Now that Turner Field in Atlanta, Ga is being closed I feel like I need to tell my experience of the infamous stadium. How cliche of me I know. My Turner field experience was probably a little different from yours. Now that I think about it I never really been to a Braves baseball game. How ironic since I was born and raised in Atlanta. I grew up in single-parent household. My mom faced a lot of challenges because my father wasn’t there financially and sometimes even physically. Now that I have gave you a little background on my life. Lets get to the story.

It was hot day in July and my father wanted to spend some time with my brother and I was 8 going to 3rd grade the following school year. My mother agreed because we haven’t seen him since my birthday in February. My mom dropped us off and In my mind I’m thinking that I get to go to my 1st baseball game. Boy was I wrong. I distinctively remember hearing my father yelling ” I got tickets, tickets right here”. I was just a little girl I didn’t understand what he was doing. He was scalping tickets just to make some money. My father grew up in Summerhill Community. They didn’t have the best infrastructure.There were no “good” schools, there was a lot of drugs and crime. My father didn’t have a lot of opportunities to better himself. He was trapped by the infrastructure of Metro Atlanta for low-income families. He did what he thought he knew was right. My father once said “You can take the boy out the hood but you can’t take the hood out the boy”. 

On that day I saw a black man struggle to get cash. I saw my father struggle for cash because he felt like he had no other option. I started to see the world differently that day. I saw the struggles of a black man who has strikes and has too many kids.