Bull Durham - Crash and Nuke Step Into the 21st Century. Part One

Back before my Belgium foray we made a brief trip to Durham North Carolina.  Mostly to visit old friends who had moved there.  Partly just to see a part of the country new to me.  But I admit to just a sliver of Movie Fandom here, as I wanted to see the location for what has perhaps become my favorite movie of all time: Bull Durham.

If you have not seen it, do so.  On the surface it is a movie about life on a minor league baseball team.  But it is actually about life, love, growing old, and about the decisions we make.

It is set in a beautiful, vintage ball park near down town Durham.  Since the movie came out 30 years ago this week there have been many changes.  The Durham Bulls have gone from being a struggling low level "A" ball team to a high level AAA team that wins national championships.  They have also moved from the old ball park into a new one, one whose size and elegance more befits a team that has "made it".

Join me for a brief wander through the two ball parks, the old and the new.  I won't intrude on your journey too much but will share my observations....which mostly deal with how the two main characters of Bull Durham would have appreciated the changes.  How would the mature, analytical but sensitive "Crash" Davis see things?  How would the brash, impetuous young "Nuke" Laloosh see them?

Today the old ball park.  It is still in use.  A local college plays their games there and I believe the Bulls still have one "throwback" game a year in the old place.  It is also a training facility for ball park grounds keepers.

The ball park entrance is seen in the beginning of the movie as a bustling, active place.  If Crash saw it this way he'd be saddened.  Nuke wouldn't go to the park on off days.

The field still looks good but you can tell that the movie makers and time both have changed things.  Down town Durham is a busy place these days, those are upscale condos off the the right.  The outfield in the movie has a series of brick tobacco warehouses.  Here we see most prominently a blue cinder block building.  We'll get back to that in a moment.

Across the street from the ball park is this tall, skinny building.  I assumed - correctly - that it had something to do with fire fighting.  It was used to train firefighters.  It also looks like a "hose tower" which fire stations used to unroll hoses after use, hanging them up until they were dry and could be recoiled.  Both Nuke and Crash being rather obsessed with sex they would have looked at this and made jokes about their towering hoses.

Ah yes, that building out beyond the right field fence.  It was being renovated.  Having heard about it I had to go over and snap a shot of the interior.  

Truth is way stranger than fiction sometimes.  This building is being renovated into a bar where you can throw hatchets.  Just for fun or in competitive leagues.  Really.  After a few drinks Nuke would for sure want to try this.  Hopefully Crash would talk him out of it but if not Nuke's notoriously troublesome control would mean it was time to duck under a table as the hatchet went who knows where.....