Chapter 4 Project

Take Me Out to the Ball Game!

An activity to demonstrate the use of percents and percent increase or decrease in real life.

The Atlanta Braves baseball team has been one of the most popular baseball teams for fans, not only from Georgia, but throughout the Carolinas and the southeastern United States. The Braves franchise started playing at the Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium in 1966 and this continued to be their home field for 30 years. In 1996, the Centennial Olympic Stadium that was built for the 1996 Summer Olympics was converted to a new ballpark for the Atlanta Braves. The ballpark was named Turner Field and was opened for play in 1997. In 2017, the Braves moved to a new stadium named SunTrust Park, which was renamed as Truist Park in 2020 when SunTrust and BB&T merged.

Round all percents to the nearest whole percent.

1. The Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium had a seating capacity of $\mathrm{52,769}$ fans. Turner Field had a seating capacity of $\mathrm{50,096}$. Truist Park has a seating capacity of $\mathrm{41,149}$.

   1. Determine the decrease in seating capacity between Turner Field and the original Braves stadium.

   2. Determine the percent decrease in seating capacity between Truist Park and Turner field.

2. The Centennial Olympic Stadium had approximately $\mathrm{85,000}$ seats. Some of the seating was removed in order to convert it to the Turner Field ballpark. Rounding the number of seats in Turner Field to the nearest thousand, what is the approximate percent decrease in seating capacity from the original Olympic stadium?

3. The Braves were ranked 2nd out of $16$ teams in 1999 and the average attendance was $\mathrm{40,554}$. Again in 2021, they were ranked 2nd out of $15$ teams and the average attendance was $\mathrm{28,746}$. What was the percent decrease in attendance from 1999 to 2021? ¹

4. The highest average attendance for the Braves was $\mathrm{47,960}$ in 1993 at the Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium. The lowest average attendance was $6642$ in 1975 at the Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium. What is the percent increase from the lowest attendance to the highest? ²

5. Chipper Jones, a popular Braves third baseman, retired in July 2013. He started his career with the Braves in 1993 at the age of 21. ³

   1. In 2001, Chipper had $189$ hits in $572$ at-bats. Calculate Chipper's batting average for the season by dividing the number of hits by the number of at-bats. Round to the nearest thousandth.

   2. In 2008, Chipper had $160$ hits in $439$ at-bats. Calculate Chipper's batting average for the season by dividing the number of hits by the number of at-bats. Round to the nearest thousandth.

   3. Calculate the percent change in Chipper's batting average from 2001 to 2008.

   4. Does this represent a percent increase or decrease?

6. In 2001, Chipper had $102$ RBIs (runs batted in). In 2008, Chipper had only $75$ RBIs.

   1. Calculate the percent change in RBIs from 2001 to 2008.

   2. Does this represent a percent increase or decrease?

1 Source: "Atlanta Braves Attendance, Stadiums, and Park Factors," Baseball Reference, Accessed May 3, 2022, www.baseball-reference.com/teams/ATL/attend.shtml.

2 Source: "Atlanta Braves Attendance Data," Baseball Almanac, Accessed May 3, 2022, baseball-almanac.com/teams/bravatte.shtml.

3 Source: "Chipper Jones Stats," Baseball Almanac, Accessed May 3, 2022, www.baseball-almanac.com/players/player.php?p=jonesch06.