As spring training wraps up, the Braves return to Atlanta and CoolToday Park empties, but behind the scenes the work continues in North Port.
The CoolToday Park Player Academy is a year-round facility devoted to minor league baseball players.
Mike Dunn, the vice president of Florida operations for the Atlanta Braves, took WINK News behind the scenes for a peek at what the organization is up to year-round in Southwest Florida.
“In reality, 2% of the minor league field is going to make it to the big leagues, so we want to give them something other than baseball to rely on,” Dunn said.
The Braves do that at their two-story, 45,000 square foot player academy.
“The academy is part of our way of life curriculum that we offer to our minor league players. There’s a housing academy where we sleep over 100 minor league players. They eat breakfast, lunch and dinner here. They have a classroom, barber shop, movie theater, laundry and they stay on campus during the remainder of the year.”
The primary focus is to acclimate international players to American culture.
“We do that through public speaking, money management, English, those types of courses that we do internally. So when they’re not playing baseball, we’re teaching them traits of the real world and we do that in this complex.”
The Braves launched the academy five years ago, shortly after opening their new spring training home.
“In our previous location in Orlando, we had nothing this elaborate. We used hotel conference rooms for our curriculum, but nothing to the extent of this, where this is real-life training.”
Even after the major leaguers head back home next week future stars will keep working in our own backyard.
