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Atlanta’s Sports Fans Don’t Suck…You Do.
By Jay Busbee | April 15, 2007
So the Thrashers are in the playoffs — though, down 2 games to zip, perhaps not for long, sadly — and we’re forced once again to consider how Atlanta stacks up as a playoff town. Sure, “Blueland” down at Philips Arena has been rocking the last two games, but as any hack reporter can attest, Turner Field has been running at, shall we say, less than capacity for the last few Braves playoff runs. So are Atlanta fans pathetic frontrunners, or just victims of their teams’ success? Let’s consider the many reasons why Atlanta fans get such a bad rap:
The failed promises. As Tommy Lee conclusively demonstrated when he cheated on Pamela Anderson, you can get tired of anything. (Yes, even that.) And year after year of Braves playoff runs that ended in humiliating defeats wore on Atlanta fans. It’s worth noting that Atlanta fans recorded the tenth-highest baseball season attendance of all time in 1993, coming on the heels of two straight World Series losses. The Hawks were the same deal, back when they used to make the playoffs, never getting farther than the second round. (Yes, kids, the Hawks used to be a reliable playoff team.) The Falcons seem to be moving in reverse. The Thrashers, among all Atlanta teams, have some rope to work with…for a season or two.
The transience. It’s a little-known fact, but there’s actually nobody over the age of 10 living in Atlanta who’s a native of the city. Everybody’s moved here from somewhere else. And they all bring their allegiances to their own little teams, and they all hoot and holler in town whenever the Steelers or the Mets or the Red Sox come to town. And then they all go back to their spacious homes in warm Atlanta, and completely miss the point of which city’s really the winner.
The other sports. New York City has exactly zero college football teams of note. Boston is, of 
course, not a big college town. Chicago has Northwestern, which almost counts as a football team. But south of the Mason-Dixon, college football is religion, and the fervor of its devotees equals anything that the long-suffering Red Sox Nation or Cubbie Horde can amass. (Nascar’s a close second.) The devotion’s here, as long as you open the door to sports beyond just those that make Roger Angell weep with nostalgia.
The numbers game. Fenway Park has a capacity of about 36,000. Wrigley Field has a capacity of 41,000. Turner Field has a capacity of 49,000. So when Turner Field is at its typical 80 percent capacity — which means wide expanses of empty blue seats in the outfield — that’d still be enough people to fill everything short of rooftop seating at Wrigley, and send 3,000 people to cram into Cheers, or wherever the hell Boston people go when they’re not at Fenway.
The space. This one’s more of a sociological argument than anything else. Here in Atlanta, everybody’s got room to move. Go a little outside of town, and you can buy three acres of land for what a pastrami on rye costs in Manhattan. So the fact that we’re not piled on top of each other like cockroaches means we’re not browbeaten into following the local losers just because our fathers/grandfathers/great grandfathers lived and died with the Cubbies/Saaaahx/Packuhs/Bearz. No, we choose to follow these clowns, no matter how many Miami airport stops/Chris Paul draft failures/postseason hitting woes they foist upon us.
See? The love’s here. We’re just a little more laid-back in how we express it.
Topics: The Good Ol' South |
April 15th, 2007 at 10:05 pm
The location of Turner Field and its inaccessibility are big factors, I think. There is nothing to do around the field - no bars, no restaurants, and it’s generally thought of as a bad part of town.
There is no MARTA access, unless you want to pay extra to wait on that shuttle, and unless you live right around the corner you have to plan an extra 2+ hours to drive there, depending on the traffic, and who the hell knows when you’ll get home. My parents used to make us leave in the seventh inning just so we wouldn’t get stuck in the traffic (traumatic memory from my childhood).
I love going, but the field’s location and the traffic make it an ordeal every time. We went to the opening series and ended up staying at that Holiday Inn on Capital Ave. just to avoid the whole mess.
April 15th, 2007 at 10:16 pm
Amen. I’m sure there’s a worse location for a ballpark somewhere in the country, but I can’t think of it. When I cover games, I often don’t even leave the house until the 2nd or 3rd inning, and I’ll still sit in 8pm traffic.
April 16th, 2007 at 4:00 pm
So difficult to read “Failed Promises” section. Eyes pulled to left. Must. Focus. On. Words.