Turner Field

My oldest sister called me out of the blue a week ago to ask me how far Atlanta was from Nashville. It turns out that she was going to be in Atlanta for business, and asked if I would be willing to drive out to meet her. Thursday afternoon we were finalizing plans for me to go meet her when she asked if I wanted to go to a baseball game as the A's and Braves were playing a night interleague game.

As you all know by now, I love sports. I am a little too crazy about sports for my own good and I love going to new sports sites that I have not been to as much as going to sporting events. I have attended quite a few baseball games, although I have been limited to the D'Backs, Pirates, and Nationals park as well as the Durham Bulls park (AAA ball) and the Diablos Rojos the Mexico old park (Mexican league). I had not been to Turner Field and had had a generally negative view of Braves fans as an apathetic crowd after years of winning divisional pennants but only winning one World Series in 1995. Boy was I wrong and I should have known better (this link is a great review of most of today's MLB parks).

For starters, transportation to the stadium was fantastic. We were staying at a downtown hotel and took the Atlanta metro (MARTA) one stop where we were easily pointed to a shuttle going to the park by Braves employees at the metro stop. The metro, shuttle ride, as well as picking up our tickets from the friendliest Will-Call employee ever took 30 minutes. The park itself, which served as Olympic stadium for the 1996 games, and was redesigned a bit for baseball, is still very modern with good sight-lines, a great video board, decent concession stands with expensive, but not ridiculously expensive food including a good veggie burger (for those vegeterian readers) and a good jumbo dog. The park also has one thing that the Nationals park lacks a lot of, character. Coca-cola is ubiquitous in the stadium, and rightly so as they are headquartered there and Coke was born in Atlanta, and there are lots of history sprinkled around the stadium (divisional and WS pennants, tributes to Hank Aron, and so on). You actually feel like you are in THE Atlanta Braves park not a park that was built for just any team.

As for the fans themselves, they were completely the opposite of what I expected. Most people in the stadium were wearing Braves gear and seemed fairly knowledgeable about the game and the team, with Chipper Jones and Jeff Francoeur (Atlanta born) being fan faves. More so, fans were into the game, cheering, jeerings, doing the Tomahawk chop at several points in the game, and generally excited about the game. I am sure it helped the game itself was a good one and that the Braves pulled off a win after trailing 2-0 after 5 and half innings. Still, this was a regular season game against a team that there isn't a huge rivalry. I mean, forget they aren't in the same division, they are 3 time zones away! Despite all of that, and a fairly chilly spring night, the park was hopping with the intensity of a late September game.

As we were leaving the park to fireworks going off, I couldn't help but think that these Braves fans must be proud. They have a solid franchise that is serious about winning, with a solid park, and built around a very good fan base. Kudos Braves fans.