When The Associated Press featured the Durham Bulls and the minor league club's connection to the classic 1988 film "Bull Durham" in 2008, the writer went straight to a description of the team's famous snorting bull sign.
The sign where if a Durham player hit it, it wound snort and the player would win a steak.
The bull ended up being one of the many impacts "Bull Durham" would have on the real Durham Bulls. (The original was actually conceived of and constructed for the movie.)
But, along with attention and attendance for the Bulls, the movie had wider impacts for the whole of the minor leagues, then-Bulls GM Mike Birling told The AP.
"Without that movie, I don't believe minor league baseball is as strong as it is today," Birling told The AP in June 2008. "That was kind of the piece that really got minor league baseball moving again."
For the Bulls, it started with Durham-native film producer Thom Mount.
To The Durham Sun as filming got underway in October 1987, Mount explained he and screenwriter Ron Shelton had begun discussing the project eight years earlier. Then, as it came together, Durham and Durham Athletic Park became a natural place to set it.
"We needed a period ballpark and Durham has one of the great ones," Mount told The Sun then. "Durham's had the good sense or luck to preserve a lot of the original architecture. It's red-brick, low-rise with lots of character."
Weeks after the movie's premiere, Durham owner Miles Wolff explained to The AP the movie's impact. Attendance, already strong, was up. Then there was the souvenir shop. The team had hired a full-time clerk to handle all the orders.
"Everybody seems to want a souvenir," Wolff told The AP. "There are more people coming, but the souvenir sales are where you're seeing the greatest impact."
That brings us to the 1990 Bull card. It's from the update set. "The Famous Mechanical Bull at Durham Athletic Park," the caption reads.
Appropriately enough, the card back includes a reference to the movie - and a selection of 12 items for sale in the team's shop, along with instructions on how to purchase.
The snorting bull has remained a fixture of Durham Bulls baseball, even after the club moved to its current Durham Bulls Athletic Park in 1995. In 2008, the Bulls installed a third-generation of the sign and it remains the team writes on its site in 2024, the park's "most distinctive feature."
- Durham Sun, Oct. 8, 1987: Mount's happy to be back home for 'Bull Durham'
- Muncie Star Press, Associated Press, July 31, 1988: Life Imitating Art? It's Not Just Bulls
- Charlottesville Daily Progress, Associated Press, June 22, 2008: Durham Bulls still bask in their Hollywood glory
Made the Majors:1,417-32.1
Never Made Majors:3,002-67.9%
That's a great card.
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