There was a baseball game played in Atlanta today. However, all Braves fans’s hearts, minds, thoughts and attention was in a little town in New York. As you know, today was induction day. (Here is the Box Score)
Growing up in the south you gravitate towards your closest SEC team and the Atlanta Braves. I was fortunate enough to have been 10 years old in 1991 when the Braves went from worst to first and started this great stretch of baseball.
In late August of 1991, my then step father and I went to see the Braves take on the Phillies at the old Fulton County Stadium. At the time, while I loved David Justice, Dale Murphy was still my favorite player. That would change by the end of the day.
My step father bought me a Braves baseball and an ink pen. We walked to an area where Francisco Cabrera was signing baseballs. There was this obnoxious adult yelling for Cabrera to sign something for him. Cabrera was joking around and kept passing him up. Eventually this guy went too far, bumped into me knocked me into the wall and I dropped my ball onto the field.
I heard this voice yell, “Hey man! Come on!” I looked up and Tom Glavine was picking my ball up (in the process of signing it) and handing it to Cabrera. He asked if I was okay. I nodded and said I was. He didn’t stay and sign for anyone else and soon the crowd was broken up.
At age 33, Glavine remains my all time favorite player.
Don’t get me wrong, seeing Greg Maddux and Bobby Cox on the stage today gave me chills. But seeing a guy who was nice to me 23 years ago was special.
I still have the ball.
Good win today and glad Minor got on the good side of mediocre.
@coop
Thanks!
Win tomorrow for a 6-5 home stand. Not ideal, but it started 3-5 so I won’t complain too much.
We could see the majority of our bench starting tomorrow.
3 games, 3 errors for Uggla. We’re still paying him. This is better than having him on our bench. Ha.
@2
It’s already been stated Schafer will start in CF and one would think that Gosselin gets a start somewhere. However, Gattis and Heyward will be back in the lineup and B.J. will be in his rightful place so everything gonna be alright.
@4
I’d assume Gosselin will give Johnson a day off tomorrow.
Smitty, great story! Glavine’s speech was awesome today. This was definitely a great day to be a Braves fan.
Yeah I figure Gosselin, Pena, and Schafer might all start tomorrow.
Good retrospective that makes an interesting point about our staff pitching on three days rest during the postseason in the Cox era: http://m.espn.go.com/general/blogs/blogpost?blogname=sweetspot&id=49988
The same Jason Lane that played outfield for the Astros years ago is starting for the Padres today as a pitcher? We had better not lose today.
@8
it’s a matter of opinion what it is that he does best
he tried catching in the minors but they soon put that to rest
then at shortstop he was famous going deep into the hole
but his arm was so erratic they soon tried remote control
so today let’s watch him starting and in main we wish him well
but tell Freddie and the others he is hardly William Tell.
Lane strikes out BUpton at least twice.
Lane is living Mark Lemke’s dream. Get ready for some independent league anecdotes from the Lemmer today.
I just looked up Lemke’s pitching stats. Holy moley, I had no idea just how badly that went:
http://www.baseball-reference.com/minors/player.cgi?id=lemke-001mar
Lemmer in the minors: 23 HBP in 3309 plate appearances. In the majors, no HBP in 3664. One of my favorite MLB records. . .
Glavine always seemed to me, from afar and recognizing that we don’t know what any of these guys are actually like, as someone you would want to sit down with and have a beer and that he would actually be able to hold an intelligent conversation about things other than baseball. I did not get that feeling about Maddux although he was about as good a pitcher as I ever saw.
The Lemmer wasn’t fooling anyone with the knuckler.
Glavine might not pee on your leg in the shower.
Up to you on whether you’d like to have a beer with him or Maddux.
The .9 walks/inning couldn’t have helped him either. In other Lemke news, the sour face my wife makes every time she hears that he’s doing color for the radio broadcast is priceless.
To Tiger224 @9 in the last thread: I’m not sure what happened to your comments, but rest assured that it was not deliberate. If you posted links then that may have caused them to be caught in the spam checker or held for moderation. Let me know if it happens again and I’ll try to go into the moderation queue and approve them as soon as I can.
@15,
Yeah, I think I would prefer to avoid people that would pee on my leg in the shower. But that’s just me.
Glad you still have the ball, Smitty. That’s a great story.
Good read over on Joe Posnanski’s blog today about the relationship between strikeouts and power: http://joeposnanski.com/joeblogs/royally-avoiding-strikeouts/.
It’s about the Royals, but it could be about Jason Heyward, too.
Ugh. Today’s line-up.
CF Schafer
2B Gosselin
1B Freeman
LF J. Upton
RF Heyward
C Gattis
3B Johnson
SS Simmons
P Santana
That Simmons-Santana-Schafer-Gosselin group is some kind of fearsome foursome. And how on earth do you justify moving Gattis out of the clean-up spot?
And for goodness sakes, put the speed in front of the pitcher! Ought to be Heyward-Jupton-Freeman-Gattis-Johnson-Gosselin-Simmons-Schafer. Well at least we’ll have BJ to pinch hit.
Ya know, watching Maddux, Cox and Glavine at the HoF Induction Ceremony brought back so many rich memories.
What a great time it was to be in Atlanta as a baseball fan.
Hard to get that back.
Nice start, Mr. Santana.
First-time starter and Schafer swings away. Good God.
While we’re basking in the collective glow of Atlanta-fest in Cooperstown, Fredi continued marching up the all-time Braves leaderboard for victories as a manager.
This time he passed John Morrill. Morrill, who played from 1876-1890, was player manager for the 1882-1888 Boston team, generally referred to as the Beaneaters.
Morrill posted a so-so 335-296 record in 645 games (don’t forget the 10 ties). Most interesting is that in both 1883 and 1887 he didn’t start the season as manager. In ’83 he lead to team to a 33-11 finish and first place in the NL. In ’87 a fifth place team remained in 5th place.
It’s unlikely the Veteran’s Committee will ever consider Morrill for the Hall of Fame, either as a player or manager!
I think Fredi Gonzalez is making a good case for the Hall of Fame. All he needs is another three world championships and he’s a lock.
Jason Lane is a 37 year old outfielder…and the Padres would rather start him than some 23 year old from their minors? It would be impossible to be a Padre fan. They don’t even seem to be trying.
@27, I was thinking the same thing. The Astros and Cubs are bad but at least they have a plan. The Padres… is this thing on? I’ve been watching them off and on for four days now and still if you put a gun to my head and told me to name three of their starters, I’d hope the gunman counts Jeff Francoeur. Who’s the best asset in that organization right now, at any level? Honest question.
I’m sure I’ve jinxed us and he’ll now throw a complete game shutout…but still. There’s a bit of a novelty factor and it’s a nice story, but they are on the road so it’s not like they’ll sell 10 more tickets or something like that. I don’t get it. There’s not a pitcher anywhere at any level in their org that they wouldn’t like to take a look at instead?
Maybe they should offer 10-game ticket packages to their fans, and if you fork up an extra fifty bucks you get to pitch 3 innings.
Tyson Ross is pretty good. I don’t know what they pay him.
26 — Or another 15 years of division championship caliber teams.
@29
I’m assuming it’s some combination of not having any of their prospects being on schedule to pitch today and not wanting to fly them all the way from Texas (AAA club is in El Paso, AA in San Antonio) and then immediately back. It was fairly short notice, I think.
Doumit in for Heyward.
Lower back soreness for Heyward.
Who was bitching about Simmons not making the “great plays” anymore?
Play ball, Andrelton.
LOL Simmons! The best part about that was how he acted like it was so easy.
And yes, the old Andrelton has returned this homestand. I count three unbelievable plays and several other great ones.
I will forgive Andrelton for the Willie Mays Hayes popup.
This team is just absolutely terrible.
Ervin smells baseball and this lineup.
Why do you decide to spell BJ for Schaffer against a left handed starter? I know the difference between 600 ops and 500 ops each way isn’t that great, but can’t you at least play the platoon?
39: Wouldn’t go that far, but the lineup is legitimately bad. Not a playoff-caliber team, although I won’t be surprised if they limp in as the second wild card.
@35
I was! He seems to have found his footing in the last week. Very refreshing.
This also isn’t our A lineup, I think it should be noted. I’ll avoid Schafer/BJ, but even outside of that, it’s missing La Stella and now Heyward.
43: The A lineup is also pretty bad, though. “Better than the historically awful Padres” is about the best thing you can say about the Braves’ offense. (Okay, also better than the Cubs, Phillies, and injury-riddled Reds, but still, it’s a lousy group.)
Murder’s Row, if one is referring to our chances of winning.
The offense did have a decent July overall. Swapping out Uggla moved us from terribad to just somewhat lousy.
Never underestimate our ability to stink it up on weekday day games.
We have lost the last 7 before today to Chc, Hou, Phi, Col, Sea, Bos and SF. Last weekday day game win was home against Mia on 4/23. We are 3-9 on the year and two of those wins were the first week of the season and we still didn’t score in any of the wins (3-1, 2-1, 1-0). We have been outscored 52-23 in 12 weekday day games and keep in mind these haven’t been great pitchers lately either, Cosart, R Hernandez, Chacin and now Jason Lane.
Gosselin gets down the line quickly.
Should it be possible to field a lineup that gets shut out by a 37-year-old converted outfielder making his first career start?
To paraphrase a very old joke, with this lineup the Braves couldn’t score in a whorehouse.
Half these guys couldn’t play dead in a goddamned cowboy movie.
Fredi is more worried about the flight out to the west coast this afternoon than winning a noon game. Noon games don’t count as much in the standings as night games against the Dodgers. Or something.
Clearly we’re good enough that we don’t have to try to win get-away games.
6 first pitch outs so far.
They are terrible, stupid, or both.
Nah, they’re just doing exactly what the manager has told them to do. Get this game over with as fast as possible so we can get our travel arrangements sorted out.
Wow. Justin never throws the ball on-line to second.
I hate to say this, but good play, Justin.
I coined “Murmurer’s Row” a few days ago. (Proud as a peacock about it, too.)
@27, In fairness, Lane is 37, but is elbow is about 5. They may be on to something.
Jim Powell diplomatically suggests that Jason Lane has been “masterful.” I guess that’s one possibility.
Sometimes the Bear eats you. Evan!
Kabonk.
Just get the bunt down, PLEASE.
EDIT: NICE!
Please make them pay for walking Schafer there on four straight!
Was that the dumbest use of the intentional walk in baseball history?
Very good call to lift Gosselin for La Stella here. Credit where credit’s due to Fredi.
Goddammit!
Not stellar, Tommy.
Damn, Tommy, that was supposed to be a double, not double play.
Hahaha. The guy is 7 for 8 with the bases loaded, and even he grounds in to a double-play on a 3-1 pitch.
My man crush on TLS has temporarily softened.
There’s your goddamned run Ervin.
La Stella was doing his best Andrelton Simmons impression. Unfortunately, he wasn’t fielding.
I’d bring him back out to go for the shutout, but I’m sure I’ll be shouted down on that.
I’m for it, Nick.
I would too. Why the hell not at this point? It’s a lot more defensible to rest Kimbrel than half of the other decisions today.
The Padres are definitely in a hurry to get out of town. Keep that airport shuttlebus humming, fellas…
Looks like it’s Kimbrel.
Yeah, Santana’s at 102. Only problem is that you need him on a short leash. He can blow up in nothing flat.
If we were up by more than a single run, I’d feel more strongly about it. You can’t really wait until the tying run gets to the plate to pull him right now, because the tying run will be at the plate from the start.
EDIT: Alright, send him back out now. And it’s a good thing we didn’t give Gattis the day off today BTW.
Big run. Big, big run.
Bear muscled.
Oh, f***ing boo.
Kraken!
Well, that was OK, too. The two games he pitched in this series may be the two best outings Kimbrel has had all year.
Well, Craig Kimbrel just made the Padres look like the Padres.
Well, we won. Fredi you can feel free to make a “quit your bitchin'” post if you like. I deserve it.
Does it count if you pitch well against the Padres?
Alex Wood sure thinks so.
Struck out 14 Padres today. Can’t complain about that.
Weekday Baseball, Love It!
The NL is really entertaining right now I must say. We are both 1 game out of the best record in the league and 1 game out of being out of the playoffs.
FYI Thursday is Teheran vs. Kershaw, must see TV.
Really can’t do less than taking 3 of 4 from this bunch.
But now that Chavez Ravine beckons, it’s time (as Mr. Blonde might say) to do some “real work.”
Harang vs. Beckett
Wood vs. Greinke
Teheran vs. Kershaw
IWOTP, but a win is a win.
We are about to hit a difficult part of the schedule. I think we will know how good we are in a few weeks.
This may be the part of the season where we come together or get bounced.
I would like to win one in LA.
Winning one of the three in LA would be acceptable IMO. I’m really anxious to see BJ Upton against Clayton Kershaw. A classic match-up.
Hasn’t Teheran had trouble out west? Am I remembering that correctly?
Weekday getaway day game: Both lineups are guaranteed to look like crap. Just getting the better pitching performance and enough offense to win is the goal.
Recap is up.