Some viewers of Friday’s World Series parade are joking about how a championship that took the Atlanta Braves 26 years to win was celebrated in a blink of an eye.
The victory parade that rolled — some would say raced — along Peachtree Street in downtown Atlanta generated a flurry of wisecracks from social media users.
“‘Faster than a Braves parade’ should be a saying from now on,” tweeted @adamdharrell.
Another compared the pace of the buses carrying baseball players to another fast-moving bus: The one famously driven by Sandra Bullock in the movie “Speed.”
Even Atlanta’s Department of City Planning chimed in, confirming what those straining to catch a glimpse from sidewalks and TV screens were saying: This parade was indeed quick.
The city planners said that a check of transportation data showed vehicle speeds on Peachtree Street ranged between 4.9 and 8.5 miles per hour at 12:15 p.m. Friday. The planning department noted that’s two to four times the speed of a usual parade, which goes about 2.5 miles per hour.
“Miss the Braves parade today? That might not be your fault,” said the City Planning tweet. “Maybe it’s time to consider some parade-traffic-calming.”
Representatives of the Atlanta Braves and Atlanta Police Department did not respond immediately to a request for comment Saturday.
The parade eventually made its way to Cobb County. A Cobb police department spokesman said the agency “did not set any speeds for the parade (especially not in the city of Atlanta).”
“This is a question better answered by the Atlanta Braves organization,” the spokesman said in a Saturday email.
Unlike other parades, Friday’s celebration was entirely wheeled with no walking.
Back in 1995, when the city last hosted a World Series championship parade, marching bands participated. At the time, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that the more than two-mile long parade was interspersed with “long gaps.”
On Friday, it took a few seconds for many in a crowd near Peachtree and West Peachtree streets to begin chanting Freddie Freeman’s name. By then the first baseman, waving from the back of a pickup truck, had already gone past.
About a minute later, another bus full of Braves players blazed by.
Credit: Ben Gray
Credit: Ben Gray
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