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.