How 'Bull Durham' made Durham Bulls into America's minor league team | Exclusive

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Ron Shelton walked into Thom Mount's Canon Drive office in Beverly Hills in 1986 with little more than an idea.

What he did have was a five word pitch – “Lysistrata in the minor leagues” – a nod to the ancient Greek play by Aristophanes about women who withhold sexual favors to end a war.

What he did not have was a story.

Mount, a veteran Hollywood producer, Durham native and part-owner of the minor league Durham Bulls, liked the idea.

But he had one question: “Who are the characters?”

“Well, there’s a pitcher and a catcher and a woman, and she’s sleeping with the wrong one of them.” Shelton replied, making it up as he went. “And the woman’s telling the story.”

A former minor league player himself who spent five years in the Baltimore Orioles’ farm system, Shelton wanted to tell an authentic story about the world he knew best – and tell it the right way.

Baseball movies had struggled for decades, either with critics, audiences or both. Films such as "The Slugger's Wife" (1985) and "Blue Skies Again" (1983) failed to gain traction, continuing a trend that stretched back to "The Babe Ruth Story" (1948).

Shelton had previously run into roadblocks with Mount, who had told him years prior that his script "A Player to Be Named Later," which contained the seeds of what would become "Bull Durham," was underwritten.

“He was right,” Shelton told the Fayetteville Observer. “It was way underwritten.”

This time, though, was different.

"That's great, go do it,” Mount said.

What followed was the creation of one of the most beloved sports movies ever made, helping to turn a scrappy minor league team in a tobacco town into something much bigger than baseball. "Bull Durham" resonates 40 years after Shelton made his pitch, and its impact can still be seen and felt around Durham.

Durham Bulls rise from folded franchise to Hollywood fame​

The Durham Bulls franchise was established in 1902, originally as the Durham Tobacconists, a nod to the city's booming tobacco industry. It did not become the Bulls until 1913, and spent the better part of the next seven decades bouncing between existence and obscurity before folding in 1972.

That was until Miles Wolff purchased the club in 1979.

Wolff, who had about 10 years of experience working in the minors, bought the club for nearly $2,500. But he needed to raise capital to revive the franchise.

So Wolff made some calls, formed a corporation and started selling stock. One of his calls was to a friend on the West Coast named Van Schley, which is how he met Mount. Van Schley and Mount, who both owned other minor league clubs, each agreed to invest $5,000.

Mount and Wolff did not meet until that winter, when Mount returned to Durham and visited Wolff at Durham Athletic Park.

“He said, ‘Miles, some day we will make a movie here,” Wolff said. “I said ‘Sure Thom, anytime,’ thinking it was just Hollywood talking.”

Little did Wolff know.

How Durham became the centerpiece for a baseball film​

After his initial meeting with Mount, Shelton flew to Durham to begin what he calls his “baseball tour,” a circuit through Carolina League and South Atlantic League towns, reacquainting himself with a world he hadn't inhabited for years.

He needed to know if it had changed. More importantly, he needed to know where to set his movie.

The tour began in Durham because of Mount's association with the club. It ended up being the town Shelton kept coming back to.

“It had that great ol' ballpark, and the downtown was just in a recession, boarded up,” he said. “It felt like the minor leagues.”

The tour gave Shelton his characters, too. Crash Davis, a real former Bulls player, came to life after Shelton discovered his name in a Carolina League record book Wolff had given him. Davis' name, and his league-leading 50 doubles in 1948, jumped off the page.

Shelton had his catcher.

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Nuke came not long after. Driving through South Carolina, Shelton stopped in Columbia, home to the Mets' Single-A club, and met a waiter at the Radisson Hotel dining room named Ebby Calvin LaRoosh, nicknamed Nuke.

With a couple adjustments to the spelling, there was his pitcher.

Annie was the last piece. The first name was a classic baseball groupie name. The last name, Savoy, came from a book of matches sitting on Shelton's desk from a famous dive bar in Hollywood. Shelton liked the way it sounded: hints of the exotic, the sophisticated, the well-traveled.

Shelton had his characters, a setting, and, by spring, a script.

He chose Kevin Costner for the lead. The rising star had caught Shelton's eye in "Fandango" and "Silverado." Through his agent, the script made its way to Costner.

Costner and Shelton met for lunch at Hollywood’s Studio Grille and went to the batting cages after.

“He’s a natural athlete.” Shelton said. “I could not believe how smooth he looked.”

Costner loved the script and wanted to do the film. It helped that Mount offered three times more money than the actor had made on any film yet.

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The only issue: Warner Brothers wanted to sign Costner for “Everybody’s All American,” a football film that would be made with Dennis Quaid in the lead role. “Bull Durham” had 30 days to get off the ground or Costner’s agents would sign him to the Warner Brothers film.

So scripts went out and meetings were set, but nothing came to fruition. Nobody was willing to take up a baseball movie or back it financially.

“Everybody passed on this, over and over again,” Mount said.

Costner, meanwhile, couldn't believe it. He insisted on rescheduling studio meetings, this time joining Shelton to help close the deal.

So the two did that, just with a week left on the 30-day hold. Many studios passed them up again, until they made a last-minute call to Orion's New York office just before 7 p.m. on the day before the deadline.

By noon the next day, 3 p.m. on the East Coast, and after strong reviews for Orion's “No Way Out” – which also starred Costner – Shelton got the call. It was a go with a near $8 million budget.

“And chaos took over,” Shelton said.

'Worst audition' and the making of 'Bull Durham'​

Casting had just a few weeks to be completed. The process stretched until the last day – dubbed "Marathon Day" – which is where Shelton found his Larry Hockett in Robert Wuhl.

Wuhl nearly walked out after waiting two hours past his call time. What followed was mostly ad-libbed, and what Shelton called the "worst audition" he'd ever seen.

He hired him anyway.

Wuhl's improv carried into filming. Wuhl's iconic mound scene, where Larry derails a pitching crisis with advice about wedding registries and silverware patterns, came from something his wife, Barbara, had said a few days prior. It was also the last scene shot that night around 4:30 a.m. after Wuhl had spent hours waiting in the dugout.

Shelton told him to film the scripted line – “Okay, let’s get two” – then gave him an alternate take. The director knew as soon as he cut that it was going to be in the movie. Wuhl was not so sure.

“When I saw it in the preview, I was shocked,” he said.

The greenlight to begin filming came around Labor Day in 1987, and shooting began five weeks later in October. It coincided with what Wolff described as one of the “coldest falls” in Durham, which lived up to its reputation of a tobacco town.

“I remember the whole town smelled like a cigarette, that’s what I remember,” Wuhl said. “You walk out, and it smells like tobacco.”

With the cold, actors drank ice water or held ice cubes in their mouths before takes to avoid their breath being visible on camera. The dying grass often had to be painted green.

There was also the matter of the ballpark: Durham Athletic Park was blue. For the film, Shelton wanted dark green. He got his way, but when it came time to repaint it blue, which Wolff wanted, there was no money left in the budget.

The solution came from an unlikely source. Vandals broke into the stadium one night and drove their cars across the outfield, rendering it unplayable. An insurance claim payout covered new sod, with enough left over for a fresh coat of blue paint.

Rumor had it someone in the production organized the break-in. Shelton, though, says he was unaware if that happened.

“It was fine, and we finished on budget – and the green is better,” Shelton said.

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A hit film and a lasting slice of Americana​

Test screenings didn't help settle nerves about how the movie would land. Scores came back low even as audiences laughed.

Nobody could figure it out.

But when the film opened on June 15, 1988, everything changed.

It earned back its budget many times over, eventually grossing around $60 million in theaters before becoming a perennial bestseller in the then-booming home video market.

The effect on minor league baseball was immediate and lasting. Attendance boomed and franchise prices skyrocketed, as evidenced by Wolff and his partners selling the club in 1991 for around $6.5 million, a long way from the $2,500 Wolff paid in 1979.

“I don’t like to take credit, but I do think the movie was really a shot in the arm to minor league baseball,” Shelton said.

Nowhere was that more evident than in Durham. The Bulls had already been on an upswing under Wolff, but the film, Mount said, pushed them over the top.

Wolff proposed a new ballpark the same year the film came out. It took until 1995 for Durham Bulls Athletic Park to open downtown, drawing 10,886 fans on opening night. The club moved up to Triple-A three years later.

The movie also made the Bulls the most-recognized team in the minor leagues. That status still exists today.

“When you say the Durham Bulls, if somebody knows a minor league team, that’s the one they’re gonna know,” said current Bulls infielder Cooper Kinney. “... It carries a lot of weight.”

The original ballpark used in the film still stands about a mile north, the brick fire tower and Bulls logo intact, now owned by the city and available for rentals. References to the movie still exist in Durham and around the Triangle: Annie’s house is off of North Mangum Street, and Mitch’s Tavern in Raleigh, which is where the bar scenes were shot, has movie memorabilia all over the walls.

At the ballpark, the story has been absorbed into the game itself. A replica of the Snorting Bull with its “Hit Bull, Win Steak” sign now sits in left field, eyes lit and smoke curling from its nostrils every time a home run is hit.

Players still earn a free steak (and, now, a $100 Angus Barn gift card) every time they hit the bull.

Just ask Kinney. He did not exactly hit the Snorting Bull, but he did hit the Bulls mascot, just like Nuke – except with a bat, not a pitch.

Close enough: He got his free steak anyway. And his $100 gift card.

“I didn’t hit the right bull, but I hit one,” Kinney said.

Players today get asked about the film and whether they’ve met Costner. Forty years later, “Bull Durham” remains one of the most recognizable sports films ever made.

After all, it wasn’t a typical sports movie that came down to a big game. Instead, it carried something both bigger and smaller than baseball, centered around a man who loves something more than it loves him back, the risks of starting over and the ache of growing older.

"'Bull Durham' is different," Wuhl said. "'Bull Durham' is about America."

Anna Snyder covers Duke for The Fayetteville Observer as part of the USA TODAY Network. Reach her at [email protected] or follow her @annaesnydr on X, formerly known as Twitter.

This article originally appeared on The Fayetteville Observer: How 'Bull Durham' made Durham Bulls into America's minor league team | Exclusive

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