Scooter and Shamu

By John Pierce

With the baseball season slipping painfully away — carrying dashed hopes for postseason play in Atlanta — the franchise is seeking to turn fans' attention to the future. The newly named and yet-to-be-built SunTrust Park looks great.

But my excitement is dampened by the uninspired and uninspiring play of the Braves this season. So I prefer to look backward rather than ahead just yet.

(Note: I paid for the improbable postseason ticket strips at the time — and will attend most of the remaining, meaningless games.  So I’m not a fair-weather fan. That’s why it creates pain and requires processing.)

Before 1991, we never really expected to be heading to the stadium in October. It was a year most Atlantans (of a certain age range) will never forget.

But the lowly baseball team that had ended the previous season in the division cellar got on a roll. Florida State football showboat Deion Sanders joined the team and a couple of fans’ spontaneous tomahawk chant soon became a stadium-wide sensation.

By season end, Braves fans were making plans to attend the city’s first-ever World Series.

Winning builds excitement and draws crowds. Foam tomahawks showed up the hands of statuary dignitaries around the state capitol. And the often-ignored Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium became the social place to be.

Playoff tickets were a treasured commodity. Before StubHub and other online outlets, scalpers hawked the few highly-inflated tickets on street corners around the stadium.

Walter "Scooter" Brown watching the 2014 Braves

Then the Braves announced that a very few remaining tickets would be put on sale on a first-come, first-served basis. I turned to one of the students with whom I had enjoyed this most remarkable “worst-to-first” season.

Walter “Scooter” Brown was a diehard fan and student at Southern Tech in Marietta. (Some may know it as Southern Technical Institute, Southern Technical College, Southern Polytechnic State University; just don’t call it Kennesaw State University in front of alumni.)

“I’ll buy the tickets if you will stand in line to get them,” I said to Scooter, who was always open to a challenge.

He recruited fellow student Russell Skelton — who still confesses to having to work very hard to make up for the class and lab work missed. They spent two, yes two, nights camped out in the ticket line.

The prize was finally grasped: tickets to post-season Braves baseball.

The old stadium was a round bowl designed for both baseball and football but not particularly good for either. It lacked the intimacy of the current (but soon to be former) Braves ballpark.

Fortunately, we were not in the highest, most remote seats in the stadium. We were one row in front of them — towering above the leftfield foul pole.

Through the top opening of the stadium, we could see Shamu the blimp — there to provide overhead views for the television audience. And we didn’t have to look up. Shamu was right there with us.

When a disputed call at third base erupted, we jokingly assured each other that we had seen David Justice’s toe touch the bag.

Recently, Scooter and I recalled and laughed about that time long ago. We did so from seats at Turner Field with a clear, close view of all the action.

I don’t want to go back to the cheap seats. But the memories sure are good.

But I sure hope to go back to October baseball in Atlanta again. Someday.