Ted Turner was Braves’ manager for a night during prolific media mogul career

Then came May of 1977.

Atlanta had gotten off to a dismal start that year, and limped into their game against the Pittsburgh Pirates on May 11 with an 8-21 record, and in the middle of a 16-game losing streak. The team had lost a double-header the day before. That afternoon, Turner told manager Dave Bristol to take ten days off.

Turner was going to manage the team.

Hall of Fame pitcher Phil Niekro, who was set to start the game for Atlanta, recalled this moment during batting practice.

“I just got through swinging in the cage, and I came out and walked behind the batting cage for the next round and Ted came out of the dugout and he walked behind the batting cage,” said Niekro. “I looked at him and jokingly I said, ‘Ted, what spot you got me hitting in today?’ And he said, ‘Hell, I don’t know. You want to lead off? You want to hit second or third? We just lost 16 in a row. You’ve been around here long enough. Hit wherever you want to.’

“I said, ‘I don’t think that’s going to work, Ted. Put me in that ninth spot.'”

There was Turner, wearing 27, managing the team he owned.

Atlanta lost that night, dropping to 8-22 on the season. While Turner did not make many managerial decisions during the loss — deferring most of them to third-base coach Vern Benson, he did make one. With Atlanta trailing 2-1 in the ninth, calling on reserve infielder Darrel Chaney to pinch-hit with a runner on first.

“I wasn’t much of a hitter, but I had never been asked to pinch hit right-handed in my whole career,” Chaney years later. “So we get in that ninth inning and we get a guy on base and Turner says, ‘Chaney, grab a bat.’ I looked over at my roommate, Rod Gilbreath, and I said, ‘Can you believe this?'”

The switch-hitter dug into the batter’s box against lefty John Candelaria, and laced a ground-rule double to left-center field. Had the ball stayed in the park, it might have brought the runner home to tie the game.

Instead, Pittsburgh brought in Goose Gossage, who closed out the game by stranding runners on second and third.

Despite the loss, Turner was upbeat in defeat.

“I can remember coming off the field, and of course 17 in a row is hard to take,” said Chaney. “And Ted was walking into the clubhouse and, just as loud as he always was, ‘How you like that move, I put Chaney in there!’ We had lost the game. ‘How you like that move putting Chaney in there, hitting that double!’ you know.”

However, MLB had seen more than enough of Turner in the dugout. Citing a rule that anyone who owned stock in a team could not manage it, he was barred from getting back in the dugout the following game.

“They must have put that rule in yesterday,” Turner told the media the next day. “If I’m smart enough to save $11 million to buy the team, I ought to be smart enough to manage it.”

Speaking after the season to Playboy, Turner recalled that he just wanted to see, from the dugout, what was going wrong with his team.

“When things are gong bad, there are 10,000 guys in the stands who think, ‘If I could just take over this ballclub for a while, I’d straighten them out,'” said Turner. “But Kuhn said I couldn’t manage again. I asked him if it was OK if I went and managed in the minors for a year and really learned how to do it. He said, ‘Nope.'”

Bristol returned as manager a few days later and closed out the season for Atlanta, and the Braves finished 61-101.

But Turner must have learned something that night.

As he hired Bobby Cox in the offseason.

Although even that took some time to get right, as it was during Cox’s second stint that the Braves enjoyed an extended run of success, including winning the 1995 World Series.

Because Turner fired Cox after the strike-impacted 1981 season. In his trademark fashion, he quipped to the media after being asked who he wanted as the team’s next manager “[i]t would be Bobby Cox if I hadn’t just fired him. We need someone like him around here.”

A tip of the hat to Ted Turner, entrepreneur, philanthropist and yes, MLB manager.