Braves ditching The Ted for suburbs

They're off to a rip-roaring start at White Flight Field:

Atlanta Braves' Pregame Fireworks Accidentally Set American Flag on Fire

 

What part of 2014 in that story confused you?

 

Well, shit. Was so excited by the ironic material that I got hoisted up on my own petard.

 

I'm visitng family in July. My brother got us Braves-Cubs tickets. It'll be a long day. Seven hours of driving round trip just to get there and then back home.

 

He only lives three miles from the ballpark?

 

After watching the exhibition game over the weekend and checking out some pictures online: It just looks like another stadium. I was actually kinda surprised how similiar to The Ted it looked, at least in the overall layout of it. Doesn't really have any defining characteristics. At least the new Falcons stadium looks like a robot's butthole.

I'll reserve final judgment until I eventually attend a game there, but for now, fuck this stadium.

 

I've always been confused with places like the new Busch Stadium, the new (now old) Ted and now Sun Trust Park, where they had the opportunity to build a new ballpark with hundreds of millions of dollars at their disposal, a chance to build something iconic and decided to build a cookie cutter ballpark that looks like the stadium they just left. Stadium design seems like a thing where if you swing for the fences and take a chance, you get rewarded. (Except for the Marlins' moving Dr. Seuss hellscape sculpture. That thing was not a home run.)Plus, there are hundreds of old ballparks you could copy from that we as baseball fans would love.

 

Agree. The cookie cutter stadiums of the 70s have been replaced by the new brick cookie cutters. There is nothing iconic about the new St Louis stadium, or this one.

 

The surrounding office buildings certainly provide quite a backdrop, don't they? It's got to be the first major league sports stadium that's the centerpiece of an office park.

 

This was definitely a thought I had. The Ted had an open-sky backdrop in the lower seats and a city skyline backdrop from the upper deck. It was actually quite scenic if you were facing the jumbotron. Other than being a renovated Olympic stadium and the giant Chick-fil-A cow doing the chop, I'd say the backdrop was the defining characteristic of The Ted.

 

The whole point of the move was for the company to make money from developing the shops and restaurants surrounding the new place. By the CEO's own admission, the Braves are a real estate company that plays a little baseball on the side.

 

Absolutely. The stadium and its "character" or what have you are and were afterthoughts throughout this whole thing. But as a fan who plans to spend a few afternoons and evenings there, the cookie-cutter stadium is kind of a bummer.

Then again, I haven't even set foot in the place yet, so this is all conjecture on my part.