Long Live Turner Field

A date took me to see Braves play the Mets. I hadn’t been over to see the new digs yet. Maybe I had been putting it off. I grew up at Turner Field. Truist is bigger, nicer, cleaner. Like the Braves had a string of good luck and moved to the “nice” part of town.

I’m not religious about keeping up with sports because I’m a sore loser.

“It’s just a game.”

“We’ll get ‘em next time.”

I don’t want “next time.” I want revenge.

And it’s not just a game. Our lives are affected by the teams we root for as much as the teams we root for are shaped by us.

There’s no heartache like being a Georgia sports fan.

February 5, 2017. 3-28.

January 8, 2018. 13-0.

Georgia had it…until they didn’t.

The morning after, a dark cloud hangs over the entire state not simply because we lost, but because we thought we were going to win. We thought it was going to be different.

But is anything ever that different?

I didn’t watch the World Series. Not because I don’t care, but because I care too much. I can’t keep crying about a team when I can’t even list the full starting roster. I am not an expert, but I am loyal. I am a Braves fan because I am an Atlanta fan and a Georgia fan and because I am my grandpa’s granddaughter.

I walked to get a beer between innings and remembered being 10 years old. It’s hard to explain. Just the way everything looked and sounded and smelled – I remembered being 10 years old. I’ve always been very independent, much to my mother’s chagrin. My family claims that I got lost a lot when I was a kid when really they lost me. I always knew where I was.

My grandpa loved the Braves. He loved Georgia and lived there all his life. He always had a joke, most of which he told out of earshot of my grandma. He always had a story - maybe half of them were true, and maybe half of that half were how it really went.

The line for beer was obscene. I looked out at the slice of field that peeked between levels. Around the 6th inning, the sun set. The field remains bright as a summer day despite the sky sinking into deep blue-black. It feels like you’re on a different planet.

I remember seeing Chipper play. Chipper was the Braves. Chipper was Atlanta. I imagined what it would be like to tell my grandpa that the Braves finally did it.

When I got back to my seat, my date said, “I was worried you got lost!”

I knew exactly where I was. Nothing’s ever that different.

I’ve been in Georgia all my life. I love the South. My sense of humor is one of my favorite things about myself. I tell a lot of stories. Most of them are true, and I think that all my true stories are exactly how it went. (And you should ignore any evidence to the contrary.)

I imagined being able to tell 10-year-old me that everything works out better than she could have imagined.

Maybe I would have eventually told him.

He’d get kind of serious, “Are you happy?”

I’d nod. I am happy.

He’d look at my nose ring and then back at me – more serious than ever, “And they’re okay goin’ out with you lookin’ like a bull like that?”

And he’d start laughing. I’d stifle a smile,

“They love it,”

And I’d start laughing and then he’d start laughing harder and then I’d start laughing harder. My grandma would ask us what we were laughing about but we would’ve already laughed ourselves to tears and couldn’t have told her even if we’d wanted to.