List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Forward Atlanta
2. America’s Virgin Sports Territory
3. Franchise Free Agency
4. The Greatest Location in the World
5. Wisconsin v. Milwaukee Braves
6. Gravitating toward Atlanta
7. Not Catching On around Town
8. Losing but Improving
9. Atlanta Stadium, a Center of Gravity
10. Outside the Stadium It’s the City
11. Atlanta Stadium, a Meeting Place
12. Madison Square Garden of the Southeast
13. The Developer Is Boss
14. The Politics of Metropolitan Divergence
15. Probably Room for Basketball
16. The Logical Choice
17. How the Falcons Lost Atlanta
18. Atlanta’s Ice Society
19. Just What Atlanta Needs
20. I Think the Fans Showed Poor Taste
21. Instant City
22. Keep Hockey a Southern Sport
23. Loserville No More
24. How the Sunbelt Became Loserville, U.S.A.
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Clayton Trutor holds a PhD in U.S. history from Boston
College and teaches at Norwich University in Northfield, Vermont.
He writes about college football and basketball for SB Nation.
Trutor is also the Vermont state chairman of the Society for
American Baseball Research (SABR) and is a regular contributor to
the SABR Biography Project.
“Clayton Trutor vividly and expertly untangles the complex ball of
issues that made Atlanta's transformation into a ‘Major League’
sports town so unexpectedly (and maddeningly) difficult. A
fascinating look at the way professional sports collided with
politics, economics, and social upheaval in the 1960s and 1970s,
Loserville also serves as a cautionary tale for any
twenty-first-century city that’s hoping to land its own MLB, NFL,
NBA, or NHL franchise. In other words, be careful what you wish
for!”—Dan Epstein, author of Big Hair and Plastic Grass: A Funky
Ride Through Baseball and America in the Swinging ’70s
“In Loserville Clayton Trutor uses painstaking research and
impressive command of Atlanta’s political and racial history to
depict the birth of a modern American sports town. Only this
creation story comes with a surprising twist. Build it and they
will come? Think again.”—John Eisenberg, author of The League: How
Five Rivals Created the NFL and Launched a Sports Empire
“As a baseball historian and writer since 1969, and as a fan of the
Braves since 1957, I loved every page of Loserville, a well-crafted
and well-researched history of both Atlanta and its sports teams. I
especially enjoyed reliving the roller-coaster ride the baseball
team took from its arrival in 1966 through its dismal years as the
Bad News Braves, with attendance so poor that it took Ted Turner to
keep the team in town—and eventually in national view via TBS and
some shrewd acquisitions. I like the place and the book.”—Dan
Schlossberg, author of When the Braves Ruled the Diamond: Fourteen
Flags Over Atlanta
“Loserville is a fascinating history of Atlanta’s emergence as the
epicenter of Sunbelt sports. . . . In a revealing portrait of
Atlanta and the ground-shifting changes in American sports, Trutor
demonstrates how the age of franchise free agency collided with the
political fracturing of a divided city. Anyone interested in the
history of American sports, the South, or Atlanta should read this
book.”—Johnny Smith, Julius C. “Bud” Shaw Professor of Sports
History at the Georgia Institute of Technology and author
of The Sons of Westwood: John Wooden, UCLA, and the Dynasty that
Changed College Basketball
“There is no other word than masterful to describe Clayton Trutor’s
Loserville, the exhaustively researched and beautifully written
story of the big-league burning of Atlanta. He tells the cautionary
tale of well-meaning town fathers, eager to show off a Southern
city ‘too busy to hate,’ determined at all costs to bring their
city top-level professional sports franchises. But they sadly
didn’t quite get what they bargained for. Along the way, they lost
their charm, their innocence, and a whole lot of money as they
rolled out the red carpet for four franchises that took them into
the future but never quite measured up.”—Jack Gilden, author of
Collision of Wills: Johnny Unitas, Don Shula, and the Rise of the
Modern NFL
"A brilliant look at the intricate ways sports and politics are
intertwined."—Publishers Weekly, starred review
"Every Atlanta sports fan should read this book."—David
Schiele, WBIR-TV Knoxville
"If one enjoys reading about the business side of sports mixed in
with social issues, this is an excellent choice."—Lance
Smith, Guy Who Reviews Sports Books
"Loserville is a well-researched and important contribution to
sports history and the history of the Sun Belt."—Seth S.
Tannenbaum, Journal of Southern History
"As a broad case study of Atlanta's decision to bring major sports
to the city, Loserville is engaging and useful to academics as well
as baseball fans. . . . Loserville, quite simply, is a
winner."—Thomas Wolf, NINE: A Journal of Baseball History and
Culture
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