Sport: TWO FOR THE SHOW

• Share

The youngest owner in the major leagues was watching his team in a preseason game last month when Atlanta Braves Pitcher Adrian Devine balked with two men on. As the runners casually advanced, R.E. ("Ted") Turner III, 37, jumped to his feet. "Where are those guys going?" he demanded. "The pitcher balked," someone explained. Turner sat down. Then, after a moment of silence, he asked: "What the hell is a balk?"

Andy Messersmith's new employer may have something to learn about baseball, but he is already an expert on winning. After inheriting his father's outdoor billboard agency when he was 24, Turner built it into a million-dollar communications business, with TV stations in Atlanta and Charlotte, N.C. that mainly broadcast syndicated shows, sports events and movies. He also races sailboats well enough to have been named Yachtsman of the Year in 1970 and 1973, and to have skippered Mariner in the 1974 America's Cup trials. "I'd rather sink than lose" is his shipboard motto, and crews can attest that "Terrible Ted" means it. But Turner does not look for easy victories. He bought American Eagle, a proven failure in two America's Cup trials, refitted her and skippered her to a series of impressive victories in the rugged Southern Ocean Racing Conference in 1970.

What he did with Eagle, he will try to do with the Braves, who finished three games out of last place in the National League's Western division last season. Turner bought the team in January for $10 million, partly, he said, because he was tired of Atlanta being called "Losersville, U.S.A." Now he introduces himself on a local TV commercial as "the frightened new owner of the Atlanta Braves." Dry land athletic competition may be a new game for Turner, but of one thing he is certain: "The principles in sailing and baseball are the same. You go at it to win, and you do so with as much style and grace as you can muster." Bill Veeck could not have said it better.

In spirit, at least, baseball's youngest owner is surely not Turner, but Veeck. At 62, Veeck has returned from the baseball purgatory to which he was assigned when he gave up the White Sox in 1961. Prior to that, he owned the Cleveland Indians, the Milwaukee Brewers (when they were a minor league team), the St. Louis Browns, and the hearts of fans. When it comes to promotion—and rocking boats—he is baseball's alltime MVP. American League owners tried hard to keep Veeck locked out of baseball last December by imposing stiff conditions on his offer to purchase the all but bankrupt White Sox for $10 million.

They failed, and already have suffered the consequences. In March, when the owners voted 23 to 1 to lock the spring training camps, the one was Veeck. ("That's the usual tally," he says.) A few days later, he unveiled the new White Sox warm weather uniform—short pants. On opening day, peg-legged Veeck (he lost his leg as a result of a 1943 war wound) choreographed some Bicentennial foofaraw and greeted his crowd as the fife player in a fetching patriotic ceremony. Marching across the field with him were Business Manager Rudie Schaffer on drum and stern Sox Manager Paul Richards bearing the flag, both as resplendent as Veeck in Revolutionary War costumes.