As you’ve probably heard, Ted Turner has died. He left his mark on the uni-verse, most notably on May 11, 1977, when he was tired of his Atlanta team’s 16-game losing streak and decided to suit up as the team’s manager. He wasn’t the first owner to serve as a skipper (Philadelphia A’s owner Connie Mack did it for decades, albeit in a suit, not a uniform), but he would be the last: After Turner managed the team for one game — a 2-1 loss to the Pirates — MLB commish Bowie Kuhn ruled that owners didn’t belong in the dugout, thus ending Turner’s brief managerial tenure.
As you can see in the photo above, Turner looked the part during his one game in uniform, even wedging a big chaw of tobacco in his left cheek. Here’s a better view of that:
Turner’s turn suiting up came one year after he decided to have the Atlanta players wear nicknames on their jerseys. Or at least most of the players wore nicknames — pitcher Andy Messersmith famously wore “Channel” to go with his uniform number, 17, creating a de facto ad for Turner’s cable TV station. The commissioner’s office quickly put the kibosh on that one, too.
Whatever else you can say about Turner, he understood the power of a uniform. R.I.P.