City: Durham, NC

Category: Spectator Sports

Telephone: (919) 956-2855

Address: 409 Blackwell St.

Description: It is hard to spend a finer summer evening in the Triangle than in the stands of Durham Bulls Athletic Park, where the highlight is seeing the enormous bovine beast on the left field wall spout smoke from its nostrils every time a batter smacks a home run. It’s a snug stadium, but it’s nearly always full. Even if you don’t care for baseball, you can always wait for mascot Wool E. Bull to race a toddler around the bases—losing every time—or to race around the outfield warning track in a souped-up miniature car. In 1902, this team took the field as the Durham Tobacconists—perhaps the least interesting tidbit from the storied franchise history. In 1926, baseball Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis—the same man who banned Shoeless Joe Jackson from professional baseball following the Black Sox Scandal in 1918—rode onto the Durham park atop a live bull. In 2003, pop idol and Triangle native Clay Aiken sang the National Anthem to a sold-out crowd. Throughout its history, Major League stars Joe Morgan, Greg Luzinski, and Evan Longoria have all gotten their starts in the Bull City. But the Bulls are forever linked to the 1988 movie that shares the team’s name. Even though the club no longer plays inside the park where Kevin Costner played Crash Davis to Tim Robbins’s Nuke LaLoosh, it is impossible to sit in the stands without thinking of lines from Bull Durham. Seasoned fans can tell you where scenes from the film were shot around the Triangle. Watch the Bulls put on a subpar show and you’ll finding yourself saying, “You lollygag around the infield . . .”