Movable, Removable, or Immovable?

Statues are associated with permanence, yet sports statues sited at stadia challenge this assumption. Sports venues are not immortal, and rarely venerable: baseball welcomed a plethora of new ballparks in the 1990s. An existing statue might not be considered suitable for a new venue, and the right to move it may be challenged by stakeholders. Focusing on a recent franchise move that brought such issues into focus—the Atlanta Braves’ 2017 relocation to Cobb County—this article describes disputes over statues of Hank Aaron and Ty Cobb, thus illuminating tensions surrounding the Braves’ and Atlanta’s sports heritage and history. Just as a sports statue allows different communities to simultaneously perceive ownership of a sports organisation’s past, moving that statue disrupts these claims and assumptions, creating conflict, and revealing how the sports organisation, its fans, local residents and public bodies interact with their heritage, with each other, and the ‘identity’ of their team.