Turner Field - Baseball cards

Baseball cards at Turner Field! Gotta show 'em! Even though they were all in cases and didn't photograph very well!

When you walk into the Braves Hall of Fame Museum there's a big display of vintage cards. And by Vintage I mean nothing more recent than a 1982 Topps Phil Niekro. One oddity is there are two cards of Bobby Cox including the only card that is not from Topps, a 1981 Fleer card.

Here's the catchers in a consecutive run from 1962 to 1964. Note that the sublime 1963 Bob Uecker is the centerpiece. The plan was to take a shot of each position but my camera ran out of memory and by the time I deleted some old stuff some kid got the same idea I had and took over the display.

Here's some Hartland Figures of Hank Aaron, Warren Spahn and Eddie Mathews. If you're not familiar with Hartland Figures, they were basically plastic baseball figures that were manufactured way back in the day. Think Vintage Starting Lineups. Oh wait, Staring Lineups are dang near Vintage themselves now. Think really Vintage McFarlane Figures.

T3 Turkey Red card of Peaches Graham. If you've never seen a Turkey Red card in the wild, try to seek one out. They are quite impressive.

If you're not into big cards, here's a much smaller card of Peaches from the 1911 T205 set. Incidentally, if you do a Google image search for Peaches Graham, you'll get pictures of a handful of cards and a ton of pies, cobblers, cakes and tarts. You will suddenly become very hungry so Google with caution.

This odd looking thing is a 1914 Blanket card of Les Mann, which is an unfortunate name if I say so myself. This wasn't the only one of these in the museum.

George Tyler, Hank Gowdy and Hub Perdue form a triforce of B-18 Blankets. I've got the Tyler in my collection and these things surprisingly can often be found for under twenty bucks if you look around.

Last up is a small pile of random Braves in the '60s locker. Two cards of Knucksie, two more of Felipe Alou, one Joe Torre and one Clete Boyer. Three from '66, two from '67 and one from '68. Seems kinda random but a nice touch among all the memorabilia.

Turner Field - Braves Hall of Fame Museum

Enough wandering around the stadium on Open House day. Let's check out the Museum & Hall of Fame. All pics taken randomly, haphazardly and poorly.

For all the excessive bitchery amongst the Braves' faithful about their lack of playoff success, we still got this one.

Rings! Men can be obsessed with jewelry too.

First issue of Sports Illustrated with Eddie Mathews on the cover. There are '54 Topps cards inside that thing too!

Here's a couple of Braves' World Series programs from the '50s.

Warren Spahn's Cy Young award featuring Thing from the Addams Family.

My favorite item in the museum, Red Moore's Atlanta Black Crackers jersey. Of all the stuff on display this  is the thing that made me squee like a fangirl.

Channel 17! I wish we could still watch the Braves on Channel 17! Greed always wins. Except in free agency.

Score card from Hank Aaron's 715th home run. No clue who is attached to that hand.

Took a picture of the headline from Andruw Jones' walkoff walk in '99 mainly because I fondly remember listening to that game in an Amoco station in Hoboken, New Jersey that evening. No, really. Long story.

Warren Spahn's purple heart from the Battle of the Bulge. Spahnnie damn near got hisself blowed up. War sucks.

Here's the 1948 World Series ticket and program in a poorly-lit display case.

Another newspaper, this one slightly older. Braves field is opened in Boston.

The bat and ball from Hank's 715th home run.

'80s time! Those dang '80s Braves turned me into a fanatic. Amazing really, concidering how terrible they were for most of that decade.

One of the greatest works of 20th century art - Pascual Perez circling I-285.

More '80s Braves - this time two Hall of Famers.

This is my favorite program cover ever. I really need to find one of these to add to the collection.

1969 Braves World Series tickets. Oh, what could have been...

We'll finish up with Dale Murphy's two MVP trophies.

And a little bit more hardware for Murph. Nope, not a Hall of Famer though.


(would have been if he had juiced up and hot two more homers though - but I digress)


Got some more stuff from the museum in the next post so stay tuned! That's right, sit in front of that screen and keep hitting F5. It'll be up in a dozen hours or two DO IT

Turner Field - Field

It's late I've been catching up on work and Twittering all night so I haven't done any productive blogging today and I really want to finish at least ONE blog series I've started this year so I'm doing a gigantic image dump of my pictures of Turner Field's field what I took at the Open House that was like 7 years ago it seems and there's no real rhyme or reason or narrative to these shots so you'll just get a rambling stream of consciousness like this terrible run on sentence I just wrote here dear lord this is so bad why do you keep reading this horrible blog it hasn't been good since 2008 seriously people.

All these photos are posted in the order in which they were tooken. Here's the Budweiser Zone and Meat Market where you can get a beer and mingle with bored college students who are way paying attention to that drunk blonde over by the railing than the game. As well they should.

The Chopping Chick-fil-A cow. No really, it does the Tomahawk Chop with its hoof. Hey, this is Atlanta. We're impressed by The Big Chicken. What can I say? Fried chicken is popular down here.

Here's the Big Screen which used to be the biggest for like 17 and a half minutes but some other team built a bigger one. The camera on my phone can't handle the frame rate.

Uhhh... There's the Budweiser zone again from the view of the dugout. Oh yeah, I got to go in the visitor's dugout.

Dammit, what day is the Chipperhead bobblejones being given away??? Doggust Gixteenth? DAMN YOU PHONE CAMERA!!!

nEXT TO THE CO- *ahem* Next to the cow is a huge flashy glowy Coke bottle that does nothing in the daylight. It is far inferior to the original Coke bottle made of baseball equipment. I am unanimous in this.

View of the Braves dugout from the visitor's dugout. I probably should have saved these photos for the dugout tour post.

HI MA! LOOK HOW CLOSE I AM TO THE FIELD AND SECURITY HASN'T TACKLED ME YET!!! WOOOOOOOOOOOO~

When I said image dump I meant it.

All our pennants! So much yellow, so little red...

Here's the retired numbers. If you had read the previous posts you would know this already.

Two more days and we'll finally have a pitch down here.

Aaaaaaand most of the field. I was just snapping photos randomly by this point.

Braves Statue of Liberty! New York fans are gagging right now. I was going to put this in the statue post but didn't for some reason, then forgot to put it in the stadium post so it goes here AND YOU'LL LIKE IT.

Braves fans have gigantic balls. I should probably go to bed now. That statement doesn't make any sense because I'm scheduling the post for Wednesday morning, but in actuality I'm writing this post on Wednesday morning. wait what

OH GOD I JUST REALIZED I HAVE FOUR MORE POSTS TO DO FOR THIS SERIES

Turner Field - Stadium

We've wandered about on the fan plaza long enough. Time to pick up tickets (yes we had to stand in line for tickets to get into a free open house) and go inside. I had no game plan while I randomly snapped photos so you get what you get.

So the first thing I noticed when I walked in is that Tooner Field is gone forever. It's now Taco Mac Zone. I love Taco Mac (wings are excellent, tons of beers and the Kenmore burger is outstanding) but the loss of Tooner Field brings sadness and grief to my soul. No more gigantic Dexter in a robot suit. No more Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends room with the doors that open. No more Powerpuff Girls ball throwy thing. Bummer.

Oh hey, look over here....

It's a mascot! A dude with a baseball for a head! A completely original idea not derivative in any way!
Seriously. Dude. Just bring back the Bleacher Creature.

We followed those dudes up the stairs and I got this shot of the bullpen from the Budweiser College Student Pick Up Zone. I wanted to get more photos up here but an usher chased us back downstairs. Would it kill ya to put up signs telling us where we can and can't go on open house day?

Alternate view of the bullpen from downstairs.

LIES!!!!! FILTHY, FILTHY LIIIIIIIIESSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hee's the Hank Aaron Room. I think this is rented out for meetings and conferences and such.

Season ticket holders get their own little room to play in where they don't have to be bothered with the game.

All around the concourse are banners celebrating the Braves' playoff appearances.

Wooo! NL Champs! I forgot to take a pic of the '95 Banner, but I assure you it's awesome.

There's also infographics and team picks for every year lining the walls of the concourse. Knucksie!

Here you can see if you can jump as high as Otis Nixon. I can get a Little League Leap on a good day.

There's also Scout's Alley games where you can swing in a batting cage or test your arm against a radar gun. My son hit a Moyeresque 35mph on his fastball. You can also see the limitations of my crappy camera phone in this pic.

Here's that gigantic tom-tom drum they play in the outfield during games. It was parked inside today.

Back outside after circling the stadium. Time for a MmmmmmmmmcCann burger! Yum!

That's a nice box score right there!

Here's the Clubhouse store with one of the 47 gigantic screens up above it. Quit watchin' the game and buy somethin' already!

There's signs all over the place showing distance to home plate and classic ballparks. I liked the nod to Ebbets here.

Gotta have BBQ down south. Here's the Turner Field Smoke House.

Ok, that's enough food and frivolity, time to go down to the field. Well, next post anyway. It's Opening day! Game's about to start!