Baseball Miscellaneous: Major Mistakes in Bull Durham

As a baseball fan, you must have seen Bull Durham. This movie showed the life in Minor League Baseball very accurately. But no matter how good the movie was, there were some major mistakes that perhaps only a few noticed.

Bull Durham is still regarded as one of the best, if not the best baseball movie(s) of all time. As written in the prologue, it depicts the life in Minor League baseball very accurately. It shows the crappy ballparks of the late 1980s and the bad means of transport the players had to deal with. But with the mistakes in this movie pointed out below, you may get a different opinion about this movie.

The research for mistakes started with the search for a lollygagger t-shirt, once sold by the AAA Durham Bulls. While I was looking for it, I wondered in which league the Durham Bulls of the movie played. It was the Carolina League. When I looked at the standings I noticed something odd. And that was the start of some research which resulted into this blog post.

The mistakes in this movie have to do with the opponents of the Bulls.

In one of the home games, the Bulls face a team called the Generals (see photo on the right). In 1988, there was a team called the Generals in the Carolina League, but that team was the Virginia Generals. It existed for only one season. But the team shown in the movie is wearing uniforms of the 1988 Fayetteville Generals. Experts will know that the Fayetteville Generals played in the South Atlantic League.

Another major mistake when it comes to opponents is the Greensboro Hornets. The Bulls face them on the road but in 1988, the Hornets also played in the South Atlantic League. A nod to reality though is that there is a shot of the front of the ballpark of this club: World War Memorial Stadium.

Near the end of the movie, the Bulls are playing a not further mentioned team. At one point, the road uniform of the club is clearly visible and it resembles the uniform of the Eugene Emeralds of those days. Any baseball fan that knows minor league baseball, knows that the Eugene Emeralds don’t play anywhere close to the Carolina League as the Ems play in the Northwest League. Perhaps this is the biggest disappointment of them all.

In the final baseball scene with Crash Davis involved, Crash is playing for the Asheville Tourists after he was released by the Atlanta Braves. He joined the Astros’ organization to chase the Minor League home run record. In the record breaking at-bat, he is facing a pitcher of a team with the name Senators on the jersey. In 1988, there was no team with that name in the Carolina League.

No matter how great this movie was and still is, the lack of accuracy with team names and wrong opponents, takes away the magic of the movie. The director and/or the script writer should have done their homework a lot better.

But then again, perhaps this movie was never meant to portray reality afterall.