I went to Turner Field Wednesday for the first time this year with some friends. We penciled in the date weeks ago because it looked like the Braves might be in the thick of a playoff race.
However, the previous night, the Washington Nationals celebrated in Turner Field as division champs, and the prospect of a wild card berth was as improbable as a B.J. Upton hitting streak. (The Braves were eliminated from playoff contention Sunday.)
Somehow, it was fitting that the embarrassment of watching their rivals dance on their diamond came on the same day the Braves broke ground on the new ball field they are building 12 miles up I-75 in Cobb County.
I was a part of a season ticket group for about 15 years, from 1993, when Braves Fever was infectious, until about 2009, when the charm had worn off.
Turner Field Wednesday night was not electric. In fact, when we arrived in the fourth inning there were still loads of Tom Glavine bobble head dolls available.
The park was, as always, pleasant and airy, and it’s hard not to get in a good mood walking around the concourse to your seats. But entering the 17-year-old park, I also felt melancholy, like I was visiting a friend on his deathbed.
“Look at that girder,” I told my bud Rankin. “That could hold up that grandstand for another 200 years.”
Instead, in three years it will be on the back of a flatbed truck heading to a recycling facility as the Braves take the field elsewhere. Such a waste of infrastructure.
I shouldn’t take it personally. It’s just business, they say. The Braves say they are moving closer to their suburban fan base. They made an economic decision, just like I did when I became an occasional walk-up fan instead of a season-ticket holder.
So let’s step back and look at the business of the Braves — and I’m not talking about the team investing over $100 million in perhaps the two worst everyday players in the business. Those were honest mistakes.
The Braves for years were the plaything of Atlanta media magnate Ted Turner, who then was bought out by another media conglomerate, AOL-Time Warner.
In 2006, Time Warner wanted out of baseball. John Malone, the chairman of Liberty Media, was looking to get rid of $1.8 billion worth of Time Warner stock without paying taxes on it. So Time Warner handed over the Braves, then worth about $460 million, and $1.4 billion in cash to Liberty in return for the stock.
“Liberty is expected to … (save) more than $600 million in taxes,” The Wall Street Journal reported.
“When else can you sell a highly appreciated asset for cash and never pay tax?” a Lehman Bother’s tax guru enthused to the WSJ. “What more could you want from a technique? It’s not like you’re deferring the tax on the cash; you’re permanently avoiding it. It’s fantastic.”
In essence, Malone got a free Major League Baseball team and $140 million in cash for his trouble. It was indeed fantastic.
The Braves went from being a big spender in the glory days of the 1990s under Ted Turner to just another mid-market team bumping along, throwing nickels around like they were manhole covers. They were just bit players to a Colorado-based, tax-avoiding colossus.
Of course, Liberty doesn’t avoid receiving tax money.
Late last year, as the company wrapped up a year in which its operating income increased to $814 million, representatives of its baseball asset convened in top-secret meetings with representatives of Cobb County.
Cobb is a conservative county, and its leaders don’t like taxes much, either. In fact they don’t like taxes so much that they promised to give The Liberty Media Braves up to nearly $400 million in future tax money to build a stadium.
Stadiums no longer have quaint names like Fenway or Comiskey or Three Rivers. Instead they are marketing synergies.
Last week, the Braves announced that the new park will be named SunTrust Park; the bank is paying a reported $10 million a year for that distinction.
SunTrust Banks Chairman and CEO Bill Rogers said at the ground-breaking that naming the park after the financial institution “is appropriate: This is our hometown.”
“It allows us to engage with more people, ” he continued. “Our branding and association with the Braves gives us more opportunities, more at-bats so to speak.”
Banks increasingly join up with major league teams because it allows them to appear major league, and it catches people at a time when they are happy and engaged.
SunTrust could use some image rehab. In June the bank was hit with $968 million in fines and consumer payouts as it settled with the government over allegations of abusive mortgage practices.
Attorney General Eric Holder said, “SunTrust’s conduct is a prime example of the widespread underwriting failures that helped bring about the financial crisis.”
SunTrust’s chief, Rogers, was “pleased to have resolved these legacy mortgage settlements.”
Weeks later, in July, SunTrust agreed to pay up to $320 million to settle a criminal investigation looking into how it handled homeowners seeking loan modifications during the financial meltdown.
Christy Romero, the special inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, was apparently so angered by SunTrust’s “slipshod and negligent administration” that she put out a statement about how the bank handled the Home Affordable Modification Program.
“Unwilling to put resources into HAMP despite holding billions in TARP funds, SunTrust simply placed piles of unopened homeowners’ HAMP applications and paperwork on an office floor until at one point, the floor buckled under the sheer weight of the document packages. Documents and paperwork were lost. SunTrust issued ‘mass denials’ to HAMP applicants and lied to the Treasury Department about the reasons for the denials.”
“The negligence which Sun Trust administered its HAMP is appalling, miserable, inexcusable and repulsive,” she continued. “Real people lost their homes and many others faced financial ruin.”
Play ball!
