Today in Let Me Rewrite That Headline For You, we have CNN’s long look at the one-win-from-a-championship Atlanta Braves, and how their fan base has changed since the last time they won a title in 1995, when they played at the downtown Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium:
The Braves then were part of the heartbeat of Black Atlanta. Hip-hop artists wore their caps, and legions of Black fans, ushers and street vendors mingled with White fans at the team’s ballpark in a historic Black neighborhood near downtown.
Rev. Michael Clayton Harris, co-host of the Red & Rev. Sports Show, attended a recent Braves game at Truist Park, he sat in a crowd of overwhelmingly White fans in a predominantly White suburb while a soundtrack of mostly rock and country music played over the sound system.
“When you go to the game, it has a Trump feel to it with the fan base,” says Harris, who is a pastor at Acts of Faith Baptist Church in Decatur, a suburb of Atlanta.
Ouch! And especially ouch in an article that ran the day after this:
https://twitter.com/samannraven/status/1454601642519797765?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1454601642519797765%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.huffpost.com%2Fentry%2Fdonald-melania-trump-world-series-tomahawk-chop_n_617deb2ce4b066de4f70d02d
The bigger issue raised in the CNN article, though, had less to do with the presence of the actual Trump than with the team’s decision to relocate from downtown Atlanta — where it had moved into a new stadium, Turner Field, in 1997 after it was built for the 1996 Olympics — to a new stadium in suburban Cobb County in 2017 after the county offered $392 million in subsidies. Writes CNN’s John Blake:
I’ve lived in Atlanta for 30 years, and I’ve long heard this talk in barbershops and sports bars. Some Black fans say the team has few, if any, African American players they can relate to. Others believe the team left Atlanta because its suburban White fans felt uncomfortable coming to games downtown, where they were surrounded by Black people.
Blake cites how he’s personally noticed white fans looking “palpably nervous as I watched them navigate Black crowds on their way into the Hawks’ arena and Falcons’ stadium,” but there’s way more than circumstantial evidence for that: Cobb County, where the Braves relocated, just happens to be the site of one of the most infamous race-based policy decisions in recent U.S. history. In 1971, Atlanta-area counties had to vote on whether to join in on funding the new MARTA light-rail system, Cobb, Gwinnett, and Clayton County voters all said no. And race was a major factor in the suburban counties made up largely of white residents who’d fled increasingly African American Atlanta: The head of one anti-tax group warned at the time that “MARTA-style mass transit would lead to an increase in crime and the construction of low-income housing in Cobb County.”
“Racial concerns trumped everything else,” Kevin M. Kruse, author of White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism tells Blake. “The more you think about it, Atlanta’s transportation infrastructure was designed as much to keep people apart as to bring people together.”
Cobb County isn’t nearly as lily-white as it was in the 1970s — it’s now 62% white, 25% African American, and 12% Hispanic, which in Georgia terms qualifies as gorgeous diversity. But it’s still much whiter than the city of Atlanta, and still home to plenty of people who worry that public transportation might allow certain sectors of the public to walk their streets, as witness the Clayton County resident who testified in 2014 against new bus routes by arguing that when one opened near her house, “I personally saw unsavory people begin to come from Riverdale Road down into the subdivision.” (The Clayton News-Daily referred to this only as expressing “concerns” about the bus plan.)
Amid all this, the Braves owners’ decision to relocate to Cobb County, even if came with a $392 million gift check, came to be seen as a statement on race as much as on new cupholders. (It really didn’t help when Cobb County’s Republican chair demanded that any transit improvements for the stadium be for “moving cars in and around Cobb and surrounding counties from our north and east where most Braves fans travel from, and not moving people into Cobb by rail from Atlanta.”) And that image lingers, enough for some Atlantans to feel turned off from the team entirely.
As Blake notes, if the Braves do win the World Series, they’ll face an interesting decision on where to hold their victory parade. It’s maybe enough to make one root for a Braves championship just to see what they’ll do, and … yeah, on second thought, maybe not.
We’ve got to stop taking people’s delusions seriously. It’s fine that Harris and other activists feel that way, but why give shine to feelings that are more based on a person’s individual jealousy than any type of real racial bias?
As a person of color, just playing devil’s advocate here: in terms of where the Braves wanted their ballpark, is it really about race, or perhaps where the money is in the Atlanta Metro?
It can be both! And in America, it generally is.
So what is your new headline?
It’s the headline!
The move from ATL was bigger than race. The Falcons and Braves reached a time where both franchises wanted a new stadium. The mayor at the time, Kasim Reed put more effort on falcons after Arthur Blank cleverly threaten to move the team to LA. Cobb offered more and majority of their season ticket holders are located in the northern suburbs.
Mr. deMause – I am a fan of your blog. It’s quite good. However, this is not your best work. I grew up a Braves fan and have been driving to Braves games since I was in high school in the 80’s and NEVER felt threatened. Now, as a father of six, still have no problem driving to Atlanta from the suburbs. The Varsity, Georgia Tech and even a drive to the airport causes me no angst. The comments already posted are spot on.
One more thing – the Braves new ballpark is right off of I-75 and no more than 10-15 minutes from the heart of the city…well, that is if there’s no traffic.
I don’t think anyone is implying that all suburban Braves fans are afraid to go downtown, or that all city residents think that all suburbanites are racist.
It’s a fact, though, that Cobb County and many of its residents have a history of making decisions for racist reasons, and that there’s a ton of suspicion that one reason the Braves jumped to move to Cobb was they figured their suburban fans would be happier not having to go inside city limits. And short drive from downtown though it may be when there’s no traffic (I’m not sure “no traffic” is a condition Atlanta has ever experienced?), the fan base at the new stadium tends to be, well, take a look at the faces in that video…
If I had to guess, I would say the Braves owners probably had their heads turned by Cobb County because of the amount of money being offered, then saw being able to appeal to their suburban fan base (some unknown percentage of whom are Atlantaphobes) as a bonus.
It’s extremely unusual for baseball teams in particular these days to move from within city limits to the outskirts, partly because they like to get hold of centrally located land to develop, but also because when you’re trying to sell tickets to a sport that plays five-sevenths of its games on weeknights, forcing fans who live on the other side of town to drive one way for the game and then back to the far side of the metro area to get home is suboptimal compared to someplace people can stop by before they leave town. So it’s not unreasonable to suspect that kowtowing to racial fears at least crossed somebody’s mind — especially when you have people like the now-former Hawks owner openly speculating that “the black crowd scared away the whites.”
Race and class are both certainly at play in terms of ticket sales and corporate sponsorship. The Cobb County Braves, as they should be known as until they return to Atlanta, had a beautiful only 20-year-old, easily accessible stadium in Turner Field. Now, they’ve got Truist Park, the Chili’s of baseball — which Is a huge pain in the rear to visit from the city, as was purposely intended. Traffic is ridiculous and the Braves overtly promote ride sharing services (toxicity of gig economy is a separate topic) as we battle climate change. Not to mention the parks that weren’t built due to the right wing leadership of Cobb County being hosed in their bid to host the Braves.
“The Chili’s of Baseball” is withering.
Stuff like this makes me think that MLB average attendances will be around 12,000 within the next 20 years.
The thing I find interesting about this coming up now is that, at least according to the US Census stats (as summarized by, you guessed it, Wikipedia), the percentage of Atlanta city residents who identify as white is actually increasing these days (partly, no doubt, because other ethnic groups/races are moving to the suburbs as well) – from a low of around 31% in 1990 to just over 40% in 2020.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Atlanta
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlanta
With the population of the city itself being about 10% of the total MSA, large swings are obviously possible as people relocate without actually leaving the “city”.
I prefer to think of the reasons the Braves moved to Cobb as more in line with traditional business values… greed and corruption. I would never say race or demographics didn’t play some role, but we all know greed and corruption rule the waves in modern western economies. This is literally what Wall Street runs on (and some of them even admit it).
While the white population in Atlanta as a whole may have gone up, if the movement by Buckhead (the wealthiest section of the city) to secede actually happens, that percentage will reverse.
This was all about race and how race and money comingle. The Brqves did not dare risk losing the Whitey Dollar. It IS that simple. It IS that racist. This is the home of Lester Maddox, folks.
This is 2021. Maddox last held a public office in 1975 and died in 2003.
Maybe it’s less about race but more about an urban/suburban divide? Sure the two often parallel, but not always (especially if the city is gentrifying); and being told you don’t like cities is not as offensive or inflammatory. But as far as no more than 15 minute drive goes; that’s if you have a car. Although I guess Lyft also an option. Still, if I am going to a game, I want to experience the city beforehand; but, admittedly I’m not a big baseball fan, so they should not pay heed to people like me.
I don’t think most white people are afraid to go downtown. Atlanta United soccer gets huge crowds. Hawks, Falcons, too. Other events.
Atlanta made a big mistake when they didn’t run MARTA by the old stadiums. I read that was done on purpose — so the Braves could get parking revenue back in the day. If there were rail transport by the Ted, I don’t think they would have left the city. The parking arrangement is so efficient by the new stadium, you don’t need rail. We’ve been several times and are always amazed at the traffic flow.
I personally miss the stadium being in the city even though the neighborhood was lousy.
The rail link idea is a good one Bill. I have never been to Atlanta, but the facilities I do visit near/generally near my home all have metro transit links.
It may not matter to city residents who own cars, but for out of towners like me having transit (be it rail, park and ride or bus) links to the stadium so I don’t have to figure out traffic and parking in a city I don’t live in is a significant factor for me. It means I can get to and from the facility conveniently and also means I don’t have to worry if my friends and I have a couple too many drinks while at the stadium.
Honest question for Neil (and for anyone else willing to engage): could THIS be a more plausible explanation for why MLB would relocate the ASG? Did they just use Governor Kemp’s Voting Rights law as a smokescreen to dodge this!
The one way street of liberalism
“heads I win, tails you lose”