Textile Update

The Lollygaggers t-shirts were a gigantic hit for our Bull Durham 25th Anniversary celebration. 

We only have a few mediums left in the store, but our genius retail manager Bryan Wilson has ordered another crate. 

What this tells me is that most Lollygaggers are L, XL and XXL...and that's not much of a surprise!

Moving on to Independence Day...
Bryan worked up this design with Nike. It's in the store now. You know you want one for July 4th. S-w-o-o-s-h!!!

Bark in the Park

I'm compelled (by Gracie, my Springer) to tout last week's installment of Bark in the Park. First, some inspired writing from Frances Dowell for Bull City Summer:

...baseball is a game for people who take the long view, and so it is with dogs. Like any good fan, a dog sticks with you through thick and thin, through Nolan Ryan’s 5,000th strikeout to Mark MacGuire’s admission of steroid use. A cat would have turned up its pointy nose at baseball a long time ago. A dog shrugs its shoulders. We’ll get ‘em next time. Tomorrow’s another day.

Check out the slideshows from the event. If you aren't a dog lover, I don't expect you to understand...

• wral.com
• Bull City Summer

Get your tickets for the final Bark in the Park of the 2013 season, Wednesday, August 7th. Click here for info.

Leisureware for Lollygaggers

Must-have Bull Durham tees.
In the Ballpark Corner Store.

At the Ballpark Corner Store our idea of haute couture is a commemorative t-shirt.

To celebrate the 25th anniversary of Bull Durham, our retail manager Bryan Wilson teamed up with Durham's School House apparel. They have created a most memorable line of t-shirts. These are must-haves for fans of the movie and the Bull City's team. 

We owe the movie a great deal. It transformed a ball club into a brand. Twenty-five years after the film's premier, Durham Bulls merchandise is among the top sellers in Minor League baseball. From southern California to New England dozens of youth baseball teams are proud to wear the the Bulls logo on their caps and jerseys. 

Learn more about Durham-based School House

Bull Durham at 25

We are celebrating the 25th anniversary of the movie that brought us fame and fortune. I believe the fame has outweighed the fortune, but who's complaining!?! 

The team was paid $10K in 1987 for hosting the on location ballpark scenes. The film was released on this very weekend in 1988, and the Durham Bulls were immortalized. (More on Sunday's game commemorating the movie.)

I discovered an oral history of the film in the wral.com archives. In 2008, for the 20th anniversary, 99.9 The Fan interviewed Kevin Costner, Robert Wuhl, the writer, the producer and others. Slip on your headphones and click here.

Extreme Exfoliation

The Bulls' season is only two months old, but the field has been rode hard. It began the first week of March with Duke games, eighteen of them, and then we added thirteen ACC tournament games to the Bulls' regular schedule. We had almost played a full season's worth of baseball on the DBAP turf when the Bulls' road trip began today.

Bermuda whisperer and head groundskeeper, Scott Strickland, scheduled this dramatic cosmetic surgery weeks ago. The scraping and skinning took place Tuesday, and 7500 square feet of new sod will be rolled out Wednesday. The patient will spend eight days in recovery until the Bulls return on Thursday, June 13th vs. the Indianapolis Indians.

If this doesn't work out, we'll just play softball!

Watch the grass grow on our stadium cam. Click here.

2013 ACC Baseball Tournament - Recap

The 2013 ACC Baseball Tournament is in the rear view mirror this morning, but we have some great memories and stats.

12, 14 and 18 inning games. The latter ending just shy of 2am on Sunday as UNC beat NCSU before the largest crowd in tourney history...and the biggest college baseball game in NC history. (I left at midnight.)

Across 13 games, Wed-Sun, the ACC teams played more innings (133) than the Bulls played during the entire month of April (128)!

In the front office, attendance numbers matter as much as game stats, and I'm elated to report that Durham posted the fourth largest attendance in the event's history...

Watch this time-lapse from Saturday night as the ballpark fills to a capacity crowd of over 11,000...




Thanks to our hard working staff for getting those games in. We enjoyed working with the ACC office - a great group of professionals - the broadcasters and media reps who camped out in Durham for the week and the visiting fans from FL to VA. The Durham Convention and Visitors bureau gave us a significant assist, too.

Finally...
We often struggle with rain when we host this springtime event, but it was only a minor problem on Wednesday evening...and we were rewarded with this memorable image (slightly enhanced by Instagram)...

Welcome College Baseball Fans!

Welcome to Durham! From FL to VA, we have college baseball fans visiting us this week from the Univ of Miami and Florida State, from Georgia Tech, Clemson, UVA and Va Tech...as well as the "locals" from NC State and UNC. The 2013 ACC Baseball Tournament will be held Wednesday through Sunday at the Durham Bulls Athletic Park.

This event means big exposure for the Durham skyline. The Sunday championship is on ESPN2, and the Fox regional sports networks carry the Wed-Sat games. The east coast is covered from the New England Sports Network (NESN) to Fox Sports Florida, and individual games will be seen in San Diego, Arizona, Wisconsin, even in the Dakotas, on the Fox system. All games are on ESPN3.

Click on the bracket diagram to enlarge...

Championship Central: official website of the ACC Baseball Tournament.

For Visitors: the Durham Convention & Vistors Bureau has created a web portal - acc.durham-nc.com