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Saturday, June 17, 2006
Braves need major trades, therapy
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
Another day, another loss. This isn’t a team any more, it’s a flashback to the Nixon administration (Russ). Lose again Sunday night to Boston and that will make another series sweep. But when you’re coming off being swept by the Marlins, being swept by the Red Sox really isn’t so bad.
These are the Braves now. They’re not the team that found ways to win in 1991 and wore that like a tattoo for 14 seasons. They are the team that has found ways to lose 16 of 19. You expected perhaps a steady decline. You didn’t expect 25 players to collectively take one step off the balcony.
These are the Braves now. They strike out with men on base, when they get men on base. They fall behind early or blow leads late. The bottom has fallen out. It’s as if everything bad that everybody projected would happen to them over this run has happened all at once. The ability to fill in for the free agents who left, to overcome budget cutbacks, to succeed with experiments in the bullpen and a parade of closers — boom! It’s payback time.
This time, it was only 5-3. To Boston. Not so bad. Like a fallen former town bigwig who has been tossed out of the nightclub to the curb, the Braves can say: “Hey, we’ve been thrown out of worst series than this.”
Starting pitcher Lance Cormier gave up a home run to the first Boston hitter, Kevin Youkilis. His replacement, Mike Remlinger, gave up a home run to the first batter he faced, David Ortiz. The crowd went nuts — because half the crowd was Red Sox fans and the other half sat silent, wondering why their team’s general manager, John Schuerholz, hasn’t made a trade yet. It’s either that or wait for a miracle of 1991 proportions.
“Everybody’s trying to be too perfect right now, hitters and pitchers,” Andruw Jones said. “We’re not scoring runs. We’re not getting ahead. That can affect you. When you’re always behind, you’re trying to be perfect and locate pitches, and guys are making mistakes.”
You want the miracle of 1991. You want the team with the history of woe that trailed Los Angeles by 9 1/2 games at the All-Star break to make an unfathomable run. But this is a team with a history of winning making an unfathomable run.
They are now 2-14 in June. The worst month of any Atlanta team in history was 7-19 in July of 1986. Chipper Jones, meet Ken Oberkfell.
Schuerholz said recently that if current statistics should carry weight, “so should the history of this franchise. It’s not a magic wand we get to wave, but we do have confidence that we have the ingredients and the leadership to overcome adversity.”
Sounds comforting. Problem is, there’s no reason to believe the Braves have the ingredients or the leadership. They have players but they also have holes. They have veterans but the clubhouse is woefully thin on take-charge personalities. They are way past the point of, “OK, today it stops.”
Amazingly, the transaction wire remains quiet. Schuerholz has yet to make a trade. He did, however, sign more copies of “Built To Win” before the game. The timing seemed just a little bit off.
Right now, Schuerholz seems like a farmer sitting out on his porch, thinking, “Corn’s always grown in the past. It’ll grow again.” Except that right now, we’re all looking at mutant-looking vegetables and half-dead relievers.
They trailed 3-0 after the third, when Turner Field looked like Fenway South. In the fifth, with the Red Sox up 5-2, the Braves had bases loaded with one out. Then Wilson Betemit and Andruw Jones popped up. With two on and out in the seventh, Edgar Renteria and Betemit struck out.
They had 10 more strikeouts Saturday. That makes 526, give or take a wind gust.
Former Brave Greg Olson was at the game Saturday. He said something strange happened in 1991: The Braves started expecting to win.
“I realize now that baseball is more of a mental game than you ever realize when you’re playing,” he said.
If that’s true, the Braves have passed the stage of needing just therapy and incense. They must say one thing but believe another. They have transitioned from a headache to a severe personality disorder.
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Duval’s magic short-lived
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
Mamaroneck, N.Y. — After the arousal inspired by his round of 68 Friday, low score of the day, there was promise that David Duval was on his way back, if not already there. For the moment, he could fill the void left in the 106th U.S. Open by Tiger Woods, an absence extravagantly mourned by the regional media. Duval had found apparent comfort back in harness with the coach of his Georgia Tech days, Puggy Blackmon. It had not, however, softened the bite in his attitude toward the press, which he appears to view as unbearable.
“I guess you haven’t been listening,” Duval said rather snippily in answer to a question about the state of his game. “I’ve been saying that for I don’t know how long, and nobody seems to listen. I’ll say it again: I’m playing well. I made some putts, and the little things added up a bit better today than they have for the past six months.”
Though that self-analysis might have begged further examination, the interview moved forward with just one biting retort about having finally made a cut in a major championship for the first time since the PGA Championship four years ago. “I guess that’s the difference between you and me,” he answered. “I don’t think that way.”
Taking to the course Saturday afternoon, paired with Mike Weir of Canada, both 5 over par, there was no doubt that this was Duval’s gallery. They squeezed in tight, lining both sides of the fairway, and they filled the air with exhortations for him, the old “go get ‘em, David” kind of stuff. When he saved par with a 20-foot putt on the second green — a portrait of beauty, shadowed by a huge elm —there was a brief outbreak of optimism and more encouraging yowls. It was if they were looking for somebody to cheer in Tiger Woods’ absence, as when one small voice cried out, “C’mon, David, the British Open,” however that might be translated.
Duval’s response was a wave of the hand, not ready yet to accept this renewed relationship.
This would all be short-lived, as he turned the front nine losing four more strokes, but even with two birdies on the back side, the glitter of the Friday round faded away. From 5 over to 10 over. He has confirmed that he will return to the British Open, at Hoylake, for the fifth and last year of exemption that came with his last winning championship in 2001.
Meanwhile, the leaderboard was a splatter of change, movement up and down, like stock market quotations on a partcularly sensitive day. The galleries still couldn’t quite get a grip on Steve Stricker, what to make of a player who only last winter was straggling through qualifying school just a few seasons after ranking fourth on the PGA Tour. Phil Mickelson was up and down and all over the place, but still keeping the leaders in gunsight, and closing in the Winged Foot dusk.
Strangely enough, Colin Montgomerie had found supporters after years of claptrap exchanges with galleries from coast to coast. He had started the round a shot behind Stricker, but by the fourth hole he had lost four strokes and was finding Winged Foot as wretched as that of the “massacre of ‘74.”
Just when it seemed nobody was capable of winning this championship, Mickelson began to steady his ship and show signs of taking matters in hand. This is not to ignore the 27-year-old Englishman, Kenneth Ferrie, winner of the European Open last year. He persisted in holding firm and firming up his bid to join the choir of majors champions that have arisen from obscurity to fame on this side of the water or the other. To wit, Paul Lawrie, Ben Curtis and Todd Hamilton, upset winners of the British Open; Rich Beem and Shaun Micheel, winners of the PGA Championship, and Michael Campbell, who returned to his place in golf’s oblivion Friday.
So we all await the climax of this fairy tale today. Heaven knows who or how, if Mickelson will tighten his grip on the brass ring, or if, as in 1974, some player will come off the back row and win at several strokes over par. That champion was only beginning to establish his ground. Hale Irwin would win three U.S. Opens before he was through.
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