The Braves are off to a horrific start, but don't fret for their owners, Liberty Media, the Colorado-based behemoth that acquired the team a decade ago to avoid paying taxes. Liberty sees the team merely as a backdrop for a massive live-work-play real estate project near Smyrna, an operation largely funded by the good folks of Cobb County.
Bloomberg, the financial news service, last week published a long story summing up the Braves' history of playing cities off each other to raid public treasuries.
The Braves 15 years ago started with moving it Single-A club to Rome and has moved up the minor league-ladder, each time building bigger, more expensive parks, each one costing taxpayers more. The magnum opus is Cobb, where the Braves are planning to field its "major league" team next year.
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