Game 25: New Coca Cola Bottle Plugged In and Hank Aaron at Turner Field

Before tonight’s Braves game at Turner Field the new giant Coca Cola Bottle was plugged in. It was a really cool ceremony with them carrying a giant electrical cord to a giant outlet in the foul territory near 1st base. Then 15 seconds later the Coca Cola Bottle lit up and began shooting off fireworks. This new bottle is a high tech one that lights up in different colors and has a LED ribbon as the Coca Cola label, which says various things throughout the game such as Home Run and has the Tomahawk logo. It would have been cool to see the old Coca Cola bottle made out of baseball gear and I was actually looking forward to that, but this was cool, too, since we were there for its plugging in/unveiling.

The coolest part, though, was not the new Coca Cola bottle, but that Hank Aaron was there as part of the pre game ceremony introducing the new giant Coca Cola bottle. I would not be surprised if he is at tomorrow’s game for the retiring of Maddux’s number, but I was totally surprised that he was there today. Of course, the whole new Coca Cola bottle was also news to us. Even Mik thought it was cool that Hank Aaron was way down there on the field in person right across the street from the site of where he hit his 715 home run breaking Babe Ruth’s career home run record. In Mik’s mind Hank Aaron is still the career home run leader or at least the true non-cheating leader.

I know tomorrow we will see former famous ballplayers as part of the Maddux number retiring ceremony, but I was pleasantly surprised to see Hank Aaron today. Tomorrow may be the highlight historical baseball moment of the trip, but I really think the unexpected seeing Hank Aaron tops that or at least is up there at the top. Of course, right below these two Braves games in Mik's opinion is seeing the star of Burn Notice throw out the ceremonial first pitch at the Boston Red Sox game.