Bull Durham

[Note: Tonight's showing of Bull Durham features a special guest: my colleague Heath, who brought over a six pack of Miller High Life, The Champagne of Beers, which players consumed several times during the film. Thus, this sixer will not survive the evening.]

I was 13 years old when I heard of Ebby Calvin "Nuke" LaLoosh. But this isn't really about him.

Like a lot of adolescent males, I wanted to play professional baseball. When I figured out I couldn't hit, I decided to learn how to pitch. Problem: No coach. Problem Also: No catcher.

So I spent hours outside, alone, almost year-round, throwing a ball against a dog kennel made of cinder blocks. If I threw the ball hard enough and hit the wall square-on, I'd get the bounce-back. Rain? Didn't care. Snow? Didn't care. Drought of 1988 bringing inferno-like temperatures? Didn't care.

Two young maple trees, maybe 12 inches around, stood in front of the dog kennel wall. The tree on the right was roughly where a right-handed batter would stand, while the other tree was just out of the way. I used the one on the right as a kind of reference, and luckily the one on the left was far enough away so as not to be a factor.

I used to hit the fuck out of those trees.

I've only been clocked once, at some county fair. My non-warmed up arm threw a fastball clocked at a scorching 52 mph. I never learned how to throw a proper curveball, but for some reason I figured out a screwball, changeup, split-finger, knuckle, and the occasional eephus.

So when I wasn't hitting the bark off the trees, I was trying really hard to become the next...I don't know. Four cinder blocks were my strike zone. Sometimes I threw a strike. Sometimes I threw the ball completely over the building. One time, I reared back and threw the ball so hard, I found the thing in the front yard.

(Once, in a fit of frustration, I threw the ball over the kennel, over the house, over the front yard, and into the cornfield across the road. This is roughly a 300 foot throw on the fly. I never saw that ball again.)

Baseball movies were the next best thing to getting to hang out with a team, which no kid gets to do. Bull Durham, Major League, The Natural, Field of Dreams, Eight Men Out, Major League II, and a little-known made-for-TV movie called Long Gone were like church to me. (Long Gone never came to DVD, sadly, and VHS copies are harder and harder to come by. A guy can get a VHS copy on eBay for about $18. Screw that. If somebody knows of a good torrent out there, I'm interested.)

I pitched in exactly two games. The first game, I came in during a blowout and struck a guy out, then got a fly ball out to end the inning. Somebody else pitched the next inning. The second time I pitched, I started a game, and I've not experienced more humiliating moments. Walks, line drive hits, beaned batsmen, wild pitches...I don't know what happened, but you would've thought I'd never thrown a pitch in my life. I don't really feel like writing about that right now. I own other baseball movies. That shit'll come back.

Bull Durham is one of those films that reminds me of when I used to have dreams bigger than myself — dreams that were always out of reach, but I didn't know that at the time. I miss that innocence.

Mostly, though, I miss the sound a baseball makes against a cinder block wall.



p.s. The sixer is gone.