4/2/2014

A few weeks ago I received an unexpected phone call: “Hey, this is [Jeff] with the Atlanta Braves. Is this Nick?”

“Uh…yeah.”

For an instant, as my friendly caller took a breath and as a rush of unsettled, bitterly suppressed feelings flooded my head, the audacious, improbable thought that somehow this call was in regard to my last piece or the desperate feelings of betrayal I’d been casually sharing with (or showering on) anyone who would listen flicked across my mind; I mean, the Braves had never called me before…

“It looks like you went to a number of games last year. Did you enjoy your experience at the ballpark?”

My scalp tingled as the presumptuous thought evaporated up into space.

“Yeah”, I answered flatly.

“Oh, sorry to hear that, what was the issue?”

Unsure whether I’d subconsciously misspoken or was being bated into some strange, reverse psychology survey, I spoke up—

“I said, ‘yeah’… I enjoyed it…”

“Oh, OK, great! Well opening day is just around the corner and I’m excited to be able to offer you some special early bird ticket packages…”

I’d been dreading this moment, knowing it would come sooner than I expected but never expecting it would take this form. I was ashamed I was still halfheartedly listening to this salesman’s pitch and not cutting him off to give him a piece of my mind, or asking to speak to his manager, to get somebody with an ounce of clout on the phone and finally vent all the pent up frustration with some choice words about the ownership’s recent “decision making.” Instead, I waited until he finished his schpiel, told him I would think about it, and hung up, confounded.

I went to twelve games last year, including the Chipper Jones retirement and our sole homefield NLDS victory. I don’t think that’s anything to be especially proud of but I am proud of the fact that I’d been steadily going to more and more games each year as my post-college income slowly grew. And last October, while leaving the Ted with a momentarily euphoric crowd, I was looking forward to adding a few more this year. But that was before the news broke in November.

That was before I engaged in numerous protracted arguments with strangers on Facebook about why I would no longer support my favorite team. That was before I tried to distill a lifetime of experiences at the cornerstone-ic intersection of the odd religions of sports fandom and hometown pride into a succinct paragraph that also encapsulated 60+ years of twisted race, class and political history with a side of historic preservation thrown in for good measure. Of course, it couldn’t be done in a paragraph, and I ended up mostly leading strangers to the conclusion that I harbored some irrational, perverted hatred of the suburbs.

I don’t hate the suburbs. I might resent the shortsightedness of unchecked sprawl, the tediousness of cookie-cutter subdivisions, and the environmental detriment of a car-centric environment but I don’t hate the suburbs, not simply for existing. I might pity certain suburbs their want for character, their lack of pride (so commonly veiled by the endless evasion of a simple question: so, where you from?) But hate? No, hate’s too strong a word.

The problem with the Braves decision to move is that it encompasses so many issues that it’s tempting to see it just through the simple lens of ITP vs. OTP, urban vs. suburban. But it’s so much more than that and some of those things I do hate:

I hate the closed door, Good Old Boy bargaining between President (and Vinings resident) Schuerholz and Cobb officials.

I hate the abandonment of a beautiful, centrally located, historic, former OLYMPIC stadium.

And yes, I hate that the new stadium will be in Cobb County because Cobb County doesn’t deserve it. Not after blossoming as a landscaped pasture of white flight, not after thriving as the leading proponent of spurning the city to which it owes its growth. Not after endlessly rejecting, with relish, a MARTA rail line. Here’s a brief timeline, in case you forgot:

1965 – Cobb politicians refuse to take part in even the earliest planning phases of MARTA, likely for fear of hurting their careers.

1984 – Cobb Commissioner Emmett Burton promises to “stock the Chattahoochee with piranha” if necessary to keep MARTA out.

1987 – “Share Atlanta Crime—Support MARTA,” Cobb bumper sticker slogan

2013 – “It is absolutely necessary the [transit] solution is all about moving cars in and around Cobb…and not moving people into Cobb by rail from Atlanta.” Joe Dendy, Cobb GOP Chairman

Do I sound mad? You’re damn right I’m mad. Because while sports at their best have the power to bring a diverse set of people together, this move feels like it’s doing nothing to assuage our longstanding regional antagonism. If anything, it’s a perpetuation of the ignorant traits that have proven to have harmed the metro area’s ability to function as a successful region for years. It’s wealth flight. It’s an insidious attempt to leave problems behind that are so intrinsic they cannot be escaped, only confronted. Did white flight work? Sure, if your only desire was for your children to not have to go to a school with children whose skin color was different. But for how long? To what benefit? As many suburbanites have been happy to proclaim to me in recent months, their counties have become much more diverse in the last 20 years. Good for you. For the die-hard racists, it’s all been too much and they’ve forged ever further into exurbia, to the outer reaches of Cherokee and Forsyth Counties. Good for them. The Braves cannot do the same thing.

But what about the map? The oh-so-often cited map of ticket sales that shows the majority of Braves ticket purchasers spread in a heavy red streak across the northern half of the metro area? It’s meaningless in more ways than one: first of all, it doesn’t account for any ticket buyer whose address the Braves don’t have on record. Second, it doesn’t account for the fact that at many weekday games (which are, in fact, the majority of games) a portion of fans are business people who leave their offices downtown (coincidentally still the densest concentration of office space in the metro area) and catch the game before heading home. Finally, and most glaringly, it’s not like the proposed stadium is even in the center of the map, which would appear to be somewhere even further north and east. There has, in fact, been no concrete evidence that the new location will be any quicker or easier to access for people in East Cobb, much less North Fulton or Gwinnett.

And finally, what about the Ted? In a city where the lessons of historic preservation are as clear as the marquee lights that spell out F-O-X, surely that precedent has some bearing? A truly one-of-a-kind building that was mere weeks from the wrecking ball was miraculously saved and is now “Atlanta’s Memory Maker,” hosting packed crowds on a near nightly basis. Half the scaffold of the Centennial Olympic torch is already lonely enough without the only other last standing remnant of Atlanta’s brush with international validity being left empty, and likely reduced to rubble.

For the hardest core of fans, this is likely old news, and for the most part, water under the bridge. The games will go on and that’s all that matters. But for me, it’s just not that cut and dry. I’m no businessman, but the fact that Mr. Turner also disapproves of the move says something. In 20 years, it seems equally as likely that the Braves will be moving back downtown as they’ll be staying put or moving another 12 miles north.

For now, as I thumb my bills and try one again to convince myself that it’s worth shelling out for Turner Field’s sake and to support the players, if not the organization, I’m left also trying to manifest a hope. Audatiously. That in the new stadium they will show me something truly innovative, or new, or different. That I will see a sign that this isn’t purely about controlling the environment, about constructing a landscape of built bigotry designed to pander to a certain moneyed class while actively discouraging an alternate population, whether they be lower class or car-less, or worst, both. That even if I have no plans to go, I can root for proof that there is a greater vision behind this move than simply bumping the profit margins up a few points. It’s an ambivalent, irresolute hope, but a hope nonetheless. Show me something Braves. Prove yourself Cobb County. You’ve got a couple years. The ball’s in your office park.