We have given the DBAP keys to the Atlantic Coast Conference. The ACC has taken over the ballpark for its annual five-day baseball tournament.The event has a different feel from our typical MiLB game. Visitors this week hail from Boston to Miami and all the ACC universities in between.
The 2009 tourney was supposed to be in Boston’s Fenway Park, but a scheduling snag developed. The Durham Bulls were on the road, so we volunteered the DBAP.
We do 70+ games per season and game day is pretty routine for us. Not so for the ACC staff. They are meticulous in their planning and attention to detail. Very impressive.
Here’s a detail we missed: On Tuesday we held a luncheon for over three hundred - primarily the visiting teams. Beef and chicken were on the buffet. We grilled 600 chicken breasts. They were gone in thirty minutes. Our “training table” was bare. We have a new appreciation for the eating habits of college athletes!
The exposure for Durham is great, too. All thirteen games are broadcast on FoxSports, Comcast and the New England Sports Network. ACC TV's affable Mike Hogewood - the man for all college sports - is in the booth:
This is a fantastic event with one exception - the aluminum bats. I'm old school. That metallic ping sounds so unnatural as it reverberates off the brick and steel beams in the DBAP. It sounds like a driving range. Still, I must admit Miami has some sharp looking orange bats!
Big Dogs at VIP picnic - atop Bulls' Blue Monster - left to right: Ron Wellman, Wake Forest; Kevin White, Duke; Jeff Elliot, ACC; Tallman Trask, Duke; Jim Goodmon, Capitol Broadcasting Co; John Swofford, ACC; Frank Jernigan, NC Dept of Commerce; Hill Carrow, Triangle Sports Commission; George Habel, Durham Bulls
Join us this weekend for championship ACC baseball. CLICK FOR TIX.
