White Christmas...at the DBAP

I'm holed up at home, but our web cam has a bead on the snow covered ballpark...

Is this a greeting to our Head Groundskeeper Scott Strickland? (Appropriately, it's in left field.) Call security!


Click here for a live view from the Bulls' web cam. Enjoy the Holidays!

Opposing Views

People assume I have a great view of the field from my office in the Durham Bulls Athletic Park. Not!

Our offices are on Blackwell St. alongside the box office. I'm the only staff member with a window, so I can't complain. This is my view...of the sidewalk...and American Tobacco's Fowler Building:

I stumbled across this video from Duke University on YouTube. The development staff for Duke's medical center has offices atop the Diamond View I office building. They have an impressive view of the ballpark. I'm jealous...like the infield...green w/envy!

For more Duke perspectives on Durham, search for Views at Duke on YouTube.

A Tale of Two Cities - Brainpower & Illiteracy

A recent study rated Durham as the fourth "brainiest" metro in America! Portfolio.com and the Business Journal publications ranked brainpower by MSA. Our metro includes Chapel Hill so we get credit for all the advanced degrees at UNC, Duke, NCCU and the local high techies. Here's the Top Ten:

Boulder, Colo; Ann Arbor, Mich.; Washington, D.C.; Durham, N.C.; Fort Collins, Colo.; Bridgeport-Stamford, Conn.; San Jose, Calif.; Boston; Madison, Wis.; and San Francisco-Oakland.

On the other hand, illiteracy in Durham has been pegged as high as 27%. Those are folks who have difficulty with reading, writing and basic math.

My personal contributions to local brainpower are severely limited, but I have persuaded the Durham Bulls and our beloved mascot to promote literacy, and in particular, the Durham Literacy Center.

The DLC turned 25 this year and is launching a $2.5 million capital campaign to improve/expand its services. The DLC is a United Way Agency of Excellence...well run operation...by Executive Director Reggie Hodges with a deeply committed cadre of volunteers. (www.durhamliteracy.org) Durhamite and Bull Durham producer Thom Mount is a DLC booster...in Hollywood. His late Mother was a long-time volunteer.

Confession: Our READ poster is a knock-off, albiet a clever one. (After all, the E in Wool E. Bull stands for education.) President Obama was ahead of us. He posed for this one as a US Senator for the Skokie IL public library.

You can jump on the bandwagon by jumping on our Facebook page. The Bulls will donate a buck to the Durham Literacy Center for every new Facebook fan that we nab during December.

Yes, we're buying our friends...but its for a very good cause.

Winter Meetings...brrrr!

We're at the Baseball Winter Meetings in Orlando. At Disney's Swan and Dolphin. Sunny Florida...except it was a record breaking 31 degrees overnight. Disney had to cover the tender tropical plants yesterday. Here's a shot of the beach. Empty!

Enough whining about the weather. We are all about business (when we're not in someone's hospitality suite.)

The Major League clubs make player trades at the Winter Meetings that generate headlines. We are here for league meetings and a gigantic trade show. Our drama revolves around the cost of cotton - a global supply crisis is brewing. T-shirts are a major retail item for us, and a big promotional give-away. The cost is expected to rise 30% or more early next year. Ouch!

The highlight of this convention was the Monday awards luncheon. Bulls' Head Groundskeeper Scott Strickland was recognized as Turf Manager of the Year in the Triple A classification. That means we had the best field among the 30 International League and Pacific Coast League teams in 2010!

There's a point I want to make about Scott's work that has nothing to do with growing grass. This is about more than turf. And it has a lot to do with meteorology and hydraulics.

Until a torrential rain this summer, the Bulls had not lost a game to inclement weather in almost four seasons. Scott's streak was 271 games. That doesn't mean we had ideal weather. It means we got a lot of games in during bad weather. Watching the radar, Scott knows when to put the tarp down as a storm approaches, and his crew knows how to efficiently get water off the field and track. That's what makes a World Class groundskeeper. Congratulations, Scott!

Deck the Halls...with LED lights!

Jingle Bull Bash

Triangle Christmas Tree Challenge

Most companies would be content to erect a Christmas tree in their lobby for the holidays, but not Capitol Broadcasting. Befitting out business, we’re partial to towers.

We decorate and light the communications tower at our Raleigh HQ on Western Blvd, and we’ve continued that tradition with the iconic Lucky Strike water tower on Durham’s American Tobacco campus.

We flipped the switch Friday evening (Dec. 3rd) amid caroling and a community celebration of the holiday season.

If you zip by American Tobacco on the freeway or Blackwell Street, you don’t realize that the complex has an expansive interior courtyard. Come for a visit. Photos don’t do the lighting display justice. It’s worthy of Disney, maybe better!

And there’s an added attraction this season: on Blackwell, next to the Durham Performing Arts Center, fifty Christmas trees line the walkway. Each tree has been cleverly decorated by a local non-profit, and there’s a contest underway that will put some cash in a charity’s treasury, the Triangle Christmas Tree Challenge.


The Bulls are sponsoring Habitat for Humanity’s Youth United tree. It’s decorated with yellow hard hats. We would appreciate your vote in support of Durham Habitat!!!

Click here for video, slideshows and more info on

Durham's Jingle Bulls Bash and the Triangle Christmas Tree Challenge

A call-up at The Fan

Godspeed to our Capitol Broadcasting comrade Dave Shore, the Operations Manager of 99.9 The Fan and 620 The Buzz.

Dave joined us three years ago from ESPN radio in Dallas when Capitol introduced sports talk radio to the FM dial at 99.9.

We’ve had our share of heartburn in the local radio wars, but overall, it has been BIG FUN…as we increased the station’s power, acquired 620 The Buzz and 1550 ESPN Deportes, added an HD radio channel and premiered wralSPORTSfan.com and ESPNtriangle.com.

ESPN has "recalled" Dave, not to Dallas, but to their sports station in Los Angeles. He’ll join the Lakers’ broadcast crew, and Dave gets to work with USC and the Angels...as Ops Manager at 710 AM ESPN Radio.

Best wishes to Dave and his wife Reenie on the Left Coast. It’s a great gig - sounds pretty glamorous - but you're gonna miss ACC hoops! The Zen Master and Kobe can't fill that void.

Dave's last free lunch on my expense account. From the left:

Sports Radio GM Brian Maloney, Dave, Capitol CEO Jim Goodmon, your blogger

Revisiting Rockwell

I was fortunate to get a preview of the Norman Rockwell exhibit at the NC Museum of Art a couple of weeks ago. A group from the Greater Durham Chamber of Commerce attended thanks to our host, the Association for Corporate Growth.

Art snobs consider Norman Rockwell a kitschy illustrator, but history will likely judge him a great American realist painter. OK, what do I know about art!?! But we boomers (and our parents...and their parents) grew up with Rockwell’s magazine covers.

The NCMA exhibit includes over 300 Saturday Evening Post covers spanning forty-seven years. That’s a lot to take in. To navigate five decades, my wife and I would pick significant family milestones (birthdays & wedding anniversaries) and find the corresponding covers. Those framed covers frame history in a poignant way.

Rockwell took a personal interest in the civil rights movement of the 1960s, and that’s another aspect of the exhibit. The night after our museum visit, Katie Couric did a story on one of the Rockwell paintings for the CBS Evening News.

What interested me the most? It should be obvious...



The Rockwell exhibition runs through January 30th. Work it into your calendar over the holidays!

American League MVP - Josh Hamilton

I would say there was a 99 percent chance that this would never happen. I mean, honestly, I think a lot of people would agree with that. Josh Hamilton quoted by the AP


We are big-time happy for Raleigh's Josh Hamilton. A well deserved honor for the Texas Rangers' slugger. The balloting was announced today. As the AP story puts it: This was one of baseball's most inspirational turnarounds. Eight trips to rehab...three lost seasons...and now he's a major force in the Majors. Click here for the story.

I'm a serious believer in second chances. (I've had my share, thankfully.) So, if it's within your power to extend such grace to someone, remember Josh, and do it!

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I was disappointed with the World Series TV ratings. Nationally, they were off 25-30%. Dallas and San Fran apparently weren't as compelling as the Yankees vs. just about anyone. Hard to swallow that. It was even worse in Raleigh-Durham. We were off by 50% over last year. 68,000 households were tuned in, though. I suppose that constitutes the Triangle chapter of the Josh Hamilton Fan Club!

The ratings generated a lot of chatter on sports talk radio. I'm not too concerned about the popularity debates. Sure, the NFL is numero uno, but baseball's real problem is saturation. Pro football is rationed: 16 games over four months. I have to remind myself that there's an awful lot of baseball. Twice as much as the NBA or NHL. There are 162 regular season baseball games. Across 30 teams that's 4,860 games before we get to the playoffs and World Series. Fans probably have baseball fatigue by late October...but after a brief rest...they are perennially psyched for Spring Training! Baseball endures.

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While we are on the subject of the World Series, I should correct the record: Josh Hamilton wasn't our sole connection to the Texas Rangers. Former Bull Jorge Cantu was on the team, too. He helped the Rangers win their division championship with an RBI and homer in the decisive game...but he wasn't in the line-up for the Series.

Way back in 2003, Cantu was a major contributor to the Bulls' championship run. He returned to Durham in '04 earning a spot on the International League's post-season all-star team.


Thanks to blogger Chris Wise of www.watchingdurhambullsbaseball.com for the reminder. Nice save, Chris.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Wolfpack vs. Tar Heels

I try to keep this blog nonpartisan. Occasionally, I slip up and write something less than complimentary about the Yankees or Red Sox. However, I avoid politics and the most incendiary topic of all - college rivalries.

Regarding the latter, it’s time for transparency. I confess that I’m a NC State fan, and Saturday’s 29-25 Wolfpack win over the Tar Heels was fine by me.

Removed from the fanatics (and hot tempers) in Chapel Hill, I snapped this photo at the Streets at Southpoint Saturday evening in Durham. I assume it was unintentional, but this clothing store had marked down its blazers...and the display was predominately Carolina Blue. A little retail humor:

Our company handles NC State's sports broadcasts and marketing for the athletic department - Wolfpack Sports Marketing. That includes apparel. May I suggest this T-shirt...perfect for Holiday gifting!

Shop at gopack.com

Swoosh!

Undoubtedly, you have encountered a Lids, Hat Shack, Hat World or Sports Fan-Attic at a shopping mall. The popular cap shops are all part of the same company found on the web at Lids.com.

Yet another division, LIDS Team Sports, provides team apparel to Minor League Baseball, and they proudly represent Nike.

The Bulls are honored to be featured in their 2011 catalog. The Durham Bulls Athletic Park and the Diamond View I and II buildings received a two-page spread.

Check out our Nike line at the Bulls Ballpark Corner Store. Click here, and type "Nike" in the search box.

Tinker Parnell: "Gotta have baseball."

The Durham Bulls lost their number one devotee last week when Thomas “Tinker” Parnell passed away at seventy-two. (He would not be pleased with devotee, but I needed something stronger than fan to capture his dedication to the ball club.)

I’m assuming he held the record for Bulls games attended by a fan. His father began bringing him to the old Durham Athletic Park when he was ten years old.

Tinker got a mention in Paul Hemphill’s The Heart of the Game. The author noted that he had his nameplate on the aluminum bleachers behind first base and was there in his Bulls cap and shorts and sneakers every night, greeting the players by name as they came out of the clubhouse to the dugout, giving the umpires hell, chain-smoking Winstons, wiping his face with a towel as the proceedings heated up, helping his grandchildren get autographs…

The “Gotta have baseball” line comes from a 1993 Duke Chronicle story. He was quoted in numerous publications as reporters penned features on the charm of the venerable DAP. Tinker was a venerated authority on the Bulls, and he always had a story to share.

In his more senior years at the new ballpark, he was a fixture in our lobby. It was sort of his personal clubhouse. Tinker’s the only fan who had access to our offices. The receptionist would send him back to our break room for a Pepsi, and he would check-up on the front office staff.

At his funeral Sunday the Pastor shared this stat and insight: "Tinker only missed two games at the old ballpark. One was for the birth of his son, and he regretted missing that one. I guess it was a really good game."

Tinker on video in 1994, interviewed for Ghosts in the Ballpark,

a tribute to the Durham Athletic Park

Click here for Tinker's obituary

Thanks to Bulls Assistant GM Jon Bishop for photos and memories.

The View

I noticed that Google has a relatively "fresh" aerial view of downtown Durham. That clearing to the right is the site of the new and improved Durham County courthouse. It's out of the ground now. Aside from the cranes, there are a few visible stories of steel and concrete.

The courthouse will top out at eleven stories. I'm thinking you will be able to see into the ballpark from the upper stories. Does that make the Durham judiciary a robbed version of the knothole gang?

Durham County website

Lambert's Launchpad: The Durham Concert

...so that headline is slightly over-the-top, but it hasn't even been a month since Miranda Lambert performed at the Durham Bulls Athletic Park. On Wednesday night at the CMA Awards in Nashville she raked in the hardware:

• Female Vocalist of the Year
• Song of the Year
• Album of the Year
• Music Video of the Year

I've been holding on to these unpublished photos from the DBAP concert...hoping that I would have a reason the revisit the subject...and to CONGRATULATE Miranda Lambert!

Check out our Facebook page. You could win a concert poster autographed by Miranda, Josh Kelly and Eric Church.

Photo credit: Deep South Entertainment

A Gaping Achievement Gap

My last post was on a Broadway show. Next up: a documentary. (It is the off-season after all.)


The Greater Durham Chamber of Commerce held a screening of Waiting for Superman on Monday. Even with that unruffled, earnest documentary style, it’s a scathing review of American public education in general and teachers’ unions in particular.

The gist of the film (according the me): Public education is broken. It hasn’t functioned effectively since the 1970’s. Funding per pupil has more than doubled while outcomes have flat-lined. The documentary stresses the importance of effective teachers, yet the system engenders mediocrity rather than merit. Poverty need not be an impediment. Children will learn in any school staffed with great teachers. [Click here for Wiki's take on the movie.]

The US Chamber of Commerce is using the film to demand accountability and innovation. Excerpts from an op-ed column in Monday’s Herald-Sun:

The facts are alarming. Among developed countries, the United States ranks 21st out of 30 in science literacy and 25th out of 30 in mathematics literacy. The achievement gap between low-income and minority students and their peers is gaping. And an astonishing 1.2 million students - about six times the population of the city of Durham - fail to graduate from high school each year.

...North Carolina has significant work to do to better prepare all of its students for success in college and the workplace. The National Council on Teacher Quality gave North Carolina a “D+” for its state teacher policies, noting that policies for delivering well-prepared teachers and removing ineffective teachers were especially bad.

...while leaders in North Carolina have been committed to improving student performance in reading and math, achievement is still too low. The National Assessment of Educational Progress found that only 43 percent of fourth grade students and 36 percent of eighth grade students were proficient in math. There is also a wide achievement gap, with minority students underperforming white students by nearly 30 points on fourth and eighth grade reading and math tests.

Read the entire piece; click here. It was penned by Durham native Bill Shore, chairman of the US Chamber’s Institute for a Competitive Workforce and director of community partnerships for GlaxoSmithKline, and Casey Steinbacher, President/CEO of the Greater Durham Chamber of Commerce.

Waiting for Superman is currently showing at Galaxy Cinema in Cary.

Another Home Run at the DPAC

We do baseball, but our neighbor - the Durham Performing Arts Center - has hit another home run.

I attended the musical Billy Elliot Friday night. It’s an energetic, uplifting production. Elton John wrote the score. Set during the bitter 1980s British coal miners’ strike in County Durham, the story is about that conflict and the family tension between coal miner machismo and Billy’s prodigious ballet talent.

The lead rotates among several young performers. On Friday, it was Giuseppe Bausilio’s turn. The kid is fantastic! He’s from Switzerland, thirteen years old, speaks five languages…and he sure can act, sing and dance.

An advisory from your resident prude: I’ve talked to folks who assumed this was a family show given the child stars and dancers. Maybe not. The language is quite “authentic” and there are issues you might not want to explain to your ten year old. I’m just sayin’…

From County Durham UK to Durham NC: It seems appropriate that this national tour of the show premiered in the Bull City. It was actually staged in Durham over the past couple of months. The orchestra even practiced in our storage space for a few days. The last Durham performance is 11/14…and then the tour moves on to Cleveland, Minneapolis, Charlotte, Tampa, Houston and Seattle this winter.

Only one week left in Durham! Click here for the DPAC website.

The results are in...

No, this isn't about Tuesday's election. Rather, we have the stats for Habitat's Halloween Bike Ride in Durham:

796 riders!

Over $66,000 Raised!

The ever versatile Durham Bulls Athletic Park was both start and finish line for the ride. A great event for a great cause! Habitat for Humanity is such an effective, productive organization.

Our staff helped out with this home last winter. Check out the before and after:



This is in the Lyon Park neighborhood off Morehead Ave. near downtown Durham. It seems like Habitat is building a house on every block. This is how neighborhoods are transformed...for the better!

Habitat of Durham can assist you with Holiday gift-giving. CLICK HERE for the scoop.

Halloween: Nightmare on Blackwell Street

You would think that the Bulls invented Halloween:

We hosted the Durham Habitat Halloween Bike Ride.

Wool E. Bull went trick-or-treatin' with a family of Bulls fans.

We conducted a costume contest on Facebook.

And we sold so many jerseys for Halloween costumes in our store that we were able to donate $1300 to the Susan G. Komen foundation for breast cancer awareness month.

Here are several photos from the Saturday cycling event. I'm waiting to hear how much money was raised. Thanks to Cree - outstanding Durham corporate citizen - for sponsoring the ride.

Election Day Looms Large

Let's take a break from the World Series and football to consider our civic duty: Election Day is Tuesday.

Have the tedious, nasty campaign ads turned you off? Snap out of it! !!!VOTE!!! Whether or not there's a seismic power shift in Congress, you should exercise your personal power at the polls. Concerned about the subterfuge of campaign financing? Cast your own secret ballot.

I liken this to choosing a fantasy team. Do a little research this weekend...make your picks...and get your results Tuesday night. (It seems I have thirteen little known state judges and two obscure reps from the Soil and Water Conservation District on my active roster!?! This is hard.)

Here's an excellent web site to help with those picks: NCvoterGuide.org

You enter your county of residence and the web site lists all the applicable races and candidates...with links to their bios. Check it out. It's the Yahoo! Fantasy Sports of electoral politics.

Huff, Hamilton & the World Series

Of course, I'm disappointed that the Rays aren't in the World Series, but we can't lose now.

Raleigh's Josh Hamilton plays for Texas, and Aubrey Huff of the Giants played for the Bulls at the beginning of this decade. I have some shots of our memorabilia...

Clean-shaven Aubrey Huff in a Bulls' uniform. Aubrey made his Durham debut in 2000, leading the team with a .316 batting average while blasting 20 home runs and collecting 76 RBI. He earned a spot on the International League All-Star Team and Rookie of the Year honors in the IL. This is his locker nameplate from the All-Star game in Rochester:


Huff returned to Durham for the first month of the 2001 season but was called up to Tampa Bay after 17 games. Here's some trivia from Bulls' Media Relations Director Matt DeMargel: Aubrey returned to Durham to begin the 2002 season, but he was injured when a line-drive struck him in the head during the batting practice portion of Meet the Team Day! He was activated on April 24th and appeared in 32 games with the Bulls...was called up to Tampa...and the rest is MLB history for Aubrey.

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Josh Hamilton never played in a game for the Bulls during his time in the Rays' organization, but we did this bobble-head promotion. I saw one on eBay Monday evening for $39.95!

Here's the good stuff...

99.9 The Fan staged a charity event for Josh's Triple Play Ministries in 2008, and I got carried away at the auction with my company credit card. (Can you really go overboard at a charity event?) So, the Bulls own one of Hamilton's bats from the 2008 All-Star Game and a Nolan Ryan jersey.

You won't find these gems on eBay! Stop by the DBAP and take a look...