Truist Park: The History, the Dimensions and How the Park Plays
A guide to Truist Park, home of the Atlanta Braves: its listed dimensions, capacity and setting, the franchise's long line of earlier homes, and what the layout means for hitters, pitchers and fans.
Truist Park is the home of the Atlanta Braves, an open-air grass ballpark in Cobb County, northwest of downtown Atlanta. The site's reference data lists a capacity of 40,819, a straightaway center field of 400 feet, and a right-field line of just 325 feet, the shortest distance on the wall. The historical record shows the Braves playing there from 2017, first under the name SunTrust Park for the 2017 through 2020 seasons and then as Truist Park from 2021. (The club announced the new name in January 2020, so the park was already Truist Park in 2020, but the database's park field switches a year later.)
The park is the latest stop for one of the oldest franchises in the sport. The Braves' National League history began in Boston in 1876; they spent the years from 1953 to 1965 in Milwaukee, and arrived in Atlanta for 1966. Across that history they have used about ten different home grounds, and the club's fourth World Series title in the database, in 2021, came in the second season the building carried its current name, since the club announced the Truist name in January 2020. This guide covers what the numbers say about the field, how the shape of the park and its setting affect play, where Truist Park sits in the franchise's long line of ballparks, and how to plan a visit without relying on details that change from year to year.
A note on sources before the details. The measurements here come from the site's own curated reference data for the park, and the history comes from the historical record through the 2025 season. Anything that changes quickly, such as ticket prices, food, parking and transit, is deliberately left out; for that, use the club's official pages and the Braves team page on this site.
The park by the numbers
The reference data for the ballpark is short, but it says a lot. Here it is in one place.
| Feature | Listed value |
|---|---|
| Capacity | 40,819 |
| Roof | Open (no roof) |
| Surface | Natural grass |
| Left field line | 335 feet |
| Left-center | 385 feet |
| Center field | 400 feet |
| Right-center | 375 feet |
| Right field line | 325 feet |
| Elevation | 1,001 feet above sea level |
| Orientation (home plate to center field) | 145 degrees, a bearing toward the southeast |
| Location | Cobb County, Georgia, near the northwest edge of the Atlanta area |
Add the five fence distances and divide by five and you get an average of 364 feet. That is a rough guide only, because it ignores the height of the wall and the real shape of the outfield between the five measured points. But it is useful for comparing parks, and 364 sits in the ordinary range for a modern major-league field. Truist Park is not a hitters' park built on a short porch or a pitchers' park built on a cavern. It is a middle-of-the-road park with one lopsided feature, the right-field line, and one generous feature, the left-center gap.
How the shape of the field plays
The two corners are not symmetrical. Left field is listed at 335 feet and right field at 325. Ten feet on a foul line is not much, but it counts for the hitter who pulls the ball in the air down the right-field line, which in practice means a left-handed batter. A fly ball that would be a long out to the warning track in a deeper corner becomes a home run on that line. The sensible reading is that the geometry gives a small, steady advantage to pull-side power from the left side, and that the effect is hard to isolate from the quality of the particular hitters who played there.
The other side of the field leans the other way. Left-center is the deepest of the alleys at 385 feet, ten feet deeper than right-center at 375. A right-handed batter who hits a ball to the opposite field, or a left-handed batter who gets the ball up in the air but does not turn on it, has to hit it a little farther to the left half of the park to clear the wall. In the language of park factors, a field like this tends to look neutral in total home runs while redistributing them: more to right, fewer to left-center. Doubles and triples fall into the gaps on both sides, and a 400-foot center field is a long run for the center fielder, which rewards an outfielder with range.
If you want to see the effect for yourself, the best tool is not a rating but a spray chart: where the home runs landed. Over a full season a park with a 10-foot imbalance will show a visible cluster just inside the right-field foul pole that does not exist on the other side. A single season of data is noisy, so look at several.
Why elevation matters, and why it does not matter much here
At 1,001 feet above sea level, Atlanta is higher than most major-league cities but nowhere near the thin air of Denver. Air density falls as elevation rises, and a ball hit through thinner air meets less drag and carries a little farther. At a thousand feet that effect is small; it is well short of the dramatic boost at a mile-high park, and it would be easy to exaggerate it. Temperature and humidity move the ball too, and not in the direction people expect. Humid air is very slightly less dense than dry air at the same temperature, because water vapor is lighter than the nitrogen and oxygen it displaces. Hot, humid Georgia evenings therefore help the ball carry a bit, though again by a modest margin.
The honest summary is that the setting nudges the park toward the hitters in the summer and toward neutral in cooler weather, but the dimensions, the wind and the particular night matter at least as much.
Open air, grass and weather
The park has no roof, so there are weather postponements and delays in a way a domed or retractable-roof park never has. Atlanta summers produce afternoon thunderstorms, and a rain delay of an hour or more is a normal part of a season. Natural grass also plays differently from artificial turf: a ground ball slows down more on grass, and a fielder gets a more predictable hop. The surface favors the infielder who positions well rather than the one who needs speed to cover ground.
The sun and the direction of the field
The orientation figure, 145 degrees, is the compass bearing from home plate out toward center field. A bearing of 145 points to the southeast. The official rules recommend aiming the field toward the east-northeast so that the low sun does not shine in the batter's eyes, and Truist Park's bearing is well to the south of that. For a late-afternoon or early-evening game in summer the sun is in the west and northwest, which is behind the hitter rather than in his face. Which fielders or fans squint, and which seats are in shade at first pitch, depends on the start time, the date and the height of the grandstand, so check the game time when you pick seats.
A long line of ballparks: where the Braves played before
The historical record lists a park for every season, and reading the list is a quick history of the franchise. Here is the sequence, with the years the franchise used each ground and the highest single-season attendance recorded in the database while playing there.
| Park | Seasons | Best season attendance |
|---|---|---|
| South End Grounds (first version) | 1876-1887 | not recorded |
| South End Grounds (second version) | 1888-1893 | 193,300 |
| South End Grounds (third version) | 1895-1914 | 382,913 |
| Braves Field | 1916-1952 | 1,455,439 |
| County Stadium, Milwaukee | 1953-1965 | 2,215,404 |
| Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium | 1966-1996 | 3,884,720 |
| Turner Field | 1997-2016 | 3,464,488 |
| SunTrust Park / Truist Park | 2017-2025 | 3,191,505 (as Truist Park) |
Two entries are missing from that table for simplicity. The database shows 1894 as a combined season in which the park field lists the second South End Grounds, the Congress Street Grounds and the third South End Grounds, which fits the fire that destroyed the old wooden grounds in Boston that year. And for 1915 the database lists Fenway Park along with Braves Field, because the club began that season in the home of the Red Sox while its new park was being finished. The club's own name changes ran alongside: Red Caps, Beaneaters, Doves, Rustlers, Braves, Bees, Braves again, then Milwaukee Braves, then Atlanta Braves.
Several things are visible in the attendance column. The best crowds rose by about half when the club moved from Boston to Milwaukee, and rose again in Atlanta. The 1993 season at Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium holds the franchise's highest figure in the database at 3,884,720, which works out to just under 48,000 per home date over an 81-game home schedule. The modern ballpark seats fewer people than that old stadium did, and the best season at Truist Park, 3,191,505, is about 96 percent of what you would get if every one of 81 dates drew a crowd equal to the listed capacity of 40,819. That figure is a rough comparison, not a measurement: it assumes 81 home dates and counts tickets distributed, not people in seats.
What each of the Atlanta homes was like
Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium was the club's home from its first Atlanta season, 1966. It was a multi-purpose concrete bowl, and it was nicknamed the Launching Pad, a name that earned its keep because the ball carried well there. On April 8, 1974, Hank Aaron hit his 715th career home run in that building to pass Babe Ruth. Aaron's career with the franchise, 1954 to 1974, produced 733 home runs, 3,600 hits and 2,202 runs batted in in a Braves uniform, all franchise records. The 1990s teams that won so many division titles played in the same stadium, through the 1996 season.
Turner Field took over for 1997. It had been built as the main stadium of the 1996 Olympic Games and was converted into a baseball park once the Games ended. The Braves played there for twenty seasons, 1997 through 2016, and won division titles in every season from 1997 to 2005, then again in 2013. The franchise's 1995 World Series championship came at Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium rather than Turner Field, a point worth knowing because people often link the title to the newer park.
Truist Park, then SunTrust Park, followed in 2017, and the club moved from a downtown-adjacent site to the suburbs. The franchise followed its fans north and tied the ballpark to a development of shops, restaurants and offices beside it. Whether that was a good trade is a matter for urban planners; for the baseball fan the main change is that the park is a long drive from downtown and an easy one from the northern suburbs.
What the Braves have done in this building
The best way to judge a park is by the teams that play there. From the 2017 season through 2025, the Braves' record in the historical record includes division titles in 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023, a wild-card berth in 2024, a National League pennant in 2021, and the 2021 World Series. In the same stretch Freddie Freeman won the Most Valuable Player award in 2020 and Ronald Acuña won it in 2023. Acuña was also the Rookie of the Year in 2018, Michael Harris won the award in 2022, and Drake Baldwin won it in 2025. Chris Sale won the Cy Young Award in 2024. Brian Snitker managed the club for the whole span, and the database credits him with 811 wins and 668 losses in 1,479 games from 2016 through 2025, third in games among Braves managers behind Bobby Cox and Frank Selee.
The postseason results from that era are mixed. The club lost division series in 2018, 2019, 2022 and 2023, won the 2021 pennant by beating Milwaukee 3-1 in the division series and the Dodgers 4-2 in the league championship series, and then beat Houston 4-2 in the World Series. The 2020 postseason was played under a special format, and the 2024 wild-card series ended in a 0-2 loss to San Diego. For the full list, see the best Atlanta Braves seasons and every October run.
Why the Braves' park has changed so often, and what that says about the club
Reading the list of parks a franchise has used is also a way to see the history of baseball's business model. A club that moved from the wooden South End Grounds to the concrete Braves Field, then across the country to Milwaukee, and then to Atlanta, was following a pattern that many franchises followed: grounds that aged, a city that offered a better deal, and the chance to capture a fresh market. The Braves' trip to Atlanta in 1966 brought major-league baseball to the Southeast. How they got from there to 2017 is a longer story, which the history of the Atlanta Braves tells in full.
The other clubs in the division have their own stories of moving and rebuilding, and they are covered in the Miami Marlins franchise history, the New York Mets franchise history and the Philadelphia Phillies franchise history. In Atlanta's case the lesson is that a fan who learned the game in the 1990s at one stadium has since seen two new ones.
Planning a visit
The following advice is general on purpose. Prices, parking arrangements, food and transit change from year to year, so confirm them on the club's official pages close to the date.
- Check the schedule and the weather. With no roof, a summer evening can include a long delay, and an April or October night can be cold for a city people think of as warm. The schedule page lists the home dates.
- Arrive early. The park is the center of a larger development, so the walk from where you leave your car or get off a bus to your seat can be longer than the walk to the gate suggests.
- Think about the sun. Because the field points southeast, the setting sun sits behind the hitters in summer, but how much of the stands sits in shade at first pitch depends on the date and the start time. Pick seats with the first-pitch time in mind and pack sunscreen for the afternoons.
- Bring a plan for the heat. An Atlanta afternoon in July or August is hot and humid. Water, a hat and a willingness to move to the shade are more useful than any seating chart.
- Know the home team. A fan who has read about Hank Aaron, Chipper Jones, Greg Maddux and the current stars will get more out of the commemorative displays in the park and the history on the concourse. The best players in Atlanta Braves history is a good place to start.
If you cannot make it in person, the club's live record and next game appear above, and the full Atlanta Braves ballpark page holds the reference data for the field.
Common questions
When did the Braves start playing at Truist Park? The historical record lists the 2017 season as the first year at the park, which was then called SunTrust Park. The name Truist Park appears from the 2021 season in the database.
How big is the ballpark? The listed capacity is 40,819. The listed distances run from 325 feet down the right-field line to 400 feet in center, with 335 in left, 385 in left-center and 375 in right-center. The wall heights are not part of the reference data, so check an official source if you need them.
Is it a hitter's park? On the evidence of the dimensions alone it is close to neutral, with a short right-field line that helps left-handed pull hitters and a deeper left-center that costs some opposite-field power. The thousand-foot elevation and the summer humidity add a small boost to carry. For a numerical answer use a park factor from several seasons, not one.
What was the Braves' attendance record? The highest season total in the database is 3,884,720 in 1993, when the club played at Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium. The highest at Truist Park through 2025 is 3,191,505.
Which World Series did the Braves win after the park opened? The 2021 title. The club's four championships in the database came in 1914, 1957, 1995 and 2021, and the 2021 team beat Houston four games to two.
Where to go next
Start with the history of the Atlanta Braves for the full story from Boston to Georgia, then the best Braves seasons and every October run for what happened in the building. The history of the World Series puts the 1914, 1957, 1995 and 2021 titles in context. For the current standings, the standings page is the place to look.