Duke’s West Campus is littered with historic athletic venues—throw a rock far enough and you’re liable to hit the 70-year-old Cameron Indoor Stadium, where both basketball teams play, or Wallace Wade Stadium, the football team’s home since the Great Depression. Even Koskinen Stadium, the site of both lacrosse and soccer, isn’t exactly a spring chicken. The Blue Devil baseball team, too, has its own classic on-campus venue, Jack Coombs Field, built in 1951 and named after the most successful coach in Duke baseball history.
But this year, the baseball program became the first of Duke’s premier teams to move the majority of its home games off campus. The primary reason is that Duke has access to one of the best minor league parks in the country—the Durham Bulls Athletic Park, home of the Triple-A Durham Bulls, in downtown Durham.
The stadium cost a cool $16 million to build and is as pretty as they come: brick exterior, great sightlines, giant wall in left field, comfortable seating. The DBAP is a gem located just a couple miles from West Campus. Negotiations between the Bulls and Duke began last spring and lasted between four and six months, Kevin White, Duke’s vice president and director of athletics, wrote in an e-mail.
A timeshare in Durham
Brad Berndt, an associate athletic director at Duke and baseball’s sport administrator, is responsible for approving the team’s budget and schedule. Berndt said Duke jumped at the opportunity to play in downtown Durham as soon as the option became viable.
“We thought [playing at DBAP] was great exposure and a great way to continue the Duke-Durham partnership,” Berndt said.
In the end, the program worked out a kind of timeshare between Jack Coombs Field and DBAP. Glamorous weekend series, like those against ACC rivals Miami, Virginia and North Carolina, would take place downtown, whereas midweek games would be held on campus. The only exception was an April series with Florida State, which was scheduled for Jack Coombs because DBAP was already booked, White added. That left 18 games at DBAP and 13 on campus.
Waterlogged outfield causes move to Cary
Last week, though, baseball officials announced that six of those 13 home games, including the series against the Seminoles, would be moved to the USA Baseball National Training Complex in Cary, a 25-minute drive from campus. The move seemed odd considering the sheer distance from the University and the fact that baseball has never been a huge draw for fans.
The reason for the move was a waterlogged outfield. Both Berndt and head coach Sean McNally said the drainage system at Jack Coombs, particularly in the outfield, is poor, and that if it rained one day, the next day’s game would have to be canceled because of rough field conditions. Given how cold and wet this winter has been in Durham, the team felt it had no choice but to move games that could not have been rescheduled—games against out-of-town opponents Xavier, Quinnipiac and Florida State—away from Jack Coombs. With the DBAP unavailable on certain dates, the games were held in the next-best facility in the area.
The weather gods threw a monkey wrench into that logic earlier this week after the Blue Devils’ game against Xavier, which had already been moved to Cary, was canceled due to snow. Still, the bigger problem remains the flawed outfield at Duke’s traditional home park.
“This has been a gradual deterioration of the field,” Berndt said. “Prior to this year, when we were kind of in a drought, that masked some of the issues going on with the substructure. But when we started to get rain, it became unplayable. And even when it’s dry, it is one rain away from being unplayable.”
McNally said that playing games in Cary is only a temporary measure, and he and White both said that they expect to continue splitting home games between Jack Coombs Field and DBAP in the future.
Little urgency to Jack Coombs renovations
Improvements to the drainage system at Duke’s on-campus facility, however, are still only in the brainstorming stages, and Duke Athletics is studying the feasibility of renovating the drainage system, White said.
“Our facility staff is working with our baseball coaches and [Facilities Management] to evaluate the situation and determine the best course of action to address the situation,” Mitch Moser, an associate athletic director responsible for the department’s finances, wrote in an e-mail.
Curiously, the park has undergone several renovations in recent years, including the installation of an all-weather hitting and pitching practice facility and the redesign and improvement of the locker rooms, according to GoDuke.com’s description of the stadium.
Neither White nor Moser would disclose what a drainage system revamp might cost the athletic department. They also declined to disclose any details of the financial arrangements with the Durham Bulls or the USA Baseball complex that allow the Blue Devils to play at those parks. Durham Bulls General Manager Mike Birling declined to provide financial information and could not be reached for further comment Wednesday or Thursday.
The attendance question
Even though Duke’s baseball team has improved rapidly since McNally took over four seasons ago, attendance has remained constant at Jack Coombs Field. But no one is sure whether the move to the DBAP—an unquestionably nicer, more enjoyable ballpark—will trump the ease of walking to Jack Coombs from a West Campus dorm.
More than 300 people attended each game of a doubleheader Feb. 27, 2009 at Jack Coombs Field; meanwhile, just 147 attended Duke’s home opener against Fordham last Friday, Feb. 26. Attendance did improve slightly as the weekend progressed, as 367 people watched the action Saturday and 273 showed up Sunday, but Berndt called attendance “sparse”.
Although comparing statistics from just one weekend over a long season does not prove attendance trends, it does show that attendance on campus was somewhat easy to predict, whereas attendance at DBAP may fluctuate.
Despite the slow start, Duke officials are thinking positively about getting students and other fans to downtown Durham.
“The DBAP is a remarkable venue for our players, students, faculty, staff and community supporters,” White said. “We are confident that Duke fans will support Coach McNally and his team and fully expect attendance, over time, to be greater downtown than it would be on campus. There is a strong marketing plan in place in order for this to occur.”
If last year’s ACC tournament, which DBAP hosted, is any indication, White might be right. Fans from all over the conference flocked to Durham for the eight-team event, and more than 2,300 fans were in the stadium for Duke’s final game, a loss to Virginia. The ACC tournament and a standard three-game series between Duke and an opponent are not truly comparable, as the tournament featured daily triple-headers involving only quality teams. But DBAP’s environment was surely one of the factors that drew fans to the stadium.
It’s not clear yet if Duke fans will turn out at DBAP more than they did at Jack Coombs Field, and there’s no real time line on fixing the drainage system at the Blue Devils’ historic home.
What is certain is that Duke’s baseball program has expanded its regional and recruiting appeal by moving its home games to one of the best minor-league ballparks in America while putting itself in the awkward position of not playing its home games on campus, where most of its students live. Whether the benefits of making such a bold move outweigh the drawbacks is something the program won’t know for some time.
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