Usher’s Braves bobblehead hardly looks like Usher but fans still say ‘Yeah!’

It’s the Braves’ third time honoring Atlanta music royalty, following Outkast and Ludacris last year. Usher showed up to ceremonially “open” the gates for fans at 5:30 p.m. outside the stadium at The Battery Atlanta as the DJ blared “Yeah!”

Usher on stage encouraged hundreds of early Braves fan arrivals to do a call-and-response of his song “OMG” followed by the tomahawk chop. He also hawked a special Braves collaboration collection of hats and jerseys featuring upside down Braves logos.

Credit: Daniel Varnado/For the Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Credit: Daniel Varnado/For the Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Once the gates opened, the bobbleheads rapidly disappeared into fans’ hands and were largely gone by 6:15 p.m., an hour before the game.

Angela Wright who lives in Southwest Atlanta, tried to get to Truist Park early with her boyfriend Michael Thomas to get a bobblehead, but Atlanta traffic did them in. They arrived at the stadium just as the final bobbleheads were handed out and had to watch the game empty-handed.

“I’m a little disappointed,” she said, but she could always buy them later on eBay, where speculators were asking for $50 to $60 for the bobblehead even before the game.

Credit: RODNEY HO/rho@ajc.com

Credit: RODNEY HO/rho@ajc.com

Nearby on the main concourse on the third-base line, Ray Wilson was working his smartphone to capture a good angle of the bobblehead. He and his best friend Kenley Waller bought cheap tickets ($30 each) simply to pick up the bobblehead, grab some dinner, watch batting practice, then leave Truist Park before the first pitch.

“We have to get up in the morning and work,” said Wilson, who owns Premiere Crematory in Conyers. “I’ll go home, watch the game and fall asleep.” (They had done the same thing to pick up souvenir championship rings in 2022, the year after the Braves won the World Series.)

Wilson was unimpressed by the bobblehead’s veracity to Usher despite the vintage roller skates and the gold necklace with a “U” pendant. “It sucks,” he said bluntly. “It doesn’t look like him at all.”

But he has no plans to sell or trash it. In fact, “Usher” will sit next to his only other bobblehead: a likeness of himself Waller had gotten for him.

Michael Fagan, a longtime New Yorker who now lives in Greenville, South Carolina, studied the bobblehead in his hand and mused, “He looks Puerto Rican.”

Tiffany Franklin of Lawrenceville said the bobblehead resembled “a generic Black man.” Her husband Terrell, she added, looked more like the bobblehead than Usher.

Credit: RODNEY HO/rho@ajc.com

Credit: RODNEY HO/rho@ajc.com

Jacqueline Esterling of Milton, whose daughter was part of a chorus that sang the national anthem, gave an assessment of the bobblehead that was charitably Southern: “They tried.”

Richard James, a Buckhead IT manager and Braves season-ticket holder, planned to place the Usher bobblehead next to his Ludacris and Outkast ones. “Any time Atlanta can celebrate its hip-hop and R&B singers,” he said, “it’s a great thing.”

Credit: RODNEY HO/rho

Credit: RODNEY HO/rho

Usher was unavailable to the press to comment on the bobblehead. But he did make it on the field before the game for the ceremonial first pitch. Wearing a Braves shirt bearing his name and the No. 1, he was on and off the field in an efficient 70 seconds. While walking to the mound, he turned his cap backyards, then quickly tossed an accurate arc to utility infielder Luke Williams.

The singer high-fived and hugged Williams, then the mascot Blooper and disappeared into the dugout area.