CoolToday Park

The entry plaza of CoolToday Park, Aug-2019.

Most of the seating bowl, as seen from the service entrance in the outfield.

Gulf Coast League game action.

Chronological Tour: Stop 409

• Location: West Villages Parkway south of Tamiami Trail (US 41 / SR 45), North Port, Fla. (map it using Google Maps)
• Opened: 2019
• Home team: Spring training, Atlanta Braves (2019-present); Florida Complex League Braves, selected games (2019-present)

In the meantime, select Gulf Coast League games were hosted at the site in 2019. The Florida State League’s Florida Fire Frogs, a Braves farm team, left another Osceola County site to join the Braves here for 2020, but whether they would stay for 2021 and beyond appeared to be dependent on negotiation with the Charlotte Stone Crabs, into whose territory the club was moving. The Fire Frogs were not owned by the Braves (at least as of January 2020) and further play in North Port would require an indemnity payment to the Stone Crabs. As it happened, both the Fire Frogs and Stone Crabs were eliminated from the Florida State League when Major League Baseball restructured the minors for 2021. With the COVID-19 pandemic wiping out the 2020 season, the Fire Frogs never did take the field at CoolToday Park. That, in turn, prompted the Braves to start holding the majority of their complex league games on the main field, the same as the Orioles do up the road in Sarasota.

The North Port stadium is open every day, even during the off-season, and features a tiki bar and restaurant on the concourse in left field. As is typical at spring training facilities, the stadium has touches that remind fans that they are at the spring home of the Braves, including an outfield seating pavilion with the same naming sponsor as their regular-season home in Georgia. Effective in 2022, the tiki bar is closed on Mondays, but a grab-and-go concession stand is open during complex league games.