Trivia / Bull Durham

• Creator Backlash: Both Ron Shelton and Kevin Costner have expressed dissatisfaction with Crash' "I believe" speech - Shelton because he felt it was too obvious, while Costner felt he could have done a better job of delivering the speech.
• Dawson Casting: Nuke is flat out stated to be 18 but Tim Robbins was 29 at the time of release. Averted with the rest of the main cast whose actors all match the apparent age of their characters.
• Deleted Scene: Originally, after Annie and Crash have their argument in Crash's apartment, there was a scene in which Annie and Crash go to a bar and have a heart-to-heart talk. In the talk, Crash asks Annie why she loves baseball so much. She explains that several years before, her estranged father passed away and that the funeral took place in Florida. She was so distraught after the funeral that she wandered off and ended up at the New York Yankees spring training facility where she met legendary Yankees catcher, Thurman Munson (thus explaining her shrine to Munson seen in the film). From then on, she developed a deep-rooted love of the game. According to Ron Shelton in the DVD Commentary, he cut that scene out when it was received poorly during a test screening. After the scene was removed, a second test screening was done and the movie received a high score.
• Enforced Method Acting: Batboy tells Crash "Get a hit, Crash." Crash responds, "Shut up." That was an ad-lib by Kevin Costner, and it reduced the batboy to tears (off-camera, though).
• Executive Meddling: The studio wanted Shelton to replace Robbins with Anthony Michael Hall, even during shooting (Shelton didn't want Hall because Hall hadn't read the script), hated the way the bus scenes were lit (Shelton's cinematographer at the beginning of the movie, Charles Minsky, had set up a rig that resembled a giant hat to distribute light inside the bus equally, which was according to Shelton's wishes), and also wanted Shelton to delete the mound scene, even though Shelton argued it was part of why he wrote the movie in the first place (it would later become a Signature Scene). Because Shelton successfully prevented both of those from happening, the studio forced him to fire Minsky and have him replaced by Bobby Byrne.
• Irony as She Is Cast: Nuke, who is Book Dumb and a terrible singer, is played by Tim Robbins, who is extremely well-read (Ron Shelton claims he had to tell Robbins Nuke reads comic books the way Robbins read Bertolt Brecht) and a real-life musician as well as actor (and writer and director)
• Life Imitates Art:
  • The bull billboard offering a "free steak" if it gets tagged by a home run was created for the film. The real-life team kept it, even after moving to a newer bigger stadium.
  • Even with the adult frankness about sex and relationships, and the level of profanity, the Durham Bulls organization heavily promote their tie-in to the movie. After all, it made the franchise one of the best-known minor league teams on the planet.
• Romance on the Set: Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon fell in love on set.
• Star-Making Role: For Tim Robbins.
• Stillborn Franchise: In the first few years after the film's release, Ron Shelton considered where the characters would be, specifically whether Annie would follow Crash to his managing job in Visalia. But now that the actors are decades older, it's apparently no longer under consideration.
• Throw It In!: In the meeting at the pitcher's mound, Robert Wuhl ad-libbed his line about getting candlesticks as a wedding present. He said it was based on a real conversation he had with his wife.
  • Millie's very wide catching stance during their game of catch was actress Jenny Robertson's idea, according to a retrospective documentary on the Criterion Collection Bluray. She was told the correct stance for a catcher and asked, "wouldn't it be funnier if she did a sort of plie?"
  • According to Ron Shelton's DVD Commentary, in the "rainout" scene, it was Kevin Costner's idea for Crash to run around the bases and slide into each of them. In his book The Church of Baseball (about the writing and making of the movie), Shelton also credits Costner with coming up with the line, "The rose goes in the front, big guy" during rehearsal.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Ron Shelton originally wrote the role of Crash Davis for his buddy (and former minor leaguer) Kurt Russell, but the studio went with Costner. Nick Nolte turned it down because he had just finished several movies back-to-back, and, most importantly, because he isn't a fan of baseball. Other candidates included Alec Baldwin, Tom Berenger, Jeff Bridges, Harrison Ford, Richard Gere, Mel Gibson, Tommy Lee Jones, Michael Keaton, Christopher Lambert, Stephen Lang, Bill Paxton, Ron Perlman, Dennis Quaid, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone.
  • Glenn Close auditioned for, Annie but was forced to turn the role down due to her commitment to Dangerous Liaisons. Michelle Pfeiffer auditioned, but was deemed too young. Melanie Griffith turned it down in favour of Working Girl. Other candidates included Kim Basinger, Kate Capshaw, Geena Davis, Carrie Fisher, Pamela Stephenson and Debra Winger.
  • Cybill Shepherd and Bruce Willis were considered for Annie and Crash but declined due to their commitment to Moonlighting.
  • Charlie Sheen was considered for Ebby Calvin "Nuke" LaLoosh, but he was doing another baseball movie, Eight Men Out. David Duchovny and Anthony Michael Hall were also considered.
    • Ironically, Sheen would go on to play another pitcher with a blazing fastball and no control only a year later.
  • J. T. Walsh was considered for Joe Riggins.
  • Laura San Giacomo was considered for Millie.
  • Originally, Crash's "I believe" speech was supposed to have the line "That the novels of Thomas Pynchon are self-indulgent, overrated crap"^note which Shelton said was not a case of Author Tract, but Pynchon threatened to sue, so it was changed.
  • The scene where Nuke tells Crash he's made it to the major leagues was originally supposed to take place in a brothel, but no one felt right about it, so Shelton convinced the studio to allow him to reshoot it in a bar/pool hall instead.
• Write What You Know: Ron Shelton was a former minor league baseball player and used his experience as the basis for the story.

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