Who is Braves Baseball to you?
KRT SPORTS STORY SLUGGED: BBO-ASTROS-BRAVES KRT PHOTOGRAPH BY TOM PRIDDY/KRT (March 6) KISSIMEE, FL -- Atlanta Braves pitching coach Leo Mazzone, left, and manager Bobby Cox talk in the dugout during a spring training game against the Houston Astros at the Osceola County Stadium in Kissimmee, Florida, on Saturday, March 5, 2005. The Braves won 4-3 in 10 innings. (Photo by Tom Priddy/MCT/Tribune News Service via Getty Images) This week, we lost two key figures on Atlanta Braves history.
Ted Turner accumulated discounted media, bought the Atlanta Braves, and built and rode the cable television wave to a fortune and brought the America’s Team to millions across the country. Bobby Cox served forty plus years in baseball and helped build, nurture, and inspire the Atlanta Braves to fourteen straight division titles, one World Series Championship, gaining undying loyalty and a record-setting number of ejections. If you’re in a younger generation, you barely know them or just caught the tail end of the story.
But we’re learning again about their greatness and some of the lost lore is starting to emerge. They’re as Atlanta Brave as it gets. It makes me wonder how everybody thinks about when they think about the Braves.
I remember this conversation with my mother from a few years during probably the last time we watched together. Mother: Why are the Braves wearing orange? Me: Mother, that’s the Mets.
They’re the home team. No it isn’t. The team wearing black is the Mets.