by Lisa Napoli
The Braves’ original lineage dated all the way back to Boston and the nation’s centenary year, 1876. By the time the team took up residence in Atlanta in 1966, after a dozen years in Milwaukee, the south was in the throes of the civil rights movement, and the city sorely needed a boost. The installation of the first Major League Baseball team south of Washington, D.C., also raised the city’s profile. Now, on the sports pages of national newspapers, the word “Atlanta” would appear. Icing on the cake: superstar Hank Aaron, who had debuted with the club at age twenty, broke Babe Ruth’s home run record, hammering home his historic 715th home run in April 1974.
As the town buzzed with speculation about this wild-card new owner, observers consoled themselves with the fact that while they didn’t know much about this Ted Turner fellow, at least he had local roots. As local sports columnist Wayne Minshew observed, “It is a peculiar trait some Atlantans, southerners, have to ‘trust our own,’ and Turner is ‘one of us,’ having grown up in Georgia and lived here since he was nine.” He was also a “wild man” with movie-star good looks—the opposite of dull. Plus, the columnist reasoned, anyone who could turn around the left-for-dead channel 17 with wrestling, shlocky commercials and a pratfalling news anchor who lampooned the news—anyone with the temerity to float the station hither and yon, all over the southeast—well, imagine what he could do for the Braves.
In truth, the Braves couldn’t sink any lower. In their entire existence, they’d called more cities home (three) than they’d had forays into the World Series (two.) Even their devoted promotions director, Bob Hope—an inventive young fellow saddled with the same name as the famous comedian—didn’t mince words: “No other team in American sports history has put together a longer span of ineptitude: 2,137 losses out of 3,975 games over 25 years.” Their attendance figures matched their performance record—pathetically low.
So why would a two-time yachtsman of the year who spent at least a quarter of his time away from the city on a boat, a man no one remembered ever seeing at the ballpark, wish to be bothered with this money-losing dud of a team?
At his press conference debut, seated behind outgoing owners Bill Bartholomay and Dan Donahue, he pledged his allegiance to the game by wearing a maroon commemorative Hank Aaron tie as he spun the acquisition as a love letter to his adopted city.
“Atlanta is my home and I love it here,” he said. “I’ve been all over the world racing and stopped in Tahiti on the way back from Australia, which I read a lot about as a little boy, and I decided the closest thing to paradise on this earth is Atlanta, Georgia, and aww . . . It’s not an economically wise move to buy the team, but, aww, money itself is not the prime motivation here. I believe I’m doing it primarily for the city and the southern part of the country, believe it or not.” He was thirty-seven years old, he told the press corps, and he intended to keep the team for the rest of his life.
And he intended to turn headlines that declared Atlanta “Losersville” into ones that proclaimed the city “Winnersville.” If anyone understood hard-fought victories, it was him. It had taken him eight years to win his first sailing race, and look at how he’d beaten the odds in turning around the fortunes of the wretched channel 17. The Braves, he promised, would win the World Series in five years.1
The desire for victory and to bolster civic pride, in fact, had very little to do with why Ted had just signed on to baseball. The truth was, the Braves were a crucial component of his burgeoning media empire, and he dearly needed them to stay put in Atlanta. When the owners had revealed at the end of the previous season that they were through with baseball and planning to sell, he’d flipped. Whoever else might have bought the team could very well have opted to move them away or sever ties with the station. Aside from his growing film library and television reruns, the Braves had become the oxygen of Super 17. Airing their games had imbued WTCG with a veneer of legitimacy, not to mention the airtime it filled and the advertising dollars it generated. As the number of cable systems carrying the station around the region continued to grow, the Braves were becoming “the south’s team.” And just imagine what would happen when permission was finally granted to shower the signal across the nation. That would catapult them to become “America’s Team.” That next step in his space-age aspirations was currently held up in a tangle of anxiety-inducing governmental bureaucracy and legal challenges that rattled even the ever-optimistic Ted. His earth station had been installed and was ready to go on a special plot of land he’d found ten miles out of midtown Atlanta, but, much to his dismay, he still hadn’t won permission to use it. For now, he could brag about this latest feather tucked onto his railroad cap.
* * *
As the city settled into news of the new owner, a thousand of the team’s toniest fans jammed the grand ballroom of the brand-new Peachtree Plaza Hotel in downtown to get a glimpse of him. Patrons donned their finest for the annual Braves 400 Eddie Glennon Gameboree, named both for the batting average that eluded most mere mortals who played the game and the long-time sales manager for the team, who had been so dedicated to the sport that he’d managed to die while listening to a game on the radio.
More people showed up for this fancy pep rally than had appeared in recent years on an average night at the stadium. The record crowd was eager to hear from this man who owned the rerun station many wouldn’t admit to watching, who’d they’d heard couldn’t tell a “ball from a balk.”
Glasses clinked as the assembled crowd feasted on salad, London broil, and parfait.
Ted, wearing that commemorative maroon Hank Aaron tie again, wasted no time in revealing himself. In his trademark buzz-saw squawk, he told the crowd he planned to make baseball fun again. “I’m sick of mottos. If we have one at all, it’s gonna be ‘Victory or Death.’” Then he revealed a bombshell: He was thinking of changing the team’s name to the Eagles—the name of one of his yachts, he explained, but mostly because “it’s cheaper to feed a bird than an Indian.”
Lighting a cigar for dramatic effect, Ted the bombastic raconteur reveled in his place at center stage. While he was certain he was a terrific public speaker, his off-the-cuff meanderings confounded audiences. His inability to stop talking, much less self-censor, would soon yield a nickname he abhorred: “The Mouth of the South.”
“We may lose it all on this deal,” he told these most ardent cheerleaders of the Braves, “but if everything goes down the commode, they’ll have to come get me, and channel 17, too. If things get bad enough, and aww, they may, we’ll lock up the stadium, play day games to save electricity, and by God, if anyone asks what the hell we’re doin’ in there, I’ll tell ’em—we’re learning how to win! I’ve got some friends in the Mafioso up north and as much as I’d hate to resort to those tactics, we’ll rough up Pete Rose or Dave Concepcion if they start playing too well.”
After a half hour of speechifying, rambling Ted admitted he’d been asked to keep his remarks to just five minutes and explained he got “kinda carried away.” In the next day’s paper, sportswriter Furman Bisher observed that for the bewildered boosters, going from the stoic, starched previous owners to Ted Turner was “like switching from Mozart to Lynyrd Skynyrd.”
Ted continued to rock and roll on his get-to-know-you publicity tour. Next stop: the Atlanta Chamber of Commerce breakfast, where he fielded questions that included one about what he intended to do regarding the crime issue in the area surrounding Atlanta–Fulton County Stadium.
His solution? He planned to run buses from the stadium to the north side of town during games, so the thieves could steal from those more affluent neighborhoods, then board buses back home afterward.
In wandering introductory remarks to the curious employees in the Braves front office, he evoked Hitler and Alexander the Great and likened their quests to conquer the world with his own. From now on, he declared, the workday would start at eight thirty, not nine—the early bird/worm theory. Environmentally unfriendly Styrofoam cups would be eliminated from the office. Next, he a
ppealed directly to fans in a newspaper ad, asking them to write in with suggestions but advising, “Please do not be too lengthy in your comments since I will have a lot of reading to do.”
Later, Ted summoned team promotions and publicity director Bob Hope to the station, asking him to bring along a Braves cap, bat, and script so he could tape a commercial promoting season tickets. He told the man he had another important goal besides winning: to put the fun back in baseball.
“Hope, I want this team to be like McDonald’s,” he said enthusiastically. “I want an atmosphere built here that will make kids want to come to the games. Excitement isn’t the success of one individual promotion. It’s the chemistry of everything combined. We’ve got to do enough to create the chemistry.”
After years of grappling with conservative ownership, this was music to Hope’s ears. He proceeded to lay out thirty pages of theatrics designed to pack the stadium and distract fans from the team’s lousy ballplaying, including organizing bathtub races, conducting weddings at home plate, and enlisting local ham radio operators to summon a UFO to the field.2
The more outlandish Hope’s ideas, the more Ted whooped with approval. “Keep the smoke going after the fire goes out!” he cheered. Then he offered up a few ideas of his own. When the team lost, fans could release their anger with Slug the Players Night. Okay, he admitted, he was only kidding about that. But he was dead serious about something else. He didn’t just want to publicize the team. He wanted publicity for himself. Hope and the Braves were going to help him become a celebrity—as famous as Muhammad Ali.
He was on his way.
Baseball had never been Ted’s sport as a fan or player, but his purchase of the Atlanta Braves placed him side by side with one of baseball’s greats, homerun king Hank Aaron. (Budd Skinner/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP)
Proprietors of a local clothing company asked to feature the handsome Ted, nattily dressed, in their ad campaign, sliding into first base. There was particular irony in this, since not only had Ted never played baseball, he also looked, as one player observed, like he got dressed in the closet. (Or in the dark. Once an interviewer noticed he was wearing one black and one brown shoe.) In an effort to jazz up his wardrobe, Janie had bought him Gucci loafers. If he knew they cost $150 a pair, he’d have freaked. He insisted on cutting his own hair to save the seven dollars for a barber.
People magazine called. Ted was to be included in their “most intriguing people” list. A dashing young media mogul who raced yachts, now insinuating himself into America’s pastime, was as juicy as headline-grabbing hamburger king Ray Kroc emerging in the eleventh hour as the unlikely savior of the San Diego Padres. The editors proposed a photo shoot that included three pillars of Ted’s passion: Ted posing in a rowboat, holding a portable television set, wearing a Braves cap. The only thing missing was a billboard—and blondes. Though the weather was bitter cold, Ted mugged happily for the cameras.
Nowhere did he hunger more for approval than with the players. Back when he was merely airing the Braves games, he’d lamented that the boys of summer were nothing but an anonymous “bunch of stiffs.” The fans needed to know these young, uniformed athletes were real people—individuals. Be nice, he advised. Amp up the theatrics. Take bows: “It will mean more money for you and more for me.” Together, they appeared in a commercial touting “The Big League Team with the Little League Spirit.” Come on out and see the Braves at your “Atlanta Teepee,” the proud new owner twanged with P. T. Barnum flair. The players smiled like awkward teenagers next to their outgoing dad.
To illustrate his approachable nature, he admonished them to “Call me Ted. I ain’t no Mister.” (After he upbraided his secretary for using “sir,” she’d taken to calling her boss by the decidedly informal nickname “Teddy Baby.”) He invited the incredulous bunch over for dinner at his house, personally greeting them at the door as if they were old friends. The planned entertainment for the evening? A screening of a film of his failed America’s Cup bid in 1974—his worst defeat ever, and the one from which he’d learned the most. His plans were dashed when the projector didn’t work.
It was if he’d acquired not just a sporting enterprise but a whole team of fellas to pal around with. After all, he was a jock, too, just like them. He didn’t care—as other owners did—what they wore off the field, or about the length of their hair, or whether they grew beards and mustaches. (“Just as long as he wears something over his cock,” he told a reporter.) This being the cusp of the era of free agency, when the average ballplayer earned less than $50,000 a year, he invited them to come work at the station in the off-season to learn new skills and pick up extra cash.3
Another culture clash: spiriting the boys of summer during an April series with the Mets to the vaunted New York Yacht Club—the same club that had reluctantly admitted Ted after rejecting him twice because of his bombastic personality. Ted himself still couldn’t believe he was allowed to enter the storied limestone mansion on West Forty-Fourth Street, much less that he belonged. Just thinking about it made him particularly wistful for his father, who’d regaled him when he was a kid with descriptions of how “swank and ritzy” the place was. Ed Turner would never have imagined his own son might be awarded membership. “Lord, it would blow his mind,” Ted said. Now, here he was wrangling a pack of young baseball studs, awkward in their sportscoats, down the streets of midtown Manhattan. He’d arranged for a private bar and a dinner of prime rib with horseradish sauce served by tuxedoed men carrying towels over their arms. The gentility quickly devolved into schoolyard recess when shortstop Darrel Chaney destroyed the decorum by letting loose his handmade fart machine, which he then gleefully passed around to the others.
As a member of a very different exclusive club—owners of Major League Baseball teams—Ted plunged into every facet of the game, the kind of total immersion he’d indulged in when he’d first purchased channel 17. By day, he’d deliver speeches to the community on the breakfast and luncheon circuits. Come afternoon, he’d busy himself with personnel issues and plot pregame promotions. In between, he’d help sell television ad time.
At the stadium, he installed Atlanta’s first electronic scoreboard, a million-dollar state-of-the-art screen, the ultimate modern billboard, on which he planned to flash instant replays as well as Ted-isms like NOT TOO SHABBY after a good play, or quippy bits like: “The Civil War was a boon to baseball. Union soldiers played the game for recreation. The Confederates learned it from captured Union soldiers.”
As general of this joint, he ordered the visiting team’s dugout emblazoned with the words THE ENEMIES and the first few rows of the stands moved a bit closer to the field. This would be the perch from which he’d lord over the games—no luxuriating in the air-conditioned isolation of an owner’s box for Ted, who fancied himself “Mr. Everyman.” After each game, he planned to head to the locker room, where, just like one of the guys, he’d shower with the team.
After the very first game, Ted frolicked on the ball field, running the bases, turning somersaults, and delighting in leading the crowds in a rousing rendition of “Take Me Out to the Ballgame.” Something about baseball unleashed his inner good ol’ boy. Off came his shirt, away went his pricey Cuban cigars, traded for a bag of Red Man chewing tobacco, which remained perched on the roof of the Braves’ dugout for the season. He’d pinch and cram a generous wad of it inside his jaw, hooting and hollering with glee. Fans unabashedly approached him for autographs—women, on occasion, pointing the pen at their bosoms—and he happily signed away. Sitting behind Ted during a game, one visitor observed, was “like sitting behind Caesar at the Colosseum.”
Caesar who threw tantrums. Once, after the team lost, he retreated to the locker room, angrily hurled an onion against a wall, and upended a table of sandwiches.
Not everyone was enthralled by the irrepressible volatility nor the wild ideas of “Teddy Baseball,” the snickering nickname the team’s staff bequeathed on him (behind his back) for his zealous and se
emingly sudden conversion to the religion of America’s pastime.
The idea of changing the Braves to the Eagles crashed with a resounding thud. Ted shrugged off the deluge of angry mail he received in response, singing to a reporter a few lines of Glen Campbell, that “Like a Rhinestone Cowboy” he was “getting cards and letters from people I don’t even know.” He got the message and dropped the idea.
After offending the fans, he’d offended the sportswriters by asking them to quit writing negative stories about the team. They explained that it was hard to write positive stories, since the Braves were so bad. Atlanta Constitution columnist Ron Hudspeth was appalled when Ted told him that baseball was for “little people” who had nothing else to live for. “Can you imagine your happiness hinging on the Braves winning or losing?” he said of the loyalists whose happiness did.
Ted’s decision to start charging members of the press for lunch and booze they were accustomed to receiving free was nothing short of a declaration of war. It was hard for anyone to believe his penny-pinching excuse for scuttling the grub: “My wife and I are unable to have friends over for dinner—and I mean that—and here I am feeding sixty people every day Swiss steak in the press box. I know every other team does it, but I’m gonna be the first to stop it.”
The only thing worse than messing with the sportswriters’ free food was firing their drinking buddy, a longtime Braves staffer who’d logged thirty-eight years of service with the team—an allegedly profligate man who happened to be a dwarf. (“What does he need a hotel suite for?” Ted demanded to know of the man’s penchant for luxury on the road. “All he needs is a closet!”) The spurned employee’s wife, a practicing witch, retaliated by casting a hex on Ted and the team. Voodoo or not, there wasn’t much lower the Braves could sink.