Loserville: How Professional Sports Remade Atlanta―and How Atlanta Remade Professional Sports Hardcover – February 1, 2022

Clayton Trutor’s impeccably researched book on sports in Atlanta is a must read. He weaves a fascinating story, telling how Atlanta went from having no major league sports as late as 1966 to having all four major sports - baseball, football, basketball, and hockey - only 6 years later. The successes and failures of these franchises, and their effects on the city and vice versa is well told in this book. Highly recommend.

Clayton Trutor's excellent new book LOSERVILLE offers a thorough and compelling study of Atlanta's execution of a strategy to bring major sports teams to the city in the mid-to-late 1960s. Trutor tells the story of how a coalition of Atlanta's civic leaders--white and Black --successfully recruited major league teams--MLB, NFL, NBA, and NHL--to the city. With an historian's perspective on the various social and economic issues at play, Trutor delivers keen insights and observations about a variety of issues: tax policy, racial divisions, urban housing, public transportation. This broad and well-researched case study is engaging, well written, thought provoking, and compelling. It should be of interest to serious scholars as well as sports fans. Highly recommended.

This book could be used as required reading for a high school or college history class. Clayton Trutor's exhaustively researched book exposes the racism and broken promises made by stadium builders, developers, and city officials which led to the displacement of Atlanta's inner-city minority population in order for ballparks and stadiums to be built. The book also focuses on the good, the bad, and the ugly of the first decade of the Braves, Falcons, Hawks, and Flames franchises in Atlanta. Kudos to Mr. Trutor for a fine piece of work!

When I first pre-ordered this book, I wasn't expecting the work of a professional historian. Yet that's what it is, and a delightful one at that. I grew up in Atlanta a diehard fan of the Braves, as well as (to a lesser extent) the Falcons and Hawks, before going on to academia myself. I appreciate the way in which the author weaves local sports history with broader political and social forces at work in an era that made Atlanta what it is today.

Excellent book!

Loserville is an excellent panoramic history of the city of Atlanta during the 20th century and specifically, how the city’s leaders attracted professional sports franchises beginning in the 1960s and the lasting impacts. There are quite a bit of racial, socioeconomic and political factors in Atlanta sports history.As Trutor notes, Atlanta was seen in the 1920s as providing African Americans “with the greatest number of economic and educational opportunities.” Former Mayor William Hartsfield formed a powerful biracial coalition between the Atlanta Chamber leaders (largely white business owners) and the Black business owners, many of whom resided on Auburn Avenue. This formula worked well for many of Hartsfield’s successors. While Atlanta’s only nationwide brand in the 1920s was Coca-Cola, the city headquartered some of the region’s largest banks and the region’s busiest airport by 1960.One of the more intriguing aspects of Trutor’s book is how Atlanta set the precedent for what he terms a Sunbelt city to lure sports franchises away from struggling Rustbelt cities with lucrative offers of public support. For Trutor, a Sunbelt city basically any one along the coast in the Southeast or the West. Interestingly, I never considered that 75 percent of franchise relocations and league expansions have occurred after 1966 (the year the Braves franchise relocated from Milwaukee to Atlanta). Atlanta’s business and political leaders secured investments that led to Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium for the Braves and Falcons franchises and later The Omni, the home of both the Hawks and Flames franchises (what is it about Atlanta attempting to host a professional hockey team).As Trutor points out, unfortunately professional sports sometimes only shined a brighter light on social divisions, rather than providing relief as the city’s leaders had hoped. Sometimes Atlanta sports fans get a bad rap, but as Trutor points out, Atlanta sports fans are simply more discerning than sports fans in the northeast. Until very recently, they haven’t had a lot to cheer about. Rightfully, Trutor focuses on the Truist Park controversy, for which I have mixed feelings. I can’t say I’m a fan of a ballpark built way out in the suburbs, but I will admit that watching the Braves play before a raucous crowd during the 2021 World Series felt a lot better than seeing them play before a stadium that had more Yankees fans than Braves fans (see 2000 World Series). One thing I wish the author had delved into more deeply is the fact that Atlanta has a huge transplant population, which has had a huge impact on the fanbase. Looking at this history more fully would have been worthwhile, as I think this plays a role in the fans’ fickle nature, too.That said, Trutor has written a fascinating history that should appeal to students of Atlanta history, as well as students of sports history. Cities like Tampa Bay, San Diego and even Seattle borrowed parts of the blueprint from Atlanta. It is written in an accessible style, although it is well-referenced, too.

Having spent my formative years as a person and a sports fan in the Atlanta area of the 1970s, I looked forward to this book, and it was worth waiting for. Trutor manages to bring sports, business, economics, social history, and politics together in a lively read that is timely and nostalgic and illuminating all at once. Classroom teachers should take note: This would be fun and useful required reading in several different courses.