Happy Fourth of July! Nothing quite like the Fourth of July in the nation’s capital. We’re in Washington playing a three game series against the Nationals this weekend and will be on the road all the way through the All Star Break (July 13-15). We’ll go to Chicago and Denver before we come home for a couple weeks.

I’m sure many of you have great plans for Independence Day – unfortunately, I’ll be missing the Peachtree Road Race in Atlanta. This is the 40th year of the race, held every year on the Fourth of July. 55,000 runners will start at Lenox Square in Buckhead and finish in Piedmont Park. It is actually the largest 10k road race in the United States! The streets of downtown Atlanta are packed with runners, walkers and joggers, not to mention lined for miles with spectators. It’s a really great race and everything ends up in Piedmont Park where they have a live band throughout the afternoon. The sea of people that gather to run and watch the race at 7:30am is unbelievable.

I hope you all have a great day filled with fireworks, food, friends and family. I can imagine the lake and beach will be hot spots this weekend!

It’s tough sometimes to miss holidays and other events because I’m on the road so much. But at the same time, I am getting to play baseball every day for a living – not a bad day job if you ask me! And I always find a way to stay on top of everything I’m missing, especially sporting events like the PGA Tour, College World Series, NBA, NFL, NCAA football – just to name a few. As most of you know, I’m a huge golf fan. A couple weekends ago the US Open (one of the PGA majors) was played in New York and I had to miss most of the coverage because we were in Boston playing the Red Sox. I followed as much of it as I could on my phone. A lot of the guys on the team have iPhones, smart phones, etc. so we don’t miss much action. I always track Tiger on ESPN.com. I’ve played with him a couple times now so I have to keep an eye on my boy!

I also love following Jason Sobel’s golf blog on ESPN.com. He’s there for every second of action that I’m missing, so I read his blog from my phone when I’m on the road – makes me feel like I’m there, even when I’m hundreds of miles away! Another cool thing I can get on my phone now is Twitter and it helps me follow the action on the PGA Tour. So many golfers, broadcasters and other athletes are tweeting now and I have just started to check those out. Stewart Cink tweets about the tournaments he’s playing and even about his life off the golf course. Those are really cool.

I’ve seen a couple teammates tweeting here and there…maybe it’s something I should get into. Any thoughts? I haven’t fully caught on to the Twitter craze yet, but it’s interesting. Do any of you guys tweet? I may need a crash course on the whole thing!

Well, it’s back to the grind for me – hope everyone has a great Fourth of July! I’ll be live at Delta tomorrow touring TechOps for my next blog, so if anyone has any questions for me to answer, post them here!

Jeff Francoeur
Atlanta Braves

It’s good to see the Red Coats back and celebrating almost 50 years of special airport service for Delta customers.  We first introduced these special Passenger Service Agents in the early 1960s, and they were quickly nicknamed “Red Coats” for their bright uniform jackets (shown here in this 1970s photo).

I’ve heard though, that the signature red jacket was not always red.  One of our early agents told me that Delta first tested yellow jackets–yellow being the favorite color of C. E. Woolman, Delta’s principal founder and first CEO.  After a couple of months, they were replaced with the now iconic red coat for better visiblity of the agents in airport crowds and to tie in with new Delta’s jet age branding–the red/white/blue Delta widget logo–introduced in 1959.

Do you have a story to share about a Red Coat’s exceptional customer service? I’d love to hear about it and add it to our story collection in the Delta Archives!

Marie Force
Archives Manager