The Braves Honor Chipper Jones with Renovated Field at Dacula Park

By Braves Give

To honor Chipper Jones’ retirement from professional baseball, the Atlanta Braves pledged to refurbish ten baseball fields throughout Greater Atlanta; one field for each of the next 10 years. This September, we teamed up with the Gwinnett Braves to refurbish the fourth field, Dacula Park in Dacula, GA.

To celebrate the improved conditions, a ribbon cutting ceremony was held at Dacula Park. Rich Wiley, Director of Dacula Athletic Association, acted as Emcee for the program. The Tomahawk Team and the Heavy Hitters were onsite to open the festivities with an exciting performance. Atlanta Braves starting pitcher, Aaron Blair, and alumni pitcher Greg McMichael, were joined by Gwinnett Braves pitchers Stephen Janas and Bradley Roney to help unveil the renovations. Braves President of Business, Derek Schiller, was on hand to speak about the importance of quality field conditions for youth players who are learning to love the game. Gwinnett Braves General Manager, North Johnson, spoke about the importance of baseball in the Gwinnett community.

In addition to Braves officials, representatives from Dacula addressed the crowd. Gwinnett County Board of Commissioners Chairman, Charlotte Nash, spoke about the importance of the Atlanta and Gwinnett Braves’ presence in the community. Ted Thomas, Director of Dacula Park Pony League, touched on how the improvements to the field would help the program grow for years to come.

Braves Field Director, Ed Mangan, addressed the audience and explained the numerous improvements his team made to the field including laser grading the playing surface to ensure smooth hops and safe play, placing new grass-turf in the outfield and rebuilding the mound was to be of Major League caliber. Additionally, the bullpens were resurfaced, providing a better area for pitchers to warm up and the batting cage adjacent to those bullpens was also redone with new netting, turf and outfitted with a new L-screen.

To end the program, officials from the Atlanta Braves, Gwinnett Braves, the city of Dacula, Gwinnett County government and the Dacula Athletic Association joined Homer, Chipper, members of the Tomahawk Team and Dacula youth baseball players in a celebratory ribbon cutting.

Thank you to everyone who helped support this initiative!