The Atlanta Braves had not one, but two, parades on Friday, plus a special concert at Truist Park with rap luminaries Ludacris and Big Boi to celebrate their improbable World Series championship.
Tens of thousands of fans lined up in downtown Atlanta and along Cobb Parkway as the Braves’ caravan made its way to the ballpark.
For a moment, the exuberance almost got the best of Cobb County’s finest, as police surrounded a man whom they thought had wandered out from the crowd, but who was actually Braves’ relief pitcher Tyler Matzek.
It was hard not to get caught up in cheering on a team that was devastated by injuries, didn’t have a winning record until late in the season, then knocked off teams predicted to beat them, including last year’s champions, the Los Angeles Dodgers, in the playoffs.
As someone who grew up in metro Atlanta and whose family’s ties to the Braves go back to their days in Milwaukee, this last week truly has been special for me.
My first game as a fan was as an eight-year-old in 1969, when the Braves won their first pennant in town.
In 1995, when the Braves won the World Series at the same venue, I was a sportswriter at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. I don’t remember much about that decisive Game 6 on a Saturday night at Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium, as I was coming back from somewhere after covering a college football game.
So it was a real treat to savor the first sports team I had ever followed beat back all the obstacles. This year’s Braves are a testament to determination, resilience, teamwork and optimism, qualities that take on special significance during these abnormal times of a pandemic.
The euphoria was bound to go overboard, of course, as these occasions sometimes do.
On Thursday, in a commentary published in our local daily newspaper, the headline referred to the late Tim Lee, the former county commission chairman who brokered the stadium deal that brought the Braves to Cobb, as the “angel in the outfield.”
Even more tellingly, the narrative glossed over the dubious process by which Lee, the Braves and local business insiders worked in secret for months, until they could keep their secret no more.
The above commentary asserted several times that “Tim did the right thing.” But the glaring lack of transparency, a bevy of investigations and ethics complaints and a rushed timeline without much of a chance to get meaningful feedback from the public are still gnawing.
This coming Thursday will mark the eighth anniversary that Lee announced a proposed 30-year memorandum of understanding with the Atlanta Braves to help construct a stadium in the Cumberland area.
In that agreement, Cobb would commit to a $300 million subsidy—taxpayer money—to help finance the ballpark, as well as to regular capital maintenance, public safety and other costs.
The four district members of the Cobb Board of Commissioners had exactly two weeks to digest a complicated long-term deal. The public had an even smaller window to ask questions of their elected officials at hastily arranged town hall meetings.
I covered these proceedings during my time at Patch, a hyperlocal network founded by AOL a little more than a decade ago.
Bob Ott, the former Cobb commissioner whose District 2 included the area along Windy Ridge Parkway and I-75 where the stadium would be built, was thrust into a sudden, and very glaring, spotlight.
Always accessible, Ott prided himself on holding informative town halls all over his Cumberland-East Cobb district.
But he made himself scarce for most of those two weeks, inundated with messages and calls from constituents and the media like no other issue in his then-two terms in office.
On the night before the vote, Ott held a town hall meeting not in his district, but in the commissioners’ meeting room off the Square in Marietta.
I found that odd, and asked him after it was over if he had made up his mind. He said he would do so when he pushed the button to vote.
Like the other town hall meetings I attended during that intense fortnight, I realized that the Braves stadium deal was a done deal.
Twenty-four hours later, in a cramped board room dominated by pro-stadium forces, the commissioners approved the MOU with a 4-1 vote, with Lisa Cupid, now the chairwoman, voting against.
Like many people who raised questions about the deal, Cupid wasn’t opposed to the Braves coming to Cobb County, or even having a partially publicly financed stadium built.
Like many of those same people, I also wondered about the rushed, secretive proceedings. Citizens groups as disparate as the Tea Party and Common Cause tried to get some answers, but community scrutiny wasn’t well organized.
Lee defended the timeline and process by asserting that if Cobb didn’t act, then the Braves would go elsewhere.
But as longtime Braves executive John Schuerholz admitted not long after the Cobb vote, the team didn’t have another venue in mind after wanting to leave the city of Atlanta after nearly 50 years.
In other words, the Braves played Cobb like Max Fried toyed with the Astros’ lineup on Tuesday, setting down the commissioners in almost perfect order.
The timing of all this is important to remember, as Cobb and much of the nation were starting to come out of the recession.
Commissioners JoAnn Birrell and Helen Goreham were doing verbal cartwheels from the moment the proposed stadium deal was announced, smitten by the catnip of economic development that has tempted elected officials everywhere.
You can love the Braves, as I have for most of my life, and still hate the way that stadium deal came down.
You can be excited about the dining and entertainment options at The Battery Atlanta, which the Braves have financed to the tune of nearly $400 million, and wonder why the franchise still needed the public’s “help” to build a ball park.
The process stunk to high heaven, lacked even a modicum of transparency, gave no thought to a referendum, and was followed by lame excuse-making.
Lee paid the ultimate political price when he was ousted in the 2016 Republican primary by Mike Boyce, and didn’t get to enjoy the ultimate payoff of his stadium efforts. He died two years ago of cancer at the age of 62.
After the stadium opened in 2017, the Cobb Chamber of Commerce commissioned an economic impact study proclaiming a nearly $19 million annual benefit to the county.
One of the more vocal critics of such claims, Kennesaw State University economics professor J.C. Bradbury, noted in an op-ed during the World Series that one can cheer for the Braves and not get caught up in such runaway economic development fever.
Not wanting to rain on a parade, but I feel the same way. The economic “home run” that was promised Cobb citizens still hasn’t been realized, and shouldn’t be conflated with success on the baseball field.
When a public official is hailed for doing something “right” without that individual being examined for how he/she conducted public business, that’s more than blind cheerleading.
The ends never justify the means, especially public officials spending tax dollars and not giving the citizens much of a say.
Holding elected officials—or the legacies of those who are no longer with us or who are out office—to account isn’t just about determining if what they did was the right (or wrong) thing to do.
It’s also scrutinizing how they do it that should matter.
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Nice smear job. The stadium is already paying back and then some.
Wendy, as someone who was and raised in Cobb, I remember how the whole stadium deal was shoved down our throats despite opposition to it. The people who were for it were the ones who benefited financially from it.
We’re still paying for it to this day. The county actually had to raise taxes to help close a $30 million budget hole due spending on the new stadium.
The whole ordeal made me realize that the Republican controlled commission at the time wasn’t really serious about reining in government spending and I’m so glad that we threw Tim Lee out of office afterwards as ramming the stadium deal through.
Had to stop reading this mindless drivel at the third paragraph that clearly misstates what happened – and if Wendy had bothered to read the article that she linked in that paragraph she would know law enforcement at no time thought Matzek was someone that had “wandered out from the crowd”.
Thank you Wendy for correcting the historical record and reminding your readers that rooting for the baseball team and the unethical way that the stadium was voted through by the Cobb BoC are two separate things.
I was part of the Citizens for Transparency in Government group that fought the stadium bond deal in court. We lost that one, obviously. Our members were from across the political spectrum, including the SCLC. One woman allegedly had her lawn set on fire by supporters of Lee, in response to her having the temerity to challenge the deal in court.
The nice thing about that group was we worked together across racial and political lines. The divisiveness and hate we see today around us was not in such a fever pitch back then. I am not sure it would be possible in this current environment for a non-partisan group to work together like that, for the community, but I hope I am wrong on that.
What the touters of the stadium don’t understand is that as is the case everywhere, these publicly financed stadiums never really deliver the economic benefits promised. Sure the battery is a nice development, but money spent there would have been simply spent elsewhere if it did not exist.
The real issue in Cobb is that the private-public partnership model is failing. Most of the benefits of the Braves stadium go to Liberty Media corp, who reorganized as a real estate venture and have capitalized on all the building around the Battery. The public gets very little tangible benefit other than the civic pride of hosting the Braves, a shorter drive to see the Braves play, and a few non-baseball events every year at the Battery. Whatever benefit there is, it is not a true public one but a private one, as you have to pay to get in.
Compared to the Braves stadium there are much worse boondoggles coming, like a light rail line that won’t serve 95% of the citizens. Or a Bus Rapid transport system that runs from a zombie mall in Kennesaw to take ghost riders downtown.
So hopefully the voters will remember the true history of the stadium deal and the BoC was fleeced like sheep in 2014 when they are asked to support a sales tax increase for “mobility.”
WELL SAID CHRIS. Living in Smyrna for 20 years, unfortunately now being 3 blocks from the stadium (been here way before its building), it has been nothing but stink and lies from the beginning. And now an increase in crime, five times the traffic verse the proposed “traffic studies” we were all shown, and now every piece of green land is being rezoned and 500k over priced low quality, below builder grade, shoddy built, on covered construction debris, townhouses and homes are being built or churches turning into land developers and neighborhood designers all under the cover of night just like the stink of the stadium deal. Then what’s the point of zoning or green space?? Unfortunately things will never change. Politicians are crooks whom look out for themselves, scratch the backs of their friends or whom will earn them more money or look good in the publics eye. Like you stated above, look at the boondoggles coming… a brewery for “family” gathering! Are we lowering the drinking age too and I missed that? And let’s sell a piece of property worth twice as much to a group that you went to college with! If it smells like dead fish & looks like dead fish it probably is. Welcome to Smyrna/Cobb County politics. The voters should be so proud.
I couldn’t agree with you more Wendy! People didn’t object to the Braves, but they did object strongly to the process or lack thereof to get the deal done. Tim Lee had people arrested who showed up in opposition and wanted to speak only to find the Mr. Lee and the Braves had stacked the deck and had all speaking slots filled before the list was available for sign up under norm protocol. You did miss one little nuance in your story and that was about the VIP democrats from Atlanta who showed up to to game to root for the Braves that were involved in the Stacy Abrams campaign with MLB to have our All Star game moved out of Cobb. We may have had a few from Cobb VIP’s who agreed with Stacy Abrams as well.
$19 million a year and we gave them way more than just $300 million. It will take 15-20 years to recoup the cost… right about the time they will want to renovate and ask the tax payers to share the cost. There are many articles about the revenue impact from stadiums in large cities. It’s never positive. It’s highly doubtful Cobb gets $19 million a year.
I’m not a baseball fan.
Liked it more when ballgame traffic didn’t impact our plans. We’ve avoided the areas near the park to avoid traffic, probably more often than we need to.
Seems the team name should be changed to “Cumberland Braves”, since they aren’t in Atlanta anymore.
As for the politicians and their choices, I can see the area businesses being happy over the dislike of 80% residents. 20% might be fans, so being more convenient is a “win” for those people.
I’m just happy to have moved out a little farther. Used to live in Smyrna, now in NE Cobb. We prefer a little more quiet.
Sorry, I don’t agree with you. Governments usually act too slowly, oftentimes missing out on great deals…moving the Braves was a big deal. Tim Lee was a genius in getting the Braves to Cobb, and now it has paid off. I have high respect for Tim Lee, and was very disappointed that Cobb voters voted him out…he had a long range vision for Cobb County.
Sour grapes.
Truist spark and The Battery have proven to be wonderful amenities and a strong economic engine in our neighborhood.
Oh, the team is pretty darn good too, Go Braves!