Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium

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Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium
The Launching Pad

Location	Atlanta, Georgia
Opened	April 12, 1966
Closed	October 24, 1996
Demolished	August 2, 1997
Owner	City of Atlanta and Fulton County
Surface	grass
Construction cost	$18 million USD
Former names
Atlanta Stadium
Tenants
Atlanta Braves (MLB) (1966-1996) Atlanta Falcons (NFL) (1966-1991) Atlanta Chiefs (NASL) (1967-1969), (1971-1972), (1979-1981) Atlanta Crackers (IL) (1965)
Seats
52,013 (baseball), 62,000 (football)
Dimensions
1966-68 Left field: 330 ft. Left-Center: 385 ft. Center Field: 402 ft. Right-Center: 385 ft. Right Field: 330 ft. 1969-72 Left field: 330 ft. Left-Center: 375 ft. Center Field: 402 ft. Right-Center: 375 ft. Right Field: 330 ft. 1973 only Left field: 330 ft. Left-Center: 375 ft. Center Field: 402 ft. Right-Center: 385 ft. Right Field: 330 ft. 1974-96 Left field: 330 ft. Left-Center: 385 ft. Center Field: 402 ft. Right-Center: 385 ft. Right Field: 330 ft.

Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium was a baseball, football and soccer stadium that formerly stood in Atlanta, Georgia. Completed in just 50 weeks, for $18 million, it opened in the spring of 1965 as Atlanta Stadium. It was intended as the home of the soon-to-be-relocating Braves, but court battles kept the team in Milwaukee as a lame duck for a year. So the new stadium had a lame duck of its own for that first season: the Atlanta Crackers of the International League, whose previous home had been Ponce de Leon Park at 650 Ponce de Leon Avenue. In 1966, both the NL's transplanted Atlanta Braves and the NFL's expansion Atlanta Falcons moved in. In 1967 the Atlanta Chiefs of the National Professional Soccer League (reformed as the North American Soccer League in 1968) began the first of eight seasons played at the stadium. The Falcons moved to the Georgia Dome in 1992, while the Braves had to wait until the Olympic Stadium from the 1996 Summer Olympics was renovated into Turner Field to move out at the beginning of the 1997 season. The stadium sat 60,700 for football and 52,013 for baseball. The baseball competition for the 1996 Summer Olympics was held at Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium.

[edit] Layout

The stadium was relatively nondescript, one of the many saucer-shaped multipurpose facilities built during the 1960s and 1970s, usually known as "cookie cutter" stadiums. The stadium was long known for the poor quality of the field of play – no one bothered to hire full-time groundskeepers until the early 1990s, instead relying on a city work crew. The relatively high elevation of the Atlanta area (situated at the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains) meant that the stadium was relatively favorable to long-ball hitters, giving rise to the nickname The Launching Pad. That factor certainly helped boost Henry Aaron's home run output, and he reached the all-time record sooner here than he might have in Milwaukee. One unusual feature of this stadium is the fact that, unlike most baseball stadiums used for football where the football field is laid either parallel to one of the foul lines or running from home plate to center field, the football field here was laid along a line running between first and third base. Thus, a seat behind home plate for baseball would also be behind the 50-yard line for football. (It shared this characteristic with the Oakland Coliseum). The stadium was refurbished for the 1996 season because it hosted the Olympic baseball competition. It probably looked better in many ways in its last season than it had in its first.

[edit] Demolition

Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium was imploded on August 2, 1997. A parking lot for Turner Field now stands on the site, with an outline of the old stadium, and a plaque marking the spot where Hank Aaron's historic 715th career home run landed on April 8, 1974, in what was formerly the Braves bullpen. That was one of the two most historic events ever to occur in the old park. The other came on October 28, 1995, when the home team defeated the Cleveland Indians on a one hit, 8 inning performance by pitcher Tom Glavine, to achieve the only Atlanta Braves World Series championship thus far (they have one in each of the three cities in which they have resided). The 1972 Major League Baseball All-Star Game was also held at the stadium.

The stadium was demolished in the same year as another Atlanta sports venue, the Omni Coliseum. That arena was the former home of the NBA's Atlanta Hawks and the NHL's Atlanta Flames.