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Tuesday, January 15, 2008
Homegrown touch for Gwinnett Braves
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
The coming of the Gwinnett Braves, as opposed to their going, going, nearly gone Class AAA forefathers in Richmond, makes so much sense. “I mean, if there was a day game here [in Gwinnett], I wouldn’t be surprised if Bobby and the coaches stopped by to see a couple of innings before they went to [Turner Field],” said Braves general manager Frank Wren, referring to Bobby Cox and others involved with the major-league staff.
Cox is the game’s best manager. Not only that, he showed his brilliance as a talent evaluator while serving as general manger during the Braves’ acquisition and development of David Justice, Tom Glavine, John Smoltz, Mark Lemke, Steve Avery, Jeff Blauser and the rest of those who set the foundation for their run of goodness through the 1990s.
It’s also like this: If you think you’ve already seen this team become the “Atlanta” Braves in recent years, with homegrown folks such as Jeff Francoeur and Brian McCann sprinkled throughout their roster, just wait a short while. Added Wren, nodding when asked if the Gwinnett Braves means the Atlanta Braves will be even more apt to scout and sign local talent: “The exposure that these players will have in close proximity to us I think will make a change in the way that we’ve done business in the past, and also in the way that we’ve developed players.”
In other words, if you can hit, pitch, run, catch and throw a little, and if you reside within a couple of fungoes of I-285, you suddenly have more of a chance to play for your local major-league team.
It all goes back to officials from the Braves, Gwinnett County and the International League announcing a couple of interesting things on Tuesday at the Gwinnett Arena. First, they said that the Class AAA Braves will make their move from Richmond official with the first pitch of the 2009 season, and then they said that the Gwinnett Braves will do so in a new $38 million facility.
Francoeur still is smiling. Before becoming a rising star with the Atlanta Braves, he was a baseball and football standout at Gwinnett’s Parkview High School. He also lives in the county, along with other Atlanta Braves. “In addition to myself, you have McCann, and I’m still counting Andruw [Jones], even though he’s gone, and Kelly Johnson lives just on the other side of the line,” said Francoeur, thinking and smiling. “Clint Sammons lives here, and Chipper [Jones] used to live here.”
Francoeur even joked with Braves management about allowing him to play “25 games” in Gwinnett instead of Turner Field to save on gas money.
Except for those in Virginia’s state capital, where their sporting life will soon revolve mostly around the Richmond Spiders and the VCU Rams instead of their Class AAA team of more than four decades, everybody into tomahawks is a winner with this decision. Yes, the Braves’ top minor-league affiliate can prosper in Gwinnett. And, no, the arrival of that team to the Atlanta area won’t affect the historically slow-clicking turnstiles at Turner Field.
Such also will apply when both of these Braves teams are playing on the same day or even at the same time. These are two different animals.
Speaking of animals, while the majority of those attending Atlanta Braves games will be going for Smoltz, Chipper Jones and Francoeur, the majority of those attending Gwinnett Braves games will be going for Pee Wee Geese, Shaquille O’Seal, Deion Salamander.
You know, ZOOper creatures. Then you have The Chicken, and the merry-go-rounds, and the clowns, and the whatever you can think of that’s zany. That’s all part of the minor-league experience, which is more about the atmosphere than the game. “I also think it’s cool because this will give the family that sometimes can’t afford to go down to [Turner Field] for four tickets — because it can get expensive — to come out to a minor-league game and see good baseball,” said Francoeur, pausing, before adding in a hurry. “Not that we don’t want them to see us.”
They will. They’ll do both, at least occasionally.
Permalink | Comments (32) | Categories: Braves / MLB, Terence Moore
Blank, McKay need to let new GM do his job
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Thomas Dimitroff trotted out a phrase that applies to the New England Patriots — “indisputable role understanding.” Loose translation: Robert Kraft pays, Bill Belichick spies, Tom Brady throws. And Dimitroff, up until Saturday, did the college scouting. Now he’s the general manager of a franchise where roles are less understandable.
“I’m very clear on the org [neo-speak for ‘organizational’] chart,” Dimitroff said Tuesday at a meet-and-greet with the Atlanta media. “Rich McKay [once the GM, now just the president] has a wealth of knowledge, and I look forward to tapping into that. But I will have final say on the football side.”
So, someone asked, does that mean the GM-since-Saturday will be hiring the next coach? Said Dimitroff: “Along with Mr. Blank, yes.”
Said Arthur Blank, seeking to clarify: “He does have final say. At the end of the day, he and I will decide who the next coach will be.”
So: Does that make the final say the semifinal say?
Give the Falcons credit for hiring their GM first and letting him have a voice in choosing the coach. Give them credit for finding a fresh face — Dimitroff looks, it must be said, 20 years younger than his age, which is 41 — who spent the past six years apprenticing in the NFL’s finest, er, org. Heck, give them credit for conducting their initial interview via Webcam. “Ask your children about it,” Blank said. “It works very well.”
And say this for Dimitroff: He gives the impression of youth without seeming immature. He’s clever and pleasant and enthusiastic. He prefers “Thomas” to “Tom,” perhaps because it sounds more distinguished. He has clear ideas about the draft — pick for need above all — and he doesn’t appear fazed by a mission that might, to someone less bold, seem impossible.
“To tell you the truth, I don’t see this as a daunting task,” he said. “I think we can right this ship. If we put the right people and the right system in place, we can get this going the right way.”
The concern isn’t so much Dimitroff as a hire as the Falcons as a hierarchy. Blank is, as we know, among the most visible owners in sports and, final say or no, Dimitroff still must report to McKay. The new GM wants, as most new GMs want, to “change the culture,” but will a 41-year-old steeped not in office intrigue but in on-the-road scouting be able to budge Blank and McKay if they decide to act mulish?
“To me as an owner,” Blank said, “there’s a very bright line. And for this owner and for most owners, I don’t want to cross that line. I ask simply that I be informed and be knowledgeable [about football affairs].”
That’s the ideal, sure. But is that the way it really works in Flowery Branch when, as Blank conceded, “my passion sometimes overflows”?
The hope is that Blank (and McKay) are smart enough to defer to Dimitroff, who didn’t come here because the Falcons are in tip-top shape. He’s here because, as McKay noted Tuesday before ducking out, “these have been the longest 14 months of anyone’s life.”
Blank can be an intimidating figure, especially if he’s paying your salary. That said, Dimitroff can’t be seen as just another employee. He’ll require free rein. Even if he offends the folks who built the failed status quo, he has to do what needs doing, lop what needs lopping.
It would be unreasonable for Blank, who has invested much in this franchise, not to have final say on the next coach. Once that’s done, the Falcons’ new general manager must be allowed to manage both generally and specifically, and the activist owner must be willing to sit back and own. Like those newfangled Webcams, that arrangement might work very well.
Permalink | Comments (145) | Categories: Falcons / NFL, Mark Bradley
Adams’ playoff push caused by Sugar Bowl boos?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
FOR WHAT IT’S WORTH: To catch up on a few things that may have slipped your mind as well as mine:
• A lot of the Bulldog Nation is suspicious that Michael Adams was pushing too vigorously for his football playoff plan — which is hardly new — as a balm for what some call one of the loudest boos ever heard at the Sugar Bowl game. Rousing cheers for the president of the University of Hawaii, drowned out by overwhelming jeers for the man of the University of Georgia.
• Just not sure Billy Payne’s Junior Pass Program is going to work out to the enthusiastic interest of longtime Masters badge holders. One child between ages 8-16 will be admitted free along with an accredited patron, in case you need refreshing, one guest per day. Concerned e-mails are already arriving, fearful Augusta National will be overrun with untethered young ‘uns.
• When West Virginia made its first major bowl appearance in the Sugar Bowl after the 1953 season, sophomore Sam Huff, a lineman later to be a New York Giant and Pro Hall of Famer, recalls “every player found a $20 bill under his plate. I’d never seen that much money in my life. We were just happy to be in New Orleans. Those Georgia Tech guys had been playing bowl games for years.” Tech won in a rout, 42-19, and Pepper Rodgers set a passing record for the game.
• Travel & Leisure magazine has just rated Sea Island as the most desirable golf community in the United States. And while on the subject, Davis Love III, the island’s leading professional, just played his first full round since the injury that took him out of action last August. Stepped in a hole, and as he says, “If I’d been Fred Couples, or somebody with a bad back, I’d probably be done as a player.”
• Maybe the Roger Clemens steroids charges will bring relief in one respect: an end to that annual Clemens Spring Derby, in which he plays the Astros, Yankees and Red Sox against one another, then signs after the season is one-third over. He won’t find many sympathetic fellow players in his camp, and in case you missed it, he’s giving second thought to testifying under oath.
• Jim Leyland is taking a fling in thoroughbred racing. Just recently paid out $50,000 for a weanling colt at the Keeneland sales. A little later a mare sold for $2.5 million and he began to get the drift of things: The purchase price is merely the down payment on a long-term investment. Joe Torre has had some luck in the game as part owner of a filly that finished fourth at the Kentucky Oaks last year.
• Does it occur to you that these overseers in the challenge booth in college football are injecting themselves into the game too often without cause?
• When John Heisman was named football coach at Georgia Tech, he was given the title “Chief Football Director.” When he left in 1920, it was the result of an arrangement between him and his wife. They were divorcing and part of their settlement was that his wife was given first choice as to where she would live; the other would have to get out of town. She chose Atlanta. The “chief director” had to hit the road, Tech lost its coach and Heisman found work at Penn.
• The scarcely known Jamie Spears was a football player at Southeastern Louisiana. Later, he became the father of a daughter too often in the news named — you guessed it — Britney.
• Some sidelights from the PGA Tour of ‘07: Toughest hole, No. 18 at Doral, scoring average 4.625. Most rounds played in the 60s, Heath Slocum, 43. Most money earned without winning a tournament, Sergio Garcia $3,721,185, an all-time record.
• In case you’d like to take a trip to Newland, Paul Johnson’s hometown in North Carolina, you’ll find it between Montezuma and Cranberry.
• When Claude Willoughby was pitching for the Phillies in Babe Ruth’s waning days, the Babe hit a home run that traveled more than 500 feet and out of sight. Some of Willoughby’s teammates protested the ball was foul, and when Willougby took it up with the umpire, the ump wisely said to the young pitcher, “Son, do you really want to throw him another pitch?”
• In all the Christmases I have lived, this is the first during which I never heard “White Christmas” played on any broadcast or telecast, notably the once-most-popular Bing Crosby rendition. Strange. … Selah.
Permalink | Comments (35) | Categories: Furman Bisher, Golf, UGA / SEC
Giving Dimitroff benefit of the doubt
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
THE TUESDAY COUNTDOWN…
10: Sending this a little early this morning. I’m among a group lunching with new Falcons general manager Tom Dimitroff. I have several important questions, not the least of which is whether he is really 40 years old because his mugshot makes him look like he just walked off the Faber College campus.
9: Am I jealous Dimitroff has all of his hair? Damn straight. But, seriously, anybody who’s getting caught up in the fact Dimitroff doesn’t look like an NFL general manager needs to get over it. Switching sports for sake of argument, Theo Epstein looks like the kid who got beat up on the way to school everyday. But he’s done pretty well with the Red Sox.
8: No, I don’t have a strong feeling on whom the Falcons’ next coach should be. Several weeks ago I threw out three names: Jason Garrett (Dallas), Josh McDaniels (New England) and Mike Singletary (San Francisco), only to have an excited headline writer make it look like I was campaigning for Singletary. That said …
7: Here’s what I do think: The Falcons are not going to be a great offensive team next season, given their issues on the offensive line and at quarterback. Hiring a strong leader with a defensive background makes the most sense. The Falcons will need to win close games, and they need to re-learn the process of punching somebody in the mouth. So here are the names, all defensive coordinators: Jim Schwartz (Tennessee), Rex Ryan (Baltimore), Mike Smith (Jacksonville). And, yes, Singletary (San Francisco assistant head coach).
6: Initial reaction: The Braves just replaced the best centerfielder in their history (Andruw Jones) with somebody who was limited to 56 games last season because of a bad back (Mark Kotsay). Well. At least we’re not starting with high expectations.
5: Note to all of you very nice people who keep sending me your perfect plan for a college football playoff: Really, I’ve already seen them all. But you’re welcome to mail them to: NCAA, —700 W. Washington St., —P.O. Box 6222—, Indianapolis, Ind., 46206-6222. Just don’t tell them Michael Adams sent you, because apparently that doesn’t count for much.
4: Regarding Adams’ failed playoff pitch, I’m convinced of two things: 1) Local sentiment largely was negative, not because of the plan but because it came from Adams (as Mark Bradley wrote today); 2) Conferences currently control the money. To implement a system means somebody else will control the money. Conferences will give up that control when you pry it from their cold dead hands.
3: While the Thrashers are busy issuing alibis such as almost every NHL team is inconsistent this season, they might want to consider this: They have 22 regulation losses. Only Tampa Bay (23) and Los Angeles (27) have more. Ten of their 22 wins have come in overtime or a shootout. They’ve given themselves no margin for error. (Only Edmonton, with 12 wins, has been more dependent on overtimes and shootouts for their record.) …
2: And finally this: In the NHL’s generous system, where only a regulation loss counts as a loss, 22 of 30 teams have more wins than losses. The Thrashers are one of the other eight. So I guess everybody doesn’t have the same problems.
1: I’m still waiting for Roger Clemens’ explanation about why Brian McNamee would tell the truth about Andy Pettitte but lie about Clemens.
Permalink | Comments (28) | Categories: Jeff Schultz, Quick Hit
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