At 9:05 Monday morning, a Premier charter bus filled with Howard Hustlin’ Tigers baseball players pulled away from the high school’s Market Street campus on its way to the Atlanta Braves’ SunTrust Park.
Tigers coach Jon Johnson thought the Braves were merely treating his team to free tickets and food throughout Atlanta’s doubleheader against the Miami Marlins, as well as a few minutes of interaction with some of their players.
And that certainly came to pass. Twenty-one Tigers were given $20 vouchers for both lunch and dinner, as well as quality seats. They met Braves front-office personnel who had grown up in economically depressed environments similar to so many of Howard’s players. They got to play pitch and catch with Braves All-Stars Ozzie Albies and Freddie Freeman.
“Once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” catcher Terrance Beamon said by cell phone between games. “Great experience. They asked me last week if I wanted to go on a field trip. I had no idea we’d get to do this, to meet major leaguers. This is unbelievable.”
Mark WiedmerNo, this is unbelievable: The Atlanta Braves Foundation handed Johnson a check for $5,000 to continue to improve a baseball program that’s literally gone from playing on a field of rocks to rockin’ the Southside.