Ted Turner was a sportsman of all types, a world champion in sailing and a World Series-winning owner in baseball.
He famously owned the Atlanta Braves, leveraging his ownership of the TBS superstation to broadcast their games across the country, all while showcasing his outsized personality at a time when many owners stayed behind the scenes.
Turner, who died Wednesday, bought the struggling Braves in the 1970s, put the team on his then-tiny TV station and then sold the signal to cable systems nationwide.
“He effectively transformed the Braves into a team with a national reach and set the table for ways that local teams have now gained more of a national footprint,” said Travis Vogan, a sports media professor at the University of Iowa.
With a burgeoning fanbase that stretched far beyond the South, the Braves turned into a World Series mainstay during the 1990s, and Turner finally hoisted the Commissioner’s Trophy in 1995 before selling the franchise the next year.
In a statement Wednesday, MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred called Turner a “visionary whose impact on the media landscape transformed how fans experience sports.”
Turner also once owned the NBA’s Atlanta Hawks and NHL’s Atlanta Thrashers, and the rest of his sports interests were about as varied as could be — everything from professional wrestling to sailing to the Olympics.
He tried to make the 1964 Olympic sailing team, won a world sailing championship in 1971 off the coast of Long Island and skippered the winning entry in the 1977 America’s Cup — the most famous yachting competition in the world.
“There will never be a time in my life as good as this time,” he said when told he would skipper in the America’s Cup that year. “I can’t believe all this is really happening to me.”
A ‘swashbuckling’ owner
Turner always wanted to be part of the action and famously named himself owner-manager of the Braves in 1977. Atlanta had lost 16 straight, and Turner told manager Dave Bristol to take a few days off. Turner took over, and the Braves lost 2-1 to the Pittsburgh Pirates to extend their losing streak.
“I wanted to see what it’s like down in the trenches,” Turner said that night.
Major League Baseball intervened and put a stop to Turner’s managerial career after that one game — just as they had forced Turner to stop putting “Channel” on the back of the jersey of pitcher Andy Messersmith, who wore No. 17.
But Turner continued to lean into his identity as “Captain Outrageous,” helping to set a model for “swashbuckling” modern-day owners who use their ownership to shape their public image, said Vogan, the Iowa professor.
Larger-than-life sports moguls like Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, former Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban and Los Angeles Clippers owner Steve Ballmer “have all emulated Turner by being these kinds of celebrity entrepreneurs that use sports to build their own identities and to build their own kind of brands in the popular imagination,” Vogan said.
“Our good friend and former owner, Ted Turner, was one of a kind,” read a statement from the Braves on Wednesday.
A new international competition
Turner’s competitive drive wasn’t satisfied by owning teams, though.
He founded the Goodwill Games, born in large part out of his frustration with the U.S. boycotting the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow and then the Soviets leading a boycott of the 1984 Summer Games in Los Angeles. He brought the inaugural Goodwill Games to Moscow in 1986, with about 3,000 athletes from 79 countries taking part.
The Goodwill Games would be held five times in all, ending in 2001. There was also a Winter Goodwill Games, held only once — at Lake Placid, New York, in 2000.
“There’s nothing better for kids than sport,” Turner said at the opening ceremony of those Lake Placid Games.
Vogan said the Goodwill Games showcased Turner’s “audacity,” even if it didn’t work out.
“The fact that he was involved in an initiative like that says a lot about his ambitions and his role as a disruptive force in media,” Vogan said.
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Reynolds reported from Miami.
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