Is Spring Coming...Ever?

Four of the most welcome words this time of year to my ears are "pitchers and catchers report". It means of course, baseball season is about to begin, and also that spring is just around the corner. This is much needed news in the doldrums of February (the most depressing month of the year if you ask me). There is a sense of renewal that comes with this, from the standpoint of new growth, the old, crusty, sooty snow gets washed away and then there is the hope that this year the Mets won't suffer another implosion and miss the playoffs. A bit too optimistic? Maybe. Talk to me next October.

I figured this was a good time to dust off an old baseball themed flick, Bull Durham. It's interesting, because though I was born in '79, I am really a child of the 80's, and yet I can't help but feel this was one of the worst decades for film. It's a decade that was filled with all the of the self-indulgence that Hollywood could manage, but with none of the grandeur. It produced its share of catch phrases ("E.T. phone home"), top 40 hits ("Footloose") and pop-culture iconography (The Back To The Future series), but little substance. Bull Durham falls into this category to a certain extent.

It's an enjoyable enough movie, particularly watching Susan Sarandon's escapades as she seduces a young Tim Robbins, and later Kevin Costner. Mostly, the thing that is kind of great about the film is that it captures pretty accurately a lot of the gamesmanship and business of baseball at the minor league level, which for a baseball fan, is fun to watch. The dialogue, in particular the repartee that takes place on the field during games gives an inside appraoch to what would normally be inaudible to an audience watching an actual game unfolding from the stands or on TV. There are some clever moments here, such as staging a conversation between Costner's character and Susan Sarandon's while in a batting cage with ball being flung in between them at a substantial pace. It's an otherwise pretty predictable storyline, and isn't particularly imaginative in its staging.

It's not what I would call a classic by any means, but as baseball movies go, it's not a bad one. It's not Field Of Dreams (made just a year later, also starring Kevin Costner), Eight Men Out, or The Natural, but worth a look nonetheless.

Now, if the Mets can only put together a classic season, we might have something.