The film stars Kevin Costner as "Crash" Davis, a veteran catcher from the AAA Richmond Braves, brought in to teach rookie pitcher Ebby Calvin "Nuke" LaLoosh (Tim Robbins) about the game in preparation for reaching the major leagues.

Baseball groupie Annie Savoy (Susan Sarandon) romances Nuke, but finds herself increasingly attracted to Crash.

The Durham Bulls, a single-A Minor League Baseball team, are dealing with another sparsely attended losing season, with one thing working for them: Ebby Calvin LaLoosh, a hotshot rookie pitcher known for having a "million dollar arm, but a five cent head," who has potential to become a major league talent.

"Crash" Davis, a 12-year veteran in the minor leagues, is sent down from Triple-A as the team's catcher to teach LaLoosh to control his haphazard pitching.

Annie plays mild bondage games, reads poetry to him, gets him to try different mental approaches to pitching, and gives him the nickname "Nuke".

After a rough start, Nuke becomes a dominant pitcher by mid-season, adding to the Bulls' good fortunes; in the end, he is called up to the major leagues.

Nuke is seen one last time, being interviewed by the press as a major leaguer, reciting the clichéd answers that Crash had taught him earlier.

He then retires as a player and returns to Durham, where Annie tells him she's ready to give up her annual affairs with "boys."

The film's writer and director, Ron Shelton, played minor league baseball for five years after graduating from Westmont College in Santa Barbara, California.

[3] According to Shelton, "I wrote a very early script about minor league baseball; the only thing it had in common with Bull Durham was that it was about a pitcher and a catcher.

[2] For Bull Durham, Shelton "decided to see if a woman could tell the story" and "dictated that opening monologue on a little micro-recorder while I was driving around North Carolina.

"[4] After Shelton returned to Los Angeles from his road trip, he wrote the script for Bull Durham in "about twelve weeks.

When Shelton pitched Bull Durham, he had a hard time convincing a studio to give him the opportunity to direct.

[2] Baseball movies were not considered a viable commercial prospect at the time and every studio passed except for Orion Pictures who gave him a $9 million budget (with many cast members accepting lower-than-usual salaries because of the material), an eight-week shooting schedule, and creative freedom.

[4] Producer Thom Mount (who is part-owner of the real Durham Bulls) hired Pete Bock, a former semi-pro baseball player, as a consultant on the film.

Bock recruited more than a dozen minor-league players, ran a tryout camp to recruit an additional 40 to 50 players from lesser ranks, hired several minor-league umpires, and conducted two-a-day workouts and practice games with Tim Robbins pitching and Kevin Costner catching.

The website's critical consensus reads, "Kevin Costner is at his funniest and most charismatic in Bull Durham, a film that's as wise about relationships as it is about minor league baseball.

"[11] On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 73 out of 100, based on 16 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".

[14] In David Ansen's review for Newsweek, he wrote that the film "works equally as a love story, a baseball fable and a comedy, while ignoring the clichés of each genre".

[17] Hal Hinson, in his review for The Washington Post, wrote, "The people associated with Bull Durham know the game ... and the firsthand experience shows in their easy command of the ballplayer's vernacular, in their feel for what goes through a batter's head when he digs in at the plate and in their knowledge of the secret ceremonies that take place on the mound".

Petroskey, who was on the White House staff during the Reagan administration, told Robbins that the actor's public opposition to the US-led war in Iraq helped to "undermine the U.S. position, which could put our troops in even more danger.

[5] Actor Trey Wilson, who played Durham manager Joe Riggins, died of a cerebral hemorrhage at age 40, seven months after this film's release.

[33] Bull Durham was originally released on DVD on October 27, 1998, and included an audio commentary by writer/director Ron Shelton.

[34] A Special Edition DVD was released on April 2, 2002, and included the Shelton commentary track from the previous edition, a new commentary by Kevin Costner and Tim Robbins, a Between the Lines: The Making of Bull Durham featurette, a Sports Wrap featurette, and a Costner profile.