchises across several leagues and sports. What I cost was never in 1 million years going to sink the team.
Yet, as I live and breathe, I’m convinced that Popeye never forgave me for this.
I didn’t do myself any favors, I’ll be the first to admit. I often hid away in the press box fixing the comedically-horrendous WinAmps music library that hadn’t been organized during its possible 8-10 years of use. I was relegated to such duty though thanks to the concussion. So, in the end, I was damned if I did or damned if I didn’t. Physical labor made me a liability. The lack of physical labor made me expendable.
I had a shit attitude after months of this dragging on, working long days and getting nothing but the opportunity to look at a beautiful mountain range in the distance every day at work. I’d also inhale the stale musty stench of our offices with tones of wasted dreams mixed with sweat and a je ne sais quoi not all that dissimilar to the at times bumpkin-y backwoods feel of Bull Durham.
I don’t portend to be the smartest guy in the room, nor do I think that I have an otherworldly in-depth knowledge of the game and how it works. Then again, I have an adequate grasp of basic math.
When I started that season, our office had a secretary, two salesmen, a groundskeeper, the general manager, promotions director, concessions manager, and a ticket office manager/assistant GM, the latter two of whom crossed paths with Popeye before. We also had one broadcaster, and one clubhouse manager with Popeye as team president. Along with the full-time staff, we had seven interns (myself included) and our aforementioned Communist of an on-field MC/team reporter.
Before the first game of the season, the secretary was fired (Ms. Guevara became her successor), and the groundskeeper resigned.
Mid-season, both salesmen left for greener pastures, and were replaced by two new guys.
All but two interns returned for the following season.
As of this writing, only Popeye, one accounting intern, and one of the mid-season sales team replacements remain. The rest, long gone and replaced (in some cases twice) by new successors.
I don’t blame Popeye alone for the state of that team. It’s not like he could magically wave a wand and make Minor League Baseball affordable for its employees – players included. But the fact that the entire office was purged in less than five years proves my point.
Baseball is wasted on idiots.
Crash Davis knew this.
Nuke LaLoosh is a young buck with a “million-dollar arm and five cent head,” as noted by Robert Wuhl’s character, Larry. Having caught the pitcher throughout the season, a frustrated Crash tells Nuke that he doesn’t respect himself or the game. “You got a gift,” he laments. “When you were a baby, the gods reached down and turned your right arm into a thunderbolt. You got a Hall-of-Fame arm, but you’re pissing it away.”
The brash LaLoosh shoots back, “I ain’t pissing nothing away. I got a Porsche already.”
Too often in this game, people look for the Porsche when they need the wherewithal to understand the Honda Civic they’re driving in the first place. That’s pretty much the current state of baseball.
Over the past month, MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred as rattled his sabers, threatening to shut down 42 Minor League clubs, and even to spurn the entirety of MiLB altogether. Keep in mind that as of now, teams can call up prospects from the minors by selecting and purchasing their contracts at affordable rates. They don’t have to deal with posting fees as seen with Japanese players looking to cash into baseball’s dominion in the States. They seldom get much push-back from agents or other interested parties. They make the call, the kid comes up from Iowa, and he suits up for however long the team needs him. They send him down, and until he runs out of options, the team can do so freely as often as they want.
There is no telling the damage Manfred’s myopic power grab would do to this process. Sure, the current guys in the league would mostly be fine. But when it’s time to usher in young players who’ve paid their dues, how much will it cost the big club to call them up? At what cost does baseball consolidate power for the ease of ownership? In what universe does rattling the cages of these small-town clubs in flyover country benefit anyone but Manfred and his cronies? It seems like a whole lot of fuss over something that works well enough.
Why nuke it all?
Towards the end of the film as Crash comes back to Durham after finishing his season elsewhere, Annie narrates that the world, baseball being implied, “…is made for people who aren’t cursed with self-awareness.”
I read this to mean that fools and blowhards seem to have their pick of the litter in life. Baseball is life – it’s unpredictability, the ups and downs of a nine-inning contest or even the months-long slog of the season, the constant reminder that what comes up must come down. And in life, it’s as though the folks who take their existence for granted are propped up by the labor of those who care.
Perhaps baseball isn’t my calling. Maybe I’m too self-aware for my own good.
But if Bull Durham isn’t realistic, than reality is Hollywood fantasy.
Diary of a Mad Millennial 