Flying balls, a hidden hiding place and a view like no other: Watching the Bulls with scorekeeper Chris Ivy

It’s Saturday night at Durham Bulls Athletic Park. As fans make their way to their seats and the first drops of rain fall from the night sky, Chris Ivy opens a secret door behind left field.

The door is hidden behind a pretzel stand. Ivy walks down a dingy corridor behind a giant video wall, past the fog machine blowing steam through the nose of the mechanical bull above her.

“It’s like a cave!” he shouts as water bubbles in from the ceiling.

As Ivy rounds the corner, a hiding place comes into view. A long wooden porch stands against the outfield wall, about ten feet above the field and directly below two rows of seemingly boarded-up windows. The porch is littered with more boards, each one showing a white number on a dark green background, waiting to be hung on the wall.

Ivy, 75, has worked here for the past 17 seasons. He is the man behind the Bulls’ manually operated scoreboard.

Manual scoreboards are a rarity these days. They can only be found in three of the country’s 30 AAA stadiums, including Durham. The most famous manual scoreboards, at Boston’s Fenway Park and Chicago’s Wrigley Field, were built in the 1910s. Unlike most modern franchises, the Bulls did not opt ​​for the digital alternative when they built the DBAP in 1995.

“It’s a connection to the past,” Ivy says of the analog version. “For the purists, it’s nice to have a connection to the old stuff.”

When fans look at the scoreboard at the start of a Bulls game, they see a green facade with a neat row of empty spaces beneath labels representing the teams, innings, runs, hits and errors. But behind the board, it’s a little more complicated. Back here, none of the scoreboard columns are labeled, so Ivy relies on his years of experience to figure out which is which.

The only pillar that is immediately recognizable from behind is the wide one to the far right of Ivy. Underneath this wide opening lies a stack of huge boards with the names of the visiting teams. Fortunately, at Ivy’s request, someone has already dragged the board with the inscription “NORFOLK” into place. His experience has earned him some privileges.

Ivy climbs the wooden steps to the porch and begins preparing for the game, pitting the Bulls against the Norfolk Tides. He arranges the green signs numbered 0 through 20 – each as large as a human torso – and stacks them in groups on his platform. The 0s are the most numerous; there are 22 in all, a testament to how few points there are in baseball.

“I’m in the ninth inning,” he says casually.

In response to my confused look, he slides a board out of a slot in the scoreboard wall, revealing his nighttime window through which he looks out onto the field. Fans looking at the scoreboard may notice a gap under the number “9,” which represents the ninth inning of the game. It is in this hole in the scoreboard that Ivy sees the game. He pulls up a chair and tells me to remove the board next to it and “take a seat in the tenth inning.”

The view from our makeshift windows is immaculate. Just a few feet away, Bulls players are warming up on the outfield grass, and the stands behind home plate are silhouetted against the pale blue sky and setting sun. A strong breeze is blowing toward us; the night’s fly balls have a good chance of becoming home runs.

Ivy’s corner behind the outfield has no air conditioning, so he puts a box fan next to his seat. He pulls out a transistor radio to listen to the live broadcast.

***

Ivy has lived in Durham since 1980, the year the Bulls returned to town. After a career as a social worker and decades of cheering for the team, he decided to apply for the job as a scoreboard operator when the stadium opened in 2008.

“I don’t know if anyone else applied,” he says. “I always teased the guy who gave me the job. I said, ‘Nobody else applied, because people either think you have the best job in the world or you don’t.'”

Regardless of how he got the job, Ivy is grateful for it.

“It’s really fun to be so close to the action and to play a role in it,” he says.

Just then, the Tides’ first batter hits a missile our way. The ball bounces off the wall like a bullet and Ivy goes to work. He grabs a “1” and goes to the left to the column marked “H” for hits. He pulls the “0” out of the top slot and inserts a “1” to register the hit.

In the second half of the innings, Austin Shenton of the Bulls hits a ball so hard that we don’t hear a bang. It sails over us and becomes a grand slam. Now Ivy’s work is piling up.

“If all the bases are loaded and then a single goes down, you have to change the runs and hits. And then you have to change the run total for the inning. And before you can do that, maybe they hit a double and there are two more runs in there.”

In addition to his radio, Ivy has a small television that broadcasts the game. The television broadcast lags a few seconds behind the game, so he uses it to catch up if he misses anything.

“Last week they hit a ball and when the outfielder jumped, his glove flew through my window. The TV went flying, but the antenna wire kept the TV in the air so it never hit the ground.”

Ivy keeps her distance from the scoreboard when hitting fly balls, but always stays close to the fan. The humidity in the “cave” begins to rise.

“I often invite parents and children to come back here,” he says. “Either they think I’m crazy or they think it’s unbelievable. But I like numbers and I like counting points, and being out here is kind of a Zen thing for me.”

But since they’ve already hit four home runs, there’s no time to meditate tonight. At the end of the sixth inning, the Bulls have six hits and are leading the Tides 6-5. Ivy’s six-man stack is starting to thin out.

In between all the action, Ivy shares anecdotes about baseball celebrities: He chatted with Cleveland Guardians manager Stephen Vogt when he played left field for the Bulls. His mother once dated legendary Yankees pitcher Whitey Ford. His wife met actress Susan Sarandon at a local park while filming Annie’s Men.

Ivy seems to have his own following in the local baseball scene. Fans who have joined him behind the scoreboard often ask to come back. He gets one such request tonight, via text from the operator of the pretzel stand outside. Samantha Wynn not only serves soft pretzels, but also acts as a filter for Ivy’s many visitors. He turns away today’s guest because of his current companion.

Later, he gets another text; his friend just saw him on TV. And sure enough, Ivy’s TV is showing the manual scoreboard and his white mustache is visible in the ninth inning window.

Another home run from Shenton and a grand slam from Cameron Misner put the Bulls ahead for good. As the ninth inning begins, the Bulls are firmly in the lead, 14-5, and Ivy has already made a lot of moves for the evening.

Bulls relief pitcher Manuel Rodríguez gets a groundout to end the game, and the crowd cheers. The win gives the Bulls a series sweep over Norfolk and rewards the fans for holding out in the rain.

Ivy pulls out a “0” – the total number of runs scored by the Tides in the ninth inning – and takes the sign to the window he’s been looking out of all night. He slides the sign into the remaining empty frame, completing the scoreboard, and closes the blinds to his hiding place.

After the team’s earlier offensive explosion, fireworks seem almost redundant. Nevertheless, we leave the cave to watch the Bulls’ fireworks display on Saturday night. The rain has stopped, and as the fireworks light up the stadium, fans marvel at the sight.

But it’s the view through a notch in the scoreboard fence that keeps Ivy coming back. Next game, he’ll be back in his hiding place behind the scoreboard, dodging fly balls, pushing posters into place, watching the game from his unique perch. And maybe he’ll have one of tonight’s fans come over.

Pictured above: Chris Ivy has been on the Bulls’ scoreboard since 2008. Photos by Travis Swafford — The 9th Street Journal