From the front page of the Sunday Times’ National Section and website…

…as the team makes plans to head a dozen miles northwest to a new $672 million baseball stadium in Cobb County, a regional civic conversation has begun: Is the move a blow to a city beginning to enjoy a post-recession urban renaissance, or is it a signal of a new era in which traditional assumptions about the divide between city and suburb no long apply?

…“We’ve got to make a decision — either we’re going to be a region or we’re not,” [Mayor Kasim Reed] said at a packed news briefing the day after the Braves’ announcement. “It bothers me that we have not come far enough as a community that people feel that a team moving 12 miles is a loss to the city of Atlanta.”

Not Decatur per se, but wow. From the AJC…

The Atlanta Braves plan to build a new stadium in Cobb County and move there from Turner Field at the start of the 2017 season, team officials said today.

On The Same Page is running (pun intended) a two-part fundraiser to benefit Our House as well as On The Same Page, Decatur’s community-wide reading program.

This year’s book, Louis Sachar’s Holes, tells the story of Stanley Yelnats, a kid who seems destined to the whims of a family curse when he is sentenced to a youth detention camp after being wrongly accused of stealing a baseball star’s shoes — shoes that had been donated to a charity auction. The fundraisers are based on this theme.

First, there is a shoe drive. Please bring new and gently used shoes to Little Shop before November 3rd. Those will all be given to families at Our House. This is already off to a great start. (Thanks, Fleet Feet!)

In addition, On The Same Page is auctioning off shoes worn by Atlanta Braves players Freddie Freeman, Tommy Hanson, Chipper Jones, and Kris Medlen. Click here for details and links to the ebay auction sites. The shoes are currently on display at Little Shop. The auction ends this Sunday, November 4th.

Feel free to tell everyone you know!

Male Braves fans give renewed meaning to the term “unwashed masses”.

From the New York Times…

The next time a man hands you a hot dog after making a run to the restroom and the concession stand at an Atlanta Braves baseball game, be careful: there is a good chance he did not wash his hands, according to a report released Monday by a group that sends spies into public restrooms in the name of science.

Only about two-thirds of the men observed washed their hands after using the restroom at Turner Field — the lowest rate for any of the locations cited in the observational study and survey on the hand-washing habits of Americans.