In the beginning: Looking back on the iconic 'Bull Durham'

Jan. 5—DURHAM — The film "Bull Durham" is widely considered to be one of the best baseball movies of all time.

The owner of the Durham Bulls at the time, Miles Wolff, explained what it was like to be part of this iconic baseball movie that made the Bulls one of the most recognized minor league franchises.

Considered "the father of Independent baseball," Wolff bought the Bulls at the end of the 1979 season. At the time, Durham didn't have a baseball team. The old Durham Athletic Park on West Corporation Street, sat empty. Wolff expanded the Carolina league to include the Durham Bulls as a farm team for the Braves.

"They hadn't had a team in eight years," he said. "The [park] had been deteriorating and they had some rodeos in the infield, it was in awful shape."

The Bulls had to add a few additions, including new lights and an outfield fence. The City of Durham offered $25,000 to fix the ballpark to make it playable.

Despite a few hiccups in their first season, it was an overall success. With the economic decline of the tobacco and textile industries in Durham, the Bulls were seen as "something to rally behind."

Opening day of the 1980 season, the lights went off in the middle of the game, the bathrooms stopped working, and about everything that could go wrong, did.

Two days before the season started, the Bulls' uniforms were stolen. Wolff called the Braves farm director, Hank Aaron, to send up a bunch of old Braves uniforms to wear so that the Bulls could play their season opener.

"[Hank Aaron] was always helpful and supportive of the Bulls," said Wolff.

As the Braves farm director, Aaron would come to many Bulls games at the old Athletic Park, and would often sit in the press box to avoid too much fan attention.

"He was too famous to sit in the stands and watch the players," said Wolff. "People would tend to swarm him to ask for autographs."

When it came to baseball, Durham fans were excited to support their new hometown team.

"The town was ready for baseball," said Wolff. "The Bulls gave Durham an identity."

"We had a great team," he said. "We had 'Dirty Al' Gallagher as our manager, he was colorful."

At the time, the Durham Athletic Park could seat about 5,000 people.

"We had these cheap, plastic rain jackets for kids. We ordered 1,000, and before the game started we ran out," said Wolff. "The lines of people went all the way down to the next block."

They drew in 5,500 fans that night. Overflow fans were ushered to sit in grassy areas near the outfield.

"It was quite the atmosphere," said Michelle Wolff. "They had a lot of Duke students working there pouring beer. It was just alive."

The influx of alcohol definitely helped create an exuberant atmosphere. The North Carolina General Assembly didn't adopt the legal drinking age of 21 until 1985, which meant until then everyone 18 and up was welcome to a beer at the park. And by 1978, North Carolina legalized liquor-by-the-drink.

Wolff remembered that one local newspaper declared the Durham Athletic park as the best bar in town.The Durham Bulls got their name from the Bull Durham smoking tobacco, sold in a pouch with papers for hand rolled cigarettes.

"It's always been the Bull City," said Wolff. "It's just part of the history."

"When I moved here in '74 the factories were still open," said his wife, Michelle. "You would go downtown and all you would smell is tobacco, not smoke but tobacco leaves."

The sweet smell of tobacco encompassed Durham, carrying with it the rich history of the town.

One Christmas, a film producer for Universal Studios named Thomas Mount flew into Durham to meet Wolff at the ballpark.

"Someday Miles, we'll make a movie here," Mount told him.

Wolff thought it was just "Hollywood talk." But six years later, Mount sent a screenwriter named Ron Shelton, a former minor league player who had an idea for a baseball movie.

Shelton fell in love with the grittiness of Durham and the old ballpark that he thought fit perfectly for what he was doing. The film crew came in at the end of the 1986 season, and began the production of Bull Durham.

"We thought it was going to be a complete flop," said Wolff.

The movie saw widespread success, grossing over $50 million and receiving an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay.

"People will say that the movie made the team, but we were selling out most games before that," said Wolff.

"But what it did was it pushed us to get a new ballpark. The old ballpark couldn't handle the crowds, even without the movie."

"It also brought the souvenir sales up," said Michelle Wolff.

After that, everyone around the country wanted a Durham Bulls hat. By the end of Wolff's tenure, the Bulls had obtained national notoriety as a minor league ball club.

In 1991, Wolff sold the team to its current owner, Jim Goodman, who was going to move the team out of Durham. But the town rallied its support to keep the team, and Goodman invested millions to help renovate historic downtown Durham, preserving one million square feet of vacant space left from the American Tobacco factories.

Now on Blackwell Street, less than a mile South of the Historic Durham Athletic Park stands the Durham Bulls Athletic Park with its field named in honor of Goodman.

The Durham Bulls completed the 2022-23 season on this field as the back-to-back Triple-A National Champions.

In February of 2023, Wolff released his autobiography There's a Bulldozer on Home Base: A 50-year journey in Minor League Baseball.