Good morning. This is LEADOFF, today’s early look inside Atlanta sports.
It's a distinguished group, the past winners of the Atlanta Sports Council's Lifetime Achievement Award: Hank Aaron (2006), Vince Dooley (2007), Billy Payne (2008), Ted Turner (2009), Tom Cousins (2010), Bobby Cox (2011), Dominique Wilkins (2012), Chipper Jones (2013), Tommy Nobis (2014), Tom Glavine (2015), John Smoltz (2016) and Arthur Blank (2017).
The Sports Council announced Tuesday that John Schuerholz will join that prestigious list as winner of this year’s Lifetime Achievement Award, which will be presented at the Atlanta Sports Awards show June 7.
Schuerholz, the Braves’ general manager from late 1990 through the 2007 season, was the architect of teams that won 14 consecutive division titles, five National League pennants and the 1995 World Series. After stepping down as GM, Schuerholz served as team president until March 2016. He has been the Braves’ vice chairman since then.
He was inducted into the Braves Hall of Fame in August 2016 and into baseball’s Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., in July 2017.
Schuerholz “forever changed Atlanta Braves baseball” and “embodies all that the Lifetime Achievement Award stands for,” Atlanta Sports Council President Dan Corso said in a statement.
The annual Atlanta Sports Awards were created by the Sports Council in 2006 to recognize excellence in local high school, college and professional sports.
MORNING READING …
> The Super Bowl will be in Mercedes-Benz Stadium next year, giving the Falcons a chance to do something no team has ever done: play in the Super Bowl in its home stadium. Is that a realistic possibility? Jeff Schultz examines the question here.
> The Hawks are tied for the fewest wins in the NBA, but they are 7-7 over the past month. Michael Cunningham lists three reasons for the improvement of late
