The Ted

Entrance to Turner Field, the former Olympic Stadium, Aug-1997.

The seating bowl is in line with other parks built during the 1990s. This photo and the next are from Jul-2003.

The outfield is lined with fan attractions.

Chronological Tour: Stop 118

• Location: Capitol Avenue and Abernathy Blvd., Atlanta, Ga. (map it using Google Maps)
• Opened: 1996 as Centennial Olympic Stadium (1997 for baseball)
• Closed: 2016 (for baseball)
• Additional names: Turner Field (1997); Georgia State Stadium (2017), Center Parc Credit Union Stadium (2020)
• Home team: Atlanta Braves, National League (1997-2016); Georgia State Panthers, Sun Belt Conference (2017-present)
• Capacity: 50,528

Rating: 4 baseballs

The most notable, and distracting, feature of Turner Field, aka “The Ted”, was the “fan fun zone” in the outfield. Sure, an exploding Coke bottle for a home run is OK (Coca-Cola is the largest employer in Atlanta outside of the state government), but there is no real reason for a full arcade to dominate the landscape out there.

On the other hand, sightlines were reasonable at the park, and it was a fairly pleasant place to watch a game, the tomahawk chop notwithstanding. It was a baseball-only park, with the NFL Falcons having moved to the Georgia Dome several years before Turner Field was completed.

I returned to the park in July 2003 and found it a lot more palatable than I had on my initial visit. For some reason, though, it took me nearly seven years to revisit my photos and upgrade the park’s rating. The Ted deserved better.

Alas, the lifespan of Turner Field ran out at a mere two decades. The Braves have relocated to a new park to the northwest, in an unincorporated area of Cobb County known as Cumberland (on the outskirts of Marietta and Smyrna), for the 2017 season. That put the Braves in their third ballpark in just 52 years since relocating from Milwaukee. Turner Field has been downsized so it can be used as the home field for Georgia State football.

With traffic in Atlanta becoming unbearable in the best of circumstances, the team resorted to selling $1 general admission tickets for most games; still fans did not flock to the park as the team languished near the bottom of the standings. The interchange where the new park is being built is notorious for congestion, and it remains to be seen how the Braves will fare in their new home.