Clem's Baseball home

Atlanta-
Fulton County Stadium*
Former home of the
Atlanta Braves (1966-1996)




Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium

DYNAMIC DIAGRAM:
Mouse rollover.

baseball: 1966 " " 1966 (upper deck) " " 1974 (upper deck) baseball: 1974 combined football
Milwaukee County Stadium Turner Field
Key to diagrams

* known as "Atlanta Stadium" (1965-1974)

Vital statistics:
Lifetime Seating capacity Seating rows
(typical)
Overhang / shade % Territory
(1,000 sq. ft.)
Fence height  CF
orien- tation
Back-stop Outfield dimensions The Clem Criteria:
Built Demo- lished 1st deck 2nd deck Upper deck Lower deck Upper deck Fair Foul LF CF RF Left
field
Left-center Center field Right-center Right field Field
asym- metry
Arch.
design
Seat
prox- imity
Loc- ation Aesth- etics Over- all
1965* 1997 52,870
(FB: 60,606)
36+7 3 23 5% 90% 110.9 35.9 8 8 8 ENE 50 330 385 402 385 330 1 5 2 5 4 3.2

* The Braves began playing here in 1966. Peak capacity: 53,046 (1985)

ALL STAR GAME: 1972 OLYMPIC GAMES: 1996 PEACH BOWLS: 1971-1991

WORLD SERIES: 1991, 1992, 1995, 1996     (1 W, 3 L)

BEEN THERE (TOO LATE): Before a Braves game at Turner Field in 2001, I walked over to the parking lot where this stadium once stood.

This was one of the stadiums built "on speculation," paid for by taxpayers as part of a scheme to lure a baseball franchise from another city. Construction began in 1964 after the Milwaukee Braves owner promised to relocate his team to Atlanta. After construction on it was completed in 1965, the minor league Atlanta Crackers played at Atlanta Stadium (as it was known until 1975) while legal wrangling over the relocation of the Braves continued. This was the fourth circular hybrid stadium used in baseball (opening one month before Busch Stadium II), but it was the first such stadium without any large movable sections. (For baseball fans, that is.) In this simple cost-cutting configuration (which was later used in Oakland Coliseum as well), the football gridiron was laid out transversely, with the goalposts near the left field and right field corners rather than near home plate and center field, as in most other circular stadiums. During football games, about 25 extra rows of seats were installed in the outfield. The 7,000 or so extra seats brought the total capacity for football games up to just over 60,000. All of the seats were arranged in circular fashion, with the result that thousands of fans sat far away from the action, during baseball games as well as football games.

thumbnail The distance down the foul lines was supposedly 325 feet when the stadium first opened in 1966 (I have yet to see any photos showing this, however), and has been 330 feet ever since 1967. As originally built, there was a vast amount of foul territory, artificially reduced by an inner fence that enclosed the bullpens. In 1969, the outfield fence was moved in, reducing the distance to the power alleys by ten feet; the distance to center field was reduced by only two feet. Five years later (in 1974), the previous dimensions were restored. In that same year, six additional rows of box seats and new dugouts were built, substantially reducing the amount of foul territory, which had been about 39,700 square feet. With a neglible slope and ending virtually at ground level, however, those seats were useless for football games. This created a "notch" behind home plate, similar to the one in Oakland Coliseum. In addition, about six rows of seats (some of the movable sections used for football games) were added near the right and left field corners. These changes raised the seating capacity by about 2,000. For some reason, there was a gap of about 20 feet between the fence and the "bleachers."

One peculiarity of this stadium was that there was virtually no overhang between the upper and lower decks. Presumably, this saved on construction costs.fOlump An Indian teepee and "Chief Noc-A-Homa" (groan) occupied a part of this vacant space in left field beginning in 1967, and in 1978 the teepee was moved to a higher, more prominent position in the bleachers. Even though the power alleys were rather deep (except for 1969-1972), this stadium had a reputation for being friendly to batters, partly because it was the highest altitude major league baseball stadium (over 1,000 feet) until the Colorado Rockies began playing in Mile High Stadium in 1993. While the rest of the nation was "wallowing" in the Watergate scandal, Hank Aaron made this otherwise-forgetable stadium immortal on April 8, 1974 when he hit his 715th career home run, thereby surpassing Babe Ruth.

CINEMA: Several scenes from the motion picture The Slugger's Wife (1985), starring Michael O'Keefe and Rebecca De Mornay, were filmed here.

Under the ownership of ultra-ambitious cable television tycoon Ted Turner, the Braves gained the advantages of nationwide publicity and, in consequence, an ample payroll funded by advertising revenues. While Turner was married to Jane Fonda, the team attracted even more glamour and hype -- plus controversy over the "tomahawk chop" which the politically-correct Ms. Fonda grimly followed.

The Atlanta Falcons played football in this stadium from 1966 until 1991, after which they moved into the Georgia Dome. Ironically, this was the very moment when the Braves finally left behind their perennial losing ways and began their phenomenal streak of National League divisional championships -- winning the West Division from 1991 to 1993, and after ralignment and the strike in 1994, winning the East Division from 1995 to date. In 1991 the Braves won the National League pennant for the first time since they moved to Atlanta, and did likewise reached the the next year, in 1995, and in 1996. There was only one other stadium whose team went to the World Series in four of the six final years it was in operation: Ebbets Field. In 1995 the Braves finally won the World Series, becoming world champions for the first time since 1957. In 1993, on the day that slugger Fred McGriff was slated to play his first game as a Brave, a fire broke out in the mezzanine level, quickly engulfing several luxury suites and damaging nearby press boxes.

Atlanta Stadium hosted a Beatles concert on August 18, 1965 -- before the Braves had ever played there. In addition, the Peach Bowl was held here every year from 1971 to 1991.

The Braves' schedule was seriously disrupted by the 1996 Centennial Olympic Games in Atlanta, played next door in what was to become Turner Field. As workers began converting Olympic Stadium into a baseball facility that fall, the Braves made it to the World Series once again, as did the Yankees for the first time since 1981. It was a strange affair in which the first five games were won by the visiting team, including the last three games ever played in Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium. (The Yankees won the deciding Game 6 back home in the Bronx.) The former home of the Braves was demolished on August 2, 1997, and a parking lot now occupies that site. The diamond and foul lines are marked in brick, and bronze plaques indicate where the bases once were. In addition, the former outfield fence has been recreated as a monument to the glory days of "Hammerin' Hank" Aaron. There is a monument marked "715" that shows where his record-breaking home run landed, in front of a blue fence marking the perimeter of the old stadium.

SOURCES: Lowry (2006), Pastier (2007), Gershman (1993); Furman Bisher, Miracle in Atlanta: The Atlanta Braves Story (1966), www.baseball-fever.com www.sover.net/~hardybob/pictures.htm

FAN TIPS: Chris Kassulke, John Cappello


Atlanta-Fulton Co. Stadium

Click on the camera icon (camera) links below to see each photo.

camera #1 ~ A left-field view of the plainest "doughnut" stadium ever built, taken during this stadium's final season. This shows how far away from fair territory most fans had to sit. (Courtesy of John Clem.)

camera #2 ~ Banners in back of center field commemorated the Braves' Hall of Famers: pitcher Warren Spahn (#21), third baseman Eddie Matthews (#41), center fielder Hank Aaron (#44), pitcher Phil Niekro (#35), and Dale Murphy (#3). (Courtesy of John Clem.)

camera #3 ~ The former location of the diamond and outfield fence at Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium are marked in a parking lot just north of Turner Field. (September 2001)


 

Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium:
Chronology of diagram updates


 



NOTE: The diagram thumbnails have been continually replaced since 2008, so the images seen in the older blog posts do not reflect how the full-size diagrams looked at that time. Roll your mouse over the adjacent thumbnail to see a pre-2008 version.

Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium
 
12 Jan 2005 10 Aug 2007 10 Aug 2008 07 Jan 2012 26 Jul 2013 28 Apr 2016 05 Jun 2019

Vox populi: Fans' impressions

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