Kevin's Baseball Stadium Blog: Durham Bulls Athletic Park

Memphis Redbirds (STL) @ Durham Bulls (TB)

May 26, 2025

Redbirds 6, Bulls 1

W: Curtis Taylor
L: Antonio Menendez

HR: Luken Baker 2 (MEM)

Attendance: 5,664
Time of Game: 2 hours, 42 minutes

Stadium Facts

Location: Durham, NC
Opened: 1995
Capacity: 10,000
Level: Triple A
League: International

After spending the weekend in the Charlotte area, it was up North to Durham for a Memorial Day game. Mondays are normally universal off days for the minor leagues. But with this being a holiday, some teams altered their schedules for the week to accommodate a holiday game, including Durham, which is a big reason why I picked this particular weekend to make this trip to North Carolina. It looked somewhat dicey that this game would actually be played though. The unseasonably cool streak continued, but with rain added to the mix starting this day and continuing for most of the next 48 hours. It held off long enough for them to get the game started. The second half of the game was played in a constant light mist, enough to be annoying but not nearly enough to halt the game.

Durham Bulls Athletic Park is a pretty unique stadium among the ones I've visited. It is among the older ones, opening in 1995. At that time, the Bulls were still a Class A organization, like they were in the fictional movie Bull Durham which popularized the franchise to new levels. They were bumped up to AAA when Tampa Bay was added as a MLB expansion team in 1998 and have been affiliated with that organization ever since. DBAP is definitely an AAA caliber park. It combines some old fashioned characteristics with plenty of modern perks as well. The brick exterior and concourse below the main seating area, with tunnels leading out to the field are some of its classic ballpark features. While the main concourse is below the seats, there is also a walkway encircling the entire park, bisecting the main seating areas in foul territory. There is no true upper level seating in this park, which is a bit rare for AAA. A fairly large roof overhangs a good percentage of the seats, which came in handy for a lot of people on this damp afternoon. Unfortunately, not yours truly because I had a seat just a couple rows from the field. There is ample outfield seating in right field, offsetting the lack of a second level elsewhere. A Blue Monster wall rises above the playing field in left, similar to Fenway's Green Monster. Except in this case, embedded in the wall is the stadium's only video board. Putting the primary video board in that location wouldn't work in most stadiums, even those with large walls. But since there are no left field seats here, it is a uniquely appropriate touch. There are mixed use buildings surrounding the park beyond both left and right field, which are great architectural fits with the stadium. The building in left houses the Tobacco Road Sports Cafe, where patrons can watch the game from the patio. I ate dinner there the following night, when unfortunately there was no game in progress. One of the lasting nods from the Bull Durham movie is the large mechanical bull sign down the left field line with the slogan "Hit Bull Win Steak". Unfortunately, nobody accomplished that feat in this game, nor did the Bulls hit any homers to set off the bull's red eyes and smoke from its nostrils. The popularity of this franchise is perhaps most evident by the size of the team store, the variety of items available for purchase, and the massive number of people in the store at the time I was there. I haven't seen anything quite like that in my other minor league stops. They must make a killing off merchandise alone.

As someone who has lived in the Chicago and Washington, DC areas my whole life and went to college at Notre Dame, the string of pitchers used by Durham in this game was quite amusing to me. The starter was Joe Boyle, who pitched at Notre Dame where he was exclusively used as a reliever because he had trouble throwing strikes. The three MLB orgs he has been with have all developed him as a starter though and he has made 14 big league starts. Following him was Antonio Menendez from the DC suburb of Reston, VA. Next was Garrett Acton from the Chicago suburb of Naperville, IL and the University of Illinois. Then came Rays' rehabbing reliever Kevin Kelly from Springfield, VA and James Madison University. All were overshadowed on this day by Memphis starter Curtis Taylor. The Canadian 29 year old journeyman has bounced around a bunch of MLB orgs over the years and is yet to make it to the big leagues. He looked great on this day though. He pitched five scoreless innings against a pretty strong Durham lineup, striking out six batters. Boyle was surprisingly pulled after two scoreless innings of his own. I didn't see an official reasoning for this, but I suspect it was precautionary due to his velocity being down a few ticks from the 100 MPH he frequently throws. He has been pitching on schedule and deeper into games since. The game kind of fell apart for the Bulls when the side-winding Menendez replaced Boyle in the third. Michael Siani poked one down the left field line for a leadoff double followed by an infield hit by Thomas Saggese. Jimmy Crooks got the Redbirds on the board with a double to the left/center gap. That was followed by big boy Luken Baker slugging a three run homer to center, giving Memphis a 4-0 lead. It was the first of a pair of homers on the day for Baker, who has had a few cups of coffee in the big leagues with the Cardinals, but had really been struggling in Memphis this year. In the sixth inning after rain had started to fall, Siani delivered his second opposite field double of the game, this one driving in a run to make it 5-0. Besides the two doubles, Siani also stole three bases in the game, including two swipes of third, making him the other offensive star of the game for the Redbirds along with Baker. The Bulls finally got on the board in the seventh on a RBI double by Jake Mangum, who has spent most of this season in the big leagues but was rehabbing in Durham this week. Another notable Rays rehabber in this game was Ha-Seong Kim who actually made his first official start in the Tampa Bay org on this day and had a pair of singles to show for it. On the prospect front, MLB.com's #20 prospect Carson Williams was in the Durham lineup, but his offensive struggles continued on this day as he went 0-4 with a pair of strikeouts. Baker's second home run came in the top of the ninth, a lined shot over the Blue Monster to the Tobacco Road patio. Memphis won this one by a 6-1 score.

The rain picked up in intensity soon after the game ended. The following day was a complete washout which limited the amount of sightseeing I was able to do in the Research Triangle region. The Tuesday night game I had planned on attending in Greensboro was postponed. Fortunately, they had an early afternoon tilt on Wednesday I was able to attend instead before heading home.

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