(Adds Braves’ $90 million stadium-conversion cost in fifth paragraph and $40 million in renovation costs in seventh paragraph; corrects move to Cobb County in ninth paragraph.)

Don’t say Atlanta never did the Braves any favors.

When Major League Baseball’s Atlanta Braves wrap up their final game at Turner Field on Oct. 2 against the Detroit Tigers, they’ll be throwing away a gift they never deserved. They’re tossing aside a 20-year-old ballpark in Atlanta proper for a $700 million SunTrust Park in Georgia’s suburban Cobb County for one of the most specious reasons imaginable: The city wasn’t paying them enough money or attention to stay.

That line of reasoning is completely devoid of reason.

“ Because Atlanta didn’t illegally hand over both a stadium and a surrounding neighborhood within less than a year, the Braves threw a tantrum and stormed off to the suburbs. ”

For 30 years, the Braves played about a block away from the current Turner Field site at Atlanta Stadium/Fulton County Stadium. In 1996, with the Summer Olympics coming to town, the NBC network and Olympic sponsors pitched a plan to build their Centennial Olympic Stadium right near the ballpark site. The Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games thought it would be a good idea to build a stadium that could be easily converted into a new ballpark, since the Braves were looking for one anyway. Everyone agreed, and NBC and the sponsors ponied up $170 million of the $209 million cost, with the committee picking up the rest.

To add to that strange miasma of stadium funding, the Braves chipped in $90 million to have the stadium converted into a ballpark, which was handed over to the Atlanta Fulton County Recreation Authority in 1997. That group leased the building to the Braves while letting them operate it. During that time, the Braves won the National League East 11 times, went to the National League Championship Series four times and made one trip to the World Series, where they were swept by the New York Yankees in 1999.

At its peak, Turner Field saw upwards of 3 million fans per year come through the turnstiles to watch Bobby Cox, Tom Glavine, Greg Maddux and others pile up wins and hardware in the ’90s. But by the early 2000s, spoiled fans grew complacent. Attendance dropped from a peak of 3.4 million during Turner Field’s first season to only 2.4 million in 2003, a year in which the Braves won 101 games and made the playoffs with a $106 million roster (no small feat for a team that won its only World Series in Atlanta by spending just $47.2 million).

When attendance dropped to 2.3 million in 2004, the excuses began. Turner Field was spruced up with a new video board and other amenities by the Braves in 2005, part of what the Braves say was more than $40 million worth of renovations during their time in the ballpark. Those additions boosted attendance a bit, but management was getting grumpy. The ballpark, surrounded by parking lots, was snarled with traffic. The city’s MARTA subway system didn’t build a spur out to the Olympic stadium and had its nearest stop three quarters of a mile from the ballpark.

Meanwhile, the team’s on-field fortunes took a turn and attendance grew more sporadic. From 2006 to 2011, the Braves made the playoffs only once. In the past decade, they’ve made the playoffs only three times and have won all of two post-season games. By fall 2011, with the team unable to draw 30,000 per game to a ballpark that holds more than 49,000, the Braves started blaming their woes on Turner Field and went directly to Atlanta to complain.

Fans pay emotional tribute to José Fernández

However, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Braves management took offense at how quickly Atlanta reached a deal with the National Football League’s Falcons for $200 million in hotel taxes for a new stadium. By 2012, the Braves were demanding complete control of Turner Field, 55 acres of city- and Fulton County-owned land around Turner Field (which it didn’t want to bid for) and complete control over redevelopment. The city pointed out that this flouted any number of laws, which sent the Braves scurrying over to Cobb County by July 2013. Just four months later, the Braves announced their deal for a new stadium and retail development in Cobb County.

That’s right: Because Atlanta didn’t illegally hand over both a stadium and a surrounding neighborhood within less than a year, the Braves threw a tantrum and stormed off to the suburbs. Braves President John “Sour Grapes” Schuerholz told The New York Times shortly after the deal was sealed that the team would have wanted $200 million for renovations to Turner Field alone, but noted that even that “would do nothing to improve access or the fan experience; these are issues that we simply cannot overcome.”

In short, that $200 million was just the tip of the iceberg. It wouldn’t have closed the three-quarter-mile gap between the ballpark and the nearest MARTA station. It wouldn’t have leveled a surrounding area that the more charitable racists have called merely undesirable, and it wouldn’t have assuaged traffic concerns that in no way improve once the Braves start playing ball at the intersection of I-75 and I-285 near the Cumberland Mall.

So why did the Braves coax Cobb County, Georgia, into borrowing $375 million in bonds — including nearly $300 million that will be paid out of property taxes — bar opponents from speaking against that levy, shroud the deal in secrecy to prevent a public vote and pry another $9.9 million from the county to build a pedestrian bridge over a highway to their convention and arts center? For the same reason they forced the county to prevent folks from selling game-day parking spaces within a half mile of the field under the guise of “safety”:revenue.

A team with $19 billion media conglomerate Liberty Media Corp. US:LMCA as its owner never wanted a MARTA spur that it wouldn’t profit from, never wanted lovely views of downtown Atlanta and didn’t even want the city’s love and affection. It wanted revenue, and its attempts to silence both Atlanta’s questions and Cobb County’s criticism cost County Commission Chairman Tim Lee his job after opponent Mike Boyce just kept pummeling Lee over his role in the ballpark mess.

Atlanta isn’t bidding farewell to Turner Field because it outlived its usefulness, couldn’t draw fans or didn’t happen to be in the greatest area. It’s doing so because Turner Field could have had three MARTA lines and multiple tiered parking decks around it and still wouldn’t have generated enough money for Braves management. To them, a public-private partnership is one in which the public pays and private interests benefit.

With Georgia State University now slated to turn Turner Field into a football stadium and its surrounding lots into a $300 million extension of its campus and a number of mixed-use developments, there is no going back for the Braves. The city’s already given the team more than its share of freebies and affection.

As Cobb County taxpayers found out the hard way, it’s time for somebody else to take the loss.

Jason Notte is a freelance writer based in Portland, Ore. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Huffington Post and Esquire. Follow him on Twitter @Notteham.