Noc-A-Homa, Other Mascots Mourn Ted Turner
Ted Turner's legacy is varied. After his passing, mascots that share a history with him reconcile their differences, regrets, sadness...and hunger?
ATLANTA, GA — Ted Turner, media mogul, sports team owner, husband to Jane Fonda at times, and restaurateur died on May 6. He was 87.
His legacy includes some complicated moments with mascots. We are interested in these complications.
Chief Noc-A-Homa Understands Displacement
The chief is parked in a lot off Hank Aaron Drive, in a section that used to be left-center field at Fulton County Stadium. He has been parking his “Jeepee” there, on and off, since they knocked the stadium down. It has never been towed.
He was sitting on the hood when we arrived Thursday morning. Coffee thermos. Clear view of Georgia State Stadium, which now sits on the footprint of the old field.
“I know where home plate was,” he said. “It’s under that end zone.”
He was asked about Ted Turner.
“I forgive Ted,” he said, before we had asked anything specific. As if he’d had the sentence ready for a while.
The incident being forgiven: July 1982. The Braves were in a pennant race, seats were money, and Turner ordered the tipi removed from left field to make room for 250 additional seats. Chief Noc-A-Homa was not consulted.
The Braves subsequently lost 19 of their next 21 games. Turner called it unrelated. Restored the tipi anyway. The Braves won the NL West.
“He came and found me after the season,” Noc-A-Homa said. “Brought a sandwich. Said he was sorry. He was a busy man. He had CNN. I’m not sure he fully understood that the tipi was my home and not a prop.”
He was quiet for a moment, looking at the stadium.
“But he tried. He was sorry. That counts.”
We asked whether the whole thing — the tipi, the removal, the displacement — ever struck him as a metaphor for something larger.
He was quiet for a while.
“It’s not the worst displacement my people have experienced,” he said finally. “If I made a list of the top hundred times displacement has happened to us, Ted Turner and his twelve rows don’t make the list.”
He drank his coffee.
“He was sorry. He brought me a sandwich. Historically, well, that’s pretty good.”
The Famous San Diego Chicken Has Regrets
There’s a wall in the Chicken’s home in San Diego that holds the things he can’t get rid of. A picture of a mistake he made in tackling a Bull’s cheerleader. A Tony Gwynn baseball card he never got signed. And of course…
The centerpiece is a wooden frame containing a 1978 business card — Ted Turner’s — with an offer written on the back in Turner’s handwriting. It started at $50,000. Turner schmoozed the Chicken over the course of a Braves home game to which he was invited by Ted himself. The offer climbed to $100,000 before the seventh inning. Also offered: a television show. An office adjacent to Hank Aaron’s.
The Chicken said no. Mayor Pete Wilson called; children in Chula Vista wrote letters; San Diego showed up for him in a way you don’t walk away from. He knows this. He has always known it.
He had forty-eight years to call Turner and say something different.
He didn’t. And now it’s done. And he’s been sitting in the room with the wall since Thursday morning.
“I think about the Braves,” he said — not the 1978 Braves, but the 1991 Braves, the 1992 Braves, 1995, the whole dynasty. Five World Series. Maddux. Smoltz. Glavine. The office next to Hank Aaron’s. All of it unreachable now, not just as a practical matter but as a theoretical one. There’s no version anymore where things could have gone differently.
“It’s not that I wish I’d gone,” he said, quietly. “It’s that there was always a version where I could’ve. And now there isn’t.”
“That was a good day way back when at the [Atlanta Braves’] stadium,” Chicken reminisced. “It’s a complicated memory.” He paused, then chuckled under his breath. “I guess there’s a reason I didn’t cross that road.”
We thanked the Chicken for his time. The call ended there.
Ralphie the Buffalo is at a Loss for Words
Ralphie is a bison. This is established in every program and on every website associated with Colorado athletics. She is not a costume. She lives at a facility near Boulder and runs the field before home games.
She was notified of Turner’s passing through her handler, who read it aloud near the pen Wednesday morning.
Ralphie lowered her head.
She held it there for a while. Long enough that the handler stepped back.
Then she ate some grass.
This was understood to be her statement.
Hero photo: Vieener / Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0
Ralphie photo: University of Colorado Boulder Alumni Association / Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 2.0
