Georgia

On the fourth day of my car trip, I left behind the kind generosity of my two long-time friends who played host to me the three previous nights and headed out towards Atlanta so I could see a ball game at the Braves' new suburban baseball park they plunked down in the far northwestern suburbs of the Atlanta metro area, far, far from downtown with no public transportation there to get there except by car driving up the beltway so they could better serve who they perceive as their clients, white suburbanites.  Good luck going forward on tat one, it was a nightmare in honking, slow traffic on Atlanta's Interstate system to get there, trying to make split level decisions as to which fork in the multilane roadways to take as Siri gave out vague directions on these similar-to-wet-spaghetti-strewn-out-on-a-table exits that came up multiple times as I tried to work my way to this new stadium that couldn't be seen from any roadway.  (The Battery outside SunTrust Park.)

I made it, however, and then faced my next new-age challenge, gaining admittance using the phantom ticket I'd bought online without its physical presence like a ticket I could have picked up at the Will Call window.  Nope, that option was "unavailable" even while it cost $5 more (the stadium does have a Will Call window) and once I purchased the ticket I was directed to Ticketmaster so I could create an account and bring up the ticket's QR image, whatever that is, on  my "handheld device" to show the ticket taker. Well, that didn't work because I got locked out of Ticketmaster when I couldn't enter my Apple ID and password (?!) and I was just SOL.  Grr.  (A statue outside the Braves' new park of the legendary Warren Spahn, a figure whose pitching heyday was in Milwaukee, bespeaking of the Braves' longstanding ties till now to three cities, Boston, Milwaukee and Atlanta.)

I got in after 30 minutes in the "Ticket Resolution" office while a 30-something bored park employee hardly listened to my I'm-an-old-guy-with-no-kids spiel while she poked my I-phone with her index finger and voila, suddenly brought up my ticket's bar code.  Inside SunTrust Park, the sight lines were good everywhere and passage around all aspects of the park was easily gained, but it's a stadium totally removed from anything Atlanta and it might as well be plunked down in Any Suburb, USA.  It's strictly a money-maker as the team obtained generous terms from Cobb County, brought their partners in to develop "The Battery" in the stadium's immediate environs with restaurants, hotels and business parks, and control the parking revenues at this drive-only park.  (My $11 dinner at the ballpark, it was quite good.)

The Braves beat the Phillies 9-2, Bryce Harper, recently of the Washington Nationals, hit a home run and after a night at a nearby Motel 6 ($66.13) and drove away the next morning to spend July 4th at the Andersonville Civil War POW camp to reflect upon true heroes of our country at the National Cemetery there rather than listen to some BS history lesson from a colossal and dangerous fool flanked by tanks on the National Mall.  I won't ever be back to see a game at the Atlanta' Braves SunTrust Park, it''s a nice park but so totally outside the fabric of venerable baseball that it's not appealing to me in the least.  (The view from SunTrust Park, of corporate America,)