If you're going to be Ted Turner and manage one game, have the good sense to do it with a Hall of Famer on the mound. Unfortunately, Phil Niekro was off to as terrible a start as the rest of the team. Phil would turn it around that season, but the rest of the Braves, not so much.
All that said, the arbitrary rule stopping him from managing was bullshit. Plenty of owners have managed their teams in baseball history, and the world kept turning.