New Home for the Bulls

Main entrance to Durham Bulls Athletic Park, Aug-2005.

The seating bowl as seen from the new right-field bleacher area on a hazy Sunday.

A look out at the field from in front of the press box.

Chronological Tour: Stop 103

• Location: Mangum and Willard streets, Durham, N.C. (map it using Google Maps)
• Opened: 1995
• Home team: Durham Bulls, Carolina League (1995-97), International League (1998-present); Duke Blue Devils, Atlantic Coast Conference (2016-present)
• Capacity: 10,000

Rating: 4 baseballs

Replacement of the old Durham Athletic Park, however, became necessary with the explosion of fans coming to see the tiny facility after the successful movie “Bull Durham” in the 1980s.

I got to the old park once, back in 1991 when a friend of mine was pitching in the Braves organization. (He didn’t make it.) There’s no question, though, that the new Durham Bulls Athletic Park which replaced it is worthy of the honor. The park was built while the Bulls were still in the Carolina League, but was made large enough to accommodate the International League franchise it was awarded in 1997 and which started playing in 1998.

Perhaps most significantly, the old snorting bull that was a fixture at the old park was successfully transplanted here. However, when I first saw the park in 1996 it was on the right-field side; that section has been replaced by bleacher and berm seating, and so the bull is now on the left-field side, atop the “blue monster” that features a scoreboard.