Posted by Scattershooting while wondering if anybody remembers the great Blackie Sherrod… He was a sports icon in Dallas, but I always liked his column style.
I’m scattershooting about my trip to Atlanta this week. The purpose was a work conference with the Local News Consortium, a gathering of journalists and advertisers learning about the latest in digital news.
The schedule was packed. There was no time to explore downtown Atlanta, so I can’t say much about it except that the entire city is so green. It was my third visit to the city; my wife, stepdaughter and I explored quite a bit.
However, Atlanta got its Battery district right.
In fact, it was a direct quote from our Uber driver early Tuesday evening. He said, “This city isn’t perfect, but they got the new Braves stadium right.”
What he was referring to was this Atlanta entertainment district filled with bars, restaurants, shopping and Truist Park. The stadium isn’t across the street; it’s right there as if the stadium were an AMC Theater in a mall.
Truist Park has everything you might want in a baseball-night-out good time. And if you have too much of a good time — and this is impressive — they have a relatively organized rideshare line that makes it easy to get a safe ride home.
For the record, I didn’t get a chance to visit any of these establishments but I intend to return. And when I do, I’ll rock my new Braves cap. With every stadium visit, I buy a new piece of head gear.
Some of them I liked better than others, especially the Heathered caps. The two-tone blue A caps were nice, but the New Era 9Forty-style cap didn’t fit to my liking.
I can be picky.
Alas, I made my selection, one that fulfilled my preference for the Heathered style and my font preference for the little ‘a.’
So, I write all this from the perspective of a long-suffering Rangers fan, who heard lots of questions pre-2020 about why the Texas organization would build a new stadium after just 25 years.
Now that I’ve been to the Battery in Atlanta, I totally get it.
It’s all about the entertainment district.
ryanwelton.com 