With a month to go before the first pitch, Fort Bragg’s Major League ballpark is nearing completion. In the last few weeks, crews have nearly finished bleachers that will hold most of the 12,500 fans set to attend the July 3 game between the Atlanta Braves and Miami Marlins. The warning track is all but done, and fencing around the field and dugouts is being installed. On Thursday, crews had begun working on the broadcast booth, where ESPN will nationally televise the game as part of its “Sunday Night Baseball” broadcast. Next week, crews will install foul poles, backstop netting and begin work on the “tent city” that will form operational headquarters and clubhouses for the game.

If voters agree to pay for half of a $1 billion stadium, the Texas Rangers will stick around Arlington long enough to celebrate the team’s 80th anniversary. City leaders and Rangers officials formally announced Friday afternoon their plans to extend the Rangers’ stay by building a retractable-roof stadium adjacent to the existing one. The city and team would share the cost evenly, with the Rangers responsible for overruns.The stadium is expected to open no later than the 2021 season, nearly three years before the team’s contract to play at Globe Life Park expires. The team, which moved from Washington to Arlington in 1972, would be committed to the city through the 2053 season.

For decades, the phrase “beautiful Wrigley Field” didn’t fit the ballpark’s exterior, which was covered in gray concrete panels that could have been lifted from a 1960s parking garage. The ballpark only became beautiful when fans entered the seating bowl and the emerald green field and ivy-covered outfield walls burst on them, like Eden redux. But when the Cub faithful return to their bittersweet shrine for Monday’s opening night, they will witness something new — or, rather, something old: a Wrigley Field whose exterior is being restored to the way it looked in the 1930s, complete with ornamental grill work topped by elegant sunburst patterns.