AJC > Sports > Braves > Blog > Archives > 2007 > July > 22
Sunday, July 22, 2007
Cox gamble pays off
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
It’s some bright and early blogging on a Sunday morning because you guys were posting fiends the last 48 hours. Congratulate yourselves. And let me clean the slate.
It’s not actually that early, just feels that way since the game last night was a lot to wind down from. And hey, I just covered it. I wonder if Willie Harris was bouncing off the walls for a couple hours after the game? Might still be.
It’s been fairly well documented last night, but surely bears repeating. Before Willie Harris stepped to the plate for the first of his six hits in six at-bats last night, his two triples and his six RBIs, he had zero extra base hits, zero runs batted in and was hitting .190 over the last month. Friday night he’d gone 0-for-5 with two strikeouts.
Yet Bobby Cox trots him out there as always, in the leadoff spot, against a right-hander, there you go. That got me to thinking — about how I’m such a horrible gambler. Not that I spend much time doing it. I’ve never even bought a lottery ticket.) It goes against my type A personality. I think I’ve been to one blackjack table in the last five years when I was covering the Independence Bowl in Shreveport. I mean what the heck else are you going to do in Shreveport?
But the reason that I never make any money is I won’t stack a lot of chips down on one hand. It’s pretty much a $5 bet a hand at a $5 table, a $10 bet if all they have is $10 tables, and an occasional double down. I see a king, I think that’s good. I see a two, I’m worried. And a good night at the table for me is either to break even, make something that might cover a dinner at Houston’s, or at least get to say hey, I played on my $50 for an hour.
I don’t have the stuff of Cox, to put so many big chips on a player everybody else would walk away from the table for, at least for one hand, or maybe the night. And that’s why it’s fun to watch Cox gamble sometimes and come up with what he did Saturday night: Willie’s 6-for-6.
Call it luck if you want. But six hits don’t come out of nowhere. Loyalty counts for something. And going to the plate, not worried about your job means something. And if you can follow me here, I’ll continue the blackjack analogy: while the rest of us get excited about the king - the guy who’s on the 10-game hitting streak - we’re not realizing that under the two, there might be a nine, and then here come the blessed face cards.
Cox sticks with his guns. His players love it. And Buddy Carlyle, for one, benefited - he’s now 5-2, folks - if only to improve his cardiovascular health from scoring from first twice on Willie triples.
“Obviously there’s no manager in the major leagues who has more faith and confidence in players than Bobby does,” Carlyle said. “There are other teams when you struggle, you can feel a manager pressing on you. But here, I don’t think you really ever feel that.”
And just a side note about Willie. No I’m not going to pick the day after he went 6-for-6 to remind everybody how when he first came up, I suggested he had Charles Thomas potential. No, that would be just way too easy. I was just going to describe for you what I saw when I walked into the clubhouse yesterday.
No players were around except for Willie and Matt Diaz, the two members of the Braves’ left field platoon. They locker side-by-side. They were sitting in their lockers, deeply engrossed in conversation, pleasantly chatting along. They both got up and walked out of the clubhouse together, still chatting it up. They might not have noticed anybody else in the room as they walked out.
I marveled for just a second at two guys who play the same position and both want more playing time. If it were me, I’m not so sure how pleasant I would be, much less friendly.
Matt and Willie say they pull for each other, and I’m inclined to believe them. This arrangement works, and it’s cool to see. I could surely learn something from them, eh?
It’s also pretty clear St. Louis’ pitching staff has got some major issues. Just saying.
And onto the trade winds … from hearing what John Schuerholz had to say yesterday, and trying as always to read between the lines, it sounds like if Schuerholz had his druthers, the Braves would be acquiring pitching some time in the next nine days.
“We’re talking about a variety of things,” Schuerholz said. “I’m not going to narrow it down to one thing. We’re just doing our due diligence. Something might come up that we weren’t even focusing on. Pitching is always a priority. It always has been and always will be.”
