COLUMN: Jimmy Carter’s achievements were astounding. His Braves fandom made him a true legend

I don’t claim to have the same emotional connection many Maconites — heck, the connection many Georgians, even Americans — might have had to former President Jimmy Carter.

I know a few folks, both my age and older, that met Carter. All five-star reviews, of course, but I never travelled to Plains to sit in on a Sunday School class he taught or anything like that.

I’m also well aware of Carter’s extensive humanitarian efforts after his time in the Oval Office. He will be remembered, and rightly so, for how he redefined that term, “former president.” 

Carter did not stop helping anyone and everyone he could when his term was up and he was ousted from the White House — if anything, as a matter of fact, he may have done even more for America in the decades following his somewhat controversial presidency than he did while he was the United States’ commander in chief.

Like many of you, I’ve read the slew of recaps and recollections of Carter’s incredible life published in the last few days by news outlets across the country following his death. It was not unexpected, given the fact that Carter was 100 and had been in hospice for something like a year, but it feels like a weight on us in the peanut state all the same. 

As stories are published and everyone’s connections to Carter are made — strong or not — it’s obvious that there are a variety of reasons to remember Georgia’s only President.

I will remember him for his leadership during a tumultuous period of American history, even if my parents weren’t even teenagers yet when he was elected. I’ll remember him for how he adamantly declined to join a racist organization in Plains as a young man, or for how he seemed to play pals with our state’s racist, segregationist governor during the election before swiftly turning the tables and advocating for the rights of Black Americans in a way few Southern politicians ever had.

These were things I read with wide eyes, occasionally even wet eyes in recent days. I’m shocked to say so, but it was incredible to relive, through words, what the man did.

I won’t get into the nitty gritty of all the achievements that will be rattled off whenever Carter’s name comes up. I’ll remember him for all those reasons, as I’m sure you will.

But how will I miss him? 

Missing someone is different than remembering someone. It is a more emotional entanglement than an obituary, I believe, though obviously if you miss someone, you do remember them as well. 

Carter’s beliefs and accomplishments and compassion and loads of other things were what made him great, what made him a legend and one of Georgia’s finest, but missing him… that requires a more personal connection, yes?

I thought so, until I started missing him a little this week. After thinking it over, I think I figured out why.

I will miss him because he was a fan.

We love Jimmy — like I said, I am not connected to the man, but in this context it feels right to call him by his first name — because he was a Georgian. He rooted for the Braves along with his wife Rosalynnn. They were two of the team’s biggest fans.

Carter was, if I’m not mistaken, the first sitting President to attend an NBA game. The Hawks, of course, lost to Washington while he was in attendance, from what I recall. Jimmy and Rosalynn even shared a peck on the Hawks’ Kiss Cam in 2019. It’s on YouTube.

He was one of us.

Jimmy was friends with Henry Aaron, one of my heroes, a man who smashed as many racial barriers as he did home runs, a man who changed the world with a bat instead of a bomb. Jimmy was there when Hammerin’ Hank — who hated to be called that, some folks say — broke Babe Ruth’s home run record in Atlanta in 1974. I still hear Vin Scully’s voice in my head at least once a week.

And a Braves highlight is, if I remember correctly, how I first saw Jimmy — watching old reruns you could catch glimpses of him in the stands, cheering as any Braves fan would. I remember learning about Carter in elementary school, of course, but when I saw Jimmy in highlight reels, I knew him. We had something in common.

I will remember him for the more important things he accomplished, the ways he shaped our nation and made it a better place across his century of life. His allegiance to the Atlanta Braves is so far down the list of his legacies that it would not even fit on a mile-long CVS receipt.

But that is the way in which I will miss Jimmy Carter. Because, in all my recent reading about him, I think his Georgia fandom and commitment to his home represents what made him so special.

He cared the way we all cared. And for that, we were all better. Even if we never bought his peanuts, or heard his sermons, or were too young to truly remember him
in the flesh.

I remember reading a quote that was attributed — possibly incorrectly, but what the heck — to Henry Aaron. A man asked him for his autograph and mentioned something about wanting to be somebody. Aaron apparently replied, “Everybody is a somebody.”

Jimmy Carter was certainly a somebody. And, in a way, he was also everybody.