LaGrange High School student starts push to get Braves to Troup County

Published 4:00 pm Saturday, January 29, 2022

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By Ethan Strang

The Atlanta Braves won the World Series in dramatic fashion back in November of 2021, beating the Houston Astros in six games. Now the Braves are keeping the celebration alive by taking the World Series trophy on tour across the southeast. The Braves plan on making 151 stops to commemorate 151 years of Braves baseball.

With only a handful of sites selected so far, members of the LaGrange community are hoping to entice the Braves to bring the trophy to town. LaGrange High School freshman baseball player Grady Westmoreland saw the tour announcement and knew right away LaGrange would be a great city to host a stop on the tour.

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“We’ve had a number of Braves alumni and a lot of Division 1 commits this year and in the past,” Westmoreland said. “It felt like the perfect time.”

Westmoreland targeted March 3-March 6 as possible dates to coincide with the LaGrange Toyota Invitational baseball tournament that Lagrange High School is hosting that weekend. Westmoreland brought this idea to his mother, Fiona Westmoreland, who promptly contacted Mayor Jim Thornton.

Katie Van Schoor, LaGrange’s marketing and communications manager, took the proposal and ran with it.

“If we can get the Braves here, then we hope to include everybody in the community,” Van Schoor said. “It will be a free event at Sweetland Amphitheater, they would come and tour with the trophy.”

The only confirmed cities for the tour so far are Atlanta, Dekalb, Savannah, Macon, Cairo, Alpharetta, and Cherokee, North Carolina.

The Braves also plan to take the trophy to the homes of all their minor league affiliates (Augusta Greenjackets, Gwinnett Braves, Rome Braves, Mississippi Braves).

The tour will begin on Feb. 15. The team is allowing fans from all over the Southeast to submit locations that would make a good stop on the tour.  To submit a tour location, or offer further support for LaGrange as a destination on tour, visit https://www.mlb.com/braves/fans/trophy-tour.