Braves' move is the latest blow to blacks in baseball
OPINION - When the Atlanta Braves announced they were taking the team to the suburbs last week, I was not surprised...
When the Atlanta Braves announced they were taking the team to the suburbs last week, I was not surprised. I have called Atlanta home and the Braves my second-favorite team for nearly 30 years. I brushed away tears the day Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium, the ‘Launching Pad,’ was demolished in 1997. In three decades, I have witnessed our growth as a city and as a region.
Reasons for the move differ based on who you’re asking. Some are spot on. Others miss the mark like a wild pitch.
Various pundits will point to the way professional sports teams “shake down” cities across the country. Huge public investment, with little economic return. In the case of Atlanta, local columnists chided two-term Atlanta mayor Kasim Reed for playing favorites, they say, with Falcon’s owner Arthur Blank. They outright blamed Reed to letting the Braves get away. Reed, like the Braves, made a business decision.
For the city, keeping the baseball team would mean strapping taxpayers with a bill they cannot pay. The promised economic development around Turner Field never materialized. Meanwhile, 80 percent of the funding for the new, state-managed, Falcons stadium will come from tourism dollars—people that don’t live here—and the city got a multi-million-dollar community investment commitment on paper. The Braves organization simply found a better situation in neighboring Cobb County, just 12 miles up I-75.
Sure, without MARTA (Atlanta’s rapid transit system) they’ll need helicopter shuttles to get fans across the north metro in time for the first pitch. But Atlanta doesn’t stop at the city line anymore. It is a ten-county metro. That said, we remain – like many other big cities—largely segregated. Even with an all-black outfield line-up that includes stars like Jason Heyward, Justin Upton and Andrelton Simmons, the new Braves stadium will be closer to their largely white base of ticketholders.
And that matters.
It still pains me that Atlanta’s downtown has lost one of the nation’s premier sports teams. But intellectually, it was the right deal for Atlanta and the Braves. It should also be said that Marietta, where the proposed site is located, is not the “lily white” town some sports journalists and political pundits would have you believe.
Although, elected officials up there might pay for the secretive negotiations and the coming traffic jams. As anybody stuck at the I-75/ 285 interchange will tell you, getting home can be a living hell—with or without a baseball stadium. But, I wish them well. They’ve got four years to work out a transportation strategy. And when they do, I’ll be there.
But more than that, I wish we could find a workable strategy to bring baseball back to African-American communities. I’ve got my hopes pinned on the next Heyward and Upton — both U.S.-born and black. Baseball is one of the most expensive youth league sports, especially when it comes to competitive team travel, equipment and the level of necessary parental involvement.
In today’s development paradigm, a family’s ability to contribute to a young player’s growth makes all the difference. Unlike basketball or football, if you aren’t scooping a ball by 3nd grade, your chances at major league play are small. So often, that begins with fathers.
