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Tuesday, July 8, 2008
Braves need the break — and so do fans
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
So help me, but this is the gol-dangedest Braves season I’ve ever sat in on. And I’ve seen them all since Bobby Bragan bottle-fed the weanling franchise in 1966. Nobody cared too much about how well they played. Just put on the uniform and call them major league. Winning right off wasn’t urgent in those days. “Atlanta Braves,” what a mellow ring it had to it!
Twenty-five years trudged by before they finally got a nip of Fall ecstasy. They didn’t win their first World Series, but, fa, la, la, there would be more down the road. They did finally win one, and the search goes on for another. It won’t be this year. That became more apparent with each passing day of spring training, and has become moreso of late. Spring training was mislabeled. It developed into a form of spring sickbay, and the casualties multiplied, as did the losses, with every turn of the calendar.
It was easy to flow along, banking on all that pitching gold. Look at them, John Smoltz and Tom Glavine. Nearly every time you see their names, Hall of Fame is required attachment. And Mike Hampton would be back — at last. Added up, the three of them had won 648 major league games. At the stage of this season, Smoltz and Glavine have won five collectively. Hampton has yet to deliver an official pitch, and he has company on the disabled roster. Smoltz is through for the year.
Little help has been mined out of the farm system. The lineup is being filled out with other teams’ backups, and in most cases, rejects. Corky Miller, the backup catcher with a lifetime batting average of .196, was dropped by the Red Sox. Ruben Gotay was cut by the Mets. Greg Norton was released by Seattle. Omar Infante came in a trade with the Cubs, who had picked him up in a trade with the Tigers. After Jorge Campillo was dropped by the Mariners, he has been able to make a place for himself as an accidental starter. The bullpen has been inhabited in part by pitchers traded away by other clubs, Royce Ring and Jeff Ridgway mainly because they’re left-handed. And the pitcher with the most stylish earned run average, Buddy Carlyle, still can’t work his way out of long relief.
Peter Moylan, the semi-submarine righthander from Down Under, found out in spring training that he, too, was in need of elbow surgery. There went the lowest earned run average on the ‘07 staff. He becomes another non-working part of the team’s travel entourage. In the nearly three years that Hampton has been a road guest of the Braves, his travel expenses might have been enough to afford another worthy reliever.
You have been kept thoroughly informed, I’d suppose, on the trials and tribulations of Jeff Francoeur, which have consumed more newsprint than the war in Iraq. Sadly, this blundersome case has reflected glowingly on neither party. That Francoeur chose to find relief for his hitting wounds on a minor league staff than in his own clubhouse is another reflection. No, it wasn’t handled with major league cunning on either part, making the point that it never should have become the front-page bluster that it did.
This is a ball team in a state of disarray, pure and simple. Bobby Cox is not having his best year, and at times, appears to be in a state of resignation. Such a team as this will do that to a man who is accustomed to being out front and on top of his game. The All-Star Game holiday couldn’t come at a better time.
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