Braves Welcome Back Fans For 2021 Season, With Limited Capacity At First
A statue of longtime Braves manager Bobby Cox outside of Truist Park now features a mask.
Emil Moffatt / WABE
After not being able to attend Atlanta Braves games in person in 2020, Karen Cerutti and Pat Stallings drove all the way from Alexandria, Virginia, to resume their streak of Braves home openers.
“The energy, the friends, it’s good to be here,” said Cerutti.
Last year’s pandemic-shortened regular season was played without fans. The last time Braves fans got to see their team play in person was the 2019 playoff series with St. Louis. For the first homestand of the season, the Braves are limiting attendance at Truist Park to 33%, announcing a crowd of 14,342 for Friday’s game.
Cerutti and Stallings were both dressed in Braves shirts as they enjoyed a drink before the game. Their journey to see the Braves play used to be shorter when they were assigned to Fort McPherson. They’ve since moved away from Georgia.
“We live in D.C., so we’re not really around places where everybody is in Braves gear, so it’s really pretty cool,” said Stallings.
Cerutti says their favorite opening day memory was from 2010 when Atlanta outfielder Jason Heyward smacked a home run in his first major league at-bat.
There were home runs aplenty for the Braves on Friday night, too, as they hit three in an 8-1 drubbing of Philadelphia. The Braves’ leadoff man Ronald Acuña Jr. had three hits, including his third home run of the year. Braves starter Charlie Morton allowed just one run in six innings to earn the win.
The Braves declared that masks were required inside the ballpark, although many fans in their seats were seen without them. Mask-wearing was more common on the ballpark concourses.
A Year Without Live Baseball
Steven Minter of Woodstock is thrilled to be seeing baseball in person again in 2021 after being away from the ballpark for a year.
“It was devastating. It was like a bad breakup — couldn’t watch baseball movies, couldn’t have any reminder of baseball. It was bad,” said Minter.
The Braves are coming off a deep playoff run last year, and expectations are high.
“I’m a baseball fanatic, I guess,” said Norman Warrick, a fan from Marietta. “I just love the feel of being in the stadium. I love live baseball.”
Warrick has high hopes for the team after their deep playoff run in 2020. He quoted Braves star first baseman Freddie Freeman.
“They were one game away from the World Series last year, so we get that one game and, like Freddie says, ‘World Series or bust.’”
The team paid tribute to the late Hall of Famers Hank Aaron, Phil Niekro and Don Sutton prior to the game, along with longtime executive Bill Bartholomay, who was instrumental in bringing the team south. Aaron, Niekro and Sutton all died over the winter; Bartholomay died last spring.
The Braves wore 1970s-era blue-and-white uniforms in honor of Aaron and Niekro.
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