Braves ditching The Ted for suburbs

Citi Field is accessible by subway, so it's in the city. The location of the Rays is about as far from where most people live in the Tampa Bay area as you could get while keeping it on dry land. There's no location in the Greater Atlanta region where travel to and from the park wouldn't be extremely inconvenient for most residents. The region's choking on itself.

 

It's smart, and it's the trend.

No one buys tickets in advance, if they know they'll always be available.

 

We went to a game there on a Saturday night in August (courtesy of a former SportsJournalists.commer who lives down there), traffic and parking were a horror show (and we left - as advised - with loads of time to spare) and the surrounding area is tres, tres sketchy.

As we sat in traffic I thought of all the things we take for granted going to games in Toronto: great public transport means no traffic or parking hassles and the surrounding area is awesome.

I did like the stadium though, very nice.

 

The Braves knew that when they took over Turner, as evidenced by not being able to sell out playoff games at Fulton County. They should've lowered capacity further before opening it.

 

Not defending it's location, but the Tampa bay area is so spread out, that there's no great location.

 

Yeah, there's nowhere in Atlanta that doesn't have suck-ass traffic, but 75 and 285 is ... not optimal.

 

It's really sad when you have T-shirts older than some stadiums that are being abandoned - that you still wear.

 

Maybe Chattanooga can swap access to Tennessee River water for a Braves stadium in downtown Nooga?

VW Field has a ring to it!

 

This move actually makes sense, as bizarre as it sounds. Turner Field was not conducive to winning World Series, as we saw year after year after year.

 

If that was the case, Fenway Park should have been demolished in 1938.

 

Braves complain that one of the biggest issues they face right now is transportation. But 75 runs right by the Ted, and there are shuttle buses that run the mile or so to the Five Points MARTA train station. The new Cobb County site? You have the 75-285 north split, but that's gonna be a parking lot. And MARTA trains run nowhere near there. NOWHERE. And there's not a peep from the Braves or Cobb County about a MARTA extension ... never mind that Cobb County has historically been vehemently anti-MARTA.

That said, it was Atlanta city government and its refusal to redevelop the neighborhood by the Ted that brought on this move. That's what gives today's announcement some solid footing. The Braves are going to control development rights in this deal, and it sounds as if they're going to build an entire neighborhood instead of just a stadium. I would, however, like to hear more details before calling the move good or bad.

As an aside, assuming this goes through, some of the proposals already being floated for the site of the Ted include new sports facilities for Georgia State or, if the right hands can be greased, a casino or horse race track. Yeah, Georgia is home to a bunch of thou-shalt-not politicians who want to ban anything fun, but Gov. Nathan Deal has already legalized Sunday alcohol sales through local option votes, and he has been back-and-forth on casinos and horse racing (he's against it now, but don't be surprised if his opposition goes away after the 2014 election ... if he can defeat Jimmy Carter's grandson, that is.

 

Yeah. They're going to develop the area around the stadium. Because no one's ever tried that and failed before ...