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Monday, August 15, 2005
There’s no doubt now : Francoeur is legit
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
At some point you stop waiting for him to cool down. At some point you stop seeing him as just another rookie off to a flying start. At some point you yield to the increasingly apparent and you say, “Look, the guy’s just good.”
And that point is …
“Now,” Marcus Giles said. “He’s a great ballplayer. He’s legit. He’s definitely legit.”
Giles was speaking of Jeff Francoeur, as if you couldn’t guess, after the pride of Parkview had fashioned another of those Francoeur-like days. He’d hit a three-run homer to break open Sunday’s game, and he’d thrown out two runners â€â€? actually the same runner twice â€â€? at the plate. After the second mighty throw, the forlorn Luis Gonzalez looked at Braves pitcher Mike Hampton and said, “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
Over the past 38 days, we’ve all mouthed those same words about the same 21-year-old. He hasn’t just looked talented and promising, the way rookies are supposed to look. He has looked like the best Braves player to come along since Andruw Jones, maybe since Chipper Jones, maybe since Dale Murphy. Everybody keeps saying, as both Hampton and Giles did Sunday, “He’s not going to hit .400 all year,” but Francoeur has played a month’s worth of games and has tailed off only to .382. And he has, as we know, had to hit his way on â€â€? he hasn’t walked yet.
“It’s pretty special what he’s done,” said Bobby Cox, trying not to get carried away but getting carried away anyway. “He can have some bad at-bats and still change a game.”
He changed Sunday’s. Francoeur struck out his first time up on a slider in the dirt from Javier Vazquez. “First time I’d seen that pitch,” Francoeur said. He hit the next pitch he saw from Vazquez over the wall in left-center. “A two-seamer,” he said. The guy, as we’re constantly being reminded, learns awfully fast.
Some rookies start hot but don’t have the physical resources to sustain them when they become known quantities. Francoeur is so symmetrically gifted it’s ridiculous. Playing two-way football as a Parkview junior, he had 14 receiving touchdowns and 15 interceptions. Playing big-league baseball for the first time in his life, he has nine homers and eight assists.
“I would be lying to you if I said I expected this,” Francoeur said, meaning his banner debut, but why should we ever expect him to struggle, to flail, to disappoint? He won state championships in football and baseball as both junior and senior. Despite suffering a broken cheekbone last summer, he reached the majors barely three years after being drafted. He has been a fast-tracker since he was a Parkview sophomore, and there’s a reason: He’s one of the finest athletes you’ll ever see.
It’s a surprise that he’s had this great an impact this soon, yes, but the greater surprise would have been if he’d pulled a Kelly Johnson and started 1-for-30. To borrow Cox’s word, some guys are just special. Walking by Francoeur’s locker Sunday, Tim Hudson said, “The bus to Class AAAA leaves tonight, Frenchy,” and that was obviously a joke. Francoeur isn’t one of those fictional Class AAAA players â€â€? a guy who does it in the minors but can’t quite stick in the majors. Francoeur is a big-league fixture already. He’ll be here until he retires.
“I’ve been getting lucky,” Francoeur said, but if that’s true he has been lucky his entire life. He has been getting pitches to hit, he said, because Chipper and Andruw Jones have been hitting, but lots of guys get pitches to hit and never hit them. Amid a host of impressive Braves rookies, Francoeur has stamped himself as the best in his class. He always does.
By the way, he was an even better football player.
Permalink | Comments (7) | Categories: Braves / MLB, Mark Bradley
T.O. and his circus pay visit to Falcons
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
Uh-oh. Here were the Falcons and the Ravens having a relatively sedate preseason game Saturday night at the Georgia Dome, and in the middle of it all, it got lively in a hurry. That’s because you had the most famous initials this side of A.I. sitting in Section 117, Row 5 and Seat 4.
What in the name of trying to get traded to the Falcons was T.O. doing here? “Just watching the game,” said Terrell Owens, with a little smile, before turning away from an AJC columnist to catch more of the (ahem) action.
If you had an opportunity to play for the Falcons, would you? “I just want to play football,” Owens said, with another little smile. So will you talk to anybody associated with the Falcons after the game about coming here? This time, Owens’ face turned serious before he said, “I know Coach Stewart [Falcons wide receivers coach George Stewart] who was my coach in San Francisco, and I know [Falcons linebacker] Ike Reese, who is a former teammate of mine, and I saw [Falcons safety] Ronnie Heard, and we played together in San Francisco, and I know Mark Anelli, who is playing tight end.”
Then Owens’ little smile returned, before he added, “I’m just here enjoying the football game.”
Uh-oh. I mean, surely T.O. was more than a spectator for this one, especially given the circus that he created during the past few days in Bethlehem, Pa., the training camp home of the Philadelphia Eagles. In case you haven’t heard, Owens became the ringmaster, the elephants and the clowns after he feuded with teammates and coaches before he was asked by Eagles officials to get lost until next Wednesday. If he can’t get his contract renegotiated (the one that he signed before last season with the Eagles without anybody sticking a knife to his throat), he wants to go elsewhere.
Like Atlanta, for instance.
Uh-oh. Owens lives in Lithonia, and although the Falcons snatched Roddy White in the first round of the NFL draft last spring, White still is a rookie with potential while the other guy lives in the Pro Bowl during most seasons. And remember: We’re talking about a league in which teams have a tendency to get amnesia if they think somebody has a dose of talent and the capacity to get your fingerprints on a Lombardi Trophy.
It’s just that this is the same T.O. who created that big top in San Francisco before Philadelphia. There was that Sharpie thing and that stomping on the star thing at Texas Stadium. Mostly, there were all of those blowup things with the 49ers, and the worst involved his screaming into the ear of offensive coordinator Greg Knapp on the San Francisco sidelines.
This is the same Greg Knapp who is the offensive coordinator for the Falcons these days. Not only that, the Falcons head coach is Jim Mora, the 49ers’ defensive coordinator during all of T.O’s San Francisco rants. No way they’d join Falcons general manager Rich McKay in bringing Owens to a locker room seeking chemistry.
Owens is anti-chemistry. We’re talking about a player who couldn’t care less that he joined the Eagles from San Francisco with much help from stellar quarterback Donovan McNabb. Ever since the Eagles stumbled last season in the Super Bowl to the New England Patriots (despite a glorious game from Owens recovering from a broken leg), he has whipped McNabb with his tongue.
That is, when Owens isn’t doing the same with coach Andy Reid, offensive coordinator Brad Childress or others wearing Eagles colors.
Supposedly, after Owens departed Bethlehem this week, he was heading for the Bahamas. Supposedly. Although Owens said he was at the Falcons-Ravens game, because, “I got some tickets from some friends,” you don’t just decide to come to a meaningless preseason game if you’ve got famous initials. In other words, it likely wasn’t a coincidence that Owens was positioned behind the Falcons bench. At one point, he shouted and waved toward Michael Vick, the guy that Owens wishes to throw passes his way instead of McNabb.
So what exactly did you say to Vick across the way? Owens swung his head around with another quick smile to say, “I’m just here to watch the game.”
Good. Let Owens watch. As for playing, let’s just hope that T.O. just G.O. â€â€? but not to the Falcons.
Permalink | Comments (2) | Categories: Falcons / NFL, Terence Moore
Bennett knows role is to push Ball
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Barely a week into practice, this much is clear: Taylor Bennett isn’t going to take Reggie Ball’s position. This isn’t to say Ball couldn’t lose his position, which he has come close to doing twice already. But Ball, for better or worse, is simply the superior quarterback, possessed of a stronger arm and fleeter feet and 25 games of collegiate seasoning to Bennett’s none.
Chan Gailey confirmed â€â€? or conceded â€â€? the point this week. Reggie Ball is Georgia Tech’s No. 1 quarterback, Taylor Bennett its No. 2. That order isn’t apt to change before the season commences, if then.
So what, you’re wondering, was that December blather about Ball having to re-win the job? And what did Gailey mean when he said two weeks ago that he might well deploy two quarterbacks? If the competition is essentially closed less than a week into practice, was it ever really otherwise?
Asked if Ball had risen to the challenge or Bennett had fluffed his audition, Gailey was loath to say either had occurred. Here’s what he did say: “Reggie has increased in knowledge, but until he gets on the field [in a game] we won’t know how much he has improved. And it’s hard for [Bennett] to show very much because he hasn’t been with the No. 1 [unit] that often.”
No, that didn’t sound like a gushing endorsement (or a rank dismissal) of either, but that’s what happens when you’re a coach and Reggie Ball is your quarterback. You wait for the other shoe to drop. In two seasons you’ve seen him do enough good things to win 14 games but enough silly things to keep Tech from winning two or three more. You’d like him to be more consistent, and sometimes you get so frustrated that you trot out Taylor Bennett as an option. Only Taylor Bennett, a redshirt freshman who played in high school only as a senior, isn’t really an option yet.
After Ball had one of his wretched days against Miami last October â€â€? eight completions, three interceptions â€â€? Gailey considered playing Bennett, who was supposed to be redshirting. “Before the Maryland game, they told me to get ready,” Bennett said. “I got a little nervous.”
But Ball was solid enough against the Terps that the issue was tabled. Then he lost track of downs against Georgia and Gailey declared that the job would be open come 2005. On cue, Ball was MVP of the Champs Sports Bowl, and he outplayed Bennett in the spring and has looked much better in the first week of fall practice. And now Gailey sounds as if Ball will again take every important snap unless he messes up royally.
“I don’t believe in jerking a guy out,” Gailey said. “Nobody out here is perfect. If I’m looking for that first mistake, then that’s wrong on my part. It would take something somewhat prolonged before I’d make a change, and I’m not looking for that. I actually think [Ball is] going to play pretty good this year.”
So where does this leave Bennett? Of Ball, he said: “He’s our starter; he’s our man. I’m out here trying to push him.”
And maybe that’s the most important function Bennett can perform. For two seasons Ball has played knowing there was no viable alternative behind him. (Gailey, you’ll recall, demoted A.J. Suggs and moved Damarius Bilbo to receiver two summers ago when he handed Ball the job, and Ball essentially worked without a backup last season.) Bennett seems an alternative. He could move Tech in a pinch. He’s just good enough to keep Ball focused on boring stuff like precision and execution, which is more than half the battle.
Reggie Ball can do the big things. What has kept him from being a true big-timer is his failure to grasp the basics. Just by being on the active roster, Taylor Bennett is performing a vital service. He’s both safety net and nagging reminder.
Permalink | | Categories: Mark Bradley, Tech / ACC
Star-crossed Mauch was one of a kind
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
In all my baseball days, I had never met a manager who knew more about the game. And I had known managers who had grown gray on the job. Gene Mauch was only 27.
He had just arrived in town to manage the Atlanta Crackers in 1953 , which struck me as strange, since he had hit .324 in the American Association the year before and apparently had a career ahead of him. But John Quinn , who ran the then-Boston Braves, felt he had a budding genius in his hire and wanted to get him plugged in. Quinn was right, but a few years ahead of his time.
Mauch would be a playing manager. “I’ll play third base, so I can be nearer the pitcher,� he said, “if I can make the team, and if I can’t, I’ll play second.� Which he did.
No doubt about who was in charge. Those piercing blue eyes could bore a hole through you. He made you nervous while he carefully thought through his next sentence. He would stand at a bar and argue baseball with you until the lights were turned off. In one season, I came to know and enjoy him more than any manager I crossed swords with. Mauch was, indeed, ahead of himself. He returned to the field for three good seasons in Los Angeles. (One year he hit 20 home runs.) In 1960, Quinn, then moved to Philadelphia, called on him again, and for the next three decades he managed the Phillies, Montreal, Minnesota and California , in the process, suffered three major heart breaks. Three times within a murmur of a pennant.
“Best manager in baseball who never made it to a World Series,� it was said of him, and who’s to debate that?
Oh, no doubt who was in charge. Captain Bligh was a scoutmaster by comparison. He took over the Phillies in 1960, and lost 23 games in a row the following year . They weren’t called “phutile� without license. If there was anything Mauch couldn’t stomach, it was complacency, and one night in Houston, after a dismal performance, he shocked his dawdling hirelings by spraying the clubhouse with spareribs, cutlets, sandwiches and all the postgame food the clubhouse man regularly laid out. It’s a rampage that hasn’t lost its place when baseball tales are being told.
He was the Expos’ first manager, and if there’s any fate worse than managing an expansion team, it’s managing one that can’t rise above .500. Then to the Twins, where he endured Calvin Griffith’s tight-fistedness as long as he could stand it. Then Gene Autry put in a call for him. Mauch later said that the Angels had more talent than any team he ever had, but twice they led him to the brink and stranded him there.
The Phillies had given him an indoctrination in close calls in 1964. Six games ahead, 16 games to play, they were sitting cozy. But he relied too heavily on two pitchers, Jim Bunning, same as the senator from Kentucky now, and Chris Short, and all the Phillies did was come up short. In California, it was even more cruel. The Angels were within one strike of the pennant in 1986, but instead blew a three-run lead and another one got away. You never saw a more bedraggled human being, standing alone in the dugout after it was all over.
Physically, he wasn’t a big fellow, but inwardly, he was as tough as a clenched fist. He had attracted John Quinn’s attention as a rookie with the Braves. The team bus, on the way to a spring game, had become wedged beneath a railroad overpass. Players got out, stood around, cursing the driver, when Mauch stepped up with the solution.
“Let some of the air out of the tires,� the rookie said. They did. The bus squeezed through, players boarded again and Mauch was a hero.
He gave me some of the days of my life I’ll never forget. His Crackers team finished third, and he later told a Philadelphia sportswriter, “Bisher told me, ‘I’m glad for your sake, you didn’t win the pennant. You’re overbearing enough â€â€? with a winner you’d be unbearable.’â€? It was written that he laughed.
Gene passed away last Monday in Rancho Mirage, Calif. He was 79, and not a dull moment among them.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Braves / MLB, Furman Bisher
Falcons catching a break with Eagles’ turmoil
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
Flowery Branch â€â€? I would say things have been quiet here, but then that wouldn’t constitute news. This is Flowery Branch. There hasn’t been big news here since bingo was moved to Tuesday nights.
But if you play for the Falcons, you love the peace. You let the serenity wash over you. You light a candle and sit on a pillow and chant and blow colors. And then at night, you make popcorn, turn on ESPN, watch Terrell Owens do sit-ups in his driveway and laugh so hard that the neighbors think, “Wow. Must be some bingo tournament they’re having next door.”
This has been a good training camp for the Falcons. Not because they have won a preseason game. It has been a good training camp because nothing worthy of an inglorious SportsCenter sound bite has occurred — especially when contrasted with the chuckle fest in Philadelphia.
The impact of NFL holdouts can be overstated. More often than not, the player eventually reports and insults are forgotten, at least until the next off-season.
But Owens’ I’m-out/I’m-in/You-Shut-up/No-You-Shut-up slap fight with the Eagles has escalated — or degenerated — to another level. Eagles coach Andy Reid suspended Owens for a week. Coaches generally stay out of players’ contract squabbles because that’s about business and they’re about football. They’re the ones who deal with the athlete on a daily basis, not the guy with the calculator and salary charts.
When Reid suspended Owens, it created a new issue. When Owens returns, he will now be a player coming off a suspension who has openly feuded with the coach. When he performed his suburban driveway workout and managed to appear on all 17 ESPN networks, it made matters even worse. He whined. He picked fights. He took the focus off the team. He actually made his agent, Drew Rosenhaus, look like the calm one.
Owens has turned a bad situation into something that is one elephant short of a circus. Suddenly, this isn’t a simple contract holdout. It is something that is filtering down to Owens’ teammates and causing cracks in the team.
Ike Reese knows this as well as anybody. The linebacker spent seven seasons with Philadelphia before signing with the Falcons as a free agent. He’s also a friend of Owens.
“Those are two major things that happened,” Reese said. “Now everybody is looking at your team for the wrong reasons. Those players have to deal with answering questions about this every day, not just to the media and the public, but amongst themselves.
“All 80 guys they have in camp right now are not on the same page as to how they feel about the situation. That can be a problem. You want your team to have the same mind-set, but everybody doesn’t have the same feelings about what’s going to happen.”
Reese said the Eagles “could put a lid on this if they can keep a camera out of T.O.’s face.”
Is that possible?
“I’m not sure,” he said, smiling.
The Eagles are not the only team standing in the Falcons’ way of a Super Bowl. They’re just the best one. Chemistry can be an overused word in sports, but that’s not the case in football. Talent levels tend to be fairly equal. Nobody has depth. Success usually comes down to injuries and how a team reacts to adversity.
The Falcons had two potential time bombs entering camp. One was Peerless Price and the receiving situation, but Price has worked hard and kept quiet. The other was Rod Coleman, who had another of those pesky driving issues before camp opened. He also has stayed out of the news (perhaps because Jim Mora hid the car keys).
“The guys took it upon themselves to take ownership of the team,” Reese said, “and not let anything get in the way of what we want to accomplish. It’s hard enough to get to the Super Bowl even without distractions.”
Peace doesn’t always carry into the season. As Reese put it, “You’ve got a whole ‘nother ball of adversities you might have to go through.”
The Eagles, Reese said, “are the team to beat in the NFL. But T.O. has to be there for them to have a chance.”
But whether he is there or not, Owens won’t be a calming influence, and damage control may soon be out of reach.
Permalink | | Categories: Falcons / NFL, Jeff Schultz
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