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DUN MARCH 2021 ■ www.ReporterNewspapers.net Commentary | 17 Joe Earle is editor- at-large at Reporter Newspapers and has lived in metro Atlanta for over30 years. He can he reached at joeearlefa) reportemewspapers.net As Abe Schear tells it, his introduction to major league baseball bears the classic marks of a 1950s boyhood. Schear grew up in a small Ohio city and cheered the Cincinnati Reds. He collect ed baseball and put extra cards into the spokes of his bike wheels to create that spe cial rattle and roar as he rolled along. He read about baseball every day in his home town newspapers and stayed up at night listening to games on a transistor radio he’d snuck into bed. “I was listening to games when I was supposed to be asleep, with the radio under my pillow,” Schear recalled recently. “Baseball took me to faraway cities. Baseball was my view into the rest of the world when I was a little boy.” Schear, now 69, is a real estate lawyer with the Atlanta firm of Arnall Golden Gregory. After graduating from Emory University and its law school, he stayed in At lanta, where he discovered, and got interested in, a new and different kind of base ball story. For the past two decades, he’s recorded Atlanta’s baseball history through a series of one-on-one interviews with players, politicians, league officials and fans. He circulates them in a newsletter called “Baseball Digest.” During many of the years Schear was listening to ball games on that radio be neath his pillow, Atlanta was a minor-league town. The Atlanta Crackers (and the Black Crackers) played at Ponce de Leon Stadium, a romantic old ballpark across from the huge Sears, Roebuck & Co. building (now Ponce City Market). Freight trains rolled past (on tracks where people now stroll the BeltLine). A mag nolia tree grew in the outfield. (Although the park is gone, the tree’s still there.) Then, in the 1960s and 1970s, Atlanta, like a base-stealer headed to second, kicked it into a higher gear and raced to be come a new kind of city. Atlanta didn’t just get bigger, it got bet ter known and became a place people wanted to be. Sports played a big part in Atlanta’s new image. In the middle 1960s, the football Fal cons and basketball Hawks set up shop in Atlanta. The Braves moved to town (after years in Boston and Milwaukee) and in ., _ , , , rl 1966 played their first game in a Abe Schear, the author of the , , , , “Baseball Digest” newsletter. new stadium that the city s pro moters had dreamed up to lure a team. Things didn’t end there. In 1970, Mohammad Ali made his comeback in Atlanta after years of boxing exile. The Braves showcased Henry Aaron, one of the greatest players of all time and who, in 1974, would break Babe Ruth’s homerun record dur ing a game in Atlanta. In the years since, Atlanta has hosted Super Bowls, the World Series, Major League Baseball’s and the NBA’s all-star games, and the NCAA’s Final Four. In 1996, the Olympics raised its flag over the town. Atlanta’s evolution into a big city wasn’t an accident. As Schear and others have written, the city’s changes followed a plan conjured by local boosters who sought to raise the city’s business profile internationally. Sports played a big part. Those ear ly boosters wanted to lure major league teams to Atlanta so their city’s name would appear every day in the sports sections of other cities’ newspapers. Schear thought it would make an interesting project to learn about and record Atlanta’s baseball history. “I knew that my friends would much rather read about baseball than about real estate leasing,” he wrote recently in what he says may be among his last articles. Over two decades, he interviewed about 80 local community and baseball lead ers. He shared his Q-and-A’s with friends and law partners and self-published a book containing about 30 pieces called “I Remember When: A Collection of Memories from Baseball’s Biggest Fans.” Some articles are posted on law firm webpage at agg. Around Town * ^ X.* 1 ,.»... • w 3- \F A baseball fan’s newsletter recalls how Atlanta became a major league city com/professionals/abe-schear. His sub jects ranged from Atlanta business and political leaders such as Jimmy Carter, John Lewis, Judge Griffin Bell and Her man Russell, to great ballplayers such as Phil Niekro and Tom Glavine. “The story of baseball in Atlanta is told by so many people. You come up with so many answers,” Schear said. “I’ll never forget that when I asked President Cart er what was the best thing about going to see the Crackers, he said the best thing was going to Sears after the game to buy something. In Plains, you could only get stuff in the mail.” Big-league baseball is set to return April 1. Last season, of course, we fans were stuck at home because of the pan demic and watched and listened from our couches as our major league teams took us to faraway cities. And we bought stuff online that was delivered to our doorsteps. Perhaps, unlike Atlanta, some things really haven’t changed all that much. “I was listening to games when I was supposed to he asleep, with the radio under mg pillow. Baseball took me to faraway cities. Baseball was mg view into the rest of the world when I was a little bog.” ABE SCHEAR University of Georgia This exhibition is co-organized by the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, and the Portland Museum of Art, Maine. NATIONAL TOUR SPONSORSHIP PROVIDED BY BANK OF AMERICA 'Kr I endowmentsMII* | A DE LTA | northside | ....vk I I I HOSPITAL I Wlan. I Brenda and Larry I I I ■ Thompson I I I BENEFACTOR EXHIBITION SERIES SUPPORTERS Anne Cox Chambers Foundation, Robin and Hilton Howell AMBASSADOR EXHIBITION SERIES SUPPORTERS The Antinori Foundation, Corporate Environments, Louise Sams and Jerome Grilhot CONTRIBUTING EXHIBITION SERIES SUPPORTERS Farideh and Al Azadi, Sandra and Dan Baldwin, Lucinda W. Bunnen, Marcia and John Donnell, Mrs. Fay S. Howell/The Howell Fund, Mr. and Mrs. Baxter Jones, The Arthur R. and Ruth D. Lautz Charitable Foundation, Joel Knox and Joan Marmo, Margot and Danny McCaul, The Ron and Lisa Brill Family Charitable Trust, and The Fred and Rita Richman Fund GENEROUS SUPPORT IS ALSO PROVIDED BY Alfred and Adele Davis Exhibition Endowment Fund, Anne Cox Chambers Exhibition Fund, Barbara Stewart Exhibition Fund, Dorothy Smith Hopkins Exhibition Endowment Fund, Eleanor McDonald Storza Exhibition Endowment Fund, The Fay and Barrett Howell Exhibition Fund, Forward Arts Foundation Exhibition Endowment Fund, Helen S. Lanier Endowment Fund, Isobel Anne Fraser-Nancy Fraser Parker Exhibition Endowment Fund, John H. and Wilhelmina D. Harland Exhibition Endowment Fund, Katherine Murphy Riley Special Exhibition Endowment Fund, Margaretta Taylor Exhibition Fund, and the RJR Nabisco Exhibition Endowment Fund David Driskell (American, 1931-2020), Homage to Romare, 1976, collage and gouache on Masonite, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, Arthur and Margaret Glasgow Endowment, 2017.3. Photograph by Travis Fullerton. © Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. © Estate of David C. Driskell and courtesy of DC Moore Gallery, New York. Icons of Nature and History David Driskell HIGH MUSEUM OF ART | FEB. 6-MAY 9 | HIGH.ORG PREMIER EXHIBITION SERIES SUPPORTERS Sarah and Jim Kennedy NATIONAL £«QTP ENDOWMENT .-HU 10 BANK OF AMERICA A D E LTA
