March 5, 1984: I was late for my first day at this newspaper. My excuse was that I hadn’t yet grown accustomed to Atlanta traffic. Thirty years later, I still haven’t.
That part hasn’t changed. Almost everything else involving Atlanta sports has. The Braves and the Falcons no longer play at Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium; heck, both are poised to exit the stadiums they’ve occupied since the old ballpark was razed. The Hawks aren’t housed at the Omni, likewise demolished. The Thrashers came and left. The 1996 Games of the Summer Olympiad came and went, leaving behind Centennial Olympic Park and not much else.
In 1984, there was no SEC Championship game being held anywhere, let alone downtown Atlanta. There was no Chick-fil-A Bowl. (There was, however, the Peach Bowl, which was staged outdoors in invariably lousy weather and would have died had the Atlanta Chamber of Commerce not taken it over.)
In March 1984, the Braves were seven months from firing manager Joe Torre, which remains the single silliest thing this franchise has ever done. It would take the Falcons until December 1986 to rid themselves of coach Dan Henning, but they, being the Falcons, managed to botch that. They couldn’t find anybody to take the job and wound up promoting defensive coordinator Marion Campbell, who had failed once as their head coach.
Looking over the expanse of three decades, I note that I tend to criticize a bit less now than then. Some will suggest that I’ve mellowed with age. (Or, put less kindly, that I’ve lost a foot off my fastball, not that I was ever Rapid Robert Feller.) I submit that there’s less to criticize on the local scene. The Falcons are no longer owned by the Smiths. The Braves have been professionally run since John Schuerholz arrived from Kansas City in October 1990. Even the Atlanta Spirit, which no longer uses the name “Atlanta Spirit,” managed to hire Danny Ferry to run the Hawks.
Speaking of whom: There was, at the shank of the 1980s, a moment in which the Hawks, the team we Atlantans now love to ignore, were The Biggest Game In Town. If you weren’t here then, it’s hard to imagine. If you were, you’ll remember. The NBA franchise of ’Nique and Doc and Spud and Fratello and Kasten and briefly Moses and Theus was bigger than the Braves, who were lousy, and the Falcons, who were likewise, and even bigger than Georgia and Georgia Tech football, which had entered fallow periods. (Tech basketball was quite large, though, and the annual Tech-Georgia game in the Omni was among the highlights of every sporting year.)
I arrived in the spring of ’84. It took until 1991 for me to hang around a Braves team or a Falcons team that finished above .500. That was 12 consecutive losing MLB and NFL seasons. No wonder I was ripping people all the time. I was sick and tired of being sick and tired. My favorite quote from that era came from Russ Nixon, the manager who would precede Bobby Cox and who was much too acerbic for his own good.
Entering the dugout for the second game of a doubleheader — anyone remember doubleheaders? — Nixon noted that Cincinnati’s lineup for Game 2 was dotted with irregulars. He sought to motivate his men by saying, “Hey, that’s not a very good-looking team out there.”
On cue, one callow Brave said: “Which one?”
(It was also Nixon who, after watching relievers Mark Eichhorn and Joe Boever blow a five-run lead for Tom Glavine by yielding two mammoth homers worth seven runs to the Padres’ Jack Clark in two hilarious innings, said of the second blast: “I didn’t think Fulton County would hold it, and I don’t mean the stadium.”)
Matters have mostly improved since those dark days. The Braves began making the playoffs every year and even won a World Series. (Only the one, as we’re constantly reminded, but one beats none.) The Falcons reached the Super Bowl. (Being the Falcons, they messed it up.) Tech won the 1990 UPI national championship in football and played for the 2004 NCAA title in basketball. Georgia football has been better under Mark Richt than at any time since Terry Hoage completed his eligibility.
OK, so the Hawks still haven’t reached the Eastern Conference finals, but you can’t win ’em all. If you could, there’d be no need for someone like me to keep reminding everybody that the Hawks drafted Marvin Williams over Chris Paul.
Over 30 years, I saw Sid Bream slide and Morten Andersen kick the overtime winner in Minneapolis. I saw Michael Vick come to own this city and then go to jail. I’ve seen stirring rallies (Tech over LSU and Michigan State in the 1990 NCAA tournament, Falcons over Seahawks in January 2013) and gallant losses (Georgia against Alabama) and more than my share of epic collapses (Braves in the Leyritz game, Braves in the Brooks Conrad game, Braves in September 2011).
I’ve aged, yes, but I like to think I’ve been too busy to mellow. The AJC is no longer just a newspaper but a multi-platform entity. There used to be such things as offseasons for given sports, but with the 24-hour news cycle those have gone the way of dinosaurs and doubleheaders. There’s something happening all the time, for that I remain grateful.
In 30 years on this job, I’ve never once been bored. I hope to stick around a while longer, and this remains my pledge to you, dear readers: I’ll try my hardest not to bore y’all.
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