ATLANTA — Ted Turner was a sportsman of all types, from being a world champion on the water in sailing to a World Series-winning owner in Major League Baseball.
He famously owned the Atlanta Braves, leveraging his ownership of the TBS Superstation to broadcast the club’s games across the United States, all while showcasing his outsized personality at a time when many MLB team owners stayed behind the scenes.
Turner, who died Wednesday at age 87, bought the struggling Braves in the 1970s, put the team on his tiny TV station, then sold the signal to cable systems nationwide.
“He effectively transformed the Braves into a team with a national reach and set the table for ways that local teams have now gained more of a national footprint,” said Travis Vogan, a sports media professor at the University of Iowa.
With a burgeoning fan base that stretched far beyond the South, the Braves turned into a World Series mainstay during the 1990s, and Turner finally hoisted the Commissioner’s Trophy in 1995 before selling the franchise the next year.