A Unique Experience: Braves/Marlins to Play at Ft. Bragg, NC on July 3
It is still just a patch of dirt in the midst of an active military base. But in just 2 more months, that dirt is to be transformed into a major-league-ready baseball stadium for a 1-night event that will host the Atlanta Braves, the Miami Marlins, and (most importantly) at least 12,000 soldiers of the United States Army.
Ft. Bragg is the home 82nd Airborne Division, the XVIII Airborne Corps, multiple Special Forces Commands, and much more. We’ve seen a number of initiatives that bring troops to MLB games. This year, Major League baseball has chosen to honor Ft. Bragg with a first-of-its-kind regular season baseball game on their own turf.
How Can They Pull This Off?
It’s a fair question. And that’s exactly what we intend to explore over the next 11 weeks leading up to this event.
At this point, TomahawTake has a lot more questions than answers, but here’s what we do know:
- The Braves and Marlins will finish their Turner Field game on July 2nd, hopefully in the early evening hours, then immediately pack up for their next road trips (Atlanta will be going to Philadelphia starting on July 4th; Miami will head back home). However, for July 3rd, they are going to North Carolina.
- ESPN is broadcasting the game as their regular Sunday Night affair. Ft. Bragg is expecting their full-on cameras and equipment for the day.
- The Field is envisioned to look like what you see below… but realize that none of this exists as of today… it’s still just a cleared area of North Carolina clay dirt near Pope Field that will soon be turned into a real major league facility.
- The field is intended to seat 12,500 and will be available to military personnel only.
- The stands, lighting, and those buildings are all supposed to be temporary fixtures.
- Once the event is over, the field will be reverted to a softball field for use by base personnel.
- With recent reports about teams being paid to do support for the military over the past year, this seems to be the reverse: all of this is being done by Major League Baseball and the Players’ Association – that according to MLB and independently confirmed by sources from Ft. Bragg.
Questions we do not yet know answers for include:
- How much equipment will the Braves move in from Turner Field? How quickly can they turn that around for the 385 mile journey?
- Who is going to be responsible for getting the this field into major-league-ready condition? Will that task go to Ed Mangan and his team, or will there be an MLB crew assigned?
- How close will the field’s lighting be to the ‘lumens’ capability of a typical full-sized MLB stadium?
- Will full-up instant replay cameras be available?
- How close will that soldiers in attendance be to the action and will there be protective netting for those who are closest to the field?
- What are the expected dimensions of the fences? Will warning track dirt areas have the standard feel?
- Will the QuesTec system be in place?
- Will there be bullpen warmup areas, or is that going to be in the field of play (old school style)?
- Will the teams fly directly into the base? Pope Field can handle commercial jets, but that would require some ‘exceptions to the rules’, let’s say.
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We do not know how long this has been in the planning stages before the announcement that was made in March, but we are told that Ft. Bragg itself is intending to make this a huge event – perhaps up to a week in duration. It will be fun to see what things are planned, though let’s just start praying for no rain during that week!
While this represents something of an experiment, the temporary nature of the facilities does raise the real possibility that this event could be moved around to other military bases around the country in future years. The next logical venue, in fact, would probably be the Naval Station at San Diego. That said, it is obviously a hugely expensive undertaking, so we’ll see if the MLB wants to continue funding that.
Next: Chacin Shines; Bats are Balky
That’s enough for right now, but for certain, we will continue to be on this exciting event as more announcements are made.