Growing up near Murphy, N.C., hard by the Georgia border, Staff Sgt. Marissa Morgan had two heartfelt interests.
The military. In such a hurry was she to begin her career as an air medic that she had her parents sign for her so she could enlist six-plus years ago at the age of 17.
“Growing up, I was very intrigued about the military. In middle school, I’d ask my parents for camo stuff for my room. I loved thinking about fighting for my freedom and doing something bigger than myself,” she said.
And, to a lesser extent, there was playing ball and rooting for the Braves. T-ball early in life, softball later and to this day. The Braves were her team and what kid of that age and that leaning didn’t grow up with a Chipper Jones fixation? As difficult as it has been to find the time once she began flying the ill and wounded back to their home base for care, Morgan has made a handful of pilgrimages south to see the Braves up close. Including once already this year, before Turner Field is abandoned.
Admittedly, watching them this season hasn’t been all confetti and stirring Sousa marches. In fact, a good deal of un-medicated pain has resulted.
“But I’m still there for them,” she said.
For one day, on the holiday in which patriotism is cool, the Braves will be there for Staff Sgt. Morgan in return.
Sunday night at Fort Bragg, N.C., where Morgan and more than 50,000 of her closest Army and Air Force friends are based, the Braves play the Miami Marlins in a one-of-a-kind, honest-to-goodness real baseball game. It will be the first professional game played on an active military base.
Yes, what we have here, for the first time, is literal Base Ball.
It has been about a year since the lords of the game first played with the idea of some tangible salute to the military. Much had to be accomplished in that time.
First, sprawling Fort Bragg, the largest base in the world by population, home to Airborne and Special Operations forces, had to be identified as the most appropriate site upon which to build a temporary stadium.
Then, all parties had to clear the high brush of governmental bureaucracy for permission to build — and it turned out that this was a project that even Congress could agree upon.
Breaking ground in early March on the weedy practice range of a deserted military golf course, a partnership of MLB and the players union built in three months a professional-grade field for this game. Temporary stands will seat 12,500 fans who, aside from some players’ family and baseball pooh-bahs, will all be Department of Defense folk. According to major league sources, MLB and the union will have spent $5 million on the project.
Scalpers would not seem to be an issue, since the general public — at least those who aren’t actually generals — can’t exactly waltz through Fort Bragg’s gates to get to their seats. And those soldiers who received their free tickets would be subject to some “adverse action” if any showed up for sale online, said Eric Hill, the recreation division chief for Fort Bragg’s Directorate of Family and Morale, Welfare and Recreation. There is a serious determination to keep this very much the military’s celebration.
(Still, according to the Fayetteville [N.C.] Observer, there have been ads offering as much as $1,000 for a ticket, provided the soldier also could escort the buyer onto the base.)
The stands will come down after the game, but the field, fencing and dugouts will remain as the centerpiece to a planned permanent complex of fields for military use.
The Braves and Marlins made logistical sense, as they wrap up a four-game series in North Carolina on their way to other road games up the East Coast (the Braves in Philadelphia, the Marlins in New York). The Braves will be both the home team on the scoreboard and in spirit, with their fan base far more far-reaching than that of the Marlins.
If you build it, they will come and play one game unlike any other.
The project seems to be have been greeted with the desired enthusiasm.
“I am stoked,” Morgan said. When the call went out to her unit to email ticket requests, hers was the first to reach the appropriate in-box. “On this holiday, watching the Braves, it’s a blessing.”
“I thought it was a joke at first, it sounded too good to be true,” said Capt. Tim Hubler, a logistics readiness officer who has kept every ticket stub from every game — Braves and otherwise — he has attended, including the first-ever game at the team’s Disney spring training site. He was Pennsylvania born, but Braves raised.
“There is a buzz around the base, just a lot of excitement that major league baseball and the Braves are coming here to play a regular season game for us,” he said. His infant daughter, wearing a Braves T-shirt, will be in arms.
That enthusiasm seems to rub both ways. Here may be one case in which the professional ballplayer has every bit as much interest in the fan as the fan does in him.
Originally, the teams were scheduled to play their game in Atlanta on Saturday, then travel to Fort Bragg Sunday.
“But the players all said, hey, we want to get there earlier and do as much as possible with the servicemen, interact with them more,” Tony Petitti, MLB’s chief operating officer, said.
So they’ll fly out Saturday evening in order to spend the day Sunday visiting sites around the base, including a parachute packing facility, a dining hall for lunch and a hospital support facility.
As the starting pitcher for a game that counts, Matt Wisler may not be able to hit all the stops, but he is looking forward to whatever he can do.
“Everyone’s excited to go,” he said. “Everyone appreciates what our military does for us. They sacrifice more than anyone else for this country and for what they do protecting us.”
Outfielder Jeff Francoeur talked about how much he looked forward to playing in San Diego and seeing a few hundred Navy personnel high up in the stands. Imagine, he said, being surrounded, immersed in the company of the military.
“I’m just looking forward to going there and hanging out with them,” he said.
An extra road trip. A single game in a tiny park in the wilds of North Carolina. Here right in the middle of a long and grinding season. Normally all that would be received as a pox or a form of punishment by the modern, entitled ballplayer. Not so much in this case.
“If anyone in here found (a one-game stand at Fort Bragg) it an inconvenience they’d be the most spoiled little you-know-whats around,” Francoeur said. “And nobody does. It’s an honor.”
