When Ron and I first met I was 20 and he was 8. His father was a jack-of-all-trades at the college I was attending in California. Ron was a sports addict and I played on the basketball team so we got to know each other rather early on. Over the years we kept in touch off and on. Ron was a standout all-around athlete and played minor league baseball for several years in the Baltimore Oriels organization. I visited him and his folks frequently after graduation.
Ron eventually got tired of minor league ball and went to graduate school at the University of Arizona for a degree in art. However, his real yearning was to make movies, so he looked at some scripts to see how they were done. Ron wrote “The Best of Times” starring Robin Williams and Kurt Russell, “Under Fire” starring Nick Nolte and Gene Hackman, before he was able to direct his own film called “Bull Durham”, which was and remains a huge success. Since Ron had been a professional ball player he knew the game from the inside out and this is what made the film a huge success. I actually got to have Ron as a guest at the college where I was teaching.
Because we were friends with Ron my wife Mari and I were able to visit Ron in Hollywood several times to watch him work. We even got to be at the kick -off party for his next film, “Tin Cup”, as well as meet Kevin Costner and Don Johnson the films leading actors. Ron and Kevin got along perfectly with each other. In fact it turned out that Kevin had been a standout high school ball player and had been very eager to do “Bull Durham”. Mari and I also got to visit several actual shootings of “Tin Cup.” By then Ron was 50 and I was 62.
As the years rolled by Ron made many more successful films, such as “Blaze”, “White Men Can’t Jump”, and “Cobb”. It was his experience as a college basketball player that made “White men Can’t Jump” such a great success. Eventually Ron married Lolita Davidovich, the star of his film “Blaze”, and they now have two young adult children. His son is playing catcher on his college baseball team and his daughter is a superb singer. They live in Southern California.
One of the most interesting characteristics of Ron’s films is their literary flavor. Everyone remembers that in “Bull Durham” Annie Savoy was a Junior College literature teacher near Durham, NC and frequently offered insights into the verse of great writers. This should not be surprising since Ron was a literature major as an undergraduate. One of the more interesting characteristics of Ron’s writing is his penchant for clever and poignant turns of the phrase.
Ron has three highly creative brothers, all of whom live and work in Santa Barbara, CA. David owns his own metal working company. Steve is a high school English teacher and writes and records his own guitar music, and Jeff is a highly successful architect. All but Ron live in the “compound” in the foothills where they grew up. I have always considered the Shelton family my “second family” and remain so very grateful for them.