Turner was involved in at least two other scrapes with the commissioners office. One involved him naming himself manager despite a lack of baseball experience. He lasted one day.
When WTBS was a local Atlanta UHF channel, he signed a pitcher to a free agent contract to pitch for the Braves. Given the number 17, Turner decided to give him a nickname and place the nickname on the back of his jersey instead of the pitcher’s real surname.
The nickname was “Channel”. Channel 17 just by mere coincidence happened to be the frequency for WTBS. Once again, baseball’s top brass told Turner to knock it off and put the real surname on the back of the jersey.
Yes, before he went leftwing kook, Ted Turner was actually a gadfly baseball owner in the likeness of Bill Veeck. Got to give him credit, though, for building a single UHF channel into a broadcasting empire. I wonder what he thinks of CNN now or if he even cares. But he was quite the innovator and entrepreneur - actually like Trump in many ways. Eccentric and never afraid to stir things up.
That pitcher was ex-Dodger Andy Messersmith.
Turner was a leftwing kook, but he was also a southern nationalist. Interesting guy.
That one game was against the Pittsburgh Pirates...yes, I remember it.
I was doing people a favor by not posting the Jarvis Landry story - it had much more web junk on it.
Did Vida Blue get an exception? He had his first name on his jersey instead.
Then of course there was Carlos May who wore his birthday on his jersey....coincidentally enough, May 17.
Bobby Bonds wore 00 for a while, a reference to the James Bond series.