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Turner Field hosted baseball's All-Star Game in 2000, the ballpark's fourth season of operation. So when will the star-studded event come to SunTrust Park?
The game will be played in Washington and Cleveland the next two years, respectively, and Major League Baseball is in the process of considering sites for the 2020, 2021 and 2022 games.
The Braves want to host the game in their new Cobb County stadium, but haven’t specified a target year.
“Everyone wants to be able to host a huge event like the MLB All-Star Game,” Derek Schiller, the Braves’ president of business, said through a spokeswoman Tuesday. He didn’t elaborate.
> UPDATE: Baseball All-Star Game will be played in Atlanta's SunTrust Park in 2021
Baseball’s All-Star Game has been played in Atlanta twice – in 1972 at Atlanta Stadium (later called Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium) and in 2000 at Turner Field. The 2000 game was originally awarded to South Florida, but MLB rescinded the commitment because of worries about the Marlins’ stadium situation and moved the event to The Ted.
Seventeen years later than promised, the Marlins finally got to host an All-Star Game on Tuesday night. The game at Marlins Park, which opened in 2012, continued the recent trend of holding the event in relatively new stadiums.
Before the Braves, six MLB teams had opened new stadiums since 2006. And five of those six stadiums already have been awarded All-Star games: Marlins Park (opened in 2012); the Minnesota Twins’ Target Field (opened in 2010, hosted All-Star Game in 2014), the New York Mets’ Citi Field (opened in 2009, hosted in 2013); Washington’s Nationals Park (opened in 2008, will host in 2018) and the St. Louis Cardinals’ Busch Stadium (opened in 2006, hosted in 2009).
After next season’s All-Star Game, the only active MLB stadiums to have never had the event will be SunTrust Park, new Yankee Stadium (which opened in 2009), the Philadelphia Phillies’ Citizens Bank Park (which opened in 2004) and the Tampa Bay Rays’ Tropicana Field (the Rays’ home since the team’s inaugural season in 1998).
The new Yankee Stadium is having to wait a while for an All-Star Game because old Yankee Stadium hosted the event in its final season in 2008. Philadelphia recently expressed interest in waiting until 2026 to host the event as part of the city's celebration of the nation's 250th birthday. Tampa Bay won't have a shot at the game until or unless it builds a new stadium.
Still, competition will be stiff for the 2020-2022 games.
The Cubs have publicly targeted the 2020 game for an extensively renovated Wrigley Field, which last hosted the event in 1990. "There will be an All-Star Game in Wrigley Field in the relatively near future," MLB Commissioner Rob Manfredsaid at a town-hall event in Miami this week. "Having said that, the caveat on that is we have a lot of cities really interested in having the game. And we're going to make a sound decision on how to allocate those games in the fairly near future. And I think Chicago will be in that mix."
The Los Angeles Dodgers are pushing hard to bring the game to Dodger Stadium for the first time since 1980. "L.A. is another place I would like to see us go," Manfred said.
He said the 2020, 2021 and 2022 sites might be announced at the same time but said "way more" than three teams are in the mix. The Braves should be in that mix, given Manfred's previous praise of SunTrust Park and adjacent development, which he called "a model for other organizations."
In a meeting with the Baseball Writers Association of America in Miami on Tuesday, Manfred said MLB will take into account a range of factors in choosing future All-Star Game sites.
“We’ve moved into a much more competitive evaluation of those various bids, taking into account things like the cities’ involvement,” Manfred said. “Have they built a new stadium for their club? Have they done particular things that are helpful to the club? The availability of key venues, convention centers and whatnot.
The 2020 season will be SunTrust Park’s fourth. So it will be a challenge for the stadium to land the game as early in its existence as Turner Field did.
But if the Braves can lure an All-Star Game in the near future, it would add to an extraordinary string of mega-events headed here: The College Football Playoff championship game in January 2018, the Super Bowl in February 2019 and the Final Four in April 2020 are booked for Mercedes-Benz Stadium.
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