By John A. Tures, Professor of Political Science, LaGrange College

What a strange trip it’s been for Cobb County’s Battery Park, home of the Atlanta Braves. Once a source of derision, it’s now the happenin’ Major League Baseball revenue-generating region that every baseball team can’t wait to emulate now.

Who can forget that Spring day when we learned the Braves were abandoning Atlanta and Turner Field for Cobb County? It was so close to April 1 that we thought it might be an April Fool’s Joke. I can remember others being upset. What about parking? Wouldn’t it take away the team from the heart of the city? I can remember local publications suggesting the recent champion Atlanta United team was “doing it right” in all facets, a marked contrast with the Braves….at the time.

I too was dismayed. We had so many family memories at Turner Field, the grounds where our oldest kid prepared to take first steps, where the kids played at “Tooner Field.” We knew the stadium and area around it so well. I was not happy. But during a rainout, a lengthy broadcast on the Atlanta Sports Network’s radio had guests from management describing what the vision was. I could see visions of a Battery Park emerging before it was built. I shifted from skeptic to supporter.

But nothing could prepare me for what I saw at my first game. “Hon,” I called my wife. “It’s Baseball Disney.”

But just because locals learned to embrace the area, that didn’t mean other teams and their media and fanbase were on board. Who can forget the L.A. columnist who mocked Atlanta as having little to do outside of going to a Waffle House? Those comments, made of ignorance, show that such critics simply never did their research, much less attend a game, to see for themselves.

After Atlanta’s epic World Series run, a string of strong titles and playoff appearances, capped by one of the best organized and performed All-Star Games in history, the sharp business minds from around the league are starting to take notice. If you’ve ever been to other ballparks, you can see the insults are born from jealousy, not from better stadium-and-neighborhood plans.

The latest to fall under the spell of Cobb County’s Atlanta Braves multipurpose mecca is the Tampa Rays. Forced to temporarily abandon their aged stadium after Hurricane Milton did a number on Tropicana Field, the Rays hope to copy the Braves Battery Park, not Dodgers’ Stadium.

“The Battery in Atlanta ‘is the gold standard’ for what the team hopes to build in the Tampa Bay region, he [owner team leader Joe Zalupski] said, adding that the mixed-use model ‘is what you have to have in today’s Major League Baseball to be successful.’” That quote comes from Janelle Irwin Taylor of Florida Politics, but has been backed up by everyone from Sports Illustrated to ESPN.

According to Front Office Sports, even the Philadelphia Phillies, Atlanta’s bitter rivals, are singing the Cobb County sports neighborhood’s praises. “The Battery was also repeatedly cited by Philadelphia officials earlier this year after an arena deal was struck between Comcast Spectacor and Harris Blitzer Sports & Entertainment. ” Wow.

A peek at the ledger also shows that the region has helped give the Braves a healthy balance sheet, much of it from the year-round revenue.

Atlanta and Cobb County probably haven’t seen the last of the insults from columnists in other cities. But over the next decade, we can expect smart baseball money to build sports hubs a lot more like Braves’ home. And imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

John A. Tures is a professor of political science at LaGrange College in LaGrange, Georgia. His views are his own. He can be reached at jtures@lagrange.edu or on “X” at @johntures2. His first book “Branded” will be coming out this Fall, published by Huntsville Independent Press (https://www.huntsvilleindependent.com/).