COBB COUNTY, Ga. — The Atlanta Braves return home to Truist Park for a series against the Chicago Cubs starting Tuesday night.
It is also the first home game for the Braves since the deaths of legends Ted Turner and Bobby Cox. Turner died on May 6 at the age of 87. Cox died days later on May 9 at the age of 84, weeks shy of his 85th birthday on May 21.
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The Braves will honor their former owner and Baseball Hall of Fame manager with a moment of silence and video tribute before the game at Truist Park. Other special tributes are likely in the works.
Tickets are still available for tonight’s game for fans who don’t have them already. First pitch is scheduled for 7:15 p.m.
TED TURNER MADE THE BRAVES ‘AMERICA’S TEAM’
Ted Turner purchased the Braves in 1976. He had already owned a group of local TV stations but would launch the TBS WTCG-TV Super Station later that year.
The Superstation would air Braves games and Atlanta Hawks games when Turner purchased the team in 1978. It didn’t take long before the teams became fixtures in homes across the country.
Braves games would aired in 24 states across the country.
“Remember back then, growing up, the game of the week was about it,” Atlanta Braves legend Dale Murphy said during April 10 BravesVision broadcast.
“It was just a different kind of thing to have a game on every night, wherever you lived with your hometown broadcast every night. It was, it was such a unique thing,” he said.
And to this day, you will find Braves fan at every stadium they play in - sometimes more than the home crowd fans.
BOBBY COX WAS THE ULTIMATE “PLAYERS MANAGER”
The Atlanta Braves have many legendary names in the organization’ 155-year history. But there will only be one “Skipper.”
Players remember Bobby Cox as the ultimate players’ manager. That’s probably why Cox holds the MLB record for most ejections with 162 in his career.
Cox said he would always stick up for his players as long as they gave it their all.
“If they’re giving 100 percent, they were always going to be backed by me. If they weren’t, it was going to be a different story and that’s all I asked them to do, was entertain the fans, give 100 percent all the time. Let’s try to win, and when you’re trying, it was awfully hard for me to get mad at somebody,” Cox once said.
In the wake of his passing, Braves players kept calling Cox a “second father” to them, including fellow Hall of Famer Chipper Jones.
“He was the leader of men and a second father to so many Atlanta Braves thru the yrs. I’m so sad today, but as I sit here watching my two youngest boys play in their championship games on the day he passed, I can’t help but shout the same things he did from the corner of the dugout. ‘Come on kid, u got this!’” Jones wrote in part on social media.
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