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Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Once again, Cox has a luxury of lefties
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
Lake Buena Vista, Fla. — It has been long ago that the Braves could check down their roster and consider themselves southpaw-rich. Once they had Tom Glavine, but he had been allowed to take a left turn to the ruddy enemy, the Mets, with barely a goodbye. But who needed him? Didn’t they have Mike Hampton?
That was before Hampton’s $15-million arm broke down, not once but twice. Two and a half years on the payroll without a payoff pitch, which leads us into the spring of ‘08. Glavine returned. He’d put his pride on the back-burner, taken a deep pay cut and come back to where his heart is. He has his 303 victories and one might suspect that he would be one of the three left-handers on hand, and so it was that St. Patrick’s Day was of considerable greater significance around here than a Green Beer Day.
Not only was Hampton making the start that could establish his presence, but so was Chuck James, the left-hander from Mableton. James finished last season with a “tired” arm, which had something to do with that mysterious portion of the body known as the rotator cuff. While Hampton had been oh-for-oh the past two seasons, James had won 22 games and filled a crying vacancy.
So Monday was final test day. Hampton pitched into the fifth inning against the Cardinals over in Jupiter, and graded out well. Meanwhile, back in the Magic Kingdom, Chuck James was being tested out of the glare. He was pitching on one of the outlying diamonds, where the Braves farmhands frolic, against a lineup of Cleveland farmhands.
It’s away from the raging throng, hidden behind hedges and fencing. Spectators, the few who show, usually kinfolks and wives, are seated in two sets of bleachers, each about the size of a choir loft. No concession stand, no scoreboard, no public address system. You’re on your own, and there was little cheering, except for an occasional yelp of glee. Grass roots baseball at the very roots. Two fences away, high school kids from the north were running up their lacrosse game.
Bobby Cox had left James there for a vital check-out. While the Indian farmhands lofted a few high-risers to the outfield, James went along smoothly, and was treated to a 2-0 lead when a Georgia Tech alum, Michael Fisher, cleared the fence with a man on. He grew more impressive with each inning.
“I had a little trouble at first, but I feel good now, ready to roll,” James said. No pain, no twitches, no tweaks.
Bruce Dal Canton, once a Braves relief pitcher, now a farm system pitching coach, saw it this way: “His location was good. His change-up got sharper as he went along, and that’s his bread-and-butter.”
It having been an informal atmosphere, friends, family and autograph collectors came out of the wee stands to share in James’ moment, far from the milling throng. Now with Glavine on hand, this gives the Braves three left-handers who start, which is one more than there would appear to be room for. With John Smoltz, Tim Hudson and three left-handers, not to mention the rookie from Curaçao, Jair Jurrjens, to sort out, this is a luxury Cox hasn’t been able to revel in for quite a spell.
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UGA’s miracle stuff of legends
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
You can rank them in any order that you wish, but 1a, 1b, and 1c works nicely, thank you. Whatever the case, the greatest miracles in local sports history were those Braves leaping out of nowhere to begin their worst-to-first journey in 1991 and the Dirty Birds flying all the way to the Super Bowl seven years later.
We’re in the midst of the third one, and if it continues a while, it will slide ahead of the other two. After all, that was a reeling Georgia basketball team that just spent four days going from joining Auburn with the worst record in the SEC to watching its coach sit just shy of losing his job to experiencing a tornado to having one of its bus drivers suffer a heart attack to tournament champions to dribbling on Thursday in March Madness.
“This is pretty awesome,” said Mark Lemke, who is qualified to speak on the subject. He was the spark plug of a second baseman for those ‘91 Braves who kept shocking reality. Before long, they finished just a key hit shy of a world championship in a classic Game 7.
Which begs the question: When you’re among those Braves — or, in this case, these Bulldogs — at one point do you know you’re living a miracle?
“Geez, that’s a great question,” Lemke said, pausing, before pausing some more. “I really don’t think you know. We were just happy at that time to be even contending. It’s like, ‘Nobody expected us to be here, so let’s just go with it.’ And then all of a sudden you start thinking to yourself after a big play, or maybe a big shot in Georgia’s case, ‘You know what? Maybe we can win this thing.’ I don’t know if the Georgia club is feeling that same way or not.”
The Bulldogs haven’t time for such feelings. First, that tornado forced the SEC tournament from the Georgia Dome to Georgia Tech’s Alexander Memorial Coliseum. Then the Bulldogs faced three games in two days, including a couple on Saturday before they played and won Sunday’s championship game.
Then Georgia left Tuesday for Washington, D.C., to prepare for its first-round game in the NCAA tournament on Thursday against Xavier. So the Bulldogs’ miracle didn’t evolve over weeks and months. That’s in contrast to the 1998 Falcons who used every bit of their season to end decades of joining the New Orleans Saints and the Cardinals (Chicago, St. Louis and Arizona) as the NFL’s joke franchises.
Even so, Terance Mathis, a key wide receiver for those Dirty Birds, sounded like Lemke on the subject of when you sense a miracle around you.
“The kicker for us is that we never looked at what we were doing as being a miracle, because if you ask every guy on our team, after a while, we expected to win,” said Mathis, whose Falcons won 11 straight near the end of that season, compared to the franchise’s total of just 10 victories during the two previous seasons.
Added Mathis, “We were loose. We were having a good time. It got to a point where nobody else expected us to win, so there was no pressure on us. We just went out and played football. The thing that held us was that we stayed together. It was just a numbing feeling. Maybe it was after we beat Minnesota [for the NFC championship] that we looked at each other and said, ‘Wow. We just won 11 in a row!’ “
Georgia would settle for enough in a row to reach the Sweet 16, or maybe the Elite Eight, or who really knows?
Mathis chuckled, saying, “My advice to Georgia is to do everything you’ve been doing, keep it the same, don’t change. Just play hard.” Added Lemke, “In this situation, you have to remember that you’ve gotten there for a reason. I would just keep believing in yourself and not really start thinking about the moment. Although I have to admit that, after we got off the plane after finishing Game 7 [of the NLCS] in Pittsburgh, we weren’t in Atlanta, we were in Minnesota for the World Series. That was kind of a shock.”
Kind of like everything surrounding Georgia hoops right now.
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Raiders will regret signing DeAngelo Hall
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
THE TUESDAY COUNTDOWN:
10: South Alabama, Gonzaga, Austin Peay and Western Kentucky. I mean, duh.
9: There’s a tendency in these parts to believe college basketball doesn’t exist outside of the ACC. But forgive me, for these be my roots: California has six teams in the NCAA tournament: UCLA, USC, Stanford, Cal State Fullerton, San Diego, St. Mary’s.
8: North Carolina might be the best team, but the state’s three tournament teams (UNC, Duke, Davidson) were surpassed also by Tennessee (five), Indiana (four), Pennsylvania (four) and Texas (four). Because of this past weekend’s miracle, Georgia finished tied with West Virginia (1) and ahead of Hawaii and Alaska (0).
7: What’s the over-under on how long before DeAngelo Hall would be miserable as a Raider?
6: When Hall gets his money, it will sooth his ego for a time. The problem is, he’s a great player on a good team but a divisive player on a bad team. He will alienate teammates and drive his coach and owner crazy (although in the Raiders’ case, he probably can’t do Al Davis any further harm). It is unfortunate that the Falcons have to say goodbye to their best player. The problem is, Hall’s not a leader. He is immature, egomaniacal and petulant. The ego part isn’t unusual for a great cornerback. But the other aspects of his personality make him a bad fit for the Falcons, Raiders or any bad or rebuilding team.
5: Notre Dame, Oral Roberts, Brigham Young and UNLV. Just looking to start a holy war.
4: Item: Bruce Levenson suggested it wouldn’t make sense to fire Thrashers general manager Don Waddell now because the team has too many big decisions to make. Question: Isn’t that a reason a team usually changes general managers?
3: Item: Heather Mills received a $48.6 million divorce settlement for four years of marriage to Paul McCartney but complained about a paltry annual allowance for their 4-year-old daughter, Beatrice, commenting: “But Beatrice only gets £35,000 pounds ($75,350) a year. And so she obviously is meant to travel B class while her father travels A class — but obviously I will pay for that.” Question: Does Heather Mills know Bruce Levenson?
2: There seems to be some confusion about Dennis Felton’s contract on airwaves and on message boards. It’s not expiring after this season. Nor does he have one year left — he has three. But college coaches generally have at least four “live” years left. Otherwise it makes it difficult to walk into a recruit’s living room and tell their mother, “I’ll take care of your son for four years.”
1: North Carolina, Georgetown, Pittsburgh and UCLA.
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