The Bull Durham Principle

Or, Why Life Is Not--At Least Not Entirely--Unlike a Box of Chocolates

If there's one phrase I'd like to inject into the mainstream of American discourse, it's "Scooby Snacks."

In fact, sometimes I think the world would be a better place if everyone knew precisely what their Scooby Snack was--what made them happiest, strongest, most sure of a future worth waiting for, or assisted them in remembering when it was they felt that way, and why, and how best to repeat the experience going forward.

In other words, what spinach was to Popeye; what lasagna was to Garfield; what Hobbes was to Calvin; what Smacky was to Bucky Kat; what the blue suit was to Superman; what hamburgers were to Wimpy; what the mask was to the Lone Ranger.

Is it a false hope, believing each person has an object or person or place to which they instinctively return, which is holy to them, in which they find shelter beyond mere shelter, courage beyond mere courage, will beyond mere will?

Something or someone whose presence in your life is so indubitably invigorating not even your worst enemy could begrudge you its restorative powers, hoping only instead--as the well-worn comic-book mantra goes--to "contain" them?

Okay, now that I've gotten that out of my system: if there's two phrases I'd like to inject into the mainstream of American discourse, at least as I sit here living and breathing in this instant, the second one is "The Bull Durham Principle."

This is the notion that no man or woman is more profoundly human than in the moment they at once and finally "step out of character."

To explain.

The classic baseball movie Bull Durham contains a scene in which a run-of-the-mill conference at the mound between a pitcher, his catcher, several infielders, and a pitching coach becomes the setting for an ad hoc on-the-stoop bullshit session, the sort of workaday tea-party in which each participant airs his most banal concerns-of-the-moment: such as, in the movie, some small discourse on which gift is best-suited to newlyweds ("Candlesticks always make a nice gift," says the pitching coach).

The "mound consultation" scene in Bull Durham is considered a cinema classic, the sort of iconic, lasting mark in time which establishes a movie as an enduring instant rather than a merely entertaining two hours.

Bull Durham became a movie for the ages in three minutes of film-making.

But why?

Did anyone doubt that professional baseball players--of the minor-league sort congregated on that dusty mound in Bull Durham--had foibles, worries, scruples, and idiosyncrasies beyond those one could easily locate in a box score or a game recap (like, say, not being able to hit a hanging curve)?

Surely not--but somehow seeing the flip-side of an American icon (the professional ballplayer) was an unimaginable treat for a wide swath of movie-goers, and continues to be so to this day.

Which set me to thinking: would I trust a man's opinion of "how it is" in a major league dugout, if he couldn't account, in his tales and imaginings of same, recurring moments in which the primary actors of his scene stepped "out of character"? What if I met a man whose every anecdote about professional poets living abroad involved one or more "Good Lord! My muffins!"-type interjections? What if I saw a television show (Law & Order is one example, but certainly there are innumerable others) in which all the characters either never "step out of character" in a fashion which renders them un-selfconsciously absurd (read: human), or else barters, in place of such moments, supposed instances of unguardedness which (in fact) do nothing but bolster the "hip"-quotient of the characters allegedly humanized?

My point is, cops do tell stories about losing their guns.

Defense attorneys do tell self-deprecating jokes about defense attorneys.

Judges do spill mustard on themselves when eating hot dogs.

Poets do like poorly-executed, non-foreign films starring Brad Pitt.

Baseball players do agonize over wedding gifts.

Now you'll say to me, "Okay, so where's the revelation here? Everyone's human--I learned that in sixth grade, so what's your point?"

My point is this: there's absolutely no reason for people to have misconceptions about the criminal justice system.

Or the nation's political system.

Or academia.

Or professional sports.

The fact is, the moments in which Art most resonates with us as inherently true are the moments which are not the most but the least archetypal--which, paradoxically, are the moments so rarely exemplified by Art that a single, should-have-been-predictable scene in a classic baseball movie successfully made that movie into a cult classic.

When poets rail against the Academy, whither the Bull Durham Principle?

Where to, this notion we carry within ourselves--which we sure-as-shit carry in our spirits if not our intellects at all times--that nobody exists in a delineated space for more than seconds at a time? Poets slide into their personas only for the briefest of spans, and then only at great peril to their essential grace as human beings, that unspeakable alacrity with which the self returns to the self in moments of surprise, fear, anger, excitement, disappointment, angst, anomie, jealously, devoutness, integrity.

The same is true for baseball players, whose synchronized muscle spasms on the baseball diamonds of the world do nothing whatsoever to circumscribe the thoughts they carry within themselves on the field (yes, in mid-game) each half-inning.

I mean, did any of the sportswriters whose sensationalistic columns we so regularly read ever play Little League baseball? When I played Little League, was there a single half-inning I didn't spend at least a moment or two contemplating the following?

1) Whether I would need a larger cup if/when my penis grew;

2) whether my mother would cook meatloaf that night, or (hope-upon-hope) get fast food;

3) whether it was better to walk twice in a game and drop an easy fly-ball, or go 1-for-4 with a double and two put-outs (still don't know the answer to this one);

4) whether a teammate was gay (or pick your puerile obsession: had body odor; lice; was cuter than me; needed a haircut; would die in a boating accident someday; picked his nose; had kissed a girl; was taller than my father; used a heavier bat; needed to use a heavier bat; looked better holding a bat than I did; and so on);

5) whether I would ever get laid;

6) whether I would be able to finish whatever homework assignment I'd most recently put off, and whether not doing so meant I-would-die-in-a-cardboard-box-in-Camden;

7) whether my teammates knew I was afraid to have the ball hit to me;

8) whether it was, in fact, the sum and substance of my lifetime: what I did in the moment the ball was hit to me.

And so it goes.

Do not trust (it says here) the wisdom of those who misunderstand or insufficiently articulate the Bull Durham Principle in their recitation of How It Is, whether in life generally, or in any of the many cubicles into which our modern lives could be striated, such as "the law" or "the Academy" or "the grid-iron" or "the beautiful people" or "the New York scene" or "the Iowa School."

The fact is, sometimes Jorie Graham goes to the shitter and stinks up the place for hours.

And sometimes I hate my job; sometimes I love it. Sometimes I despise the notion of "the police"; sometimes I am so struck with awe at their courage I actually feel less whole. Sometimes music is Art to me; sometimes music is Garbage to me and I consume it every bit as avidly. Sometimes I worry my poetry will rest in my coffin alongside me; sometimes I think it deserves no better. Sometimes I want to live; sometimes I want to die. Who is better than this?

Consider: Greek mythology is not so timeless because it is beautiful, or sensible, or (let's be frank) terribly relevant. It's timeless because those gods were fucked up--and fairly indiscrete about it.

It's important, I think, to remember the Bull Durham Principle, and it's not nearly as easy to remember or internalize it as people presume it is, as evidenced by the fact that not nearly enough people in the world seem to speak about the world as a series of bizarre mound consultations--or, failing that, to at least know the location and character and likely effects of their Scooby Snacks.