AJC > Sports > Columnists > Archives > 2007 > November > 19
Monday, November 19, 2007
Glavine deserves happy ending
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
I hope this works out. I hope Tom Glavine has as much left in him as the Braves believe. I hope next season will erase much of the foul memory of Glavine working those five years in Flushing, N.Y.
I’m not a fan of the Farewell Tour as a concept - Terry Pendleton, Mike Remlinger and Julio Franco were brought back by the Braves to negligible effect, Alejandro Pena to somewhat more - but if anyone deserves a victory lap it’s Glavine. He was the boyish face of the team that came of age in 1991, and his presence in the organization dates to the long-ago days when Bobby Cox was off managing the Blue Jays. Bringing back Cox has yielded 14 division titles; maybe Glavine can generate one last shout.
But I must say I’m torn about this, torn because I like and admire Glavine as much as any athlete I’ve ever covered, torn also because I’m not sure he’s even a No. 3 starter at this late date. (Glavine himself admitted, “I don’t view myself as a No. 1 guy anymore.”) Mostly I’m torn because his return only underscores how silly it was that this Hall of Fame pitcher and prince of a guy was allowed - nay, impelled - to leave five years ago.
The Braves didn’t need him then, when he was 36 and coming off an 18-win season, but they need him now, when he’s 41 and just posted the second-highest ERA of his past 19 years? They were alarmed by two playoff losses in 2002 but are willing to overlook the three wretched outings that closed his 2007 season? They speak of how much Glavine is - Frank Wren’s words - “loved and still loved,” but where was the love when Glavine and John Schuerholz were getting spitting mad at one another?
Anger drove Glavine away. Yeah, he got big money from his Flushing employer, but money was never the sticking point in those negotiations. Pride was. Glavine wanted the Braves to tell him they loved him, and Schuerholz, for reasons still unclear, never did. So now the Braves love Glavine again, which is nice, but why did they ever stop?
“When I look back, I think, ‘If this conversation or this situation had gone a different way, there might have been a different outcome,’ ” Glavine said Monday, his face still boyish but his hair a 41-year-old’s shade of gray. And then: “But things happen for a reason.”
Maybe they do. Still, it was hard to stomach watching Glavine in his blue-and-orange Siberia, harder still to hear the greeting he received at Turner Field. Greg Maddux, who’d begun as a Cub and who wasn’t the MVP of the only World Series the Braves have won, returned as a Padre last summer to a warm ovation. Glavine would hear boos as he made his pregame walk to the visitors’ bullpen, boos when he was introduced, boos when he came to bat. “For a long time I didn’t understand it,” he said, “but over time I became indifferent to it.”
The best part of his return is that he’ll hear no more boos in Atlanta. He’s no longer a spokesman for the players’ union, a responsibility he bore nobly even though it infuriated so many in this non-union city. “Over 50 percent of people have been divorced,” said Glavine, himself on his second marriage, “and we’ve learned to forgive our exes for a lot of things. But somehow I was never forgiven for being a union rep.”
If he wins 13 games and eats up 200 innings and helps the Braves break their newfound hold on third place, he’ll be not just forgiven but canonized. He’s a starting pitcher, and the Braves wouldn’t have fallen to third place if they’d had more starting pitching. (“More times than not, we’ll be the favorite next season,” said Wren, in a quote you’ll want to clip and save.)
Fans are fickle, nowhere more so than here. Surely some of the same folks who swore they’d never again root for Tom Glavine will be his loudest backers now. I hope this works for many reasons, not least because I enjoy seeing hypocrisy held up to the light.
Permalink | Comments (44) | Categories: Braves / MLB, Mark Bradley
