Owner Take Over:Ted Turner Managing the Braves

On May eleventh, nineteen seventy seven, one of the most unique moments in baseball history happened when owner of the Atlanta Braves, Ted Turner, took over as the manager for the team in one game versus the Pittsburgh Pirates, a move that was actually illegal in the baseball rule books. Here's the story behind how all this happened today on Daily Sports History. Before we tackle today's episode, let's take a brief time out and talk about Sports Social pro. If your sports social media game is about as coordinated as a three legged race, fear not. We're here to help your online presence from benchwarmer to MP, skip the social media stress and score big with us at Social Media Pro. Learn all you need to know at Daily sportshistory dot com slash social Welcome to Daily Sports History. I'm Ethan Reese, your guide to a rapid deep dive into sports history every day now. The Braves have a unique franchise history, as they started in Boston, then in the nineteen fifties made their way to Milwaukee, where they had a lot of success, But by nineteen sixty six they had waned in attendance and made their way down to Atlanta. While in Atlanta, they made a connection with the local television owner, Ted Turner, who are in the WTBS network, which would later be known as TBS for Cable, and in nineteen seventy four they made a five year deal worth six hundred thousand dollars with Turner to broadcast sixty Brave games, making TBS known as the Brave Station, and this connection actually led to Turner buying the team in nineteen seventy six when the owner at the time was struggling for cash, and he bought him for twelve million dollars. But this move she worried many other baseball owners and the Commissioner of the League, Bowie Kuhn, who knew that television was taking over in the baseball world and having a television owner could cause that team to have an unfair advantage. And then in the late nineteen seventies, Commissioner Kon actually testified to the US Congress trying to regulate the cable broadcast industry and how they produced sports, and Ted Turner was on the defensive side of that as Ted at the time was trying to make the Braves America's team, just like the Cowboys were in the NFL, and with his cable channel of TBS, he could broadcast the Braves not only in the local market, but across the country, and for a time, the Braves were one of the most popular teams, especially in the nineties when they went on an incredible streak of Division wins and would win a World Series title in nineteen ninety five. But right around this time was also a unique as Turner had just bought the team and wanted the team to have more success, as since they had moved to Atlanta, they had only won one Division title in the ten years they had been there, and he wanted to change that, and a new process had just happened in Major League Baseball. They had just started to have free agency, which we talked about on a previous episode, and we'll linked to that episode in the show notes for the first move he did was signed former LA Dodgers pitcher Andy Messersmith, who had just won nineteen games the year previously, in hopes that he could be the ace for the Braves. Unfortunately, Messersmith only had a five hundred record that first season in nineteen seventy six with the Braves, as they went on to finish last in their division again, only winning seventy games, thirty two games behind the first play Cincinnati Reds. Following that season, though, San Francisco Giants outfielder Greg Matthews was coming off a great season, and Turner told Giants owner Bobby Lurie that he was going to sign Matthews after the season. Now, this actually constituted as tampering within the league rules, which caused Commissioner Koon to find Turner ten thousand dollars and suspend him for one year and also force the Braves to forfeit their first pick in the nineteen seventy seven draft. Now, Turner protested, saying he was still a rookie in this business and it was an error in wording, and his suspension was actually overturned after his appeal and he was able to participate and they got their draft pick back, and he wouldn't make that mistake again. But it wouldn't be the last time he skirted with the rules, because despite the fact that they did sign Gary Matthews, they were still struggling that year, and it would actually go on to be a worse year than the year previously, only winning sixty one games. But there was a stretch. Starting the beginning of the season. They won eight of their first thirteen games, but then starting April twenty third, they would go on a a sixteen game losing Street and Turner had had enough of this losing. He was spending money, yet it wasn't having the success on the field. So Turner called manager David Bristol in for a meeting and told him to take the next ten days off. He was going to coach the team because whatever was going on, something needed to change. So Dave asked, are you firing me? He said, no, you need a break and when the team needs something different. And so the next day, thirty eight year old Ted Turner put on the number twenty four Braves uniform and stepped out of the dugout in a game at Pittsburgh in front of almost seven thousand fans to manage his first game. Now, Turner didn't have a whole lot of experience actually coaching baseball, and he relied heavily on bullpen coach Chris Ginzarno and third base coach Vern Benson to help explain him through the nuances of being a manager and calling a game. And Turner would actually watch what the Pittsburgh Pirates manager Chuck Tanner was doing. As Tanner would cross his legs, Turner would then cross his legs try to match what he was doing to look like he actually knew how to coach the team. And Turner actually came out to knuckleball pitcher in Phil Nrico and asked him, do you want to back clean up today or maybe lead off? And Phil was taken back. He said no, I'll just stick in the ninth spot, and he's like, okay, we need something different though, And little things like this really stuck out in players' minds, and after one inning, the Pirates were up one to zero, and then following in the second inning, the Braves were able to actually tie the game and it looked like maybe they could possibly have a chance still winning, but in the third inning, the Pirates hit a home run, taking the lead with a score of two to one. But in the top of the ninth, Turner called on switch hitter Cheney to pitch hit for Phil n Rico as a right hander, which he had never hitch hit in his nine years career as a right hander, and Chaney actually looked at Benson, the third base coach, is this really happening. He's like, he's the manager, and so he went up there and he actually hit a ground role double, giving them two players on base on third and second. But that would be the last people to get on base, and they were in the game, losing their seventeenth straight game two to one to the Pirates. But following the game, Turner was so excited by the move he made by pitch hitting Cheney that that was all he talked about. It didn't matter because that actually still lost the game. Now, following the game, when Commissioner Kuhon found out about Turner managing the team, he immediately said that was illegal and prohibited him from doing it ever again. Now, Turner said, I'm smart enough to pay twelve million dollars for the team, I should be smart enough to coach the team as well. But the rule was actually put into place back in the nineteen twenty when Roger Hornsby, was actually a manager in second basement and part owner of the team, was actually traded to the New York Giants and had to sell his team in order to not have a conflict between the two teams, and this also caused them to institute that players and coaches could not be financially responsible for wins and losses for any game. That rule had never specifically put owners in that in that role. But if you were managing, then you and you own the team, you would financially be connected to the wins and losses. Got him a loophole in the rule, But again Turner said, I'm new at this. Maybe they just put it in that role yesterday because I've never heard of it. That's how Turner was and the rest of the next game, third base coach Benson would coach the team until Dave Bristol came back to finish out the season, winning a total of sixty one games, again finishing last in their division. In the following the following game versus the Pirates, the Atlanta Braves would actually win and break their streak, So maybe what he did actually changed their fortunes of their team now. Turner would go on to sell the team back in two thousand and seven for two hundred and seventy million dollars, not a bad investment for the twelve million he had made thirty years earlier. But I'll always be remembered for that time he took a chance being the coach of a team, and sometimes for us it may not be following the rules exactly, skirting a little bit. Sometimes you need to ask for forgiveness rather than permission to change your fortunes. We don't always get what we want by just sitting back and following the rules. I'm not saying break a law, but sometimes we can skirt the norms of society to change something in our lives to have success. Just like Ted Turner tried new things out for the team he just bought to see if he could change their fortune, and for me, I just want to thank you so much from the bottom of my heart for listening to today's podcast. It means so much to me that you're listening, and the best thing you can do to support the podcast is to listen as much as you can, so come back tomorrow for more daily sports history.