Back in college, my friends and I had a tradition: Baseball Sunday. Every Sunday, starting at the beginning of Spring Training, my friends and I would watch a baseball movie to get amped up for the season. It didn’t matter if we’d seen these movies once, twice, or a million times; the point was to get baseball on the mind and think of the countless hours of bliss we had ahead of us.
Later in life, when I was already working at Bleacher Nation, I re-visited that tradition and turned it into #content, by watching and ranking the top 20 baseball movies of all-time (while also calculating how much actual time they actually spent playing baseball in each movie). Three years later, I’d almost certainly change the order of the list, but I probably wouldn’t touch the top-billing.
Today’s sports movie – replacing the Cubs’ finale against the Diamondbacks – is Bull Durham, the greatest baseball movie of all-time. With the greatest baseball scene of all-time:
And, hey, get this: When I tweeted out my article, the actor Robert Wuhl, who plays the team manager Larry in the movie, took notice:
Cool article by @Michael_Cerami on how much baseball is played in baseball movies.
1. Bull Durham (1988): 26 minutes 30 seconds
2. Moneyball: 21:43
3. Major League (1989): 40:11
4. Bang the Drum Slowly (1973): 14:45
5. Bad News Bears (1976): 40:00https://t.co/CLGAsueve2
— Robert Wuhl (@RobertWuhl) July 23, 2018
It’s not Cubs baseball. But it’s better than nothing. If you’ve never seen Bull Durham, you’re in for an absolute treat.
Movie Info
(Note: Some of the movies on this calendar are streamable on Netflix, Hulu, etc. (and some of you may even own hard copies on VHS or DVD!) I’ll be sure to mention it when they are. However, whenever they’re not available for free, I’ll share a link to the cheapest place to rent it in this section).
Bull Durham (1988) – Sunday, April 5th on … Stream on Tubi (free), Rent on Amazon ($3.99)
Credits:
Director:Â Ron Shelton
Writer: Ron Shelton
Ratings:
IMDB: 7.1/10
Rotten Tomatoes: 97% Critic Score, 82% Audience Score
The Cast:
- Kevin Costner … Crash Davis
- Susan Sarandon … Annie Savoy
- Tim Robbins … Ebby Calvin ‘Nuke’ LaLoosh
- Trey Wilson … Skip
- Robert Wuhl … Larry
- William O’Leary … Jimmy
- David Neidorf … Bobby
- Danny Gans … Deke
- Tom Silardi … Tony
Full Calendar: