The (Un)official Atlanta Braves Spring Training guide
By Kyle Walter
You’ve got your tickets, now what?
The ESPN wide world of sports complex in Orlando offers much more to do then just watching a baseball game. Aside from baseball, the facility hosts many amateur events throughout the year.
Your purchase of a ticket gives you access to a wide swath of fields across the practice complex. While you can’t actually walk onto most fields, you can get rather close to the action.
By some of the fields, minor leaguers will walk around near fans, and many are happy to sign autographs for the people hanging around. My favorite thing to do in the practice complex is watching batting practice.
Last year, I got to the fields around 10:30 for a 1:30 game, and I got to watch Ronald Acuna take BP. I hadn’t really seen much of him before, but that moment was when I knew he was going to be a star. He hit moonshot after moonshot over the fence, and I was in awe.
One of the coolest parts of the experience is something that I don’t see many people doing. You can actually walk pretty far behind the first field to about the center field fence, but at that point there is security and you can’t go further.
When players are hitting BP, balls will go over that fence. Me and my dad just sat behind the right field fence and got about ten baseballs from the hitters on the field. We even had a short conversation with Ozzie Albies while he shagged fly balls at the fence.
For those people who are autograph collectors like myself, there is a short fence by the 3rd base side of the first practice field that players will sometimes walk by and sign.
In the same area that is by the right field fence of the first field, you can walk down to one of the minor league practice fields. It offers a good insight into what spring training is like for the players that don’t get the spotlight of being on the main field. As a former player myself, I really enjoyed watching the various drills that get run on that field.