1988 movie starring Kevin Costner as Crash Davis, an aging catcher playing for the Carolina League's Durham Bulls, signed to teach Nuke LaLoosh (Tim Robbins) the ways of the baseball world. Susan Sarandon played Annie Savoy, a somewhat unusual Baseball Annie (in that she remains monogamous within the bounds of a single season) who sleeps with LaLoosh while slowly falling in love with Davis.

This movie kindled a boom in minor league baseball that has lasted to this day. Unfortunately for tourists (but fortunately for Durham baseball fans who were spending their summers in a decrepit facility), the stadium where this movie was filmed, Durham Athletic Park, was knocked down in the mid-1990's and replaced by brand-new Durham Bulls Athletic Park. The Bulls themselves moved up to the AAA International League in 1998.