YMMV / Bull Durham

• Award Snub: Received only an Original Screenplay nomination from the Academy Awards, while the screenplay did get wins from various critic groups around the country. At least Susan Sarandon received an acting nomination from the Golden Globes. In hindsight, this movie is recognized as one of Kevin Costner's best performances, and the movie itself the best sports film ever.
• Fridge Brilliance: If Crash is so knowledgeable about the game, why did he intentionally go for the one word "cocksucker" you're never supposed to say to an umpire? Because the team was having a bad night, especially Nuke throwing poorly with his father in the stands, so if he got thrown out by the ump the bad night would be blamed on him. A good catcher takes one for his pitcher.
  • When Crash teaches Nuke the key sports cliches he'll need to survive interviews, each cliche is a subtle prod that baseball is a team sport and that Nuke needs to clamp down on his raging ego.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • When Crash gives his speech to Annie about what he believes in, among the things he says is, "I believe Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone." Three years later, Kevin Costner went on to star in JFK as Jim Garrison, the man who tried to prove Oswald didn't act alone. After he was nominated for an Oscar for the role, his monologue from Bull Durham was played at the ceremony as a joke.
  • In real life, Annie chose Nuke.
  • The opening shots of still photos of various baseball scenes with slow zooms and pans looks almost exactly like a Ken Burns documentary, two years before his documentary about the Civil War established the look and six years before he applied that look to baseball.
• Retroactive Recognition: Paula Abdul choreographed the scene where Nuke dances with several women at the bar.
• Spiritual Successor: Loose Example to Slap Shot. While the mood of the two movies are different, both are pretty accurate depictions of minor league sports life, and star an aging veteran who recognizes that their chance for a job in the big leagues has passed, but holds onto the life anyway. Both are also looking to coaching as their ticket instead.
• Unintentional Period Piece:
  • Crash’s famous “The difference between hitting .250 and .300” monologue implies his batting average kept him out of the majors. Today batting average is far less valued than it was at the time (at least partly due to the rise of sabermetrics, and more focus on things like how often a player just plain gets on base) and his ability as a home run/power hitter would’ve been much higher valued.
  • One of the teams featured in the movie was the Kinston Indians. After the 2011 season, that team relocated from Kinston, in the eastern North Carolina coastal plain, to the Raleigh–Durham suburb of Zebulon, becoming the Carolina Mudcats. Kinston would eventually get another minor-league team in 2017, but it's known as the Down East Wood Ducks.
  • The Bulls themselves, while still a minor-league team, have advanced from Class-A at the time of the movie—mentioned by Crash when he's complaining about his transfer—to Triple-A, meaning they now play nationally rather than in the Carolina League. Ironically, their brand recognition due to Bull Durham was one of the reasons for their promotion.

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