…And the Home of the Braves

After more than three months living in Atlanta, we finally ventured out to do things the locals do. Our first activity was attending the Atlanta Braves vs. New York Mets baseball game at Turner Field, which is named for modest, wealthy businessman and local Lunatic Laureate Ted Turner. The fact that they were playing a New York team, albeit not the good New York team, was at least comforting.

As is the case with most new stadiums, Turner Field features all sorts of activities and diversions designed to make you forget how much you paid for the seats that are undoubtedly too far from the field to see any of the actual action, not to mention the parking fee that allows you to park in a lot that requires you to walk only slightly further than if you had left your car in your own driveway.

We managed to ignore most of the pre-game activities and elected to go straight to the field-level front row for an opportunity to get up close to and possibly meet members of New York’s second-best baseball team. Armed with official Rawlings Major League Baseballs purchased just an hour prior, my two kids and I pushed our way to the front. Just then, a buzz began to our left: autographs were being signed. Not officially knowing anyone on the Mets’ roster, we jockeyed for position to get our baseballs signed by some random Hispanic guy in a Mets uniform. From what I gather, his name is “O~~ﮟ~D.” I don’t think he played that day, but then my seats were far enough from the field that I was able to actually see Shea Stadium, so I’m not the best person to ask.

After getting O~~ﮟ~D’s signature, we were asked to find our seats, which required an uphill hike, a camel and a sherpa. The ambient southern-laced calls of “cold beer!,” “wieners!” (which I think is funny to yell in a baseball stadium), and “cotton candy!” were beginning. Which of course reminded my kids that they were rapaciously hungry.

Any person who ever sees us at a baseball game would think we never feed our children. When they are at home they barely eat enough to survive, but at a baseball stadium they have tapeworms. Not wanting others to think I’m starving my kids, I invariably wind up spending the equivalent of the gross domestic product of Belgium on snacks, drinks and other sundry items. What’s worse is that Turner Field is the one stadium in the free world that actually allows you to bring in food, drinks and snacks. Judging by my cash-flow that day, I single-handedly covered their losses for everyone in my section who brown-bagged it.

Before this game, my only experience with Braves fans was when I watched the Yankees sweep the 1999 World Series in person at Yankee Stadium. But it was the televised games on TV where I became familiar with the Tomahawk Chop, a ‘chopping’ arm-wave, accompanied by a droning chant, made by Braves fans to support the team when they rally. I always hated the Tomahawk Chop, but now that I’ve witnessed it in person performed by some 45,000 Braves fans, I can appreciate how truly irritating it is.

Silly as these traditions may be, I realized every team’s fans have them. In The Bronx, we tend to yell out crazy things like “Let’s Go Yankees” followed by a foot-stomping bum, bum, bum-bum-bum. Where do they come up with these things?

As the Mets took the lead, and we as a family rooted them on (lesser of two evils), some Tomahawk Chump got into a verbal spat with my wife:

HER: Yay!
HIM: Yeah.
HER: YEAH!
HIM: We’ll see.
HER: Yeah. We will see.
HIM: Huh…
HER: Yay!

In the midst of all this, I had my first experience on the big screen. I’ve attended countless games at various New York stadiums, but it’s at my very first game in Atlanta that I finally make the Diamond Vision screen cut. Yet everybody in my family managed to miss it because of the heated exchange happening at precisely that moment. So now I had a decision to make: do I tell my family that I miraculously appeared on the screen at exactly the moment when nobody was paying attention? Or do I simply bite my lip and avoid the perjury card that will surely be thrown my way? I had no choice but to avoid my family altogether and instead tell the stranger sitting to my left.

Plenty of other people made the screen that day. Mostly people wearing the team’s colors or holding homemade signs supporting the team. Lucky for us, there were several times the cameras caught a large group of fans who had created single letters to spell out an entire thought. This never works. Especially when they are baseball fans that are dumb enough to have gotten drunk on stadium-purchased alcohol. At different times, while being broadcast on the Diamond Vision screen, their signs said “O-G- -B-R-A-V-E-S” and “G-O- -B-R-A-V-S-E.”

Every Sunday, the Braves allow kids between the ages of 4-14 run the bases after the game for free (cost of photos every parent will purchase from the Braves website: $12.99 and up). So with the score 3-1 Mets, we left in the bottom of the 9th inning so we could stand on a line with what amounted to the combined population of all the US Virgin Islands, Guam and Puerto Rico (including The Bronx and the entire Major League Baseball roster).

Judging by the amount of Tomahawk Chanting we heard, either Hank Aaron himself had come out of retirement to reclaim the Home Run title or Osama bin Laden had been captured on the field. I left the line to see what was happening. The Braves managed to rally one run in, making the final score 3-2.

When I got back to the line (with a mile-post marker that said the wait would be 70 minutes), my family was nowhere to be found. I can only hope that the person who posted those signs was fired.

I caught up with the family, walked onto the field and my imagination ran wild. I never really dreamed I’d be a baseball player, so other thoughts of childhood rushed back into my mind… getting in trouble for hitting my sister; being grounded for turning the TV knob too fast; being hit in the face with a line drive that nearly required reconstructive surgery. It was still cool to be on a real Major League Baseball field – and my son, who firmly believes he’ll play on a team with Derek Jeter one day, was in all his glory.

We left lighter in the wallet and a little daunted by the whole Tomahawk Chop thing. Regardless, it was a fun day out and we’re lucky to have moved to a town where they have a baseball team. But we learned a lot. Next time we’ll bring our own snacks, our own sherpa and a sign that says “B-A-R-V-E-S- -T-S-I-N-K.”