{"id":778445,"date":"2026-05-07T00:35:24","date_gmt":"2026-05-07T00:35:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/778445\/"},"modified":"2026-05-07T00:35:24","modified_gmt":"2026-05-07T00:35:24","slug":"ted-turner-managed-one-braves-game-and-forever-changed-professional-sports","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/778445\/","title":{"rendered":"Ted Turner managed one Braves game \u2014 and forever changed professional sports"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ted Turner, the media tycoon who died Wednesday<\/a>, had a unique business sense that led him to (among other things) create America\u2019s first 24-hour cable news channel, establish the concept of a \u201csuperstation\u201d and pocket many billions of dollars.<\/p>\n

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It also led him to the dugout of the Atlanta Braves, where, on May 11, 1977, Turner \u2014 who owned the team \u2014 decided to become its manager.<\/p>\n

And while that move was ridiculed across baseball at the time, another decision Turner made \u2014 far more consequential but no less revolutionary \u2014\u00a0put his franchise on a trajectory to become one of the most popular in the sport. For three decades, his Braves would appear in living rooms coast-to-coast as he broadcast their games nationally on the Turner Broadcasting System, or TBS.<\/p>\n

John Thorn, the official historian for Major League Baseball, told NBC News that Turner’s move brought new life to a franchise that had already relocated two times and came at a time when owners were reluctant to broadcast too many of their teams’ games.<\/p>\n

“Baseball owners, beginning in the 1920s, had been reluctant to air their games on radio. Next, they viewed TV as a threat, limiting the number of games broadcast until the 1951 playoffs were televised nationally,” Thorn said. “Ted Turner not only shared all of Atlanta’s 162 games, thus addressing his station’s need for programming, but also revived the dormant Braves to become America’s franchise.” <\/p>\n

The Braves moved to Atlanta in 1966 and, aside from Henry Aaron’s effort to break Babe Ruth’s home run record, gave fans little reason to cheer in the franchise’s early days in the market. But as TBS \u2014 and the Braves \u2014\u00a0reached more and more Americans, the team’s on-field performance started to turn around.<\/p>\n

Boosted by future Hall of Fame pitchers Tom Glavine, Greg Maddux and John Smoltz and hitters Chipper Jones and Andruw Jones, the Braves became the National League’s premier team during the 1990s, reaching the World Series in 1991, 1992, 1996 and 1999 and winning it in 1995. And fans throughout the South and across the country could catch them every night thanks to the unique relationship between the team and Turner’s network.<\/p>\n

It was that dynamic that both the Braves and MLB highlighted in statements marking Turner’s passing.<\/p>\n

“Ted Turner was a visionary whose impact on the media landscape transformed how fans experience sports,” MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred said, adding, “Through his leadership, the Atlanta Braves reached millions of households nationwide on TBS, helping build a legacy of sustained excellence that included the franchise\u2019s first championship in Atlanta with the 1995 Braves.”<\/p>\n

The Braves, in a separate statement, praised Turner’s “visionary leadership and innovative approach to broadcast television” that “transformed the Braves into ‘America\u2019s Team.'”<\/p>\n

The team also described Turner as “one of a kind \u2014 a brilliant businessman, consummate showman and passionate fan of his beloved Braves.”<\/p>\n

Never was that showmanship more apparent than when Turner made a choice he may be more remembered for in some corners than for his positioning of the Braves as a national entertainment juggernaut \u2014 when he literally took over his team for a day in 1977.<\/p>\n

Turner\u2019s decision, however fun in a \u201cWhat would you do if you owned a baseball team for a day?\u201d sense, was met with immediate pushback from Major League Baseball, which allowed him to manage the Braves for only a single game \u2014 a 2-1 loss to the Pittsburgh Pirates \u2014 before it prohibited him from managing moving forward.<\/p>\n

\u201cHere\u2019s something people don\u2019t know: Ted wore my shoes that day,\u201d Cito Gaston, a Braves left fielder who scored a run in the game, told NBC News. \u201cHe didn\u2019t have a pair of cleats or whatever to wear, so he wore my shoes, but I never got them back, either, so he kept them. But Ted was a great man.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hall of Fame pitcher Goose Gossage, who earned the save for Pittsburgh in the game Turner managed, said, \u201cHe was truly an out-and-out character.\u201d <\/p>\n

At the time, Turner\u2019s decision was met with derision around the majors.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not surprised to hear it,\u201d former Brave-turned-Texas Ranger Ken Henderson told The Atlanta Constitution\u2019s Alan Greenberg and Kelly Dude at the time. \u201cIt\u2019s the Ed Sullivan Show over there, a big circus.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"AtlantaTurner cheers for the Braves in his only game as manager.R.C. Greenawalt \/ AP file<\/p>\n

Said Bob Lurie, then the owner of the San Francisco Giants: \u201cI think it\u2019s the most unusual decision I ever heard of. It doesn\u2019t make much sense. I don\u2019t think it\u2019s right, but that\u2019s his business.\u201d<\/p>\n

Buzzie Bavasi, then the general manager of the San Diego Padres, was seemingly in shock.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t believe it. I don\u2019t believe it. I don\u2019t believe it,\u201d Bavasi said. \u201cIf this has really occurred, it\u2019s got to be one of the most ridiculous things I\u2019ve seen in baseball.\u201d<\/p>\n

Turner hopped into the dugout after the Braves dropped 16 games in a row. His reasoning at the time was to find out for himself why the team was struggling.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have found out all I can from the stands,\u201d Turner said of the decision, according to a story in The Atlanta Journal the day after he managed. \u201cNow I want to learn first hand what is going on, what is wrong. It can\u2019t hurt us. Not now. Not the way we\u2019re going.\u201d<\/p>\n

Turner gave manager Dave Bristol a 10-day sabbatical, signed a managerial contract of his own and led the team during a Wednesday night game against the Pirates. Gaston had broken into the big leagues in 1967 with Atlanta, and he returned to the team in 1975, the year before Turner purchased the team. He quickly found the new owner to be one who treated players well. Gaston said Turner arranged jobs and helped pay for home down payments for any Braves players who lived in Atlanta during the offseason. <\/p>\n

Turner was also a competitive \u201cgo-getter,\u201d he said. Gaston recalled once watching Turner challenge longtime pitcher Tug McGraw to a contest to see who could roll a baseball to home plate, using only their noses, the fastest. One started at third base, the other at first base, before they crawled down the baseline toward home.<\/p>\n

Turner won.<\/p>\n

\u201cHis face was bloody because he wasn\u2019t rubbing it with his nose; he rolled with everything he could to beat Tug there,\u201d Gaston said.<\/p>\n

Still, even an understanding of Turner\u2019s eccentricities didn\u2019t prepare the Braves to learn the morning of their game against Pittsburgh that the team\u2019s owner was now the manager.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe found out about it once we got to the ballpark, and we were a little bit in shock, because we never heard of that before, never seen that before,\u201d Gaston said. \u201cYou know, Ted was great to us, so we didn\u2019t have no problem with that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Turner leaned on assistant coaches for guidance during the game. If a hard-hit ball by Darrel Chaney hadn\u2019t hopped the fence for a ground-rule double that prevented a Braves runner from scoring, Atlanta might have won.<\/p>\n

The morning after the game, National League President Chub Feeney told Turner not to manage any more games until the contract was reviewed. Turner was \u201cdisappointed,\u201d Gaston recalled.<\/p>\n

Feeney and MLB Commissioner Bowie Kuhn ultimately told Turner that anybody who owned stock in a team wasn\u2019t allowed to manage it, which irked the mogul.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf I\u2019m smart enough to buy the team, I ought to be smart enough to manage it,\u201d Turner told reporters afterward. \u201cThis is like a game to me. This is just a big Little League team.\u201d<\/p>\n

As Turner\u2019s day in the dugout proved, he cut a different profile from most owners. Contract negotiations between players and teams could be brutal, but Gossage, who played for 22 years, recalled one free-agency negotiation with Turner as \u201cpretty pleasant.\u201d MLB is missing such colorful personalities, Gossage said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe way he talked and the way he just went about his business was really fun interacting with him,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Despite MLB’s protest against owners\u2019 acting as managers, Turner wasn’t done finding his way onto the field. Just one year after his brief managerial stint, he served as the third-base umpire as a stunt during a 1978 exhibition between the Braves and their minor-league affiliate the Richmond Braves. According to an account from<\/a> the time, he spent the game “standing behind third base with a giant chaw of tobacco ballooning in his cheek.\u201d<\/p>\n

Twelve years after Turner\u2019s memorable night as a manager, Gaston became a manager himself in 1989 with Toronto. By 1992, he led the Blue Jays to the first of two straight World Series titles \u2014 by beating Atlanta.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we beat him in the World Series, he wrote me \u2014 I have it on my wall here,\u201d Gaston said. \u201cHe wrote me a nice letter and congratulated me, even though we beat his club. He\u2019s an amazing guy.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ted Turner, the media tycoon who died Wednesday, had a unique business sense that led him to (among…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":778446,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[1266,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-778445","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-mlb","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116530495089887911","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/778445","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=778445"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/778445\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/778446"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=778445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=778445"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=778445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}