Politics & Government

Braves-to-Cobb Draws National Headlines

The political leaders of a conservative county have been accused of "embracing sports socialism."

As the news soaks in -- and as the stadium details are being parsed -- we thought we'd link to what some baseball and political pundits have been saying this week about the Atlanta Braves' proposed move to Cobb County. 

But be warned: Much of what has come from national commentators hasn't been very complimentary, either of the Braves or of Cobb.

Many were quick to jump on the $672 million price tag, and what's now been revealed to be Cobb's $300 public commitment that Commission Chairman Tim Lee is promising won't be done with a property tax increase.

Lee is the subject of scorn in the video from MSNBC host Lawrence O'Donnell, who claims the top local elected official in "Tea Party Country" has "embraced sports socialism."

"What if the Cobb County Commission Chairman was named Obama?" O'Donnell said on his program, "The Last Word."

The short-term stay of the Braves at Turner Field -- it will be only 20 years when they vacate for Cobb -- has been a prominent topic for baseball writers and bloggers, including Craig Calcaterra of the Hardball Talk blog, who on Monday called the move "understandable but perverse."

Calcaterra, a Braves fan, later called it the "Braves Ballpark Bamboozling," and took The Marietta Daily Journal -- which first broke the Braves-to-Cobb news -- to task for publishing a celebratory editorial, parroting the economic development claims of Cobb political and business leaders who worked the secretive deal:

  • "Why do people continue to peddle this stuff? Maybe it’s because people buy it. Or don’t care. But whatever the case, the fact that it is peddled at all is an absolute disgrace. It’s cheerleading disguised as journalism.
  • "And all of it will be forgotten when there’s a 'Marietta Daily Journal' sign painted on the left field wall of the new ballpark and when the publishers and editors of the paper are ensconced in their luxury boxes, watching the Braves play ball."

The decision by Cobb officials to put up public money in light of the continuing financial struggles of the Cobb County School District also drew the notice of the blogging class. 

Charles Pierce of Esquire, also posting more than once about the story, made this link, then opined:

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  • "And the first toadying sportswriter who fashions a column about how 'beautiful' this ballpark is needs to be pelted with produce."

Will Bunch of The Philadelphia Daily News took to his "Attytood" column to fulminate about the short life of a baseball park, Cobb's conservative politics and "American sanity" all at once:

  • "If you travel today to Italy, it's not always easy to find the ruins of Ancient Rome, a world that was lost to a long run of corrupt emperors and the folly and contradiction of maintaining a global empire. But you can't miss the Colosseum, still standing strong after all these centuries. It's not hard to imagine the tourists of a future millennium touring an Ancient American monument to imperial insanity that was once called Turner Field."

Native Georgians now writing for national sports websites were a bit gentler and more heartfelt. Tommy Tomlinson, on Forbes.com, posed this suburban doomsday scenario:

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  • "If the Braves start losing … with a downtown stadium, people working in downtown Atlanta might stick around after work, grab some dinner and go to a Braves game. But get off work and do the commuter death march to Cobb to watch a losing team? No way."

Current New Yorker Rembert Browne, of Grantland, mourns what the Braves' departure means for his native city:

  • "So the idea of an Atlanta sports team playing in a suburb makes me sick. Because I have no love for the suburbs. I care about cities, because that's where people are forced to intermingle. I care about cities, because that's where the culture is. And I care about my city above all, because it's mine.
  • "Suburbs are where you go to buy multiple pairs of slacks. And learn how to parallel park on a Sunday afternoon. And covertly, in the case of Atlanta, suburbs are where you may go to either self-segregate or distance yourself from others.
  • "As someone who no longer lives in Atlanta but fully plans on returning, today is a tough day. Because, yet again, the city has been outfoxed by its northern counterparts."


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