In response to some questions on the AthleticsNation board about the tomahawk chop/chant, i posted this reminiscence.  Then i though that some of you might be interested in this look at braves baseball circa 1991, so....here goes:

I noticed that during the A’s-Braves series several AN posters have commented about the tomahawk chop and chant.  As a long-time Atlanta resident who recently moved to the  east bay, I am pretty immune to the chop, and hadn’t realized it still had the power to shock.  While I don’t have any socio- or psychological insight into the nature of the chop, I was there the night it got started, and thought some of you might be interested in the story. 

This tale actually intersects with a subject near and dear to AN readers, the emergence and spread of the statistical analysis of baseball. While the Bill James movement was struggling to achieve critical mass in the early 1980s, the lack of access to detailed and complete baseball statistics was a chronic and frustrating problem.  In typically direct fashion, James asked people through his annual publication to adopt a pitch by pitch scoring he had developed and mail him the scorecards.  By the late ‘80s, the amateur scorer network, of which I was a part, had produced enough data that it seemed possible to turn it into a business.

Around 1990 or so, that business, STATS, Inc. scored its first big deal, a contract to provide information-rich box scores to _USA TODAY_.  Along with that deal came two perks for the scorers, a modest stipend for each game scored, and – far more exciting – a press box seat. Thus it was that on a late spring evening I was in the press box at the old Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium when a haunting ululation was heard throughout the park.  It was deep in extra innings and the crowd had thinned out, so it was easy to hear, but hard to decipher. 

I thought it might be some visiting Europeans doing a soccer chant, but it quickly turned out that it was actually some kids up from Florida State University, where fans of the football team, the Seminoles, had developed this cheer and its accompanying motion, a repeated, rhythmic first down signal, to root on their team.  It caught on like wildfire.  By the next night, the whole stadium had picked it up, and since it was the year when, after ten years of major suckage, the Braves emerged as the powerhouse they have been ever since, it became a civic phenomenon.  I don’t know if you have ever lived through a moment when an entire community becomes completely and nuttily obsessed with a sports team, but it’s really something.

Of course the morally questionable valence of the chop was immediately apparent, but there was no stopping it.  Still, as the playoffs approached, I began to anticipate what I assumed was going to be a chop-related moment of truth, the return of team owner Ted Turner.  This was the era when Ted had moved beyond being a big shot in Atlanta, and had emerged as a national player.  Specifically, he was hanging around Hollywood, buying ranches, and had acquired an A-list fiancee, none other than Jane Fonda.  They were expected in Ted’s front-row box for the playoffs, and surely, I thought, Jane Fonda was not going to sit still for the chop!  The moment arrived, there she was - Hollywood royalty and friend of the oppressed, Jane Fonda herself. The chant broke out - Jane’s chance to take a stand, to yank off her enormous diamond, storm out, and show Ted and all the choppers just how she felt.  But…no.  She chopped.  Not enthusiastically, but she chopped.  So, anyway, I decided that if Jane Fonda could deal with it, I could deal with it.