Hey, y’all.
It’s AJC Subscriber Week, and tonight’s the night for sports trivia at Fado Midtown with yours truly. Check out the details here, then RSVP if you’re free (and have at least one subscriber in tow).
In the meantime: How about a trivia-fueled tribute to the GOAT?
ATTA BOY, BOBBY
Bobby Cox was more than baseball’s ejection king, of course.
He was a champion of everyone he met. A cleat-clad leader of men. One half of a duo that changed Atlanta sports forever.
Still … it’s old No. 6 waddling out for another round of red-faced gesticulating that’s forever burned into your baseball-loving brain meat, right?
Thought so.
Because no one did it like Bobby — and no one ever will again.
For proof, join me on a journey down the statistical rabbit hole (which includes a spoiler or two for the Win Column’s exclusive Bobby Cox Ejection Trivia Challenge. Play now!).
Some basics to begin:
- 162: Career ejections for Cox.
- 121: The second-place total of John McGraw, who skippered the (New York) Giants for the first 30 years of the 20th century.
- 54: The most career ejections by an active manager, held by Cincinnati’s Terry Francona.
Francona is 67 and already retired once. No. 3 on the active list, Don Mattingly, hadn’t managed since 2022 before being promoted to Phillies skipper two weeks ago.
Let’s toss them out as threats to the crown and focus on the active list’s No. 2: Aaron Boone of the Yankees.
He’s notably younger (53), earlier in his career (ninth year) and has racked up 47 career ejections so far.
Not too shabby.
But Cox is still sitting pretty.
Boone needs 115 ejections to match him and, at his current pace of one ejection every 26.3 games, it would require another 3,024 games to (theoretically) catch the king.
At 162 games per season, that’s … almost 19 more seasons. To even have a chance. At age 72 or so.
Here’s the other rub: Ejections as a whole are trending down. Hard.
Win Column data whiz Rahul Deshpande crunched the numbers and found that, after MLB began instituting video replay on certain calls in 2008, manager ejections dropped about 15% compared to the previous decade-plus.
- 222 managers, on average, got the thumb each season between 1995 and 2007.
- 174 were ejected in 2025.
Add in the brand new adoption of the ABS ball-strike system and things figure to drop even lower.
As of Tuesday morning — a little more than one-quarter through the 2026 season — just 26 manager ejections had been recorded.
Twenty-six times four, of course, equals 104. Less than half the MLB-wide average during Cox’s heyday.
Long live the king.
“He was a patron saint of the Braves,” team Chairman Terry McGuirk told reporters Wednesday, ahead of a pregame ceremony honoring both Cox and former owner Ted Turner.
“Bobby is Braves royalty.”
🧠 Don’t forget to try your hand at the Bobby Cox Ejection Trivia Challenge. You might even learn something.
MARK YOUR CALENDARS
⚾ The Braves — who enjoy the biggest NL East lead ever at this point of the season — continue their series with the Cubs on Wednesday night, and the first 15,000 folks through the gates get a bobblehead of Michael Harris II and his dog, Cash. 7:15 p.m. on BravesVision.
Same time, same channel for Thursday’s series finale, then the Red Sox come to town for the weekend.
🏀 The Dream beat Dallas on the road Tuesday and sits at 2-0 heading into Sunday’s home opener against the defending champion Aces (1:30 p.m., State Farm Arena, NBC).
- Angel Reese through two games for Atlanta: 23 points, 30(!) rebounds and one game-saving block.
👑 Georgia and Georgia Tech baseball wrap up their regular seasons by visiting Auburn and hosting Boston College, respectively. The Bulldogs are SEC champs, while the Jackets need two wins, two North Carolina losses or something in between to clinch the ACC crown.
🏈 The Falcons start organized team activities on Monday. Consider these recent stories about rookies Harold Perkins, Zachariah Branch and Avieon Terrell — and this update on quarterback Michael Penix Jr.’s progress — your appetizers.
FALCONS SCHEDULE SOON COME
¡Viva la España!
We already knew the Falcons were headed to Madrid for a game this season, and now we’ve got the details: Nov. 8 vs. the Bengals. 9:30 a.m. EST.
That’s Week 9, so surely Atlanta will have its quarterback situation figured out and Cincinnati’s Joe Burrow will still be upright.
Right?
Well … regardless. The rest of the schedule details get filled in Thursday night (7:30 p.m. on the Falcons website).
A few notes to prepare:
- The Madrid adventure counts as a “home” game.
- The Bears, Lions, Ravens, 49ers and Chiefs will actually come to Mercedes-Benz Stadium.
- The away slate includes trips to Green Bay, Minnesota, Cleveland, Pittsburgh and Washington, D.C.
Factor in the usual opponents from the (slowly improving?) NFC South and it could be worse … though almost every opponent has some degree of playoff ambition. And with those road destinations, there’s plenty of room for late-season winter weather wackiness.
Smells like another 8-9er.
⏩ More importantly: The Falcons crushed it with a Mario Kart-inspired schedule release video last season … so what will they do this year? Smart money’s on some sort of World Cup/soccer theme.
30-SECOND COLLEGE SPORTS STATUS REPORT
March Madness is getting bigger for money reasons and the College Football Playoff is probably getting bigger for money and coaches-keep-jobs-longer reasons but the SEC is complaining about a nine-game conference schedule and canceling cool home-and-homes and everyone’s complaining about NIL not having real guardrails while not making real guardrails but maybe a new arbitrator’s ruling will make some real guardrails and tennis programs are getting axed and Lane Kiffin is talking about diversity and some folks are calling for athletes to boycott the SEC over political redistricting stuff and yes.
Yes, Ken Sugiura.
You’re right. We’ll be watching anyway.
YOU CHOOSE: BIG GUY OR SMALL(ER) GUY?
The ping-pong balls have spoken, and the Hawks are sitting on the eighth overall pick in next month’s NBA draft.
It’s a spot they don’t have a lot of history with (owned it in 2019, traded up for De’Andre Hunter instead) — and one that requires a touch more thought than had they landed a top-four selection.
Columnist Michael Cunningham and beat writer Lauren Williams both opined this week on the Hawks’ plentiful options, which include a glut of guards (Louisville’s Mikel Brown Jr. seems to be popular in mock drafts) and Aday Mara, the 7-foot-3 Michigan man we briefly mentioned last week.
So, at the risk of asking for too much class participation in one newsletter, here’s the question …
🤔 Which way do you want to see the Hawks go with their first pick? Big guy or small(er) guy?
Go vote via the fancy form or shoot me an email with your thoughts. I’ll make sure Onsi Saleh hears tell.
LAST WEEK’S RESULTS ARE BANANAS
Good news, everybody: Social media isn’t real life, and we’re not tired of the Savannah Bananas.
- A solid 57% of folks who responded to last week’s poll said they, in fact, “love them Nanners.”
- Another 28% fell in the live-and-let-live camp, leaving just a 15% hater population.
To quote one pro-Banana philosophizer: “Since when can farce and reality not coexist?”
PHOTO OF THE WEEK
In 2014 or so, I covered something akin to “Bobby Cox night” at a Gwinnett Braves game. A photographer pal shot and saved this perspective-shifting beauty for me.
I’ll love it forever.
Thanks for reading to the very bottom of the Win Column. Questions, comments, ideas? Contact me at tyler.estep@ajc.com.
Until next time.
About the Author
Tyler Estep hosts the AJC Win Column, Atlanta's new weekly destination for all things sports. He also shepherds the Sports Daily and Braves Report newsletters to your inbox.
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