Bull Durham (1988)

Crash (Kevin Costner) is a veteran catcher in the minor leagues, brought on to mentor the Bulls' new pitcher (Tim Robbins) who's got a million-dollar arm and a five-cent head. Local Annie (Susan Sarandon) chooses one player each season with whom to hook up and guide and with a 100% success rate in improving that guy's game, she's earned some club respect. Crash takes himself out of the running, leaving her with the pitcher who adopts the nickname "Nuke" at Annie's insistence. But neither Annie nor Crash is comfortable with the arrangement.

What a fun story. Though Costner's line readings aren't as loose as they should be, it almost doesn't matter because the other points of this triangle are absolutely wonderful (probably didn't hurt that they were falling in love offscreen at the time). "Nuke" is dumb as a bag of rocks, but he grasps -- after much trial and error -- that Annie and Crash know their stuff and he's better when he follows their instructions. Meanwhile, Annie and Crash are committed to improving the kid but can't help what their hearts want.

On top of all of the relationship stuff, there's the baseball stuff. I admit that the first time I saw this way back when (I had this poster up in my dorm room senior year of college) it was all about the relationship and those "long, slow, deep, soft, wet kisses that last three days." But this time I also appreciated hearing the internal monologues of the players as they walked up to the plate or wound up for the pitch. Yes, it's about romance, but it's also about ball. They're only together because they love this glorious game played on cool spring evenings and hot summer afternoons that only really works live, not through a screen. Magic.

B+