We’ll never again have a team quite like Braves’ Ted Turner and Bobby Cox

“It was a done deal,” Hope told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Saturday.

Ted Turner stepped in.

The Atlanta entrepreneur had a vested interest in buying the team from the ownership group headed by Bill Bartholomay, which wanted a buyer who would keep the team in town. As the owner of the TV station that was broadcasting Braves games, he didn’t want his programming to leave town.

“But it was also the thing that stabilized the Braves in Atlanta,” Hope said. “There was no longer this feeling of, attendance isn’t great, maybe it was a bad idea to come to the South, there was no tradition of Major League Baseball in the South. And just all the doubts went away with Ted.

“And Ted got out front and he made the Braves relevant.”

It took years and many steps, not the least of which was his televising the team on a nightly basis in front of the nation on TBS.

But among his best decisions was hiring Bobby Cox, a manager whom Turner was so enamored with that he hired him twice. Under Cox’s peerless managership in his second tenure, the Braves’ success — 14 consecutive division titles and the city’s first World Series title — was unmatched in MLB history.

Both men died this week, Turner on Wednesday at the age of 87 and Cox on Saturday at the age of 84.

It was the sort of twist that leaves us grasping for meaning.

Whatever truth is to be found in it, the following is incontrovertible. It would seem a near impossibility for another two-person team to have a greater impact on sports in Atlanta than Turner and Cox.

Turner was the dynamic owner who stopped at nothing to support the team. Cox was the steady skipper who delivered Atlanta — a fan base whose sporting history is draped in heartache and failure — its most consistent winner, and arguably its grandest moment, the 1995 World Series championship.

“And they also did it right,” said Hope, who, as the team PR director, executive or board member, was there for just about all of it.

That Turner bought the team and kept it in Atlanta was, of course, only the start.

Among other decisions, he hired Cox for the first time, before the 1978 season. Hope recalled how the prevailing wisdom at the time was that in order to win, teams needed managers to be stern.

Cox believed in treating people the right way. And a team that had been separated by cliques responded.

“With Bobby, he just had this incredible ability to get people to play together and support each other,” Hope said.

While Turner ultimately fired Cox after the 1981 season, he didn’t forget. He called the dismissal his biggest baseball mistake. Turner brought him back to be his general manager after the 1985 season. Cox came back down to the field during the 1990 season and stayed there until he retired after the 2010 season.

Turner sold the team in 1996.

Some of the greatest moments in Atlanta sports history took place during that span, with Cox leading from the dugout and Turner from the owner’s box.

“I think (Turner) was very good at seeing the capability of someone and supporting that capability,” said Hope, a confidant of Turner’s.

Turner bought the team and prevented it from moving and then remained committed through lean years to build a winner.

First, as the general manager who established the team’s pitching-first approach, and then, as the manager who guided a talented roster to historic success with a people-first style, Cox set the course that the franchise continues to follow today.

Think of all of the joy, thrills and memories they helped create for millions of Atlantans, Georgians and Braves fans everywhere, past and present.

It’s not difficult to conclude that none of that ever happens without them.

Gone, but hopefully never to be forgotten.

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