Frank Thomas

Notable Sports Figures
baseball establishment. Turner even managed the Braves
for one game, in May 11, 1977, before Commissioner
Bowie Kuhn ordered him out of the dugout. Charged
with tampering in the signing of outfielder Gary
Matthews, Kuhn suspended Turner for the balance of the
1977 season.
That gave Turner the opportunity to focus elsewhere.
In late December 1976, Turner also added the struggling
Atlanta Hawks basketball team to his growing
professional sports stable. Making the deal sweeter was
the low price tag: $400,000, plus assumption of a $1
million note.
Freed at least for a year from his pressing baseball
obligations, Turner threw himself into his other passion,
sailing. He underwrote construction of the innovatively
designed, aluminum-hulled Courageous, a boat selected
to defend the America’s Cup against challenger Australia.
Turner piloted his craft to a sweep over the challenger
from Down Under.
Clashed with Baseball Hierarchy
However, Turner’s bid to defend the Cup three years
later fell short, with his loss to Dennis Connor. The result:
Turner renounced competitive sailing and sold his
boats, Courageous and Tenacious. In fact, most of Turner’s
subsequent racing has been with an 18-foot catamaran
crew, with son, Rhett, on the crew.
Turner in 1986 launched the quadrennial Goodwill
Games, an alternative international sports competition,
that were played through 1998. The motivations were
twofold: to provide an alternative athletic forum following
Washington’s decision to boycott the 1980 Winter
Olympics in Moscow (the Soviet Union boycotted the
Los Angeles Summer Olympics in 1984) and, of course,
provide a source of ready programming for TBS during
the slack periods.
Turner also expanded his sports franchise when he
founded the Atlanta Thrashers, a National Hockey
League expansion team that began play in 1999. It plays
at the $213 million Philips Arena, a new face on the Atlanta
sports skyline that complements the $235 million
Turner Field, named after the owner of the Atlanta
Braves, the primary tenant. It opened in March, 1997.
Turner’s Impact
As sportsman, Turner was a sailing champion. As a
sports entrepreneur in the 1970s, Turner represented a
new breed of owner. He epitomized corporate ownership
while remaining a hands-on maverick. He blurred the
distinction between business and sports, and remains
highly influential today in both, despite his departure
from AOL Time Warner early in 2003 amid a management
shakeup. Turner, at the time of his announcement,
remained the largest individual shareholder of AOL
Time Warner.
SELECTED WRITINGS BY TURNER:
(With Gary Jobson) The Racing Edge. New York:
Simon and Schuster, 1979.
Captain Planet and the Planeteers (original idea by Ted
Turner). Atlanta: Turner Publications, 1992.
(With Janet Lowe) Ted Turner Speaks: Insights from the
World’s Greatest Maverick. New York: Wiley, 1999.
FURTHER INFORMATION
Books
Bibb, Porter. It Ain’t As Easy As It Looks. New York:
Crown, 1993.
Byman, Jeremy. Ted Turner: Cable Television Tycoon.
Greensboro, NC: Morgan Reynolds, 1998.
Periodicals
Peers, Martin and Ken Brown. “AOL’s Winners and
Losers.” Wall Street Journal (January 14, 2003): B1.
Other
“Future Muddy for Braves, Hawks, Thrashers.” Atlanta
Journal-Constitution. http://www.accessatlanta.com/
ajc/sports/0103/30turner.html (January 29, 2003).
“Ted Turner Bio Information.” Austin American-Statesman.
http://www.austin360.com/aas/business/ap/ap_
story.html/Financial/AP.V7172.AP-Turner-Bio-
B ox.html (January 29, 2003)
Mike Tyson
1966-
American boxer
Tyson
Sketch by Paul Burton
He was one of the best, and he blew it. The youngest
heavyweight champion in history, the most inspiring
champ since Muhammad Ali, Mike Tyson became the
most notorious modern boxer when he went to jail for
rape, and then, in his comeback tour, for biting off a
piece of Evander Holyfield’s ear. Even before that, Tyson
was the man who bragged about wanting to kill his opponents,
to punch a man so hard his nose would go
through his skull. It is tempting to see Tyson’s story as a
classic Greek tragedy, the same primal brutality that carried
him to the top destroying him in the end. But Tyson
was not a plaything for the gods and the Furies. At each
step he had opportunities, chances not often given to
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