Lawrence Columbus "Crash" Davis (July 14, 1919 – August 31, 2001) was an American professional baseball player whose name inspired that of the main character of the 1988 movie Bull Durham. Born in Canon, Georgia, and raised in Gastonia, North Carolina, Davis earned the nickname "Crash" at age 14 when he collided with a teammate when chasing down a fly ball. Davis excelled as a middle infielder at Duke University, where he was the captain of the baseball team and a member of the Chi Phi Fraternity until he graduated in 1940.
After graduating from Duke, Davis played three seasons for the Philadelphia Athletics, batting .230 in 148 games. He was drafted into the United States Navy in 1942 amid World War II, and was assigned to Harvard University where he helped run the ROTC program. Davis also coached Harvard's baseball and squash teams.
When he was discharged from the Navy in 1946, Davis returned to Durham to begin graduate school at Duke and play for the Durham Bulls, then a part of the Carolina League. Davis would play in the minor leagues, with teams including the Reidsville Luckies and the Raleigh Capitals, until 1952.
After Bull Durham was released, Davis became a minor celebrity. He befriended the director of the film, Ron Shelton, and Shelton gave him a bit part in his movie Cobb about controversial baseball player Ty Cobb.
Davis died on August 31, 2001, from complications of stomach cancer.
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you brought my mistress
from her quiet palace
through breaker and crash of surf
to love-rite of unhappiness!”
—Hilda Doolittle (1886–1961)
“Before the birth of the New Woman the country was not an intellectual desert, as she is apt to suppose. There were teachers of the highest grade, and libraries, and countless circles in our towns and villages of scholarly, leisurely folk, who loved books, and music, and Nature, and lived much apart with them. The mad craze for money, which clutches at our souls to-day as la grippe does at our bodies, was hardly known then.”
—Rebecca Harding Davis (1831–1910)