I didn't say anything about them, and the ballplayers walked in, and he couldn't not grab the baseball and start holding it or picking up the bat. And I just put a ball on the table and a bat in the corner. 'I did a (TV) pilot that didn't get picked up, set in AAA Nashville a few years ago. ('The Church of Baseball' also recounts how a rainout in Little Rock became his 'Road to Damascus' moment in his filmmaking career and informed a major scene in 'Bull Durham.')Īsked if he got into filmmaking because of the way basketball and baseball were depicted on screen were so horribly inaccurate (try, just try watching Anthony Perkins throw a baseball in 'Fear Strikes Out'), Shelton laughs. From 1967 to 1971, Shelton played second base and shortstop for the Stockton Ports in A baseball, the AAA team the Rochester (New York) Redwings (where he made the team's Hall of Fame) and the AA team the Dallas-Fort Worth Spurs. Ron Shelton's 'Bull Durham' and 'White Men Can't Jump' are a couple of the rare movies people who have actually raised a bat or taken a jump shot for a living can watch without rolling their eyes.Īs he recounts in his new book 'The Church of Baseball: The Making of Bull Durham: Home Runs, Bad Calls, Crazy Fights, Big Swings, and a Hit' (Knopf, $30) sitting through movies like 'Pride of the Yankees' was a chore for him.

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