SunTrust Park

I attended two games at SunTrust during the inaugural season. Overall I was not very impressed.

On the plus side the open concourses are nice and the monument garden is really well done. Also the entryway near the center field entrances is good. There are some excellent food options in the park. I very much enjoyed a cheeseburger from H+F [even though I had to wait 45 min in line to get it] and I had a great chopped brisket sandwich from Fox BBQ.

Some of the other features of the ballpark include the right field air conditioned seats which are part of a restaurant, the expensive seats behind home plate have touch screen monitors, and the giant bobbleheads placed throughout the park. SunTrust also has a Coke deck in the same location as in Turner Field, but the giant coke bottle is gone.

My primary complaint is the ballpark is boring. It’s shiny and new but there is nothing here that couldn’t have been renovated at Turner Field. Other complaints:

• The exterior of the park is not designed for people to walk around – they really want to funnel you through the battery shopping alley. I find this odd since there are statues around some of the entrances that are not easily accessible.
• I bought my tickets through a third-party vendor. The cell phone admission policy is asinine. You can only use tickets managed through the MLB Ballpark app.
• The jumbo screen in center field is high quality – however – the information displayed is lacking. There is nothing about the batter’s previous plate appearances. Player lineups don’t include number or position. At various point in the game the scoreboard will highlight the batters’ stats for things like ‘with the bases loaded’ or ‘with RISP’, at the expense of showing nothing else. The out of town scoreboard shows a minimal amount of information.
• On the upper level, the bathroom doors are propped open – which gives people walking by clear view of the stalls in both the men’s and women’s rooms.

 

I am also bothered by the lack of a tribute to either Turner Field or Fulton County Stadium. Other people can probably speak with more authority on this than I can but I have been led to believe that the break up between the Braves and Atlanta/Fulton County was unpleasant and A/FC refused to let the Braves take anything from the old stadiums or the statues that were outside the park.