Durham Bulls

After a thunderstorm passed through, delaying the first pitch for about an hour, the Durham Bulls trounced the Louisville Bats, 5-0, at Durham Bulls Athletic Park on Friday evening, June 17. My wife and I were joined by two of my daughters, one daughter's domestic partner, and my dad, in an early Father's Day celebration.  The game was followed by a pretty great fireworks show. 

I never thought I'd see the winning team in a shutout game use six pitchers, but the Bulls did, by design I'm sure. There were no mid-inning changes to slow the game down. Catcher Joe Hudson was the player of the game, for his opposite-field two-run homer and for handling all those hurlers. 

The Durham Bulls have operated in organized baseball most seasons since 1900, in various leagues. They have paused only for major national emergencies: World War I, the Great Depression, the COVID pandemic, and the disco era. 

Durham was an important manufacturing center in postbellum North Carolina. Textiles and, especially, cigarettes. In the late 80s, especially on summer mornings, the city smelled like an unlit cigarette. Bull Durham was a popular brand of tobacco dating from 1874. It gave the local team its name, and it's among the best team names in American sports: pithy, distinctive, tied to its hometown. Also, bulls are majestic and fearsome, unlike Senators or Twins or Banana Slugs or a lot of mascots I could rattle off. 

The 1988 baseball movie directed by Ron Shelton, starring Kevin Costner and Susan Sarandon, could have been set in a number of minor-league towns. It came to life as Bull Durham, the charming and perennially popular rom-com set in Durham and the Carolina League. It showed Durham in a good light, not to mention minor-league baseball. It gives the Bulls name recognition and a marketing hook no other minor league team can match. 

In the wake of Crash Davis, Nuke LaLoosh, and Annie Savoy, the ballclub's profile rose. As results of that, the Bulls got a new stadium in 1995 and a promotion to the Class AAA International League in 1998. In another lucky break, since rising to AAA, the Bulls have been a Tampa Bay Rays affiliate. Tampa Bay has its problems, but it's really good at drafting and coaching up young prospects, and in those 20+ years, only 4 years have seen the Bulls finish under .500. 

The DBAP was tied in to the American Tobacco Campus urban rehab project and an overall period of growth and renewed vibrancy for downtown Durham. The stadium was designed by the same architects responsible for Baltimore's Camden Yards, the catalyst for a wave of neo-traditional downtown baseball parks in many MLB and MiLB cities. All of which is to say, the DBAP is pretty great, and within walking distance of lots of fine eating and drinking places. The Camden wave of parks were quirky and asymmetrical. In the left field corner the DBAP has a short 303' fence, but a 32' tall "Blue Monster" to compensate, topped by the famous Bull sign. Center field is 395', and it's 329' down the right field line. The DBAP seats 10,000 fans. Friday night post-game fireworks have become a regular feature.

Ballpark foods consumed by me: a hot dog with chili and slaw, and most of an order of BBQ nachos - messy, unhealthy, but good. Others in my party consumed pizza slices from Pie Pushers. Ballpark beers enjoyed: the Red Oak Hummin'bird Helles Munich Golden Lager. But there are a lot of beers and ciders to choose from.

Durham is the northernmost point of the Research Triangle. My idiosyncratic definition of the "Durham region" is a broad sweep of the Piedmont north of the city to the Virginia line, including all those towns along I-85 North. This part of the state has spawned its share of notable baseball figures, particularly around the turn of the 20th century.

• George "Possum" Whitted (1890-1962) spent 11 years in the National League as an outfielder and utilityman. He was a key player on the 1914 "Miracle" Boston Braves. Born in Durham. After leaving the majors, Whitted did a spell as player-manager of the Durham Bulls.
• Jack Scott (1892-1959) grew in Ridgeway, in Warren County, and had a 12-year National League career. He had some bad seasons with bad clubs, as well as good seasons with good clubs. His finest hour was throwing a shutout for the New York Giants over the crosstown Yankees in the 1922 World Series. He spent some time with the Bulls in 1913-14.
• Born and raised in Oxford, in Granville County, Lee Meadows (1894-1963) won 188 games as a National League pitcher. He had the honor as a Pittsburgh Pirate of getting roughed up and losing a start to the Yankees in the 1927 World Series. A sometime teammate of Possum Whitted's, Meadows started and ended his pro career with the Durham Bulls.
• Enos Slaughter (1916-2002) was a native of Roxboro in Person County. He got his start in baseball with a textile mill team in Durham, where he caught the attention of the St. Louis Cardinals organization. He went on to play in five World Series, winning four of them, and was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1985. Later in life he coached the Duke University baseball team. I met him once, at a Duke basketball game.
• Durham native Roger Craig (b. 1930) had a career much like Jack Scott's for the Brooklyn and L.A. Dodgers, the original Amazin' Mets, and the Cardinals. Not a star, just a pretty darn good pitcher. Craig won two games and lost two in the four World Series he pitched in, collecting three rings. As an MLB pitching coach he had a major impact in the 1980s as a teacher and proponent of the split-finger fastball. He also managed in the big leagues for 10 years.