Editorial:
Baseball
By Steve Tuttle
It as the bottom of the fourth at Durham Bulls Athletic Park by the
time I realized I would have to miss some of the action on the field
if I wanted another hot dog. I asked my son to watch everything that
happened so he could fill me in when I got back to my seat.
“Here’s what you missed,” he told me when I returned.
“Wool E. Bull raced a little girl around the bases, and when he was
about to beat her home, a rodeo guy ran out of the dugout and caught
him with a lasso. Everybody thought it was hilarious.”
He was filling
me in on some of the details when our attention was caught by a great
fielding play. It was the hamburger flipping contest, wherein one
contestant holding a spatula flips a burger back over their head to a
teammate who tries to catch it in a bun. The burger arched high and to
the right, but the bun lady made a great dive and snared it inches
from the grass.
Later there
was a sumo wrestling match, a water balloon toss and a strange event
in which a blindfolded person tried to crawl toward a prize guided
only by shouts from the stands. Oh, and in between those contests and
innumerable announcements of birthdays, company outings and plenty of
bouncy music, they played a baseball game. Durham lost to Syracuse,
but if any of the nearly 10,000 fans in attendance were depressed, the
fireworks display after the game undoubtedly lifted their spirits.
So it goes in
minor league baseball around North Carolina, a once-dying sport that
has come roaring back to life. As we learn in this month’s cover
story, which begins on page 26, the 11 minor league teams in the state
are attracting record crowds and enjoying unusually strong community
support. Many are playing in new or renovated stadiums paid for by
local taxpayers and all are practicing a pedal-to-the-metal brand of
showmanship that would make Barnum & Bailey envious.
Everyone, it
seems, is glad that baseball is back in the only state that fields
teams in all five minor league levels. Families have discovered that a
night at the park provides lots of wholesome entertainment at a fair
price. The owners who embraced this marketing strategy are again
making money. And the cities lucky enough to have a franchise are
using baseball as a sure-fire way to attract attention in economic
development circles.
Durham, for
example, promotes itself as a great place for business because it has
two top-drawer universities, Duke and N.C. Central. To drive home that
point, the Durham Chamber recently sent our a mass mailing with
pictures of the two universities affixed to — what else? — a
baseball.
So get out and
see a game this summer. You’re sure to have some fun while boosting
the local economy and seeing some great athletic skills —
particularly if they’re having the hamburger flipping contest.
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