Blog Post Rewind: Blank the Braves

As to what was missing, what was so different other than that MARTA seems more difficult than other city’s mass public transit.

This is a genius idea, one that I never really thought of. The appeal of the neighborhood stadiums is tremendous and would be a slam dunk in Atlanta. To be honest it can be a bit rough around that area, but what big city metropolis downtown isn’t these days?

Something needs to be done, and i think a direct marta line would help bunches. I’ve always said if i ever won the lottery, i was gonna buy one of those condos on the side street near the Orange lot. However, i think we’re currently in no economic condition to even plan something like this. Does anyone know if Kasim Reed is a Braves fan?

If the city of Atlanta doesn’t reciprocate the effort, it’s a lost cause. I’ve made tons of suggestions and shared ideas in the past that really can’t come to fruition, because the location of Turner Field, as much as I love the park itself, rather stinks. More or less, in a nutshell, Atlanta doesn’t really give two turds about the city limits on the south-side of I-20.

Attendance could appear better if they got rid of a lot of seats; namely eliminate a large chunk of the 421+ sections that serve as general admission and go empty most of the time anyway, and let the park have a better skyline. But then I realize that in that direction, there’s not much of a skyline and likely, view of the liquor store shown in the movie “ATL” and a big billboard that has been advertising the same $5.99 fried chicken meal available every day at Kroger for the last three seasons or something.

Heading in the other direction, and across the Connector is the neighborhood, also glorified in “ATL,” of Mechanicsville. Nothing like walking past a house where a weight bench sits on the front patio, and people stare judgingly as you pass. Personally, I have never had any bad incident there before, but not a week during the season goes by where I don’t have to side step a fresh pile of broken windshield on my way back to my car.

A direct MARTA line from Turner Field seems like the most effective way to bolster attendance, since the current complicated “Get off at the (sketchy) Five Points station, and walk through dimly-lit tunnels to crowded buses” isn’t really getting over all too well with the citizens, but it seems like a dream falling onto deaf ears.

Turner Field is roughly on the 4:30 o’clock position of the pink circle. Unlike they did with Bankhead Highway’s MARTA stop (Blue line branching off of 9 o’clock), doing similarly to get people to Turner Field from Oakland City, Garnett, or Five Points has been considered impossible. Instead, the city of Atlanta likes to propose these alternative commuter trains every few years, with promises to incorporate Turner Field into their routes. Like This One, and This One, as you can very well see the great progress made with both.

In my ideal dream world, all parking lots north of Turner Field would be converted to mixed-purpose shopping and living. Since maintaining history is so important, I would envision some creative builder to come along and repurpose a shop, or series of shops to be built along, or off of the old Fulton County outfield wall, and create some sort of memorial spot from where King Aaron’s 715th landed. A wide variety of restaurants, tourist trap stores, and watering holes would adorn the area formerly known as the Orange and Gold lots, with the neighborhoods and condos behind them to expand somewhat.

A MARTA expanse would stretch out from the aforementioned stops I mentioned above, which would eliminate the need for enough parking spaces to back every single seat in the park. Which would be cut from 56,000 to somewhere more like 43,000, with the aforementioned section being eliminated to give the park a skyline of the hip and festive-looking expanded City of Atlanta right outside the park.

And since parking is still necessary, I would clear up some of the run down empty lots, the razed KFC/Taco Bell, and the surface-only parking lot behind the Ted, and create some actual garages, that could fill via height instead of taking up acres of space. Limit the number of spaces so that they’re considered a premium, as well as to give all the private lots and auxillary lots on the other side of the bridge room to survive as well.

In the end, Turner Field is smaller in capacity, eliminating piles of potential empty seats while increasing the chances of legitimate sell-outs. The parking lot land is converted to business and living, MARTA helps bring people into the stadium, and the Braves actually feel like a part of the city, and we’re all happy. Hopes and dreams, right?

and 15th in attendance. I’m curious as to what the actual team revenues are like over the last few years, whether the team is in the black, red, or holding steady. I do think it’s clear that payroll is not going up until attendance starts to shoot up, though.

Just a few random thoughts I’ve scraped together:

1) Braves were 9th in payroll in 2008. Their listed payroll that year was $102 million.
2) Their listed payroll last year was $96.7 million. It was just 4 million behind the Dodgers, or basically one mediocre free agent from having the 10th highest payroll. But the Braves did drop a few spots.
3) Right now, we’re pretty much done, and are sitting at about $85-87 million. Which is basically where you get when you deduct 3/4 of Hudson’s contract due to insurance. Last year, that would have dropped us all of one spot lower in payroll rank.

Last year, the Braves were basically a third tier spender. The Yankees are a tier all to themeselves, and the second tier goes from Boston down to Philadelphia. The teams spending within about $5 million of the Braves were the Astros, Dodgers, Mariners, and White Sox.

Dropping down to about $87 million puts them down in a lower spending tier, closer to the Giants and Indians than anyone else. It would be really depressing for the Braves’ listed payroll to drop for a third straight season. Of course, the Rockies and Twins both spent less than that last year and made the playoffs. They were, though, essentially the worst two playoff teams.

That’s not to say we can’t be competitive with a lower payroll. I mean, last off season, we’d have been a better team spending $5 million on Randy Wolf and $5 million on Bobby Abreu instead of $15 million to Derek Lowe and $2 million to Garret Anderson. But it takes some good decision making.

It’s really embarrassing that the city of Atlanta doesn’t view the Braves/area around Turner Field as a top priority. I mean, not only in the south, or the country for that matter, the Braves are well-known throughout the world. Have a little more pride, Atlanta. If you build (more of it), they will come (back).