The Atlanta Braves’ Ft. Bragg Game, Part 2: From Brainchild to Ballpark
How Exactly Do you Create a Major League Quality ball field in 4 months? From Ft. Bragg woods and part of a discarded golf course…You had to know what you’re doing.
Part of the decision-making process involved with staging a major league game involves having a suitable location. You could argue with the Braves’ selection for SunTrust Park based on traffic considerations, but at least that’s a permanent facility – one designed to last for at least a quarter century. There are a lot of things you can do as time goes on to improve the local access infrastructure, parking, that infamous pedestrian bridge, and more.
But with the Ft. Bragg game, when the announcement was made on March 8, there wasn’t anything obvious going on: no shovels had begun turning dirt over and the game was less than four months from happening.
Moreover, military bases – even one this large – are not exactly equipped to do a large scale building operation like this. Military procurement people are experts at logistics, but even this is a daunting task.
Let’s Start With Location
Fort Bragg turned out to have an ideal spot in mind for a ball field. A little history is in order.
Bragg is the result of a merger of the former Pope Air Force Base with Ft. Bragg, an event that occurred in 2011. This was part of a BRAC – Base Re-alignment and Closure program that Congress has mandated for better military spending and efficiency.
When the two bases were consolidated, a few amenities have also been consolidated. For example, the base contains two golf courses: the Ryder and the Stryker.
There was a plan already in the works to close the Ryder course and build a multi-purpose sports facility on that site via the base’s office of DFMWR – Director, Family Morale, Welfare, and Recreation (gotta love these military acronyms!). There are a couple of ball fields on site, but they mainly support the base’s schools (yes – they have lots of school-age families!).
So on top of Bragg being the largest military base in the world by resident count, they already were going to build themselves a ballpark. There’s two big reasons that made them the logical choice to host this one-of-a-kind game.
But they were never planning to build anything like this.
Next: Major League Effort