Bull Durham was named best sports ever movie by Sports Illustrated.
More than 25 years after its initial release, Ron Shelton’s Bull Durham (1988) remains one of the most beloved baseball films in cinema history. The tale of perpetual minor-leaguer Crash Davis who plays catcher for the Durham Bulls resonates as a heartfelt, realistic portrait—and with more than its share of ballpark wit and humor. Perhaps these endearing qualities account in part for how critics and audiences often favor Bull Durham over contemporaries such as that popular nostalgia-vehicle Field of Dreams (1989) and earlier works like Bang the Drum Slowly (1973) and even The Pride of the Yankees (1942).
In 2003, Sports Illustrated hailed Bull Durham as the greatest sports movie of all time and ranked it at the top of a list of 50 notable sports films including classics from as far back as Harold Lloyd’s silent comedy The Freshman (1925). But competition ideologies feed into our attempts to reify artistic worth with these ranking impulses, and Bull Durham would likely hold up fairly well in the minds of many devoted baseball fans regardless of its canonical status or critical achievements; after all, it’s a story about the journeyman ballplayer’s struggle to achieve within another, more actualized competitive hierarchy known as minor league baseball.
The film follows the inevitable decline of Crash Davis as he’s sent down the rungs of the minor league system; to add to his discontentment, it turns out that his demotion is thanks to a young pitcher named “Nuke” LaLoosh, whom Davis is supposed to help tutor in the ways of fastballs and change-ups. Of course, somewhere along the plot line a woman is involved. Then the film develops into a story about more than just baseball.
Yes, Bull Durham is about love, the oft-strained camaraderie between teacher and pupil (and catcher and pitcher). Of equal emphasis, though, are the insights into that strange, ancient phenomenon of spectator sports. In as much, the film powerfully delivers perhaps its most poignant narrative, one of failure. In spite of the failure to attain one’s dreams, however, there remains the potential to achieve, which may be different than to succeed, in the compromised obscurity and regrettable reality of the minor leagues.
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To reflect on Bull Durham the film is also to necessarily/eventually reflect on the true, biographical Crash Davis. Fittingly, the trajectory of that vital theme of success in failure—call it losing big, or winning small—can be traced through the real-life, loose inspiration for Shelton’s protagonist of Crash in one similarly named Lawrence Columbus “Crash” Davis (1919-2001), who played for the Durham Bulls in Durham, N.C.
As for that team name: apparently, the city with its lucrative tobacco industry acquired the eponymous titles of “Bull City” or “Bull Durham” on account of one such named and branded tobacco company. The company was particularly productive and its name stuck, which in turn led to the familiar christening of the local baseball team in the early 1910s. The tobacco business stuck around, too.
“‘I can still remember the smell of tobacco from the nearby warehouse,’” Davis later reminisced to Kevin Kernan in a piece for the New York Post about his time playing in Durham; one season there, in 1948, he set a Carolina League record with 50 doubles. (It was this very achievement, coupled with that salient name, that would one day pique Shelton’s interest while he was working on his film, a project also largely inspired by some of Shelton’s own experiences in the minors.)
However, Durham was just one among several stops in Crash’s playing career. Not unlike the fictive Crash, after a relatively brief period in “the show” where the Philadelphia Athletics contracted him for a few seasons, Crash Davis spent a fair amount of time in the farm system playing minor league ball. As is the case for many itinerant professional ballplayers, Davis was no stranger to travel with the routine but nevertheless exhausting road trips. “I remember going from Cleveland to Detroit on the boat at night,” Davis recalled during an interview for the Philadelphia Athletics Historical Society. “We didn’t fly. We had trains. In spring training we worked our way back from the West Coast with the Cubs and Pirates.” And when not going by train (or boat), the long interstate bus rides could drag on interminably.
He was equally familiar with the trade deals or contract buyouts that precipitated sudden relocations. No matter: he was in it for the long haul. In the seven seasons he spent with the Class C Durham Bulls and four or five other minor league teams—primarily Class B organizations in Lawrence, Mass. and Pawtucket, R.I., along with some North Carolina ball clubs—Davis played in the minor leagues far longer than his three seasons as a second baseman in the majors with Philadelphia.
However, these were far from his only distinctions. Among his life accomplishments, Davis studied at Duke University, served in the Navy, and helped train cadets as an officer in the ROTC program at Harvard, where he also coached baseball. That Philadelphia Athletics Historical Society interview (along with a dig through other articles and obits for Davis ) confirms another small triumph: when Davis retired from professional baseball, he returned to Gastonia, N.C., where he coached high school baseball and led his team to two state championships. In 1954, he also coached an American Legion baseball team all the way to the championship finals.
And of course the dedication exemplified while grinding it out all of those years in minor league obscurity on the road and at home, playing in small towns and even smaller ballparks, proved to be an accomplishment in itself and inspiration in part for that iconic, wry antihero in Bull Durham.
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But name origins can be a curious business, if not a little sticky; for the obsessive-compulsive baseball fan and would-be sleuth, such fixation may lead down the proverbial rabbit hole—from film favorite as entry point, to biographical background, etc. So here’s the thing: throughout his many experiences, including one particularly rough, on-field collision that proved serendipitous, the real Crash Davis never carried the moniker of “Bull Durham.” In addition to “Crash,” Davis was earlier known by other names, such as “Dynamite” and even “Squeaky” (yes, it’s pretty hard to imagine Costner’s character going by that one), but never “Bull Durham” or the like. So it seems that Shelton settled on the film title due to, again, the team/town name.
Oddly enough, the first player to go by that handle did not once play for the Durham ball club; actually, the rather enigmatic character who went by the name Bull Durham was really Louis Raphael Staub (1877-1960), and, as far as the historical records indicate, he never played organized ball for any North Carolina team. In fact, he may not have ever set foot in the state, though anything is possible in light of those frequent away games and all of the pervading mystery about his eccentric (and nomadic) existence.
Ultimately, in what would be a decades-long pursuit for the genuine biographic record of Staub, and to get to the bottom of his inexplicable stage name of sorts, a team of historians from the Society for American Baseball Research was led by Bill Haber (also one of the founding SABR members). At last, in 1982 the investigation reached a turning point. A paper trail long since gone cold finally picked up again, and SABR managed to track down some relatives of the original Bull Durham. And wouldn’t you know it? The breadcrumbs, peanut shells, or whatever leftover ballpark morsels led to another Durham—Staub’s good friend and fellow pitcher, Jimmy Durham. So yet further into the annals of minor league baseball and on down that rabbit hole. . . .
Several genealogy sheets and phone interviews later, Haber and his fellow researchers came to some inconclusive, er, conclusions about Staub and his pal Jimmy, as well as that notable nickname:
There still are a number of things we don’t know about Louis Durham. We can only speculate about why he changed his name and why he moved to Kansas…The family is of the opinion that he used the pseudonym of Bull Durham because of his appreciation for the popular smoking tobacco. However, one can’t help but wonder if his friendship with Jimmy Durham had something to do with it.
The two had developed a close relationship when they first met as members of the Cedar Rapids pitching staff of 1902. Their friendship continued in 1907 when the two combined to win 34 games at Louisville. As a matter of fact, the 1907 Louisville team photo shows Jimmy seated with Louis standing right behind him. And, it has to be something more than mere coincidence that Louis settled in Kansas, the home state of Jimmy, upon heading west during the 1920s. Also, we know Jimmy was in the oil business in Kansas, and Louis became a geologist. Louis’ widow doesn’t recall him mentioning Jimmy by name, but then again, we know he was a mysterious sort of fellow, don’t we?
And if all of that wasn’t speculation enough, some additional rumors and unverified reports attribute Staub’s name change to Bull Durham for yet other reasons: for purposes of anonymity and evasion of the law—in the aftermath of a bar fight.
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What’s every bit as intriguing as the namesake history here is how equally appropriate a basis Staub’s life may have been for the minor league chronicles of Crash Davis in Shelton’s Bull Durham, albeit these being entirely different time periods. In fact, some more research into Staub’s playing career suggests that he was an even more persistent, wandering ballplayer than Davis.
For example, Staub played with three major league clubs but for very short stints (i.e. games, not full seasons) with the Brooklyn Superbas (1904), the Washington Senators (1907), and the New York Giants (in 1908 and 1909). In the minor leagues, however, the sheer number of his affiliations is staggering. Over the course of several seasons between 1902 and 1909 and then 1913, he enlisted with at least 14 different teams, including some lesser-known organizations in the Southern California League—a last effort near the end of his playing days. Staub’s minor league teams of record: the Waterbury Rough Riders; Cedar Rapids Rabbits; New London Whalers; Amsterdam-Gloversville-Johnstown Hyphens (seriously, that was a real team’s name); Augusta Tourists; Altoona Mountaineers; Lancaster Red Roses; Louisville Colonels; Trenton Tigers; Indianapolis Indians; Columbus Senators; Denver Grizzlies; and, in the Southern California League, the Long Beach Beachcombers and Pasadena Millionaires. (Exhale.)
One more thing: while in California, Staub also made it into the pictures, not unlike Davis . That’s right, Louis Staub was an actor in Hollywood silent films (and he’s actually a searchable entry on IMDB.com, though under another alias, Louis Durham, go figure). Among his acting credits (all 36 of them), he appeared in two baseball films: The Pinch Hitter (1917) and The Busher (1919).
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Considering their respective times in baseball (and likewise eras in American history), maybe Davis and Staub aren’t necessarily unique, though this is not to say they shouldn’t be valued. Journeymen that they were, it’s almost overwhelming to consider their myriad compatriots—those hundreds, perhaps thousands of likewise intriguing lives thus far unknown. Maybe that’s part of the fascination with these stories of early ballplayers, and one reason why they make such great source material for our popular novels and Hollywood films.
More fantastic still: Despite the variations in characters, names, and tales, so often the broken threads of such seemingly disparate lives appear to be lying in wait for some connection. Admittedly though, they could just as easily lie alone, untouched, unsung, as was nearly the case with Davis, until by pure luck “Shelton was leafing through a Carolina League record book one day when he came across Davis ’ name” (Kernan). No doubt Shelton was immediately taken with how that name “Crash” leapt off the page. And together with that flash of characterization, both Davis and Bull Durham reportedly became “responsible for the rebirth of the minor leagues.” Apart from the little-known SABR research, no such luck or recognition for Staub; indeed, his own obituary “gave not the slightest indication that he had been a ballplayer, an occupation he had filled for about 15 years.”
References & Resources
- “Bull Durham Minor League Statistics & History.” Baseball Reference. Sports Reference, n.d. Web. 30 June 2014.
- “Crash Davis Minor League Statistics & History.” Baseball Reference. Sports Reference, n.d. Web. 30 June 2014.
- “Former Durham Bulls Player Made Famous by Baseball Movie Dies at 82.” The Herald-Sun, Sept. 3, 2001. The Herald-Sun’s Archives.
- “In Pursuit of Bull Durham .” Society for American Baseball Research. Research Journals Archive, n.d. Web. June 30, 2014.
- Kernan, Kevin. “Will the Real Crash Davis Stand Up? The True Story of this Character is no ‘Bull.’” New York Post, Aug. 19, 2001.
- Shelton, Ron, director, Field of Dreams. Orion, 1988. Film
- “The 50 Greatest Sports Movies Of All Time!” Sports Illustrated 99.4 (2003): 62-71.
- “The Legend of the Real Crash Davis.” Philadelphia Athletics. Philadelphia Athletics