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.
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I I I HOSPITAL I Wlan.
I Brenda and Larry I I I
■ Thompson I I I
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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
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