No Bull: The Real Story of the Durham Bulls and the Rebirth of a Team and a City

by Ron Morris

In 1980, Durham, N.C., was a downtrodden city without baseball or much identity at all beyond the tobacco industry, which was slowly fading away. Enter the Durham Bulls, who debuted to instant success that year and led to an era of rebirth for the city. This is the story of the 1980 Durham Bulls, told by the beat writer who followed them from spring training through the dog days of August, and how they gave rise to successes that none of them could have envisioned.

Just as covering the Brooklyn Dodgers in the 1950s proved to be “The Boys of Summer” for author Roger Kahn, the 1980 Durham Bulls provided Ron Morris with a story to cover that has endured over the next three decades. While many baseball fans think the success of the movie "Bull Durham" led to the rise of the Durham Bulls, in fact the opposite is true. The Bulls were a hit from the first time they opened the gates in 1980, and their sustained success led to the rebirth of Durham, N.C., as a city, to the renaissance of minor league baseball as a viable industry, and even the rise of Baseball America as the recognized leader in baseball media.

In "No Bull," Morris follows the 1980 Durham Bulls through their inaugural season, using that narrative thread to explore all the ripples that the team caused in the city and beyond. Morris was the reporter who covered the team for the Durham Herald-Sun that season, and now he has gone back and interviewed the former players and coaches, as well as residents of Durham, to examine the team's impact on the city.

Genres: Baseball, Sports

300 pages, Paperback

Published June 13, 2017

Reviews

[Danny Knobler · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fresh out of college, I moved to Durham, N.C. in April 1983 to work for Baseball America. I drove across the country, pulled into town and on my first night there (April 25, as I remember), I headed to Durham Athletic Park to go see the Bulls. Duane Ward was on the mound. Brian Snitker was the Bulls manager. And Ron Morris was in the press box, covering the game for the Durham Morning Herald.

Ron became a good friend, as did Snitker, and the Bulls were a significant part of my life for the next six seasons. Miles Wolff owned both Baseball America and the Class A team, so to supplement my meager salary at the paper, I made a little extra money as the official scorer, scoreboard operator and fill-in PA announcer at DAP. They were great times, lots of fun and an introduction to professional baseball that has served me well for the rest of my career. But in a lot of ways, I wish I'd gotten there three years earlier.

Wolff brought the Bulls back to Durham in 1980, and as my buddy RonnyMo writes in this well-told story of a team, a city and a movie (yes, Bull Durham), the timing was perfect and the team fit. Ron tells how Durham has moved on to bigger and better things, with Triple-A baseball and a thriving downtown. But there was a special innocence and a special attraction in those early years, when the Bulls gave a struggling city a reason for self-respect ... and a fun place to go on a hot summer night. You know how people call Wrigley Field Chicago's best outdoor bar? That was Durham Athletic Park in the early '80s. It was true for the fans in the bleachers, and also for those of us who worked during the games and congregated at the beer truck on the concourse when the work was done.

There were always stories of the first year, of 1980 and of Dirty Al Gallagher, the first Bulls manager. Morris tells those stories and more, and goes on to detail how the movie came about, and how it also helped transform the team and town.

I was looking forward to this book, and it didn't disappoint.

[Patrick Kelly · Rating 4 out of 5]

No Bull

- A book about Durham, Baseball, the Bulls, and a movie
- Lots of nuggets of fun facts
- For a few seasons in the ‘70s they were part of a four team league -
- In the early to mid 1900’s Durham tobacco had sold 90% of the world’s tobacco
- After the surgery generals report in ‘64 about the dangers of smoking, the tobacco industry in Durham declined until it was virtually gone by the start of the new millennium. Duke Hospital North opened in the ‘80s, GE came to RTP, the large Durham downtown library - Durham became a medical and technology city
- The book is dragging, it is covering the minutia of the ’80 Bulls season
- The movie is only one chapter
- There is a chapter about a minor league baseball magazine that the author wrote for
- Baseball was not in a great place during the 70’s and 80’s, football was taking over. The Big Red Machine created a revival of baseball. There was even talk about folding all minor league teams expect for AAA
- An interesting cast of characters but no story lines
- It goes into the details of the business and financials of owning and operating a minor league baseball team. As baseball was struggling minor league teams were folding. You could buy a team for a few thousand dollars. Many people that owned them, did so for the boy dream of owning a team. Few teams made any money
- Attendance was abysmal - another area that they go deep into
- It is a tough life being a minor league ball player. Many of these teams were not far off of being parks and rec teams
- This book could be better but I still find it interesting
- For decades Durham was the lowest income, most rundown, sketchy city in the triangle. In less than 10 years it had completely flipped
- In the ‘90s Durham almost lost the Bulls to Raleigh. A collation of Durham business owners and community leaders kept the team in Durham. The ball park became the center of the town’s economic and cultural revitalization - it still is the center of it, it’s awesome
- Certificates of participation instead of bonds to fund the stadium. The town borrows money and pays it back through taxes. It is more expensive but does not have to be approved by voters
- The stadium is based off of Camden Yards in Baltimore
- The stadium was built in ‘95 and then expanded to 10,000 seats in ‘98
- It brought Duke into Durham. Durham, Duke, and RTP are competing with Palo Alto and Boston. Having a great city vibrant city is essential to attracting top talent
- ‘we took the money we would have spent building office buildings on campus and basically invested in for-profit real estate deals in downtown Durham.’
- The Bulls lead a nationwide revival of minor league baseball
- By any measure, winning, financially, economic impact, cultural impact, etc. The Bulls are a huge success. If not the most they are one of the most famous and successful minor league teams
- The American Tobacco District
- I love this section about the growth of downtown - I have directly experienced it in my life
- DPAC opened in ‘08, +200 shows a year, one of the biggest venues on the broadway circuit
- US baseball in headquartered at the park
- It’s a great sports town. It’s a great place to live
- I love post scripts of where are they now. He did not have to do it with every member of ‘80 team. He did it for people that were only with the Bulls for two weeks and people that were only mentioned once
- The pieces of this book work better than the whole. I would have structured it differently, either as a narrative of the author during the 1980 season or as a series of essays. He needed better editor
- I enjoyed the pieces and the book. The Bulls are center piece of Durham. I have directly experienced the changes since the mid 90s. The Bulls have always been and still are cheap (price, not quality) family friendly entertainment. Downtown Durham is awesome, go to a game, eat at a restaurant, see a show, enjoy this awesome city
- I can’t wait for next year’s season
- Go watch the movie, particularly the ‘I believe’ scene

[Dave · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars but I'll round up.

My annual baseball read took me to Durham, N.C., where Ron Morris, longtime sports journalist, chronicled the rise of the Durham Bulls from their revival in the 1980 season through the movie to the present day (at least to the book's publication in 2017). It's a solid look at what it takes to run a minor-league baseball team, as well as a hefty dose of nostalgia from an old sportswriter, linking the early 1990s boom in minor-league baseball to the success of the Bulls after their founding.

He captured the characters on the team well, devoting a final chapter to where each player landed after his time in Durham. You'll see a few familiar names, too, though again the personalities stand out. A good beat writer like Ron certainly knows a team well enough to bring out those characters.

Ron just needed a more strident editor to close a couple of narrative loops and check some facts. The style is a little dry, too, but I understand the desire to inform and chronicle. No, I couldn't have done any better.

Thanks to my buddy Alex, who knows Ron well, for loaning me the book.

[Mike Kennedy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ok book about the return of baseball to Durham, NC in 1980. The author did a good job at looking at all aspects of the club from the owner to the groundskeeper to the players to the front office. The one problem the book had was that the stories were not overly compelling. The last third of the book is about life after the 1980 season. It covers the movie Bull Durham which was interesting. The author also talks about the magazine Baseball America's origins because the Bull's owner was an owner in the magazine. It didn't seem to mesh with the rest of the book, and more of an attempt to lengthen the book by the author. I didn't love this book, but I didn't hate it either.

[John Monaghan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book, Ron does a great job describing the re-birth of the minor leagues in the early 80s. The emphasis is on the rebirth of the Durham Bulls, he covers the economic and cultural changes that were impacted when the city decided to support a new team.

Mr. Morris writing style reveals his background as a sportswriter and it fits this story very well.

Just the kind of book I needed to make it through the winter.

[Artie · Rating 3 out of 5]

A high 3. The idea for this book is better than its execution. It could use better editing.