Old mossback Braves fans hate LA back from the years Atlanta was placed in the Western Division. I always say this happened because Atlanta is in the westernmost part of the Eastern Timezone. And LA is still, of course, a formidable competitor: the back-to-back champs that you have to go through to get back to the World Series. And I still hate Tommy Lasorda. But as long as Freddie is a Dodger, you can’t hate them completely.
I have a good friend, a little older than me, whose life-altering experience as a child was losing a major league team, just a few years before my life-altering experience of gaining one. Once he had grown up and gotten educated, he moved to LA and worked directing soap operas just to be near the Dodgers. His son has the middle name Campanella. All of this is touching, and his devotion is close to mine, not one of those arriviste trend-following Left Coast posers. Losing to the Braves will break his heart.
Now, go break his heart.
Some boast they never doubted. I never fully believed. Didn’t expect to win a series and it seemed like Philly was just destined to have our postseason number. But now that we’ve advanced for the first time since 2021, it seems like anything could happen. Why not?
Walt Weiss just did something that not everyone has done, and certainly something that cannot be taken lightly with our particular team: he won a playoff series. He pushed a lot of the right buttons, as he did all year. He didn’t get everything right, but he did enough.
At some point in the offseason, still drunk on World Series victory celebrations, we need to discuss Walt Weiss. There are a few obvious things to start with: (a) nobody here thought he was a good pick — it was sort of a “I guess it’s your turn” pick; (b) he has consistently made bold managerial moves — that is decidedly unusual: Bobby Cox made none, Fredi Gonzalez made few, most of them idiotic, Brian Snitker made very few; (c) with rare exceptions, none of them are the Tony LaRussa SuperGenius moves that say “look at me… I’m playing chess here while the rest of you play tic-tac-toe”; and (d) the majority of them have worked (thus far).
After winning the last two World Series, Dodger fans deserve no sympathy when we knock them out of the playoffs.
If Atlanta lost that game yesterday, that would’ve been four straight playoff series against the Phillies lost and each time we had a better regular season record. We are now 12-15 in postseason series where we were the better regular season team. I would assume that we won’t play another team for the rest of the postseason where we were the better regular season team. Underdogs from here on out.
I see it as, starting in 1991, 12-14 in series where we had the better regular-season record, 0-1 in series where we had the same record, and 6-6 in series where we had the worse record. So 18-21 total, slightly underperforming what would be the average expectations (maybe 21-18 or 22-17?) but nothing that makes me think it’s anything more than luck, given that the opponents were also on average probably 90+win teams.
Mixing different eras, it looks pretty good.
The 90s Braves were fantastic teams that got a little unlucky in the playoffs but generally advanced.
From 2000-2019 we ran off an impressive string of defeats. Excepting one wild card series win from Houston in 2001, we lost what, 12 series including 10 consecutive?
The 2020 and beyond Braves have been much more successful, but that 2 decades of futility is what really earned the playoff loser reputation.
We’re underdogs to an injury-nicked, but still super-talented team that we somehow already beat 5 out of 6 games — works for me.
That ’93 NLCS loss to Philly, IMO, was one of the worst post-season losses in the 14-year run. That Braves team had just about everything.
Just watched the condensed game again. Ben Ingram is so good at his job. Goosebumps!