AJC > Sports > Braves > Blog > Archives > 2008 > April > 17
Thursday, April 17, 2008
This. Trip. Must. End.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Fort Lauderdale, Fla. — The only perfect ending for this Braves road trip would be a three-game series on the Seventh Ring of Hell. Though Dolphin Stadium is close enough.
This three-city debacle of a road trip will end tonight, barring natural disaster. When it’s over, the Braves will have lost either six or seven of nine games since leaving Atlanta, including (at least) four one-run losses.
But that’s just the start of what’s made this trip one the Braves won’t soon forget (without therapy).
Catch your breath. Now here we go.
Since leaving Atlanta the Braves:
— Placed their two best relievers on the DL with elbow injuries.
— Lost their top prospect to a 50-game suspension for HGH.
— Watched Tom Glavine limp off the field with a first-inning hamstring injury.
— Learned that Braves legend Hank Aaron’s mother died last week.
— And Braves Hall of Famer Tommy Holmes died Monday.
— Brought up Chuck James, then sent him back to Triple-A 15 hours later after he lasted three erratic, hard-to-watch innings in one start.
— Had one game snowed out and another delayed 90 minutes by rain.
— Released troubled veteran Scott Spiezio for showing up at the ballpark in a state resembling me each morning during spring break, Daytona Beach 1984.
— Did I mention lost six of eight games (with one to go)?
To say this has been a rough trip is to say that commercial air travel has become slightly inconvenient (the Braves don’t fly commercial, but if they had to, they might just have called it a season after this trip).
What’s the mood in the clubhouse, some denizens of the Braves/Man In Black blog have asked.
Folks, it’s been somber. So quiet after most games, you could hear the sound of a pin drop (or blood pressure rising … or a calcium deposit scraping against a ligament).
Here’s what Chipper Jones, whose .404 average ranks second in the NL to former teammate Rafael Furcal’s .407, said when I asked whether he could even take any satisfaction from starting out hot at the plate, given the team’s struggles.
“Obviously I’m happy with the start individually,” Hoss said, “but it’s not a lot of fun, period, whether you’re producing or not, if you’re not winning games. We’re not getting it done. The injury bug’s hit us pretty hard here the first two weeks of the season.”
But he’s not one to mince words or make excuses. And he continued:
“We’re not consistent out of the bullpen. Our starting guys have done pretty well, but we’re just not consistent out of the bullpen. Our offense, it seems like we either score one run or 10. That, again, is inconsistency out of guys up and down the lineup.
“And one thing you try and stress is, each guy has got to go out there and try to produce a run a game, and get on base so that the next guy can do something productive. We’re just not getting it done, one way or another, through the course of each and every game.”
I asked if there was anything he or John Smoltz or other veterans could say to the rest of the team, to try to get things turned around.
“Obviously with the injuries we’ve had, we’ve got to have [other] guys step up,” Chipper said. “But I don’t think there’s anything we can really say until everybody gets healthy and everybody gets in there.
“The every-day lineup has stayed pretty healthy. But obviously when the middle of your lineup has struggled the way Tex and Frenchy — you look at Frenchy’s numbers and they’re not that bad. But he had one monster game. You take that game away and he’s struggled.”
(He’s right. Francoeur is hitting .281 with three homers and 12 RBI in 14 games, but he had two homers and seven RBI in one game at Washington. In his other 13 games he’s hit .250 with one homer and five RBI in 52 at-bats, including eight games without an RBI.)
(Oh, and Teixeira is hitting .204 overall including 2-for-11 with runners in scoring position, after hitting a ridiculous .509 in 53 at-bats with RISP for the Braves in August and September.)
“B-Mac [Brian McCann] has hit into some bad luck, hasn’t gotten a lot to show for it,” Jones said. “Whenever you have the meat of your lineup not producing runs and getting big hits, you’re gonna struggle. And that’s where we are right now.
“Those guys hopefully will run into some warmer weather here pretty soon and guys will heat up.”
Home at last: The Braves can only hope that getting home can help them snap out of this funk. They’ve hit just .237 on the road, while at home the Braves have a .312 average that ranks second in the NL to Arizona’s .327.
By the way, the Braves also finished the 2007 season mired in a road malaise. Going back to Aug. 21, they’ve now lost 20 of their past 30 road games.
A few stats: The home that Jeff Bennett gave up to Luis Gonzalez in the seventh inning Wednesday was the league-high sixth homer allowed by Braves pitchers in the late innings of close game. Meanwhile, Braves hitters rank last in the NL with a .196 average (22-for-112) in those situations…. Since going 24-12 to start the 2007 season, the Braves are 10 games under .500 (65-75) in their past 140 games. They’re 31-43 on the road in that period.
OK, now for something great: The new James McMurtry album Just Us Kids isn’t good, it’s terrific. Simply outstanding. My early candidate for album of the year, though it’ll make few best-of lists because not enough music critics seem to have a clue about his brilliance.
I’m not going to say this tall Texan is our generation’s Bob Dylan, because it’s a bit much to say anyone is the next Dylan. But McMurtry turns a phrase like no other artist to come along the last two decades, and he’s put out a string of provocative, intelligent albums that each contain more well-written songs than some more heralded artists of a similar genre produce in a career.
This one’s even better than 2005’s Childish Things. Though I should warn some of you, don’t even reach for it if you believe musicians shouldn’t express dissenting points of view. I’ll leave it at that, and won’t get into those particular lyrics in this forum. I certainly understand and respect that we have differing views among the motley assortment of good, opinionated folks here.
No need to let those views cause any problems in our discussions of baseball, movies, TV, BBQ (not enough of that discussion lately, by the way), etc.
Plenty of the songs on this McMurtry masterpiece are of the stuff he’s always written about, tales of blue-collar folks and hard-luck inhabitants of the American underbelly. Five-minute character studies that contain more depth and detail than most authors put in a book.
But some of these new songs are very much his reaction to the times we live in.
In this Braves/MIB forum, I just feel like it’s fair that I advise some of you not to spend your money if that’s not what you want to hear, because I don’t want anyone angry at me for spending money on something I recommended that they find objectionable when they hear the lyrics.
OK, that said, those of you who like such fare, run to your finer record stores (like Ella Guru, for instance) and buy it.
Now let’s go out with an older McMurtry tune, one of my favorites:
”LIGHTS OF CHEYENNE” by James McMurtry
Look off down the highway
at the glittering lights
Like windshield glass
on the shoulder tonight
As the diesels come
grinding on up from the plains
All bunched up like pearls on a string
And I guess time don’t mean nothin’
Not nothin’ at all
And out on the horizon
the broken stars fall
Old broken stars they
fall down on the land
And get mixed together
with the lights of Cheyenne
Well I’ve been up all night
and I’m down on my back
Workin’ the counter
to take up the slack
`Cause the money tree’s light
and the whiskey stream’s low
You ain’t worked a week
since July
You say the gravel pit’s hiring
After the first
But you don’t have the
nature for that kind of work
You might get hired on
But you won’t make a hand
And I’ll still be here lookin’
at the lights of Cheyenne
You stand in the sky
with your feet on the ground
Never suspectin’ a thing
But if the sky were to
move you might never be found
Never be heard from again
We go on good behavior when
our youngest comes home
She comes up from Boulder
but she never stays long
And that oldest still fights
me like she was 18
Stopped in for a six-pack awhile ago
And she’s got a cowboy problem
And this last one’s a sight
All dressed up like Gunsmoke
for Saturday night
And they were off to the bars
for lack of a plan
Racing the stars to the lights of Cheyenne
And you’ve kept all that
meanness inside you so long
You’d fight with a fence post
if it looked at your wrong
Well the post won’t hit back,
and it won’t call the law
I look at you right,
or I don’t look at all
Now take a crumpled up
soft pack and give it a shake
Out by the dumpster on a cigarette break
With one eye swelled up from
the back of your hand
And the other eye fixed
on the lights of Cheyenne
You stand in the sky with
your feet on the ground
Never suspectin’ a thing
But if the sky were to
move you might never be found
Never be heard from again
Now there’s antelope grazing
in range of my gun
Come opening weekend
you won’t see a one
They’ll vanish like ghosts
`cause somehow they know
But now they’re up to the
fence in the early dawn
And it’s warming up nicely
for this time of year
The creeks are still frozen but
the roads are all clear
And I don’t have it in me
to make one more stand
Though I never much cared
for the lights of Cheyenne
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