The Atlanta Braves Ft. Bragg Game, Part 3: The Event
The Weekend
On Saturday starting at 9:00 near Pope Field, children of service members will get to participate in a baseball clinic. Registered children get a chance for a big prize, too: 4 tickets to the July 3rd game!
There will be meet-and-greet sessions for the players and base personnel during the day on Sunday.
Sunday night: Of course there will be a fly-over… it’s an airbase! There will be a monster American Flag out for the presentation of the colors and the entire opening ceremonies will be streamed on the Facebook page of the 82nd Airborne Division.
Members of the All American Chorus will be handling the vocal duties for the evening – (Timothy Miller tells me he got the day off this week)!
On the 4th, the base has a huge schedule of events, including concert appearances by Natalie Stovall and The Drive, Cheap Trick, and Chris Stapleton.
The game itself will have some challenges for the ticket-holders. This is fairly large “city” of people, but Ft. Bragg doesn’t usually bring this many people together at one time. Thus shuttles will be moving people around from designated parking areas since there aren’t 10,000 parking spaces anywhere near this new ballfield!
Once it’s over, the Braves will head for Philadelphia (a solid place to be on the 4th of July) and the Marlins will go to meet the Mets in New York.
Starting on July 5th, crews will begin undoing much of the last 4 months of work. The field will be transitioned into a softball field – albeit a very high quality softball field! – for use as part of a multi-sports facility for the base.
The temporary stands and buildings will be dismantled, removed and carted back to their vendor-designated locations.
But hopefully, all involved will have a special weekend to remember.
Will This Happen Again?
That’s a good question. MLB is non-committal at this point, but did communicate this to TomahawkTake:
"We will see how this event goes first, but we are always open to exploring new opportunities that generate the kind of enthusiasm that this one has so far. Taking the game to an area that has never hosted a Major League game is exciting for us. And the fact that it will be played for our service members is a thrill. This event is one small way to show our gratitude."
There’s a few reasons why I believe this could be done again – perhaps with a year hiatus in between each successive attempt:
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- There was undoubtedly a lot of up-front expenses associated with putting this game on… some of that was probably one-time-only expenses (the buildings, the temporary stands)
- It would still not be cheap to repeat this event elsewhere in the country (field materials, field construction, labor, storage, transportation), but it should be cheaper to repeat.
- There’s a lot of this country that would love to see a game brought to them … the military first, but maybe elsewhere, too.
- The reactions I’ve been seeing from military and players alike has been tremendous. That’s a ton of goodwill that baseball should recognize and spread.
The Reactions
Here are just a couple:
"“The excitement more than anything is about the experience,” Francoeur said. “We’re going to get a chance to hang out in the mess hall and spend the day honestly just hanging with those guys, which for us, what an honor.”"
"“This is a once-in-a-lifetime kind of thing,” Pierzynski said. “To be able to go to an active military base and play a game in front of troops is a huge honor. I know all the players are very excited about it, and we’re going to get some time to spend with the troops. We’re also going to get to tour the base and see what’s going on there.” “These military guys that we’re going to be around are the real heroes who give us an opportunity to do what we do every day,” Pierzynski said. “It truly is an honor to be able to be a part of something like this.”"
…and of course Ft. Bragg itself is ready and itching to get started!
Can’t wait! Now down to just 3 more days!
As noted in Part 2 of this series, TomahawkTake.com is indebted to Ft. Bragg and the MLB Communications VP for information provided in this report.