Truist Park is a prime example of corporate welfare gone wrong. The Braves new home owes its existence to $450 million dollars of taxpayer money, which Cobb County offered up to entice the team to leave downtown Atlanta. The ballpark replaces Turner Field, where the Braves played for less than 20 years. While Turner Field was never highly acclaimed, it was a perfectly serviceable ballpark, and one that played host to plenty of classic baseball moments.
What did the citizens of Cobb County get for their $450 million dollars? A cookie cutter stadium, with little charm, and largely resembling the Braves previous home. Looking around the stadium, it’s pretty obvious the team copied elements they liked from other MLB stadiums. Most noticeable is the small grouping of trees in center field, a shameless ripoff of Coors Field.
All you have to do is look around, and you can find plenty of similarities to other ballparks. In isolation this isn’t a bad thing. Incorporating elements from successful ballparks can be a winning strategy. My issue is that they built a generic stadium and dressed it up with features borrowed from other ballparks. In my eyes the enhancements relative to Turner Field don’t justify the expense, or the relocation away from downtown.
While I contend Truist Park wasn’t enough of an upgrade, it does have some distinct advantages over Turner Field. I think more than any other MLB ballpark, opinions of Truist Park are going to be heavily dependent on the perspective of different types of fans. The fans who like Truist, probably agree with Bleacher Report’s description, ”Truist Park is also different in that it’s just one part of a larger entertainment and shopping complex known as The Battery. It’s essentially a ballpark as a resort destination, and the benefits of that can’t be denied.” I don’t disagree with anything in that description, but those aren’t factors I particularly care about.
As I’ve said before, I’m doing these rankings from the perspective of a baseball fan, someone who is more concerned with watching the game than enjoying a stadium’s amenities. I can certainly understand the perspective of someone who enjoys having restaurants and shopping adjacent to the ballpark. But for me it doesn’t move the needle. It could also be argued that the Braves’ design for Truist Park contributes to watering down the fan base. By putting to much emphasis on the dining and entertainment options, they are attracting casual fans, for whom the actual game is a secondary attraction.
Putting aside my concerns, the gameday experience at Truist Park is fine. Nothing special, but still a good place to watch a baseball game. The sightlines are good, and it’s generally easy to navigate the ballpark. I thought the concourses were a little too narrow, it’s nitpicky, but it was definitely too crowded in certain spots. Not a huge detractor, but you would think this wouldn’t be an issue with a brand new ballpark. Traffic and parking are a big plus, one of the positives of a suburban location. Rather than having one giant parking lot in the mold of Angel or Dodger Stadium, parking is dispersed across multiple lots. This cuts down on traffic congestion after the game, which is certainly a plus.
As you would expect with a brand new stadium, the amenities were fantastic, but don’t fully compensate for the park’s other shortcomings. The food was delicious, and there are plenty of options to choose from. The one feature I did really like was the Monument Garden, located behind home plate, which highlights Brave’s history in a really cool way.
Rankings Update
I’ll concede up front that quite a few people will disagree with where I have Truist Park ranked. As I previously mentioned, it’s a matter of perspective, and I understand the view of those who like the ballpark. For me though, the stadium feels like it’s in the bottom 10 or 15 of MLB ballparks. If you think that’s harsh, it’s actually considerably better than where some others rank Truist Park. Consulting some of the more popular online rankings, some have Atlanta in the bottom 5, while others have in near the top 10. I fall somewhere in the middle, but for one of baseball’s newest stadiums, I expected more. I ended up ranking Truist Park at number 9, only ahead of the undisputed terrible stadiums in Oakland and Tampa Bay. I still have quite a few stadiums to visit, but my guess is Truist Park ends up in the bottom 10.
MLB Ballpark Rankings
- Dodger Stadium – Los Angeles, CA
- T-Mobile Park – Seattle, WA
- Oracle Park – San Francisco, CA
- Petco Park – San Diego, CA
- Kauffman Stadium – Kansas City, MO
- Minute Maid Park – Houston, TX
- Angel Stadium – Anaheim, CA
- Chase Field – Phoenix, AZ
- Truist Park – Atlanta, GA
29. Tropicana Field – St. Petersburg, FL
30. Oakland Coliseum – Oakland, CA
Hmm, going to have to take a trip to Atlanta to see if I agree with you on this one or not:)
Haven’t been to Truist Park, but did go to Turner Field. It was just five years after the Olympics, for which it was built, and just about a month after 9/11. Delta Airlines was offering incredible deals to get people flying again and I had a friend with Braves season tickets. We went to the final game of the NLCS where Randy Johnson pitched the D’backs into the World Series that night. We happened to sit at the table next to Luis Gonzalez at lunch that day. I told him I flew across the country to watch him play, so to go out there and get a base hit. I don’t remember what he did that day, but he got the walk off hit in game seven of the World Series that year against the dreaded New York Yankees to win the World Series for the D’backs. I like to think I was responsible for that.
I have to admit I was shocked when the Braves announced they were leaving Turner Field. However, the market for fans in Cobb county is much stronger than it is in downtown Atlanta were you can take your life into your hands driving to or from the stadium. I would imagine the Braves will draw a lot more people at their new stadium, and the old stadium is the new home of Georgia Tech, so it’s not like it’s going to waste. All that being said, if Truist Park is not much different than Turner Field, then I would agree with your assessment. There was nothing really outstanding or special about Turner Field other than the fact that it had been converted from the Olympic stadium.