AJC > Sports > Braves > Blog > Archives > 2007 > January > 08
Monday, January 8, 2007
Hammerin’ Hank & R.E.M. top these lists
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
On the day of football’s national championship and the announcement of Bobby Petrino as new Falcons coach, the biggest story nonetheless, at least to me, was R.E.M.’s election into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Damn straight.
And so, I’m devoting this Braves/Man in Black blog to two favorite topics: The Braves and rock ‘n roll. Feel free to talk pigskin if you want, but this blog, should you choose to take part, is going to require undivided attention.
And this exercise is undoubtedly going to raise some arguments. It better, or you folks aren’t nearly opinionated enough.
Here’s what we’re going to do. What we’ve done. Ranked the top 10 Atlanta Braves players — repeat, ATLANTA Braves — and top 10 rock bands of the past 25 years (bands are eligible for the Hall 25 years after their first record, and R.E.M.’s going in on the first ballot).
Keep in mind, this eliminates some great Braves who played all or most of their career with the Milwaukee Braves or with other teams, and eliminates a lot of rock bands who were already big before 1982, bands such as The Clash, Allman Brothers, X, Ramones, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Pretenders, Talking Heads, Van Halen, Kiss — or Led Zep and the Stones, obviously. And also Husker Du, one of my personal faves.
(LATE EDITED CHANGE TO MY LIST: I dropped U2 after determining they were sufficiently big following pre-1982 releases of Boy and October albums, though they obviously got far bigger in the past 25 years. That’s why there’s going to be confusion when you read some posts before the change was made. Anyway, back to our blog, as filed earlier today.)
It also eliminates Bon Jovi and Journey, because I said GOOD bands, not cheesy bands that sold a lot of albums. Oh, that ought to get a couple responses right there. And for these purposes, we’ll consider Elvis Costello, Prince and others as solo artists, though they released plenty of sensational CDs in this era with bands (the Attractions, the Revolution).
Now, this is just my list, and I’m certain that very few of you are probably going to agree with all or most of my bands. That’s fine. This is about personal tastes, and, personally, I don’t care how many albums a band sells.
Also, a few of my very favorite bands, like Drive-By Truckers, Black Keys and Calexico, haven’t been around quite long enough or made quite a big enough impact to make my list, not like these 10 have. I cheated on Wilco and combined them with the band they stemmed from, Uncle Tupelo.
I though of including Public Enemy, but in the end I decided we needed to confine this to rock bands or it just gets unwieldy. Though I could argue Public Enemy rocked harder than some bands on my list, and have had a bigger impact.
Radiohead, Pearl Jam, Social Distortion, Pavement, Blur, Morphine, Oasis, Metallica, Flaming Lips, Red Hot Chili Peppers … a lot of great bands got left off my list. But I wanted to keep it to 10 to make it tougher to pick.
Now, as for the Braves list, I think we’ll probably agree on most of the guys on the list, but the hard part of that was ranking them. Unlike the bands, we’re ranking the players by their greatness, their impact while with the Braves.
To me, guys like Andres Galarraga, Terry Pendleton, Denny Neagle, Mark Wohlers and — OK, I’ll say it — John Rocker weren’t with the team long enough to make this list, though they may have had a few spectacular seasons in Atlanta.
And I admit, it’s splitting hairs on some of these guys. A year or two ago, I would still have had Dale Murphy ahead of Chipper, but as Hoss has passed Murph in a few major club records, I’ve gotta go with Chipper.
Also, though some may say it’s obvious because Niekro’s in the Hall of Fame, I really debated whether to rank him ahead of Glavine. If you look at their career numbers with Atlanta, it’d be easy to go with Glavine. And how to rank, say, Andruw compared to Chipper and Smoltz?
Javy Lopez was the toughest call, and he got the nod from me only because he was around twice as long as Terry Pendleton and a bit longer than Rafael Furcal. I wouldn’t argue strongly with anyone who chose two ahead of Javy, though.
It’s highly subjective and I might have a different opinion by the end of the season. Or the week. Who knows? But it’s fun, I think you’ll agree, to go through and try to rank them. Get out your reference books, or get ready to go back and forth to Baseball Reference or your favorite website for comparisons.
And if you want to skip either list, feel free. No worries.
Top 10 Atlanta Braves (in order)
1) Hank Aaron
2) Greg Maddux
3) Phil Niekro
4) Tom Glavine
5) Chipper Jones
6) Dale Murphy
7) Andruw Jones
8) John Smoltz
9) David Justice
10) Javy Lopez
Top 10 Bands of 25 years (no particular order)
Jane’s Addiction
The Replacements
The Waterboys
The Pogues
The Smiths
R.E.M.
Nirvana
Guns & Roses
Pixies
Wilco/Uncle Tupelo
