AJC > Sports > Columnists > Archives > 2007 > June > 18
Monday, June 18, 2007
Local fans don’t measure up
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
It’s a free country. You’re allowed to root for the team of your choice. But every so often there comes an Atlanta sporting event that makes you wonder if this is still Atlanta and if there’s such a thing as an Atlanta sports fan.
Monday night was another installment in a weird and distressing series, a night when the titular host was made to feel like a tourist. To report that there were more Red Sox fans than Braves backers at Turner Field would be a slight exaggeration. To report that the 20,000 Boston zealots shouted down the home folks — at least until the old nemesis Curt Schilling got shelled — would fall under the heading of distressing old news.
“Sounded like more Red Sox fans,” said Jeff Francoeur, who was asked if such a thing bothered him. “It doesn’t when you’re winning.”
Such a thing, as we know, has happened here often. It happened in 2003, when legions of Cubs fans celebrated a Division Series clinching. It happened in 1994, when Pacers people flew in by the planeload knowing there’d be playoff tickets available at the old Omni. It happens whenever the Cowboys or Steelers play at the Dome. Question is, will it ever stop happening?
This has been a big-league city for more than 40 years. That’s time enough for the local franchises to have imprinted themselves on the marketplace, except that ours remains the trendiest of towns. Our imprints are issued in washable crayon.
Mike Fratello said he knew his Hawks had arrived in the late ’80s only because there weren’t as many “green people” in the Omni when the snooty Celtics came calling.
The Braves were hot in the early ’90s, when the Tomahawk Chop became a weapon of intimidation. But here it was a Monday night in June 2007, and the sections directly behind home plate included patrons with jerseys bearing the names Ortiz and Ramirez and Schilling and Varitek and Youklis and Papelbon, none of whom play for the Braves.
“It was like this in Oakland,” said Gordon Edes of The Boston Globe, once an AJC colleague. “It was crazy in Arizona, where [the Sox] had never played a regular-season game before. And with ticket prices the way they are in Fenway, it’s almost cheaper to fly to Baltimore for a game there.”
But why is it always this way here? The Atlanta Braves have won just as many World Series since 1918 as the beloved Sox, but hardy New Englanders are passionate about their team in a way we Atlantans seldom get about any of ours. Maybe we’re too transient a city for such roots to grow. But if that’s true, then how do you explain our mania for college football?
“It’s kind of a bummer,” said Mike Mills, the bassist/keyboardist/singer for R.E.M., speaking of the proliferation of Sox fans around him. (Mills has standing in the matter, being a longtime supporter of Atlanta teams and a Braves season-ticket holder.)
“It’s crazy,” said Grady Baxley, who’s from that famous Bosox bastion of Jacksonville, Fla. “We couldn’t believe how many [fellow Sox believers] are here.”
Baxley’s traveling party included three other Sox-lovers. Two were wearing David Ortiz’s name and number. Matthew Gilligan, who grew up in South Boston, sported a “Cowboy Up” T-shirt from the 2003 Sox postseason and a red “B” on his biceps.
It’s a free country. You’re allowed to bear the tattoo of your choice. But every so often there comes a scene that makes you wish Atlanta sports fans would take it upon themselves to Cowboy Up.
This baseball team has been really good for a really long time. Just because this ballpark doesn’t have a Green Monster doesn’t mean it shouldn’t brim with the same hometown fervor as the famous Fenway. But it rarely does, and whose fault is that?
Permalink | Comments (356) | Categories: Braves / MLB, Mark Bradley
