Sports (pt. IV)

Bull Durham

Field of Dreams

Happy New Year, dear readers! 2025 greeted me with one of the worst cedar allergy attacks of my 28-years of allergy suffering, so we’re already off to an eventful start. Despite the increase in allergens due to climate change, despite the incoming second term of the orange commander in queef, despite the rumors that Timothée Chalamet knocked up K*lie J*nner, I still sincerely hope that 2025 is somehow better than 2024. There are many battles ahead of us, dearest readers, and we’ve yet to even really dive into Awards Season, but thankfully there are always more healing, calming movies to be watched along the way. I’m still recovering from my allergy hangover and my exploration of apocalyptic movies last week, so let’s ease into this new year with another round of movies about sports. That never feels any less weird or foreign to type, as an un-athletic, indoorsy person, but being that this is now my fourth sporty double feature, I’ve learned that I do randomly like quite a few sports films. This tradition began on my sports-loving dad’s birthday in 2021, when I finally gave in to watching two of his favorite sports movies, and much to my surprise, I was thoroughly entertained and shockingly charmed by them. As with any other hyper-specific, impossibly-niche subgenre I formulate my double features around, sports films are often about more than just sports (thank god) and can find clever ways to be more interesting than watching actual sports. Tonight’s double feature revolves around the sport of baseball, but one is about the intersection of baseball and sex, the other is the intersection of baseball and magic. And both feature Kevin Costner in a lead role with a love interest named Annie. Again, my psychic intuition doesn’t seem to help with lottery tickets or gambling or any tangible success, but only in the realm of picking movies that are cosmically-aligned. Up first is a film that is beloved by baseball fans and sex fiends alike, directed by Ron Shelton (who directed one of last year’s selections: White Men Can’t Jump), this is the 1988 film Bull Durham. Partly based on Shelton’s own experience playing in the minor leagues the real-life team from Durham, North Carolina, Bull Durham introduces us to Annie Savoy (Susan Sarandon), a legendary baseball groupie who narrates this film. She says, “I believe in the church of baseball. I tried all sorts of religions…but the lord laid too much guilt on me.” Annie says she prefers metaphysics to religion anyway, and each season when she takes a different baseball player as a lover, they end up playing their best season ever. Annie offers them more than just pleasure, but wisdom and perspective as well. She reads Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson to them, expanding their minds, making them feel confident, and in return Annie gets to watch a successful and satisfying season of her favorite sport. I’m not big into baseball or religion, but I was immediately sold on her favorite pastime(s), because sports are so naturally ritualistic, full of traditions and superstitions, and concerning levels of loyalty. Annie maintains the balance in her athletic community, and proves herself to be a significant pillar of this particular minor league team—especially when she meets two very different teammates who both want her. Ebbie Calvin LaLoosh (Tim Robbins), which is one of the more ridiculous fictional names I’ve ever encountered in a film, is a young, bright-eyed and unfocused rookie known for having a, “million dollar arm, but a five cent head” and he quickly responds to the seductive influence of Annie. His unwieldy passion is juxtaposed against the serious and mature “Crash” Davis (Kevin Costner), a 12-year veteran of the minor leagues who’s been sent down from Triple-A to help LaLoosh hone his talent. Neither man can resist Annie, even when she pokes fun at their “macho male bonding” and invites them both back to her house. It was at this point that I realized Bull Durham was a sexy dramadey set in the world of sports, much like Luca Guadagnino’s Challengers, and had I known this, I would’ve watched this film much sooner. Ebbie aka “Nuke” is more than happy to oblige Annie in her competitive desires, but “Crash” is a little more stubborn, saying, “I don’t audition, I don’t believe in quantum physics when it comes to matters of the heart, and I’m not interested in a woman who’s interested in that boy.” It’s clear that Nuke really requires Annie’s lessons, to better his game and his craft at lovemaking, whereas Crash is perfectly well-practiced, and he may be seeking something more. But as Annie says after Crash makes another move on her, “I am, within the framework of the baseball season, monogamous”, and she finds great pleasure in not just erotically-mentoring Nuke, but in teasing both men. At one point, Annie ties Nuke up and doesn’t have sex with him, but reads him poetry all night, which Nuke explains in the locker room the next morning as, “More exhausting than fucking.” Even though Nuke and Crash are playing for the same team, the two are constantly beefing over their shared desire for Annie—which at first makes for some discombobulated pitching and catching, until these two eventually find their rhythm, and learn to work together. I don’t find sports particularly sexy, funny, or interesting—certainly not baseball (only second worst to golf)—but Bull Durham managed to be all three. Every little moment of this movie sold itself a little bit more to this reluctant viewer—from Susan Sarandon’s aspirational levels of intelligence and sex appeal, to when Nuke puts on Annie’s lucky garter and Crash slaps him on his ass and says, “that’s hot.” I couldn’t believe how hot and tender this movie was, with each little detail and interaction catering to the female gaze more and more as if I wasn’t already sold on Kevin Costner’s abs or Tim Robbins’ twinky little ass (both of which we see multiple times), the erotically-charged moment that really got me is toward the end, is when Crash is painting Annie’s toenails in bed. It reminded me of Slapshot—a hockey movie that masquerades as a sports movie but is really just another vehicle for Paul Newman and Michael Ontkean to show off how sexy and considerate they are/were as lovers and performers. I’ve been duped and fooled many times into watching films just because people claim they are sexy, only to be gravely disappointed. And while Bull Durham isn’t the hottest movie of all time and the male leads are not my favorites of all time, its story was pleasantly charming and shockingly cheeky—which is much appreciated for someone like me, who has a short attention span with sports. Every time I was close to zoning out during some baseball talk, I’d be pulled right back in by the steamy dynamic and clever dialogue between this film’s main trio. I also loved how sex positive and pro-slut this movie was, how funny and lighthearted it remained even when there were some genuinely tense moments, and I knew Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon were versatile actors, but this film proved to me that Kevin Costner is, too. For some reason, Costner’s just never done it for me hotness-wise or screen presence-wise, but he made a few line deliveries here that definitely afforded him some points, particularly when him and a ref are yelling in each other’s faces and he says, in a superbly-offended tone, “You spit on me!!” I loved Susan Sarandon in this, just as I love her in most things, and I loved how her home was decorated with tiny trinkets and baseball memorabilia everywhere you looked. The details, the dialogue, the freshly-showered Kevin Costner yelling at smelly boys in the locker room, it all really worked for me, and I’m just as surprised as you are. I’m even more surprised that this film was adapted into a musical, but that’s awesome. All y’all had to say was “sexy love triangle”, not
“baseball”, sheesh. Way to bury the lede. Also, Tim Robbin’s’ ass? You have my attention. And when it comes to tonight’s next Kevin Costner baseball movie, all y’all had to say was “ghost story”, not “baseball”, and this is Phil Alden Robinson’s 1989 baseball classic Field of Dreams. I’ll admit that I’ve avoided this movie for years, not even because of the baseball of it all, but because it seemed sad to me. And while it is rather poignant, Field of Dreams is the exact amount of sad that I can handle because it is balanced out by wonderful writing, a dynamic cast, and a little bit of mysticism. Based on the novel Shoeless Joe by W.P. Kinsella, Field of Dreams follows Ray Kinsella (Kevin Costner) during an extraordinary and mysterious chapter of his life. This time, Costner is the one narrating, and he explains how a hippie intellectual from Berkley like himself could end up owning a farm in the middle of nowhere Iowa. He also explains how his baseball-loving father raised him not on stories of Mother Goose but on stories of Babe Ruth and “Shoeless” Joe Jackson, and how him and his father unfortunately developed a troubled relationship up until his death. Now with a wife (Amy Madigan), a daughter (a very young baby Gaby Hoffman), and a farm to tend to, Ray worries that he’ll be just like his father: failing to chase after any of his dreams. One night, as Ray is wandering in the cornfield on his land, he hears a ghostly voice out of nowhere whisper, “If you build it, he will come.” After some concerns that he might be losing his mind, Ray realizes that in all of his anxieties of following in his father’s footsteps, in all of his grandfathered-in appreciation for baseball, he must build a baseball field out in his cornfield, then Shoeless Joe himself will show up. “Isn’t he dead?” his wife Annie asks, to which Ray responds “yes”, prompting Annie to ask, “Well is he still dead?” Ray explains how his father, “must’ve had dreams but he never did anything about them. He never did one spontaneous thing all the time I knew him, and I’m afraid it’ll happen to me.” Thankfully, Annie is very supportive and curious to see some ghosts, so she helps him mow down half of their giant cornfield and construct a baseball diamond, stands for viewers to sit in, and big, tall, bright stadium lights, all at their humble little farm in Iowa. For awhile, nothing happens. The money they sunk into this construction has not been made up, and now they risk losing the farm as a whole. But then one night, Shoeless Joe Jackson, in his former, young White Sox costumed glory, shows up on the baseball diamond, as if he was always there, waiting to be seen. Ray meets Joe, the two throw the ball back and forth to each other, and Joe (played by Ray Liotta) waxes poetic about his beloved sport of baseball. Joe wants to come back with even more players next time, and Ray is over the moon. And when Joe looks at Ray sincerely and asks, “Is this heaven?”, Ray responds sincerely, “No, it’s Iowa.” before Joe disappears back into the cornfield. And Joe does return, with more Sox players, eager to play their favorite sport after decades of not doing so. But Ray’s mythic journey doesn’t end here, he hears that ghostly voice beckon to him once again, now saying, “Ease his pain.” Ray feels like a madman but he knows that there is still some otherworldly magic to attend to in our corporeal world, and for whatever reason, he’s been chosen. (But in the least Jesus-y, Harry Potter-y way possible.) The rest of the film takes us on Ray’s insane but beautiful quest, where James Earl Jones and Burt Lancaster make significant cameos and steal the show with their booming voices and captivating smiles. And while this film is full of heart, grief, and dreams, it’s also surprisingly funny and more rooted in realism than I would’ve guessed. You can visit the actual farm where this was filmed, at 28995 Lansing Rd. Dyersville, IA, where they are open from 9:00am to 6:00pm daily, to see this famous baseball field in the middle of nowhere, which is a bit of real-life magic to me. Another bit of real-life magic comes from that ghostly voice that Costner hears throughout the movie, as this voice has never been unveiled. The Voice was simply credited as “Himself” and the identity of this voice actor remains unknown, even by many stars of the film. A fact about this film that is perhaps less fun but still fascinating to me, is the fact that Field of Dreams is George W. Bush’s favorite movie, even though there’s a lengthy scene where Ray and Annie attend a PTA meeting concerning book-banning—which is portrayed as quite fervently in favor of NOT banning books—and George W. Bush still sought to ban plenty of books during his presidency. I just find that interesting. Field of Dreams was incredibly sweet and touching and complex. I do not like sad movies or sports movies and yet I enjoyed this one somehow. I liked how it was about writing and reading and ghosts and existentialist anxieties and only slightly about baseball. With all of the superstitions surrounding New Years Eve and the New Year, baseball was actually the perfect sport to explore this week, and I’m just glad that both films managed to do so in a way that didn’t bore me to tears (like watching actual baseball games does.) If I can successfully find sports movies that I enjoy, now four years in a row, then I believe that anything is possible, dear reader. May our 2025 be filled with good vibes, great company, and excellent movies to watch. Ta ta for now!