6.21.2006
The Run, R.I.P.
When the Atlanta Braves lost Sunday night to the Red Sox the end of an era was made official. It was the Sunday night ESPN game, it was Smoltz v. Schilling, and the eyes of the entire baseball world were on Turner Field. The Mets, who after many years of trying have finally succeeded in throwing together a cohesive All-Star team without apparent weaknesses, have won approximately 67 of their last 51 games, opened up a double-digit lead in the standings and shown few signs of slowing down. It was going to take a massive turnaround to make a race out of this, and Smoltz knew he was going to have to be the guy who sparked it.
He wriggled out of a bases-loaded, none out situation with only one run allowed, gutted out seven innings on 123 pitches, and left with a 3-2 deficit that became a 5-3 lead in the bottom of the seventh when Jeff Francoeur cranked a dramatic three-run homer on the first pitch thrown by new (old) reliever Rudy Seanez. It was rejuvenating for the Braves fans to see Smoltz suddenly eligible for the hard-earned win, as if they could feel the veil of futility finally starting to lift, but it dropped right back down in the next half inning when Bobby Cox entrusted the two-run lead to his bullpen.
Half an inning, six runs and two additional pitching changes later, the morale-boosting victory was a spirit-crushing defeat. The loss was the Braves' seventh in a row and seventeenth out of twenty, it dropped them to last place in the NL East and fourteen games behind the Mets, and it capped a week that had seen losses to Wandy Rodriguez, Ricky Nolasco, Jon Lester, Taylor Tankersley, Josh Johnson, and quite possibly the Marlins batboy somewhere in there. On top of all this came the symbolic value: Smoltz, the team's big kahuna and the last link to the Braves of the late '80s, the last Braves team to truly know failure, the guy who has pitched like a warrior week in and week out for two decades, on an elbow now being held together by metal pins, silly putty and baling wire, was clearly reaching back for a little extra. He knew the magnitude of the game, toughed it out and was good enough to win until he was knifed in the side by a supporting cast not worthy of his effort. Close your eyes and it felt like 1989 all over again.
So if there was any doubt before that game that The Run had ended, it is long gone now. As a Braves fan going back to the Dale Murphy, Zane Smith and Ken Oberkfell days, I am hereby finally mentally ready to concede the division, the first time I have said so out loud in public since David Justice's rookie year in 1990. Braves radio man Joe Simpson, assessing the situation during the second pitching change in the sixth-run eighth, actually said he hoped would "see some things being thrown in the dugout when this half inning is over," in a tone that suggested a desire to be down in the dugout doing some of the throwing himself. The rest of the announcing crew too, as loyal and steady as any other bunch over the past two decades, have never been as down on their team as they were Sunday night. "At some point you begin to realize that maybe you're just not that good," said Pete van Wieren, with the geniune surprise of a man who hasn't had to say that in many years. And despite the halfhearted protests afterwards from some Braves trying to stay optimistic, by early Monday eulogies for The Run were popping up all over the place. (No, I won't be linking to them. I will, however, link to Rob Neyer, who gets credit for jumping on the bandwagon a couple days early, if such an act is worth anything anymore.)
We've all known the Braves were going to lose the NL East eventually, but I'm pretty sure that 2006 was not the year that most pundits had in their office pool. It's been an unprecedented run in baseball history, and truth be told the team is still young and talented and not far off from contention in the years to come. We're saying R.I.P. today to an achievement more so than to the team that currently wears the jersey.
(Also, it's worth mentioning that the wild card is still an available option in mid-June, with the Cincinnati "Over Their Heads" Reds eight games ahead of the Braves, and the Braves' biggest hole potentially fixed with a relief acquisition or two or three, but that's not what this post is about. To water down The Run to "Consecutive Years in the Postseason" would be getting into St. Louis Blues territory, a toothless boast. Forget it.)
More concerning is what's become of the Atlanta Braves as a franchise in the years since 1991. Constant national exposure on TBS used to help make the Braves a top-drawing road team, and the Cinderella season of 1991 consolidated many of those fans and made them a phenomenon truly deserving of the Turner-bestowed label "America's Team." This effect, along with the advent of the dreaded Tomahawk Chop (which had been swiped from FSU), held together for a few subsequent years including the 1995 World Series championship. But now TBS carries fewer and fewer games each year, and anyway cable and Internet technology has improved to the point that teams other than the Braves and the Cubs are remote-accessible. Atlanta has always been much maligned for its overly casual fan base, and while that hasn't always been deserved, recent showdowns with the Mets have featured significant enemy contingents in the stands, and that gets depressing to see after awhile. (Here I must confess that, as a child of TBS, I've never lived in Atlanta and have actually attended more Braves road games than home games over the years.) To listen to Sunday night's game on the radio, one would think the game was taking place in Fenway based on the fan reactions. Failing to sell out playoff games is a minor and understandable P.R. nuisance, but having your home park repeatedly taken over by hostile fans is a gaping wound in the franchise. The Braves' intense scouting focus on prospects from the Southeast, and Georgia in particular, is an interesting strategy and somewhat effective so far on the field (producing Francoeur, Macay McBride, and Brian McCann among others), but we have yet to see a more loyal local fanbase blossom as a result.
And if it's not too blasphemous to say, even The Run itself has changed in nature over the years. The addition of a third NL division in 1994, while probably helping to extend The Run, also cheapened it by asking less from John Schuerholz and Bobby Cox to win the division each year. Since the championship year in 1995, the team has needed to win more than 95 games only once to take the East (when the Mets won 97 as the runner-up in '99), and the race has never been particularly suspenseful down the stretch (again '99 is the exception). But since the AOL-Time Warner ownership megalopolis took the helm from Turner, the team has been visibly constrained by mandated payroll restrictions, forcing Schuerholz to try to keep the team good enough to make the playoffs without allowing him to build a powerhouse strong enough to legitimately contend in the postseason. It's a financially motivated strategy, but it's also a good way to contribute to the corrosion of a fan base.
But we'll get back to this subject later, and anyway we can't go out on a down note like that. We must step back for a moment and pay respects to The Run, the greatest of its kind in baseball history and a last remaining link to the days when winning a division meant significantly more than it does today in any sport this side of the Atlantic.
1991. The Cinderella Year. In which Atlanta magically leapt from last place the previous season to World Series Game 7. It is safe to say that nobody in the world saw it coming. Smoltz and the Cy Young-winning Tom Glavine had been coming into their own for a couple years by this point, but Steve Avery was a sudden Dontrelle-level pheenom, Lonnie "Skates" Smith and a young Ron Gant patrolled the outfield with varying levels of grace, Otis Nixon stole bases by the truckload until a coke bust got him suspended for the stretch run and postseason, and Terry Pendleton stole the MVP with a year of strong defense, clutch hitting, and a league-leading .319 batting average. They stayed legit in the postseason, playing the Twins to the limit in Game 7 of that rare Series that is remembered for Mark Lemke, Jack Morris, and constant tenacious competition between two underdog teams, more so than for who actually won. Key Game: 10/1 against the Reds, who took a 6-0 lead in the first on an unlikely Joe Oliver grand slam, only to see the Braves chip away until a David Justice two-run homer off Rob Dibble in the ninth won it for Atlanta, 7-6. The Braves ran the table afterwards and clinched the NL West over the feisty Dodgers four days later. (Honorable mention goes to Game Six of the NLCS in Pittsburgh, a thrilling 1-0 victory that featured Andy Van Slyke striking out to end the game with the tying run on third. It had been a marathon plate appearance with a full count and several additional foul balls, until Alejandro Pena floated a changeup down the middle that completely froze Van Slyke. It was the only changeup Pena threw the entire season.)
1992. The Year We Realized We Weren't a Fluke. You could really see the swagger start to emerge this year, from both the body language of the players and the actual language of Skip Caray and his fellow announcers, who were clearly beginning to enjoy themselves. Fell down early by seven games to the Giants in late May, but after a torrid second half this was not as suspenseful a race, ending with 98 wins and a comfortable eight-game cushion over the Reds. A thirteen-game winning streak in July really was the knockout punch. Another thrilling postseason which featured the Francisco Cabrera Game and the agony of watching Jeff Reardon succumb to the mighty power of Ed Sprague in the World Series. Key Game: The last game of the July winning streak, a 1-0 classic over the nemesis Pirates whose only two dangerous seasons since The Stargell Time would be foiled each time by Atlanta in the NLCS. Danny Jackson only allowed one Atlanta hit, an opposite-field homer by Justice in the second inning, but Charlie Liebrandt made it hold up with some of that vintage Liebrandt craftiness (actually quite entertaining at its best), and Otis "Overdrive" Nixon saved the game with one of the best defensive plays of the entire decade, scaling the large right field wall of the old Fulton County Stadium in one unbelievably smooth motion to rob Andy Van Slyke of a game-winning homer. Check it out here at www.otisnixon.com. Still think I was exaggerating? (Of course all anyone cared about was that Bonds went 0-4 with a strikeout. Ah, I keed.)
1993. The Year of The Last Great Race. The free-agent signing of Mad Dog was the tipping point to making the team a sho-nuff National League Dynasty and monopolist of the NL Cy Young. That and the July acquisition of Fred McGriff from the Padres, which propelled the Braves to a .740 second half (!) and the victor's role in the last truly great pennant race: 104 wins to the Giants' 103. Bullpen retread Greg McMichael became the unlikely closer for the pennant drive, relying on a funny throwing motion and a changeup that couldn't break toilet paper. A truly miraculous season, sadly ruined in the NLCS by the ragtag Kruk 'N' Dykstra Phillies, who frankly got what they deserved thereafter in the Series against Toronto. Key Game: July 20, the famous McGriff Trade / Press Box Fire Game, which I guess is pretty self-explanatory from the title. Crime Dog hit the ground running in Atlanta, hitting the homer that sparked a rally from 5-0 to 8-5 over Rheal Cormier and the Cardinals. The Braves were ten games back at the time. Of everyone ever to play for the Braves during The Run, McGriff probably remains the most underrated contributor. Well, there's Juan Berenguer too I suppose.
1994. The Strike Year. This lends a little extra mystique to The Run, as they were actually in second place when the strike hit. Who knows how it would have played out? The Expos were a fantastic team and had amassed a six-game lead with 48 games to play when the strike happened, but anyone who tries to insist the deficit would have been insurmountable clearly hadn't been paying attention the previous three years. Key Game: None for obvious reasons, but we'll go with this 5-0 win over the Expos in May, featuring vintage Maddux besting a young Pedro Martinez, time of game 2:18.
1995. The Year of Unnnhh Ohh Yeah! Simply glorious. When Marquis Grissom caught that final out in deep center to win the World Series, Bob Costas declared, "The team of the Nineties has its championship!" He was absolutely correct at the time. Backed by Grissom in his prime in center, Justice in his prime in right, McGriff in his late prime at first, Mark Wohlers in his prime as a closer, the pitchers who led the NL in ERA for the third straight year, and the formative seasons for Chipper Jones, Ryan Klesko and Javy Lopez, this edition was not quite as powerful at the plate as some of the others but didn't need to be with all that pitching. The forgotten hero from '95 was August acquisition Mike Deveraux, the MVP in a series against the juggernaut Gant 'N' Sanders Reds team that turned out to be one of the more lopsided NLCS in memory. Honorable mention goes to Pedro Borbon Jr., who got a crucial save in Game 4 of the World Series. Key Game: the last one. Duh.
1996. The Year of the Coulda Been Dynasty. Another strong team, this one overlooked because of the World Series choke. This time it was Smoltz's turn to snag the Cy Young from Maddux with his strongest campaign to date. The season was a cakewalk, exemplified on this game in August when Andruw Jones, who had just debuted the day before as a 19-year-old, hit his first big league home run off Pittsburgh ace Denny Neagle, illustrating just how blessed from above the Braves had become. The next day, John Schuerholz acquired Neagle for the forgotten Ron Wright just because he could, as if to drive the point home. (Lost in my analysis was the debut of Jermaine Dye, who homered in his first AB and enjoyed a brief stretch of Francoeur-like heat before eventually falling out of Schuerholz's plans.) The NLCS comeback from a 3-1 deficit against St. Louis might look remarkable in retrospect, but in reality it was virtually expected to happen at the time, such heavy favorites were the Braves. Andruw's two homeruns in Game One of the World Series were shockingly great, and everything was looking peachy. At that point anything looked possible -- two rings in a row, three, four? When would it end? Well, turned out it ended two games later with Jim Leyritz's dagger of a three-run homer in our Key Game: Game Four. Many have forgotten about the classic Game Five duel (Pettite def. Smoltz 1-0), but in retrospect [cue Behind the Music voiceover] Game Four was when it all came crashing down. Remember the swagger I mentioned that started gaining steam in '92? Series participants on both sides described the Braves entering the showdown with that swagger and leaving without it. (SI described it, and I wish I had time to find the link.) That was the crest of the wave right there. I've said it before and I'll say it again: Fuck you, Jim Leyritz.
1997. The Year of Continued Coulda Shoulda. Major offseason shakeup sent David Justice and Marquis Grissom to Cleveland for Alan Embree and Kenny Lofton, the latter of whom teamed up with a young Michael Tucker to revitalize the top of the batting order, at least until Lofton pulled a groin, stopped stealing bases, and left town in a huff the following year. It was really the first major shakeup of The Run, setting a precedent for Braves teams to come that would come to be borderline unrecognizable compared to their predecessors. (It was also the first salary dump, which would become a recurring theme as well.) The Florida Marlins were one of The Run's stronger second-place teams as they would show in the playoffs, but even they didn't seriously challenge the Braves, who were now getting solid pitching from Denny Neagle in addition to the Big Three. Unfortunately Wohlers had his meltdown after an oblique strain early in the year, a disaster that got unfairly blamed on the Leyritz homerun from '96, but it didn't matter in the end. Key Game: It's been mentioned recently in the press due to the unfortunate demise of its namesake, but the Braves were simply stabbed in the back by the home plate umpire in what has become known as, well, the Eric Gregg Game. I am still unable to talk about it rationally.
1998. The Year of the Big Cat. The big acquisition here was Andres Galarragga, who enjoyed one of the many great peaks of a rollercoaster sort of career. Although no longer as nimble around first base as his nickname suggested, the 44 homers were nonetheless a welcome addition to a suddenly homer-happy offense featuring Cat, Chipper, Andruw, Javy, and the Klesko-Gerald "Ice" Williams platoon in left. The pitching staff was still in its prime, with Glavine enjoying a mild renaissance to capture his second Cy Young, and rookie Kevin Millwood began to establish himself as well. Neagle was OK, and he had his own unique variation on the Tom Glavine pitching approach, but he would be sent to the Reds in the offseason as part of the Bret Boone trade, marking the last time Atlanta featured a legit Fab Four. Meanwhile Andruw Jones was cementing his reputation as the greatest defensive CF since Willie Mays with his propensity to be calmly waiting for fly balls that other outfielders would have to dive for or simply chase to the wall. Despite a dominant 106-win campaign, the NLCS went to Kevin Brown and the Padres. This was when Schuerholz first began to wrestle with the problem of not having the pitching edge in the postseason. Key Game: putting up a fight in the NLCS by winning Game Five. A great game, partly because it finally derailed Kevin Brown, who had been lights out all October and was appearing here in relief just because Bruce Bochy felt he could. Also because it featured the critical blow from Michael Tucker, the one bright shining unimpeachable accomplishment from his maddeningly inconsistent tenure in Atlanta.
1999. The Year of Chipper and the Chipperettes. At first glance one of the strongest teams of The Run with 103 wins, but actually one of its weakest, relying on an MVP season from Chipper and slightly reduced brilliance from the usual suspects in the rotation. Meanwhile this was the year they began to realize they could win the division despite carrying major weaknesses, such as a middle infeld of Walt Weiss and the despicable Bret Boone, with an unsuccessful Jose Hernandez acquisition for good measure. MIA was Galarragga, who sat out the year with non-Hodgkins lymphoma in his back. Also lost to season-ending injuries were Kerry Ligtenberg, Javy Lopez, Odalis Perez and Rudy Seanez, not that it mattered. The hero of the rotation turned out to be Millwood surprisingly enough, who went 18-7 with a 2.68 ERA in only his second full season. This season also marked the rise of John Rocker, the only player in baseball history to be ruined by an SI article. Key Game: The showdown with the Mets on 9/21 at Turner Field. Chipper was white-hot down the stretch, playing like an MVP with the sort of momentum you knew was going to be unstoppable. This game played out like it had been preordained, with a solid start from Smoltz and a solo Chipper homer from each side of the plate in a 2-1 game that didn't feel that close. The Braves went on to take five of six from the Mets in that crucial September home-and-away, and later roll past the same Mets in the NLCS. Chipper tried to reprise his heroics later in the World Series by jacking one for a 1-0 lead in Game One against El Duque and the Yanks, but it was simply not meant to be. This marked the first time the Braves had been obviously outmatched in a playoff series, which would become a trend.
2000. The First Year of Scraping By. This was the first year the vultures began to mistakenly circle overhead in anticpiation of The Run being over. Smoltz missed the season with Tommy John surgery, Galarragga made a remarkable comeback from cancer but wasn't quite the same, Schuerholz had traded Boone and Klesko to San Diego in the offseason for Quilvio Veras and Reggie Sanders, a move that looked great on paper but played out poorly as Sanders struggled horribly and Veras blew out his knee. As compensation we were introduced to a stellar rookie season from Rafael Furcal, whose .295/.394/.382 line belies the fact that he caused approximately 1,761 opposition errors with his blinding speed. He's still fast in Dodger Blue today but trust me, he was a freak of nature in his rookie year. The final one-game margin over the Mets wasn't quite as small as it looks, and anyway was rather anticlimactic as the loser was assured the wild card anyway. Bud Selig, the blood of regular season baseball is on your hands. Key Game: The final game of the regular season in Colorado. After inheriting a two-run lead from a choice Millwood start, John Rocker had the save in hand, but a two-out throwing error by Chipper on a routine play opened the floodgates for a six-run rally. The East was already clinched, but the loss cost the Braves home field advantage against St. Louis and left a bad taste in everyone's mouths that plainly contributed to the ensuing defeat in the NLDS for the first time during the Run (that would also become a trend). Honorable mention goes to the next game, the playoff opener against the Cardinals aka the Rick Ankiel Game, which saw the destruction of a player you all know to be near and dear to my heart. A rare day when everybody lost. Ghastly series, that, and a Pyrrhic victory for the Cards.
2001. The Lean Year. Not sure how this one happened. Atlanta finished 13th in the NL in offense and still managed to win the division by two games. It was the Phillies' turn to play runner-up this time, and the best they could do was 86 wins in a season when the East was there for the taking. Smoltz's return from Tommy John wasn't all that smooth, leading to the grand and largely successful John Smoltz As Closer Experiment, as opposed to the completely unsuccessful Ken Caminiti as First Baseman Experiment which was also this year. The team's ace in '01? John Burkett, with a smoke-and-mirrors 3.04 ERA. Key Game: a 2-1 win on 8/17 over Livan Hernandez and the Giants. Chipper's sixth-inning triple gave Maddux the win and set the table for Smoltz's first save.
2002. The Year of Leo. Gary Sheffield had been acquired for Odalis Perez and the overrated Brian Jordan in a classic sharp Schuerholz trade, but Sheff didn't really take until 2003 as he struggled periodically with an injured wrist and vanished in the NLDS against the Giants. I've gone this far in the post without once mentioning Leo Mazzone, but this year was really his opus. The Braves posted the best ERA in the league for the ninth time in twelve years and won the East by a whopping 19 games over Montreal. Millwood had one of his schizophrenic "good" years, Maddux had a 2.62 ERA, Glavine won eighteen games, Damian Moss peaked in his rookie year and Smoltz set an NL record with 55 saves despite being statistically the weakest link of a bullpen that featured Mazzone reclamations Darren Holmes (1.81), Mike Remlinger (1.99), and the remarkable Chris Hammond (0.95). The line of pitchers who excelled under Mazzone and faceplanted after leaving Atlanta goes out the door and around the corner. Mazzone's departure is an obvious choice for the biggest factor in the 2006 collapse, and it may well justifiably be so as the current reclamations don't look so hot any more all of a sudden (Ken Ray, Chad Paronto, Mike Remlinger II). Leo Mazzone, I raise my beer to thee. Key Game: Game Four in the NLDS against the Giants, when Glavine got rocked for the second time in the series, crippling Atlanta's chances. A doubly damaging series because a) it lent more urgency to the need to go find some new ace starters, and b) it made the Braves front office think Russ Ortiz was capable of being said ace starter.
2003. The Year of the Heavy Artillery. For the first time the Braves won the division on the strength of their offense rather than the pitching. Strong seasons all around from Lopez (43 HR), Sheffield (39 HR), Andruw (36 HR), and Chipper (27 HR, .919 OPS). This was also the long-awaited breakout season from Marcus Giles, a scrappy little sibling made good and far and away my favorite latter-day Brave for his cerebral hitting approach and excellent defense. A joyous season until the Division Series rolled around and the starting pitching was exposed by the Cubs, who had incredible aces Prior, Wood and Zambrano and also had a date with fate in the NLCS. Watching the wild-card Marlins blow past the Yankees in the World Series this year didn't sit too well, either. Key Game: NLDS Games One, Three and Five, in which Wood and Mark Prior outclassed each of the Braves' three top starters: in order, Russ Ortiz, Maddux and Mike Hampton. It was the second of three consecutive years in which the Braves would fail to get past the rubber match of the NLDS.
2004. The Year of This Is Getting to Be Fucking Ridiculous. This is when the season summaries on the official page start beginning with the phrase "Proving the critics wrong...." Analyzing the Braves' chances in the division each offseason was getting pretty close to wishcasting by this point, but against all odds Schuerholz's moves somehow kept working out. Here's how ridiculous it got: A year prior, Maddux had made the surprising decision to accept arbitration and stay for one more expensive ($16M) year past his peak. The Braves had been expecting him to sign elsewhere, and the resulting payroll increase led the new and more tightfisted AOL-TW ownership to force Schuerholz to panic and deal Millwood to archrival Philly on short notice rather than pay him $10M to help give the Braves another top-notch rotation. It was the most blatant salary dump in Braves history because all he could get in return was AAA catcher Johnny Estrada, and it caused an uproar among Braves supporters...until Estrada began tearing it up in Richmond and batted .314 in Atlanta the next year with several clutch hits, all this while Millwood flopped in Philly. Going into 2004, after a winter in which Lopez, Sheffield and Maddux (finally) had all been allowed to walk to greener pastures, there was no way to look at the roster and expect it to be threatening unless there somehow was a miracle in the form of the unthinkable, a fully healthy season from new acquisition J.D. Drew. And lo and behold, it came to be. Early in the season Drew took off an extra game or two with one of his signature "pulled this" or "tight that" or "sore the other" excuses, and reportedly Chipper, the team's clubhouse leader ever since his MVP year in '99, took him aside and made it clear that shit wasn't going to fly anymore. Drew's final line: 518 AB, 31 HR, 118 BB, .305/.436/.569, borderline MVP numbers in a non-Bonds world, and the perfect bait for his subsequent $50M contract from the Dodgers. (Looking at Drew's log from '04 the alleged episode may have come in the first week of May.) Jason Marquis may have helped out the Cardinals over stretches and Adam Wainwright may well turn out to have a long career, but Schuerholz yet again got exactly what he wanted out of this trade. Key Game: 5-2 over the Cubs on 4/10. Only symbolically a key game because it contained the signature moment of the great Julio Franco's reawakening in Atlanta. Kyle Farnsworth had come in to protect a 2-1 lead in the eighth with the bases loaded, and with two outs he and Franco locked horns in a thirteen-pitch epic battle until Franco finally came through and doubled in all three runs. The highlight of the season despite happening in the first week, and the crown jewel of Franco's second career.
2005. The Year of the Youth Movement. Perhaps the most remarkable East victory of the entire bunch, and if indeed it was the last, it was an appropriate conclusion to The Run. This is recent enough history that I don't have to go into too much detail here, but basically the team struggled mightily until rookies Francoeur, McCann, Langerhans, Johnson, and Boyer all arrived at about the same time and gave the team a shot in the arm. Also notable was Andruw for his long-awaited MVP-caliber season. The award went to Pujols and should probably have gone to Derrek Lee instead, but an argument could be constructed in Andruw's favor based on the timing of his immense midsummer hot streak, which came exactly when all the other major contributors were on the DL and the team was fading in the standings. Players, managers and announcers were unanimous in agreement that it was the single most thoroughly enjoyable and fulfilling year of the run. The sentiment was genuine, but it betrayed the underlying feeling we'd all become accustomed to, that any postseason success from the Braves would just be a bonus. Key Game: Yet another tough NLDS loss, this one coming in Game Four in eighteen innings to the Astros. Expectations had been uncertain because of the largely new cast of characters, but there's no doubt they had the talent on hand to make a deeper October run than this. The goat this year was Farnsworth, acquired for the stretch drive to fill the gap at closer. He had been up to the task until this game, when he tragically surrendered homers to Lance Berkman and Brad Ausmus (!). The second one especially was a punch in the gut, and the nine extra innings that followed the meltdown simply delayed the inevitable.
And that's The Run, ladies and gentlemen. This all took way longer to compile than I expected, but there's still quite a bit of forgotten lore remaining. There are numerous players not mentioned here that contributed enormously to The Run: Rafael Belliard, Mike Bielecki, Jeff Blauser, Alejandro Pena, Brian Hunter, Ozzie Guillen, Pete Smith, Damon Berryhill, Andy Ashby, Jeff Treadway, Eddie Perez, Charles Thomas, Dennis "El Presidente" Martinez, Dave Martinez, Greg Colbrunn, Mike Stanton, Mike Cather, Jerry Willard, Greg Olson, Kent Mercker, and so many more. Nor did I mention the controversy over Maddux's never-properly-explained refusal to pitch to Lopez, or the time Cox pulled Andruw Jones out of centerfield during an inning in '97 (?) for lollygagging, or Walt Weiss' beautiful diving play on Astroturf with the infield drawn in that saved the 1999 NLDS against Houston, or Deion Sanders giving Tim McCarver a Gatorade bath in the Atlanta clubhouse. There's way more of this stuff in the past sixteen years, and this is the stuff that makes following a team over the years a worthwhile pastime.
Anyway, this brings us to 2006, the intolerable present. We hope for more success of course, but the franchise is certainly coming to a crossroads. Next time we'll take a look at what needs to be done going forward.
[And many thanks to Deadspin for linking to this. You're with us.]
He wriggled out of a bases-loaded, none out situation with only one run allowed, gutted out seven innings on 123 pitches, and left with a 3-2 deficit that became a 5-3 lead in the bottom of the seventh when Jeff Francoeur cranked a dramatic three-run homer on the first pitch thrown by new (old) reliever Rudy Seanez. It was rejuvenating for the Braves fans to see Smoltz suddenly eligible for the hard-earned win, as if they could feel the veil of futility finally starting to lift, but it dropped right back down in the next half inning when Bobby Cox entrusted the two-run lead to his bullpen.
Half an inning, six runs and two additional pitching changes later, the morale-boosting victory was a spirit-crushing defeat. The loss was the Braves' seventh in a row and seventeenth out of twenty, it dropped them to last place in the NL East and fourteen games behind the Mets, and it capped a week that had seen losses to Wandy Rodriguez, Ricky Nolasco, Jon Lester, Taylor Tankersley, Josh Johnson, and quite possibly the Marlins batboy somewhere in there. On top of all this came the symbolic value: Smoltz, the team's big kahuna and the last link to the Braves of the late '80s, the last Braves team to truly know failure, the guy who has pitched like a warrior week in and week out for two decades, on an elbow now being held together by metal pins, silly putty and baling wire, was clearly reaching back for a little extra. He knew the magnitude of the game, toughed it out and was good enough to win until he was knifed in the side by a supporting cast not worthy of his effort. Close your eyes and it felt like 1989 all over again.
So if there was any doubt before that game that The Run had ended, it is long gone now. As a Braves fan going back to the Dale Murphy, Zane Smith and Ken Oberkfell days, I am hereby finally mentally ready to concede the division, the first time I have said so out loud in public since David Justice's rookie year in 1990. Braves radio man Joe Simpson, assessing the situation during the second pitching change in the sixth-run eighth, actually said he hoped would "see some things being thrown in the dugout when this half inning is over," in a tone that suggested a desire to be down in the dugout doing some of the throwing himself. The rest of the announcing crew too, as loyal and steady as any other bunch over the past two decades, have never been as down on their team as they were Sunday night. "At some point you begin to realize that maybe you're just not that good," said Pete van Wieren, with the geniune surprise of a man who hasn't had to say that in many years. And despite the halfhearted protests afterwards from some Braves trying to stay optimistic, by early Monday eulogies for The Run were popping up all over the place. (No, I won't be linking to them. I will, however, link to Rob Neyer, who gets credit for jumping on the bandwagon a couple days early, if such an act is worth anything anymore.)
We've all known the Braves were going to lose the NL East eventually, but I'm pretty sure that 2006 was not the year that most pundits had in their office pool. It's been an unprecedented run in baseball history, and truth be told the team is still young and talented and not far off from contention in the years to come. We're saying R.I.P. today to an achievement more so than to the team that currently wears the jersey.
(Also, it's worth mentioning that the wild card is still an available option in mid-June, with the Cincinnati "Over Their Heads" Reds eight games ahead of the Braves, and the Braves' biggest hole potentially fixed with a relief acquisition or two or three, but that's not what this post is about. To water down The Run to "Consecutive Years in the Postseason" would be getting into St. Louis Blues territory, a toothless boast. Forget it.)
More concerning is what's become of the Atlanta Braves as a franchise in the years since 1991. Constant national exposure on TBS used to help make the Braves a top-drawing road team, and the Cinderella season of 1991 consolidated many of those fans and made them a phenomenon truly deserving of the Turner-bestowed label "America's Team." This effect, along with the advent of the dreaded Tomahawk Chop (which had been swiped from FSU), held together for a few subsequent years including the 1995 World Series championship. But now TBS carries fewer and fewer games each year, and anyway cable and Internet technology has improved to the point that teams other than the Braves and the Cubs are remote-accessible. Atlanta has always been much maligned for its overly casual fan base, and while that hasn't always been deserved, recent showdowns with the Mets have featured significant enemy contingents in the stands, and that gets depressing to see after awhile. (Here I must confess that, as a child of TBS, I've never lived in Atlanta and have actually attended more Braves road games than home games over the years.) To listen to Sunday night's game on the radio, one would think the game was taking place in Fenway based on the fan reactions. Failing to sell out playoff games is a minor and understandable P.R. nuisance, but having your home park repeatedly taken over by hostile fans is a gaping wound in the franchise. The Braves' intense scouting focus on prospects from the Southeast, and Georgia in particular, is an interesting strategy and somewhat effective so far on the field (producing Francoeur, Macay McBride, and Brian McCann among others), but we have yet to see a more loyal local fanbase blossom as a result.
And if it's not too blasphemous to say, even The Run itself has changed in nature over the years. The addition of a third NL division in 1994, while probably helping to extend The Run, also cheapened it by asking less from John Schuerholz and Bobby Cox to win the division each year. Since the championship year in 1995, the team has needed to win more than 95 games only once to take the East (when the Mets won 97 as the runner-up in '99), and the race has never been particularly suspenseful down the stretch (again '99 is the exception). But since the AOL-Time Warner ownership megalopolis took the helm from Turner, the team has been visibly constrained by mandated payroll restrictions, forcing Schuerholz to try to keep the team good enough to make the playoffs without allowing him to build a powerhouse strong enough to legitimately contend in the postseason. It's a financially motivated strategy, but it's also a good way to contribute to the corrosion of a fan base.
But we'll get back to this subject later, and anyway we can't go out on a down note like that. We must step back for a moment and pay respects to The Run, the greatest of its kind in baseball history and a last remaining link to the days when winning a division meant significantly more than it does today in any sport this side of the Atlantic.
1991. The Cinderella Year. In which Atlanta magically leapt from last place the previous season to World Series Game 7. It is safe to say that nobody in the world saw it coming. Smoltz and the Cy Young-winning Tom Glavine had been coming into their own for a couple years by this point, but Steve Avery was a sudden Dontrelle-level pheenom, Lonnie "Skates" Smith and a young Ron Gant patrolled the outfield with varying levels of grace, Otis Nixon stole bases by the truckload until a coke bust got him suspended for the stretch run and postseason, and Terry Pendleton stole the MVP with a year of strong defense, clutch hitting, and a league-leading .319 batting average. They stayed legit in the postseason, playing the Twins to the limit in Game 7 of that rare Series that is remembered for Mark Lemke, Jack Morris, and constant tenacious competition between two underdog teams, more so than for who actually won. Key Game: 10/1 against the Reds, who took a 6-0 lead in the first on an unlikely Joe Oliver grand slam, only to see the Braves chip away until a David Justice two-run homer off Rob Dibble in the ninth won it for Atlanta, 7-6. The Braves ran the table afterwards and clinched the NL West over the feisty Dodgers four days later. (Honorable mention goes to Game Six of the NLCS in Pittsburgh, a thrilling 1-0 victory that featured Andy Van Slyke striking out to end the game with the tying run on third. It had been a marathon plate appearance with a full count and several additional foul balls, until Alejandro Pena floated a changeup down the middle that completely froze Van Slyke. It was the only changeup Pena threw the entire season.)
1992. The Year We Realized We Weren't a Fluke. You could really see the swagger start to emerge this year, from both the body language of the players and the actual language of Skip Caray and his fellow announcers, who were clearly beginning to enjoy themselves. Fell down early by seven games to the Giants in late May, but after a torrid second half this was not as suspenseful a race, ending with 98 wins and a comfortable eight-game cushion over the Reds. A thirteen-game winning streak in July really was the knockout punch. Another thrilling postseason which featured the Francisco Cabrera Game and the agony of watching Jeff Reardon succumb to the mighty power of Ed Sprague in the World Series. Key Game: The last game of the July winning streak, a 1-0 classic over the nemesis Pirates whose only two dangerous seasons since The Stargell Time would be foiled each time by Atlanta in the NLCS. Danny Jackson only allowed one Atlanta hit, an opposite-field homer by Justice in the second inning, but Charlie Liebrandt made it hold up with some of that vintage Liebrandt craftiness (actually quite entertaining at its best), and Otis "Overdrive" Nixon saved the game with one of the best defensive plays of the entire decade, scaling the large right field wall of the old Fulton County Stadium in one unbelievably smooth motion to rob Andy Van Slyke of a game-winning homer. Check it out here at www.otisnixon.com. Still think I was exaggerating? (Of course all anyone cared about was that Bonds went 0-4 with a strikeout. Ah, I keed.)
1993. The Year of The Last Great Race. The free-agent signing of Mad Dog was the tipping point to making the team a sho-nuff National League Dynasty and monopolist of the NL Cy Young. That and the July acquisition of Fred McGriff from the Padres, which propelled the Braves to a .740 second half (!) and the victor's role in the last truly great pennant race: 104 wins to the Giants' 103. Bullpen retread Greg McMichael became the unlikely closer for the pennant drive, relying on a funny throwing motion and a changeup that couldn't break toilet paper. A truly miraculous season, sadly ruined in the NLCS by the ragtag Kruk 'N' Dykstra Phillies, who frankly got what they deserved thereafter in the Series against Toronto. Key Game: July 20, the famous McGriff Trade / Press Box Fire Game, which I guess is pretty self-explanatory from the title. Crime Dog hit the ground running in Atlanta, hitting the homer that sparked a rally from 5-0 to 8-5 over Rheal Cormier and the Cardinals. The Braves were ten games back at the time. Of everyone ever to play for the Braves during The Run, McGriff probably remains the most underrated contributor. Well, there's Juan Berenguer too I suppose.
1994. The Strike Year. This lends a little extra mystique to The Run, as they were actually in second place when the strike hit. Who knows how it would have played out? The Expos were a fantastic team and had amassed a six-game lead with 48 games to play when the strike happened, but anyone who tries to insist the deficit would have been insurmountable clearly hadn't been paying attention the previous three years. Key Game: None for obvious reasons, but we'll go with this 5-0 win over the Expos in May, featuring vintage Maddux besting a young Pedro Martinez, time of game 2:18.
1995. The Year of Unnnhh Ohh Yeah! Simply glorious. When Marquis Grissom caught that final out in deep center to win the World Series, Bob Costas declared, "The team of the Nineties has its championship!" He was absolutely correct at the time. Backed by Grissom in his prime in center, Justice in his prime in right, McGriff in his late prime at first, Mark Wohlers in his prime as a closer, the pitchers who led the NL in ERA for the third straight year, and the formative seasons for Chipper Jones, Ryan Klesko and Javy Lopez, this edition was not quite as powerful at the plate as some of the others but didn't need to be with all that pitching. The forgotten hero from '95 was August acquisition Mike Deveraux, the MVP in a series against the juggernaut Gant 'N' Sanders Reds team that turned out to be one of the more lopsided NLCS in memory. Honorable mention goes to Pedro Borbon Jr., who got a crucial save in Game 4 of the World Series. Key Game: the last one. Duh.
1996. The Year of the Coulda Been Dynasty. Another strong team, this one overlooked because of the World Series choke. This time it was Smoltz's turn to snag the Cy Young from Maddux with his strongest campaign to date. The season was a cakewalk, exemplified on this game in August when Andruw Jones, who had just debuted the day before as a 19-year-old, hit his first big league home run off Pittsburgh ace Denny Neagle, illustrating just how blessed from above the Braves had become. The next day, John Schuerholz acquired Neagle for the forgotten Ron Wright just because he could, as if to drive the point home. (Lost in my analysis was the debut of Jermaine Dye, who homered in his first AB and enjoyed a brief stretch of Francoeur-like heat before eventually falling out of Schuerholz's plans.) The NLCS comeback from a 3-1 deficit against St. Louis might look remarkable in retrospect, but in reality it was virtually expected to happen at the time, such heavy favorites were the Braves. Andruw's two homeruns in Game One of the World Series were shockingly great, and everything was looking peachy. At that point anything looked possible -- two rings in a row, three, four? When would it end? Well, turned out it ended two games later with Jim Leyritz's dagger of a three-run homer in our Key Game: Game Four. Many have forgotten about the classic Game Five duel (Pettite def. Smoltz 1-0), but in retrospect [cue Behind the Music voiceover] Game Four was when it all came crashing down. Remember the swagger I mentioned that started gaining steam in '92? Series participants on both sides described the Braves entering the showdown with that swagger and leaving without it. (SI described it, and I wish I had time to find the link.) That was the crest of the wave right there. I've said it before and I'll say it again: Fuck you, Jim Leyritz.
1997. The Year of Continued Coulda Shoulda. Major offseason shakeup sent David Justice and Marquis Grissom to Cleveland for Alan Embree and Kenny Lofton, the latter of whom teamed up with a young Michael Tucker to revitalize the top of the batting order, at least until Lofton pulled a groin, stopped stealing bases, and left town in a huff the following year. It was really the first major shakeup of The Run, setting a precedent for Braves teams to come that would come to be borderline unrecognizable compared to their predecessors. (It was also the first salary dump, which would become a recurring theme as well.) The Florida Marlins were one of The Run's stronger second-place teams as they would show in the playoffs, but even they didn't seriously challenge the Braves, who were now getting solid pitching from Denny Neagle in addition to the Big Three. Unfortunately Wohlers had his meltdown after an oblique strain early in the year, a disaster that got unfairly blamed on the Leyritz homerun from '96, but it didn't matter in the end. Key Game: It's been mentioned recently in the press due to the unfortunate demise of its namesake, but the Braves were simply stabbed in the back by the home plate umpire in what has become known as, well, the Eric Gregg Game. I am still unable to talk about it rationally.
1998. The Year of the Big Cat. The big acquisition here was Andres Galarragga, who enjoyed one of the many great peaks of a rollercoaster sort of career. Although no longer as nimble around first base as his nickname suggested, the 44 homers were nonetheless a welcome addition to a suddenly homer-happy offense featuring Cat, Chipper, Andruw, Javy, and the Klesko-Gerald "Ice" Williams platoon in left. The pitching staff was still in its prime, with Glavine enjoying a mild renaissance to capture his second Cy Young, and rookie Kevin Millwood began to establish himself as well. Neagle was OK, and he had his own unique variation on the Tom Glavine pitching approach, but he would be sent to the Reds in the offseason as part of the Bret Boone trade, marking the last time Atlanta featured a legit Fab Four. Meanwhile Andruw Jones was cementing his reputation as the greatest defensive CF since Willie Mays with his propensity to be calmly waiting for fly balls that other outfielders would have to dive for or simply chase to the wall. Despite a dominant 106-win campaign, the NLCS went to Kevin Brown and the Padres. This was when Schuerholz first began to wrestle with the problem of not having the pitching edge in the postseason. Key Game: putting up a fight in the NLCS by winning Game Five. A great game, partly because it finally derailed Kevin Brown, who had been lights out all October and was appearing here in relief just because Bruce Bochy felt he could. Also because it featured the critical blow from Michael Tucker, the one bright shining unimpeachable accomplishment from his maddeningly inconsistent tenure in Atlanta.
1999. The Year of Chipper and the Chipperettes. At first glance one of the strongest teams of The Run with 103 wins, but actually one of its weakest, relying on an MVP season from Chipper and slightly reduced brilliance from the usual suspects in the rotation. Meanwhile this was the year they began to realize they could win the division despite carrying major weaknesses, such as a middle infeld of Walt Weiss and the despicable Bret Boone, with an unsuccessful Jose Hernandez acquisition for good measure. MIA was Galarragga, who sat out the year with non-Hodgkins lymphoma in his back. Also lost to season-ending injuries were Kerry Ligtenberg, Javy Lopez, Odalis Perez and Rudy Seanez, not that it mattered. The hero of the rotation turned out to be Millwood surprisingly enough, who went 18-7 with a 2.68 ERA in only his second full season. This season also marked the rise of John Rocker, the only player in baseball history to be ruined by an SI article. Key Game: The showdown with the Mets on 9/21 at Turner Field. Chipper was white-hot down the stretch, playing like an MVP with the sort of momentum you knew was going to be unstoppable. This game played out like it had been preordained, with a solid start from Smoltz and a solo Chipper homer from each side of the plate in a 2-1 game that didn't feel that close. The Braves went on to take five of six from the Mets in that crucial September home-and-away, and later roll past the same Mets in the NLCS. Chipper tried to reprise his heroics later in the World Series by jacking one for a 1-0 lead in Game One against El Duque and the Yanks, but it was simply not meant to be. This marked the first time the Braves had been obviously outmatched in a playoff series, which would become a trend.
2000. The First Year of Scraping By. This was the first year the vultures began to mistakenly circle overhead in anticpiation of The Run being over. Smoltz missed the season with Tommy John surgery, Galarragga made a remarkable comeback from cancer but wasn't quite the same, Schuerholz had traded Boone and Klesko to San Diego in the offseason for Quilvio Veras and Reggie Sanders, a move that looked great on paper but played out poorly as Sanders struggled horribly and Veras blew out his knee. As compensation we were introduced to a stellar rookie season from Rafael Furcal, whose .295/.394/.382 line belies the fact that he caused approximately 1,761 opposition errors with his blinding speed. He's still fast in Dodger Blue today but trust me, he was a freak of nature in his rookie year. The final one-game margin over the Mets wasn't quite as small as it looks, and anyway was rather anticlimactic as the loser was assured the wild card anyway. Bud Selig, the blood of regular season baseball is on your hands. Key Game: The final game of the regular season in Colorado. After inheriting a two-run lead from a choice Millwood start, John Rocker had the save in hand, but a two-out throwing error by Chipper on a routine play opened the floodgates for a six-run rally. The East was already clinched, but the loss cost the Braves home field advantage against St. Louis and left a bad taste in everyone's mouths that plainly contributed to the ensuing defeat in the NLDS for the first time during the Run (that would also become a trend). Honorable mention goes to the next game, the playoff opener against the Cardinals aka the Rick Ankiel Game, which saw the destruction of a player you all know to be near and dear to my heart. A rare day when everybody lost. Ghastly series, that, and a Pyrrhic victory for the Cards.
2001. The Lean Year. Not sure how this one happened. Atlanta finished 13th in the NL in offense and still managed to win the division by two games. It was the Phillies' turn to play runner-up this time, and the best they could do was 86 wins in a season when the East was there for the taking. Smoltz's return from Tommy John wasn't all that smooth, leading to the grand and largely successful John Smoltz As Closer Experiment, as opposed to the completely unsuccessful Ken Caminiti as First Baseman Experiment which was also this year. The team's ace in '01? John Burkett, with a smoke-and-mirrors 3.04 ERA. Key Game: a 2-1 win on 8/17 over Livan Hernandez and the Giants. Chipper's sixth-inning triple gave Maddux the win and set the table for Smoltz's first save.
2002. The Year of Leo. Gary Sheffield had been acquired for Odalis Perez and the overrated Brian Jordan in a classic sharp Schuerholz trade, but Sheff didn't really take until 2003 as he struggled periodically with an injured wrist and vanished in the NLDS against the Giants. I've gone this far in the post without once mentioning Leo Mazzone, but this year was really his opus. The Braves posted the best ERA in the league for the ninth time in twelve years and won the East by a whopping 19 games over Montreal. Millwood had one of his schizophrenic "good" years, Maddux had a 2.62 ERA, Glavine won eighteen games, Damian Moss peaked in his rookie year and Smoltz set an NL record with 55 saves despite being statistically the weakest link of a bullpen that featured Mazzone reclamations Darren Holmes (1.81), Mike Remlinger (1.99), and the remarkable Chris Hammond (0.95). The line of pitchers who excelled under Mazzone and faceplanted after leaving Atlanta goes out the door and around the corner. Mazzone's departure is an obvious choice for the biggest factor in the 2006 collapse, and it may well justifiably be so as the current reclamations don't look so hot any more all of a sudden (Ken Ray, Chad Paronto, Mike Remlinger II). Leo Mazzone, I raise my beer to thee. Key Game: Game Four in the NLDS against the Giants, when Glavine got rocked for the second time in the series, crippling Atlanta's chances. A doubly damaging series because a) it lent more urgency to the need to go find some new ace starters, and b) it made the Braves front office think Russ Ortiz was capable of being said ace starter.
2003. The Year of the Heavy Artillery. For the first time the Braves won the division on the strength of their offense rather than the pitching. Strong seasons all around from Lopez (43 HR), Sheffield (39 HR), Andruw (36 HR), and Chipper (27 HR, .919 OPS). This was also the long-awaited breakout season from Marcus Giles, a scrappy little sibling made good and far and away my favorite latter-day Brave for his cerebral hitting approach and excellent defense. A joyous season until the Division Series rolled around and the starting pitching was exposed by the Cubs, who had incredible aces Prior, Wood and Zambrano and also had a date with fate in the NLCS. Watching the wild-card Marlins blow past the Yankees in the World Series this year didn't sit too well, either. Key Game: NLDS Games One, Three and Five, in which Wood and Mark Prior outclassed each of the Braves' three top starters: in order, Russ Ortiz, Maddux and Mike Hampton. It was the second of three consecutive years in which the Braves would fail to get past the rubber match of the NLDS.
2004. The Year of This Is Getting to Be Fucking Ridiculous. This is when the season summaries on the official page start beginning with the phrase "Proving the critics wrong...." Analyzing the Braves' chances in the division each offseason was getting pretty close to wishcasting by this point, but against all odds Schuerholz's moves somehow kept working out. Here's how ridiculous it got: A year prior, Maddux had made the surprising decision to accept arbitration and stay for one more expensive ($16M) year past his peak. The Braves had been expecting him to sign elsewhere, and the resulting payroll increase led the new and more tightfisted AOL-TW ownership to force Schuerholz to panic and deal Millwood to archrival Philly on short notice rather than pay him $10M to help give the Braves another top-notch rotation. It was the most blatant salary dump in Braves history because all he could get in return was AAA catcher Johnny Estrada, and it caused an uproar among Braves supporters...until Estrada began tearing it up in Richmond and batted .314 in Atlanta the next year with several clutch hits, all this while Millwood flopped in Philly. Going into 2004, after a winter in which Lopez, Sheffield and Maddux (finally) had all been allowed to walk to greener pastures, there was no way to look at the roster and expect it to be threatening unless there somehow was a miracle in the form of the unthinkable, a fully healthy season from new acquisition J.D. Drew. And lo and behold, it came to be. Early in the season Drew took off an extra game or two with one of his signature "pulled this" or "tight that" or "sore the other" excuses, and reportedly Chipper, the team's clubhouse leader ever since his MVP year in '99, took him aside and made it clear that shit wasn't going to fly anymore. Drew's final line: 518 AB, 31 HR, 118 BB, .305/.436/.569, borderline MVP numbers in a non-Bonds world, and the perfect bait for his subsequent $50M contract from the Dodgers. (Looking at Drew's log from '04 the alleged episode may have come in the first week of May.) Jason Marquis may have helped out the Cardinals over stretches and Adam Wainwright may well turn out to have a long career, but Schuerholz yet again got exactly what he wanted out of this trade. Key Game: 5-2 over the Cubs on 4/10. Only symbolically a key game because it contained the signature moment of the great Julio Franco's reawakening in Atlanta. Kyle Farnsworth had come in to protect a 2-1 lead in the eighth with the bases loaded, and with two outs he and Franco locked horns in a thirteen-pitch epic battle until Franco finally came through and doubled in all three runs. The highlight of the season despite happening in the first week, and the crown jewel of Franco's second career.
2005. The Year of the Youth Movement. Perhaps the most remarkable East victory of the entire bunch, and if indeed it was the last, it was an appropriate conclusion to The Run. This is recent enough history that I don't have to go into too much detail here, but basically the team struggled mightily until rookies Francoeur, McCann, Langerhans, Johnson, and Boyer all arrived at about the same time and gave the team a shot in the arm. Also notable was Andruw for his long-awaited MVP-caliber season. The award went to Pujols and should probably have gone to Derrek Lee instead, but an argument could be constructed in Andruw's favor based on the timing of his immense midsummer hot streak, which came exactly when all the other major contributors were on the DL and the team was fading in the standings. Players, managers and announcers were unanimous in agreement that it was the single most thoroughly enjoyable and fulfilling year of the run. The sentiment was genuine, but it betrayed the underlying feeling we'd all become accustomed to, that any postseason success from the Braves would just be a bonus. Key Game: Yet another tough NLDS loss, this one coming in Game Four in eighteen innings to the Astros. Expectations had been uncertain because of the largely new cast of characters, but there's no doubt they had the talent on hand to make a deeper October run than this. The goat this year was Farnsworth, acquired for the stretch drive to fill the gap at closer. He had been up to the task until this game, when he tragically surrendered homers to Lance Berkman and Brad Ausmus (!). The second one especially was a punch in the gut, and the nine extra innings that followed the meltdown simply delayed the inevitable.
And that's The Run, ladies and gentlemen. This all took way longer to compile than I expected, but there's still quite a bit of forgotten lore remaining. There are numerous players not mentioned here that contributed enormously to The Run: Rafael Belliard, Mike Bielecki, Jeff Blauser, Alejandro Pena, Brian Hunter, Ozzie Guillen, Pete Smith, Damon Berryhill, Andy Ashby, Jeff Treadway, Eddie Perez, Charles Thomas, Dennis "El Presidente" Martinez, Dave Martinez, Greg Colbrunn, Mike Stanton, Mike Cather, Jerry Willard, Greg Olson, Kent Mercker, and so many more. Nor did I mention the controversy over Maddux's never-properly-explained refusal to pitch to Lopez, or the time Cox pulled Andruw Jones out of centerfield during an inning in '97 (?) for lollygagging, or Walt Weiss' beautiful diving play on Astroturf with the infield drawn in that saved the 1999 NLDS against Houston, or Deion Sanders giving Tim McCarver a Gatorade bath in the Atlanta clubhouse. There's way more of this stuff in the past sixteen years, and this is the stuff that makes following a team over the years a worthwhile pastime.
Anyway, this brings us to 2006, the intolerable present. We hope for more success of course, but the franchise is certainly coming to a crossroads. Next time we'll take a look at what needs to be done going forward.
[And many thanks to Deadspin for linking to this. You're with us.]
Labels: atlanta braves, wistful remembrance
