The late TED TURNER, who made the term “Superstation” a household word, was a mogul, entrepreneur, champion yachtsman and … loose cannon.
No one worked closer with Turner than STAN KASTEN, the current president and CEO of the Dodgers who once ran three of Turner’s teams at once: the Braves, Hawks and Thrashers.
To hear Kasten, there was never a dull moment. When Turner publicly discussed acquiring OF GARY MATTHEWS while Matthews was still under contract to the Giants back in 1976, MLB suspended Turner for a year and docked the team a draft pick. Which meant Kasten -- who at the time was Turner’s in-house counsel -- had a whole other role:
“My only job was to keep Ted out of trouble,” Kasten once told me.
Apparently, that wasn’t an easy task.
“The other thing I remember -- and I’m 25 at the time -- is that the Braves were on a 15-game losing streak, and I go home to my bachelor pad in Atlanta and turn on the TV,” Kasten said. “And there’s a guy running around the dugout wearing a number that I knew we didn’t have on our team. That was very odd to me, and I look, and I’m, ‘Sonofabitch, Ted has taken over the team as manager.’ Look it up. Look at the all-time register. ‘Managers: Turner, T. Record: 0 and 1. We lost that game to the Pirates.
“He was manager of the effin’ team! I sit down. I call our outside counsel [TENCH COXE] who I know very well through our Hawks transaction, which we closed the first week of that January. And so I call Tench Coxe, and I say, ‘Tench, you watching the game?’ He said, ‘No, why, should I be?’ I said, ‘We have a new manager.’ He said, ‘He fired DAVE BRISTOL?’ I go, ‘No, not exactly.’ He said, ‘What do you mean, not exactly?’ I say, ‘He gave Dave a 10-day vacation.’ He goes, ‘Ohh noooo.’ But that’s a real thing that happened. Ted had been in Pittsburgh. No lawyer with him. No CFO with him. Just him. So he took over as manager.”
It’s not clear if Turner made any in-game decisions -- “You could see Ted following around the bench coach,” Kasten said -- but MLB Commissioner BOWIE KUHN put a stop to it the following day.
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“That next day, I was this young lawyer in Bowie Kuhn’s office trying to explain this, trying to rationalize, trying to justify,” Kasten said. “Bowie said, ‘Stan, we’ve had rules forever. ... An owner can’t make himself or his brother or even his father-in-law manager. We’re not gonna do it.’ So Bowie put me on the speakerphone with Ted. We called Ted, and Bowie said, ‘Sorry, Ted, you have a great young lawyer here. He was really kind to me. But there’s no way we’re letting this happen. No way!’ And so Dave [Bristol] stayed on vacation, and the bench coach took over for the next couple days. We won the next day. We lost Ted’s game.”
Turns out, Turner had always wanted to wear a baseball uniform.
“Ted had talked about doing this casually in the office [before it happened],” Kasten said. “He had even signed a player contract that we didn’t file because he said, ‘Dammit, players have a union. But owners don’t have a union. I want to be a member of the [players’] union.’ So he signed a player contract. He was always talking about things like that.”
Kasten says Turner was a promotional genius, who thought out-of-the-box -- or out of his mind, depending on your perspective. When Turner launched WTCG-Channel 17 (which eventually turned into TBS), Turner was so intent on turning the Braves into America’s Team he had the word “Channel” inscribed onto P ANDY MESSERSMITH’s No. 17 jersey.
But he was also a man of the people. At the press conference to unveil Turner Field, a reporter asked Turner -- seated next to Stan -- why stadium Coca-Cola prices were so high. Turner explained the cost was in line with other ballparks, until he asked, “How much is a Coke here, Stan?”
“Three-fifty,” Kasten answered.
“What?!” Turner said. “I would never buy a Coke here. That’s outrageous.”
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