AJC > Sports > Braves > Blog > Archives > 2008 > June > 22
Sunday, June 22, 2008
Braves need an R.E.M.-like resurgence
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Gregg Allman’s “I’m No Angel” is playing on the stadium loudspeakers and Mark Kotsay is taking full-on cuts in the batting cage. That’s a pretty good start to a Sunday morning for me and for the Braves.
But Kotsay’s still at least a few days from returning. And I know you’re more interested in a couple others among the Braves’ walking wounded.
First, Chipper Jones is status quo. Day-to-day after his surprising pinch-hit appearance (and huge single) last night. Quad’s still messed up, and no word when he might be back in the lineup. But they obviously aren’t thinking DL, or he wouldn’t have hit last night.
Yunel Escobar’s is also unchanged. He’s got a strained hip flexor, injured Friday night. He ran well in his pinch-hit appearance last night, but he’s still sore and “not ready to play,” he said. He took BP and infield today, though, so I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s back in the lineup as soon as tomorrow.
Bobby Cox said the trainers have told him it’s a touchy injury, though, in that if he injures it any worse, if he tears it, he’d be out a couple months. So they’re testing him daily, doing strength tests, and also stressing to him the importance of being honest about how much discomfort there is in the hip.
Ruben Gotay is at third base and Omar Infante is back at shortstop after his uncharacteristic first-inning defensive gaffes last night. “Infante is a very good shortstop,” Cox said today, surely aware of what folks are thinking after watching those mistakes the veteran utility man made last night.
(Personally, I think Infante is strong defensively at every position he’s played. Just had an awful night. It happens.)
Why no Brent Lillibridge in the lineup? I think the Braves are trying to be careful and not throw him in there and have him go 0-for-4 again like he did in each of his two games when thrust into the lineup earlier this season at N.Y.
The Lil’ Bridge had a couple of three-hit games before he was called up, but he was still hitting .207 with 55 strikeouts in 208 at-bats at Richmond. He’s insurance right now because he can play three infield positions and even some outfield in a pinch.
Oh, and what’s this? No Jeff Francoeur in right field? Yes, it’s true.
Francouer is out of the lineup and Greg Norton is in RF. I asked Bobby and he said he told Francoeur in Texas last week that he was going to rest him in this Sunday day game. “He needs a breather,” Cox said.
Francoeur’s got some black-and-blue marks on his left arm where he was hit by pitches the last two nights, near the elbow and hand. He’s also got bruises on his shin from fouling a couple balls off.
Regardless of all that, most observers (including this one) would suggest he needs a day or two off because he’s struggling. Mightily.
Since May 27, Francoeur has hit .214 (21-for-98) with three homers, nine RBI and a .287 OBP in 25 games. The Braves are 9-16 in those games, and while there are many reasons for the losses, his lack of production is among those reasons.
He’s 4-for-32 with one walk and seven strikeouts in his past eight games, and in his past eight home games Francoeur is 6-for-33 with more double plays grounded into (two) than extra-base hits (one).
Brandon Jones is in right field today.
From frosty to sizzling: That’s what the Braves will see in the range of starting pitchers they’ll face today and tomorrow — the skidding Carlos Silva (3-5, 5.79 ERA) today and the streaking Ben Sheets (8-1, 2.74) in tomorrow’s series opener against the Brew Crew.
Silva’s overall numbers don’t reflect just how terrible he’s been lately. The man is 0-8 with an 8.49 ERA in his past nine starts, including losses in his past five starts. He is the coldest starting pitcher in baseball right now.
Sheets, on the other hand, is having a career season (he hasn’t been hurt, which is almost amazing). He’s given up more than three earn runs only twice in 14 starts, which is really, really good. He’s 4-0 with a 2.11 ERA in his past five starts, and he hasn’t lost on the road (5-0, 2.62 ERA in nine starts, with 48 strikeouts and 15 walks).
Then there are his numbers against the Braves. Oh, my.
Sheets is 8-3 in 11 starts against the Braves, including 6-1 with a 3.20 ERA in his past seven. In those seven starts he’s piled up a stunning 62 strikeouts with only six walks in 50-2/3 innings. Yes, 62 K’s, 6 walks in 50-2/3 innings.
He’s won all of his past five starts against the Braves, getting more than seven support runs per nine innings in that stretch.
R.E.M. is truly “back”: If their most recent album, the very strong Accelerate, wasn’t enough to completely convince me that R.E.M. had reclaimed its status as one of top rock bands in the world, last night was.
The boys from Athens, Ga., put on a phenomenal show at Lakewood here in Atlanta last night. Seriously, this was a great rock concert.
By the end of their approximate two-hour performance, I had forgotten (and no longer really cared) that I’d missed The National’s opening set (even though I do love that band, too). Rock shows should not start when the sun is still blazing overhead, unless it’s an all-day festival show, the kind that most middle-aged working dudes like me no longer attend.
Anyway, Modest Mouse’s middle set was fine, about as good as you can expect from a band that has to fill an opening slot for the huge headliner, and thus usually must play with lesser equipment and without all the bells-and-wistles visual effects, etc.
But R.E.M. would’ve blown away most bands on this night, which I’m assuming was pretty indicative of how they’ve played on this entire tour. They rocked hard, folks. Forget that mostly bland period between the excellent New Adventures in Hi-Fi album and the “comeback” blast of “Accelerate.”
If they were in danger of slipping from relevance for many younger rock fans (and I admit, they had), then they have certainly stepped forward with this album and this tour and answered any skeptics and critics, at least any who are actually paying attention and listening to the music.
Not only did they play every solid song from the new album, but I was pleasantly surprised - make that thrilled - that they played so many of the older gems, including “Fall On Me,” (with the greant former Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr joining on guitar), “Pretty Persuasion,” “Rockville” “Driver 8,” “Orange Crush,” “What’s the Frequency, Kenneth?,” “Electrolite,” and a slightly speeded up, muscular version of “Harborcoat.” Sublime, it was.
I’ve seen R.E.M. 10 or 12 times since 1983, the year I saw them play at old Hoch Auditorium on campus at the University of Kansas, just after Murmur was released and was the hottest thing going on college radio.
Stipe had long, curly hair then, and kept his back to the audience for most of the show. Saw them every year for the next five or six years after that, as they’d release a new album annually - Murmur, Reckoning, Fables of the Reconstruction, Life’s Rich Pageant, Document, Green and tour annually.
While I have only vague memories of those shows, for some reason (ahem), I’ve got to say, I can’t recall the band ever being much better, much tighter, much more entertaining than they were last night. Honestly.
They had a truly remarkable run of high-integrity, high-grade and original rock and roll during the 1980s, no dud among those early albums. Other than Monster, they really didn’t have even a mediocre album until after drummer Bill Berry left the band for health reasons more than a decade later.
Now, after figuring I’d be one of the R.E.M. completists who buys every album they put out, regardless of critical reviews, on the day it’s released, for as long as they hung on, it’s been a really uplifting thing to see one of my very favorite all-time bands come back so strong.
These are musicians who are all older than me playing new songs so good that most younger, trendier, “edgier” bands with members half their age can only dream of ever producing if they stay together half as long as the boys from R.E.M. have. Not to mention the classics most of those bands will never produce.
More than 25 years later, R.E.M. is back kicking tail. For us of a certain age, who went to college in the early 1980s, that’s great stuff. Seeing them on that stage last night, doing their thing, it doesn’t get much better.
”LIVING WELL IS THE BEST REVENGE” by R.E.M.
It’s only when your poison spins into the life you’d hoped to live
and suddenly you wake up in a shaken panic now
You had set me up like a lamb to slaughter
Garbo as a farmer’s daughter
Unbelievable, the gospel according to who?
I lay right down.
All your sad and lost apostles
hum my name and flare their nostrils
Choking on the bones you tossed to them
now I’m not one to sit and spin
because living well’s the best revenge
Baby, I am calling you on that
Don’t turn your talking points on me.
History will set me free
The future is ours and you don’t even rate a footnote now!
So who’s chasing you? Where did you go?
You disappear mid-sentence
In a judgment crisis I see my in and go for it
You weakened shill.
All your sad and lost apostles
hum my name and flare their nostrils
Choking on the bones you tossed to them
now I’m not one to sit and spin
because living well is the best revenge
and baby, I am calling you on that
You savour your dying breath
I forgive but I don’t forget
You work it out, let’s hear that argument again
Camera three… GO NOW!
All your sad and lost apostles
hum my name and flare their nostrils
Choking on the bones you tossed to them
now I’m not one to sit and spin
because living well is the best revenge
and baby, I am calling you on that
Baby, I am calling you on that
Baby, I am calling you on that
.JPG)
-1.JPG)
Services »
