The first Atlanta Braves manager was Bobby Bragan. My memories of him of him are fleeting, but that’s what we have the web for. He was hired as manager by Milwaukee in 1963 before there was any notion that they’d be coming to Atlanta, but in some ways he presented a perfect story for the South’s first baseball team. He was an ardent segregationist from Birmingham who asked to be traded from the Dodgers when Jackie Robinson was being promoted, and then recanted early on after seeing Robinson play. In this, he was not nearly as famous as his fellow Southerner, Dixie Walker, or as initially supportive as Pee Wee Reese, but Bragan was a journeyman catcher-shortstop, and Walker and Reese were stars.

The reconciliation of Robinson with his Southern teammates is a story which has been told many times, but I confess it always seems to me to be one of those stories that baseball likes to tell to show that it is a progressive civilizing American institution. I am suspicious of these morally uplifting stories, but that probably says more about me than it says about the stories. I suspect we’ll never get the full truth of those days, and maybe we don’t want to. Joe Posnanski wrote up Bragan’s story and it’s… morally uplifting. But it is generally undisputed that Bragan became one of Jackie Robinson’s best friends, while also hiring Walker to head up the Braves Southern scouting operation in Atlanta. Bragan aggressively promoted the career of Maury Wills when he was a minor league manager for the Dodgers, and as near as I can figure out got along well with players, including Aaron, of course.

But in 1966, as Milo Hamilton put it, “he lost the team.” (Did he? Milo was there, but Milo is not all that reliable. The Braves only had one really bad month under Bragan, and that was back in May.) The 1966 Braves were 52-59 and languishing 12 ½ games out of first when Bragan was fired and Billy Hitchcock was brought in. Hitchcock’s first game was the 2-1 victory over the Dodgers I wrote up last week, and his decision to start Mathews against a lefty (not just a lefty, of course, but arguably the best lefty of all time) put Bragan’s platooning of Mathews to an end and served as a marker that Hitchcock was going to be different. Bragan’s last game, the night before, was a wild 10-9 win in which Dodgers starter Don Sutton got shelled for 6 runs in 1 2/3 innings and Phil Niekro won his third game of the season in relief to even his record at 3-3 when the Braves scored 4 in the bottom of the 9th.

Was 52-59 a good reflection of what that team was capable of? To the ten-year-old who was surprised whenever they lost, of course not. But the Braves had moved, without knowing it, to a home run hitter’s park with a bunch of arms that weren’t ready to pitch in a home run hitter’s park. (Home Run Factors: 1965:104 1966:131 .) Hard to say that that’s Bragan fault. On the other hand, when he was fired, the Braves’ Pythagorean record was exactly reversed, 59-52. That’s a pretty big difference, but I’ve never been one to attribute Pythagorean differences to managing. What really happened here was an unusual number of blowout wins without a corresponding set of blowout losses and a bad record in close games.

Billy Hitchcock was an Auburn graduate and a multi-sport athlete who was coaching for the Braves after a two year stint of .500 ball in Baltimore. The Braves record was much better after he took over for the rest of the year (20-8 in September), earning him the job for the 1967, but he couldn’t hold it, getting fired the last week of the 1967 season.

There’s a lot of talk here, and in baseball generally, about the quantifiable value of managers. Bobby Bragan got three MLB managerial jobs, none of them particularly successful. Does that make him a bad manager? Absolutely not. Does the evidence of the last 50 games of 1966 prove he was a bad manager? Absolutely not. Managers get too much credit for winning and too much blame for losing, except for Dusty Baker who can never get enough blame for losing. Preferring to keep baseball as a sport and not a exercise in applied social psychology, I really don’t care whether Bragan was a racist, a reformed racist, an artfully hidden pseudo-reformed racist, just a guy doing his best to keep a marginal playing career alive, or something else. Only his Maker knows for sure, when he gave his final debrief in 2010 at the age of 92.

And now to current events. There are several possible explanations for the first pitch by the Marlins José Ureña, a 97 mph fastball that caught Ronald Acuña Jr on the funny bone:

  1. Ureña is upset that there’s another guy in the league with a tilde in his name. This seems unlikely as there are lots of guys in the league with tildes in their names.
  2. Ureña needed to lower his earned runs per appearance below three, and lasting only one batter was a pretty good way to ensure he didn’t give up more than one run.
  3. Ureña had a hot date with a girl in Smyrna whose bedtime was 8 p.m.
  4. Ureña needed to punish Acuña Jr for being talented.  Talent is always unforgiveable.
  5. Ureña was tired of being ignored by Keith Hernandez
  6. Ureña is a punk-assed bitch on a team of punk-assed-bitches plus JT Realmuto and Martin Prado.

By now everyone has seen the replays. Fortunately, Ronaldinho seems fine. He stayed in to run and came out in the top of the second but didn’t appear to be badly hurt. I hope Mattingly didn’t order this, but I’m pretty sure we’ll never know.

Meanwhile, Gausman, in his third start with the Braves, did not pitch well. But he pitched well enough to get through six innings yielding only two runs. This was a classic example of skating by without his best stuff. That’s what good pitchers do.

The Marlins then had a bullpen game to pitch. While Hernandez pitched three good innings, Jarlin Garcia gave up an ABC run to Inciarte and a two-run homer to Dansby. Another couple of runs late knocked in by the same two guys completed the scoring. Venters, Brach and Minter (VBM) pitched a perfect 7-8-9. VBM stands for: Veritable Baseball Masters.  Alternate acronyms solicited.

Braves sweep the Fish, the Phillies take one from the Sawx. gNats fall below .500. Lead stays at 2. Rockies come to town. The Mets go to Philly for 4, and I’m hoping deGrom pitches all four games.