The question came up on the radio broadcast of a Braves game last week: Will the team’s dugout be located on the first-base or third-base side of the new stadium?
The location of the home team’s dugout is one of many hundreds of decisions, from major to minuscule, that must be made in designing a Major League Baseball stadium.
There’s no MLB rule governing the matter, leaving the choice up to the team building the stadium and the architect designing it. Of the 30 MLB stadiums, 18 currently have the home team’s dugout on the first-base side of the field and 12 have it on the third-base side.
Turns out, those numbers will be unchanged by the Braves’ move from Turner Field to the Cobb County stadium in 2017.
The Braves and architect Populous are far enough along in the design process to have determined that the home dugout will be on the first-base side of the new ballpark, same as it is at Turner Field, according to Braves executive vice president Derek Schiller.
Schiller said a variety of design and access factors drove the decision on dugout location. Among them: The home clubhouse, which typically is significantly larger than the visitor’s clubhouse and connects to the home dugout, will work best on the first-base side of the new stadium because of the amount of available space and the proximity to the player-parking area.
