atlanta — Ted Turner was an all-around athlete, a world champion sailing champion and a world championship-winning owner In baseball.
He was famous for his ownership Atlanta Bravesleveraging his ownership of superstation TBS to broadcast their games across the country, all while displaying his outsized personality at a time when many owners remained behind the scenes.
turner, Who died on WednesdayHe bought the struggling Braves team in the 1970s, put the team on his small television station and then sold the signal to cable systems around the country.
“He effectively turned the Braves into a team with a national reach, setting the table for the ways in which local teams now have a larger national footprint,” said Travis Vaughan, a sports media professor at the University of Iowa.
With a thriving fan base that extended far beyond the South, the Braves became a World Series mainstay during the 1990s, and Turner finally hoisted the Commissioner’s Trophy in 1995 before selling the franchise the following year.
In a statement issued Wednesday, MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred called Turner “a visionary whose influence on the media landscape has transformed how fans experience sports.”
Turner also once owned the NBA’s Atlanta Hawks and the NHL’s Atlanta Thrashers, and the rest of his sporting interests were as diverse as can be — everything from professional wrestling to sailing to the Olympics.
He tried out for the 1964 Olympic Sailing Team, won the 1971 World Sailing Championship off the coast of Long Island, and captained the winning entry in the 1977 America’s Cup – the world’s most prestigious yachting competition.
“There will never be a better time in my life than this,” he said when told he would be captain in that year’s America’s Cup. “I can’t believe all this is really happening to me.”
Turner always wanted to be part of the action, and he named himself owner and manager of the Braves in 1977. Atlanta had lost 16 straight games, and Turner asked 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 was like in the trenches,” Turner said that night.
Major League Baseball stepped in and suspended Turner’s managerial career after that game — just as they forced Turner to stop putting “The Channel” on the back of the jersey of pitcher Andy Messersmith, who was wearing No. 17.
But Turner continued to rely on his identity as “Captain Outrageous,” helping set a model for modern-day “reckless” owners who use their ownership to shape their public image, said Vaughan, the Iowa State professor.
Larger-than-life sports moguls, such as Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, former Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban and Los Angeles Clippers owner Steve Ballmer, “all emulated Turner by being the kind of celebrity entrepreneurs who use sports to build their own identities and build their own kind of brands in the popular imagination,” Vaughan said.
“Our dear friend and former owner, Ted Turner, was one of a kind,” a statement from the Braves said on Wednesday.
However, Turner’s competitive drive was not satisfied with owning teams.
He founded the Goodwill Games, which arose in large part out of his frustration with the United States’ boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow and then leading the Soviets to boycott the 1984 Summer Games in Los Angeles. He brought the inaugural Goodwill Games to Moscow in 1986, where some 3,000 athletes from 79 countries participated.
The Goodwill Games would be held five times, ending in 2001. There were also the Winter Goodwill Games, which were held only once – in Lake Placid, New York, in 2000.
“There’s nothing better for kids than sports,” Turner said at the opening ceremony of the Lake Placid Games.
Vaughan said the Goodwill Games showed Turner’s “grittiness,” even if it didn’t work out.
“The fact that he is involved in an initiative like this says a lot about his ambitions and his role as a disruptive force in the media,” Vaughan said.
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Reynolds reported from Miami.