SEEING THE FIELD
Why Not Atlanta?
Why not here?
Why not rebuild from the ashes? Why not turn a railroad town into a regional city? Why not make a regional city into a global one? Why not host the Centennial Olympic Games? Why not turn a last-place baseball team into a generational dynasty? Why not continually reinvent yourself into the South’s empire state—while maintaining the customs, culture, and history that give your city its soul?
Atlanta wasn’t the South’s obvious choice for its commerce and cultural capital.
First came the elegant coastal cities of Charleston and Savannah. Then the Louisiana Purchase gave rise to New Orleans, once the wealthiest city in America and the birthplace jazz. Even well into the 1950s, Atlanta and Birmingham were still comparable in size, economic output, and importance.
But what distinguished Atlanta from the beginning was its commitment to reinvention — and the industriousness, courage, and pluck required of its people willing to do so. That instinct kept the door open for those more interested in propulsion than preservation.
That willingness to evolve — to welcome ambition, outsiders, money, media, music, commerce, and reinvention — is not a recent development. It’s baked into the city’s character.
And yet Atlanta has never fully lost its Southern soul. The accent may be harder to find now. The skyline may keep changing. The old houses may sit beside new glass, new money, new studios, new restaurants, and new versions of what the city thinks it is becoming.
But the deeper code remains: hospitality and hustle, manners and ambition, creativity and commerce, growth and a stubborn devotion to its trees, rivers, neighborhoods, and quality of life.
Seemingly contradictory, perhaps — but together, they give the city its distinctive character and beauty.
Atlanta embodies rootedness and reinvention. That’s part of why it’s home for me. Not just the place I live, but the place where I took the shreds of early roots and constructed new ones — through friendships, family ties, work, memory, chosen belonging, and decades of accumulated experience. I recognized myself in the city: a belief in the power of reinvention, paired with the knowledge that some things aren’t for sale at any price.
The city embodies rootedness and reinvention. And that’s a reason why it’s home for me. Not just where I live, but where I took shreds of early roots and constructed new ones to form a lifelong connection as deep as a Georgia Live Oak. In addition to decades of meaningful relationships, experiences, and memories—I saw much of myself in the character of the city, one that sees the power in reinventing yourself while knowing there are some things you don’t sell for any price.
Last week, Atlanta lost two men who helped define that spirit—and left an indelible mark on our city.
Ted Turner made Atlanta feel like the center of the media universe before anyone else believed it could be. He launched CNN here in 1980 with the revolutionary idea of the 24-hour news cycle. At the time, all major networks and media were in New York. But he believed in his city.
The brash, confident Turner asked, “Why not Atlanta?”
He owned the Braves, built cable empires, saved bison from the verge of extinction, and left his fingerprints on everything from American television to land conservation. He went broke multiple times before building all this; Atlanta’s reinvention, ambition, and Southern swagger personified. Turner died May 6 at age 87.
Bobby Cox, meanwhile, gave Atlanta (and the South) one of its great unifying pasttimes: Braves baseball. Fourteen straight division titles. Five National League pennants. The 1995 World Series. A dugout presence that felt fiery, principled, loyal, and unmistakably ours. Bobby Cox didn’t just lead the Atlanta Braves, he was the Braves. Cox died May 9 at age 84.
Cox answered in another language: build the system, set the standard, protect your people, show up every day, and let winning become a culture.
Turner: reinvention & pluck. Cox: rooted & loyal.
That’s Atlanta at its best.
Tradition and reinvention.
Old codes and new money.
Southern roots and global ambition.
Manners and hustle.
Memory and motion.
The city too busy to stay still, but too Southern to become rootless.
This week, we follow that thread.
From Margaret Mitchell, Asa Candler, Bobby Jones, and Dr. King who first elevated the city.
To Billy Payne, Art Blank…Ted Turner and Bobby Cox—who took Atlanta to a level previously unfathomable.
This Week Inside The Magnolia League
The Archives — Coca-Cola, Bobby Jones’ Grand Slam, 1996 Olympics, and the moments that put Atlanta on the world stage.
The Next Frontier — Remembering Ted Turner, the Atlanta-sized media outlaw who put CNN, cable television, the Braves, bison conservation, and audacious civic self-belief into the national imagination.
The Clubhouse — Remembering Bobby Cox, the Braves skipper who built one of baseball’s great modern dynasties through standards, loyalty, player development, and old-school leadership.
The Lodge — Turner didn’t just transform media, he was one of our best land stewards. Today you can stay at some of these remarkable properties—from rustic ranch luxury in New Mexico to the Turner family beach house in St. Phillips Island, SC.
The Joint — Atlanta’s self-made music tradition, from blues and country to OutKast, Ludacris, Zac Brown, John Mayer, and the restless creative engine that keeps the city moving.
The Pro Shop — Atlanta-coded objects and escapes: Sid Mashburn style, Braves gear, Turner’s rustic-luxury conservation world where you can stay.
People. History. Timeless Classics.
THE ARCHIVES
Atlanta Announces Itself to the World
That is Atlanta in five scenes:
The magic formula and global brand creates the New South’s oldest money.
The gentleman champion restores Southern pride and introduces America to golf.
The media renegade gives a finger to the establishment and says “Why Not Atlanta?”
The baseball dynasty finally arrives after years of heartbreak.
The dream is realized as the Olympics symbolize Atlanta’s arrival on the global stage.
These scenes tell the story of Atlanta’s drive, to make it’s mark on the world:
Coca-Cola: The city’s most famous export and one of the clearest examples of Atlanta’s commercial imagination. What began as a pharmaceutical “tonic” became a global brand, icon, and symbol of American optimism—while becoming the South’s first true post-war wealth engine.
Bobby Jones’ Homecoming: After winning golf’s Grand Slam 1930, the hero triumphantly returned home. Jones was more than an athlete: he was a native son who embodied our best traits. Discipline, grace, mastery—a storybook Southern gentleman. Jones gave Atlanta a sporting icon, rooted in tradition, that restored pride and fueled the city’s greater ambitions.
Ted Turner on 60 Minutes in 1986: Already running CNN, owner of the Braves, and bending the media business to his will—we find Turner on the brink of the MGM takeover that spawned the TBS Superstation. A man selling the future; daring you to laugh at him before he proves you wrong. If Jones represented Atlanta’s old code, Turner represented its new bravado.
Braves Clinch the 1995 World Series: Finally. The release after years of almosts, division titles, and heartbreaking runner-up finishes. But we had the steady leadership of Bobby Cox. For a generation of Atlantans, that team wasn’t just a baseball team. It was identity; proof that after all the heartbreak, this was indeed a city of champions.
Muhammad Ali Lights the Torch at the 1996 Olympics: It remains one of the greatest moments in American sports. Ali’s trembling hand lights a steady flame to set the global stage. Atlanta spent decades insisting it belonged in the national conversation. Many felt it was delusional to even attempt Olympic bid—the centennial games at that. It appeared a shoe-in for Athens. But the duo of Billy Payne and Andrew Young believed. And that night the whole world had to look as Atlanta had finally, indisputably arrived.
The core tension — tradition x reinvention — is not theoretical here. Atlanta lives it every day. It remembers, but it does not sit still. It honors the past, but it is rarely content to preserve it untouched.
Philosophy. Improvement. Growth.
THE NEXT FRONTIER
Ted Turner saw himself in Atlanta, and built the vision for what he knew it could become.
When Turner launched CNN, he not only had to convince critics on the feasibility of a 24-hour news network—but also that Atlanta was a viable location for the headquarters.
The major news networks and media powers were all in New York. Atlanta was a respectable regional city, sure. But people “...couldn’t see how an operation like this could be run from a place like Atlanta,” said Tuner in his 2008 autobiography.
Turner didn’t seem to care: “When I’d hear that, I’d think ‘Why not Atlanta?’”
That was part of the genius. He had exceptional vision and confidence that he, and his city, could build that vision—and he didn’t wait for permission.
Why not Atlanta? Why not turn his dad’s sleepy billboard business into a global media empire? Why not the Braves? Why not save the great American bison? Why not blow cigar smoke in the blue-blazered America’s Cup establishment after emerging victorious?
CNN changed how the world consumed news. TBS pioneered cable TV and made the Braves “America’s Team.” But the Turner story is far bigger than media.
Turner was not just the mouthy cable cowboy. He was also a conservationist, sports owner, philanthropist, “Captain Courageous” sailor, rancher, showman, and one of America’s great land stewards.
He’s credited more than any other with saving America’s National Mammal, the bison, from extinction.
Proving bison could be raised sustainably on a large scale, Turner once owned about 11% of the world's entire bison population.
Atlanta found a kindred spirit in Turner because he embodied the best version of its core values: you can build your wildest ambitions into a reality, without forgetting where you came from.
Ted Turner was reinvention with roots. And he was ours, no matter what happened.
Sporting. Golf. Outdoors.
THE CLUBHOUSE
Bobby Cox and the Braves Standard
For a lot of people, Bobby Cox was the Atlanta Braves.
He certainly was for me.
I remember hearing the ‘95 World Series score announced by the pilot during a flight to Atlanta as a kid, and cheering with passengers. I remember my first game at Turner Field in 7th grade, sitting close enough to hear Maddux cuss himself out. And the rhythm of Braves baseball followed me into adulthood: buying boiled peanuts on the walk to the ballpark on summer nights, seeing Turner evolve into Truist, the icons from Chipper to Freddie to naming my dog Dansby, the chop—and the grounding presence in the dugout.
For all those years, there was Bobby.
Cox’s stats are absurd in hindsight: 14 straight division titles, five NL pennants, one World Series title, 2,504 wins as a manager, Cooperstown induction, and the most remarkable stretch of sustained success in baseball—if not all of sports.
But the numbers are only part of it.
Cox understood winning is cultural before it is tactical. And creating a winning culture starts with the seeds you plant in the farm system.
When he first took the Atlanta job in 1978, he inherited a struggling franchise. Later, as GM and then returning as skipper, he built the infrastructure that made the Braves the Braves: the farm system, scouting, player development, homegrown talent, pitching, high standards and a shared way of doing things—that created the winning culture.
The farm system mattered. The culture mattered. The expectations mattered.
That part gets lost in highlight reels. The Braves didn’t simply have stars. They had a system that produced them, supported them, protected them, and ingrained a set of values.
Cox was known for his intensity. His 158 ejections were more than any manager in baseball history. Though typically deserved, many were the byproduct of fierce loyalty. He fought for his players. He took the heat. He protected the clubhouse.
And yet he was also remembered as a player’s manager. Loyal. Fair. Direct. Old-school without being small-hearted. Demanding without making himself the story.
The early Cox rules tell you something: no beards, no pants covering shoe tops, be on time, play hard. He relaxed the beard rule over time, but not the standard. Under Cox, you did not fail to run out a ground ball. You did not coast. You did not make yourself bigger than the game.
Bobby Cox practiced what he preached, an embodiment of a rare type of leadership: set the tone, protect your people, stay out of the spotlight, keep showing up, and play for something bigger than yourself.
Cox led in a very different way than Ted Turner. But collectively they embody Atlanta’s core contradiction, tradition vs. reinvention, and remind us why we need both. Cox kept us rooted as things changed rapidly, and gave us a grounding core as steady as the Braves division title year after year.
Travel. Culture. Connection.
THE LODGE
A Vision as Vast as the West
Long before he shaped global media and Atlanta’s skyline, Ted Turner was a boy captivated by a photograph in National Geographic: an image of the American bison.
The powerful symbol of the American West, which once jolted the plains with its vast numbers, then nearly vanished. That photograph sparked a lifelong conviction—that the wild could be lost, but called back.
Just as he asked, “Why not Atlanta.” Turner saw the bison, a symbol of all our wildness, and asked, “Why not restore it?”
And he did.
Turner became one of America’s great private landowners and conservationists. Restoring two million wild acres through a vision connecting business, ecology, sporting life, and hospitality—both protecting the landscapes and allowing people to experience them not as scenergy but as an active particuipant in the resotration.
I’d recommend checking out all of Turner’s ranches and land holdings, but we’re going to focus on places where you can actually experience it:
St. Phillips Island, SC: The island is a 4,680-acre undeveloped barrier island off Beaufort, South Carolina, accessible only by boat. Turner bought it in 1979 to preserve it as an unspoiled natural environment and protect it from development. In 2017, South Carolina purchased the island, and it is now operated with Hunting Island State Park—another place I love and where took my groomsmen on the morning of my wedding.
The Turner House served as the family beach retreat for decades and now accommodates up to 10 guests, with beach access, fishing gear, trails, kayaks, bicycles, golf carts, a screened porch, and a boat-only arrival that’s a fitting way to enter the wild of the South Carolina lowcountry
Learn more about booking the house in The Pro Shop section of this issue.
Vermejo - New Mexico’s Natural Masterpiece: Turner’s grand Western expression, set on over half a million acres of rewiled solitude in the northern part of the state. Larger than most national parks, this private luxury resort is filled with alpine tundra, grasslands, lakes, streams, bison, elk, horseback exploration, fly fishing the Rio Grande, North American wildlife safaris, spa recovery, and historic lodging ranging from cottages to mountain cabins and a turn-of-the-century mansion. This is not rustic luxury as an aesthetic. It provides a new definition of “rustic” and “luxury” as you become an active participant in the stewardship of this majestic landscape.
That is where Turner becomes more interesting than the caricature and provides valuable lessons.
Tradition is not just preserving what remains. Sometimes upholding tradition means restoring what was almost lost. And reinvention is not always burning the boats and tearing off the rearview mirror. Sometimes it means reinventing traditions to keep them alive; bring them back in a better way and letting go of what needs to be left behind.
Sometimes it’s bison returning to grassland. A barrier island kept wild. A house you built for timeless family traditions that you never got to experience growing up.
Music. Storytelling. After Hours.
THE JOINT
The South Had Something to Say
Atlanta’s music story is usually told through hip-hop. Fair enough. The city became one of the defining rap capitals of the world, and André 3000’s famous declaration at the 1995 Source Awards — “The South got something to say” — still feels like one of the great cultural turning points in modern Southern identity. Explore Georgia traces Atlanta’s most cohesive modern musical identity to that moment, when OutKast disrupted the old East Coast/West Coast frame and made the South impossible to ignore.
But Atlanta’s sound is bigger than one genre.
Blind Willie McTell gave the city one of its early blues ghosts—still haunting one of the nation’s best blue clubs in Virginia Highland. Ray Charles made “Georgia on My Mind” feel like unofficial scripture. Alan Jackson and Travis Tritt carried country out of the metro area. The Black Crowes gave Atlanta a loose, swaggering rock-and-roll edge. John Mayer passed through the city’s singer-songwriter orbit. Zac Brown Band made Southern musicianship feel communal and expansive. Then came OutKast, Goodie Mob, Ludacris, T.I., Ciara, Usher’s Atlanta chapter, Future, Migos, and the trap ecosystem that reshaped popular music.
The throughline is not genre. It’s self-invention. It’s ambition. It’s embracing your roots while creating something totally new.
Atlanta Magazine recently described the city as a place of “self-made music superstars,” which feels exactly right: artists here have always seemed less interested in asking permission from the old cultural capitals than in building their their own sound.
Products. Brands. Craftsmanship.
THE PRO SHOP
The Atlanta Code
A few ways to carry this week’s issue into the real world.
Sid Mashburn
Just went to Sid’s warehouse sale here in Atlanta. It reminded me that Mashburn holds up as our city’s best expression of modern Southern style: polished but not stiff, timeless but evolved, luxury but pragmatic. Mashburn understands the city’s sweet spot — old codes, purposeful reinvention, and Southern swagger.
Buy for: the Atlanta uniform — sport coat, oxford, loafers, good denim, better proportions. And, with stores from LA to New York, this represents another great Atlanta export to add to the list.
Check out the original in Atlanta’s Westside, or shop online below.
Ted Turner Reserves / Vermejo
For the wilder version of the Turner legacy, look west. Turner’s ranch properties connect rustic luxury with conservation, bison, fishing, hunting, ecotourism, and big-land stewardship. Vermejo in New Mexico is probably the purest expression: old West scale, restored ecosystems, sporting life, and Turner’s belief that business and conservation could share the same land.
Book for: bison, trout, sky, silence, and the kind of trip that recalibrates a man.
St. Phillips Island, SC: The Turner House
A Georgia coast classic with Turner-adjacent appeal: quiet, ecological, remote, and deeply rooted in the coastal sporting tradition. Less scene, more place. The kind of destination that reminds you luxury does not always need to announce itself.
Book for: barrier-island quiet, birds, salt air, and the old Southern art of disappearing properly.
Atlanta Braves: Chop Rope Hat
Pay homage to the Braves and Bobby with this rope hat that’s made locally from an Etsy shop here in Georgia.
Buy for: remembering the skipper.
A Final Note
THE LAST WORD
“Do something. Either lead, follow or get out of the way.”
Written from the American South.
