“Smoltz Deserved Better From The Braves”

Here’s a really good column in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

For those of you who don’t follow baseball too closely, John Smoltz, the face of the Atlanta Braves, is close to signing with the Boston Red Sox after Atlanta failed to offer him a competitive contract for the 2009 season.

It’s been hard to root for the Braves the last couple of seasons, but this is a new low. I’ve been a Braves fan since 1987 (which is basically when I first became aware of them), but my fan-dom has reached a crisis point.

Good luck in Boston, Smoltzie.

Thanks to Jared for sending me the link.

Maddux Calls It A Career

Greg Maddux announced his retirement from Major League Baseball on Monday.

I grew up watching Maddux and the other members of Atlanta’s Big Three, Tom Glavine and John Smoltz, baffle hitters and win lots of games.

Maddux was my least favorite of the three (he arrived in Atlanta last and always seemed somewhat like a hired gun), but he was also the best, and he put up some historically shocking numbers in the mid 1990s.

Really, Maddux was also most representative of the great Atlanta teams of the 90s and early 2000s—an absolute terror over the long course of the season who suddenly became mortal when the playoffs rolled around (Maddux was just 11-11 in the postseason during his 11 seasons with the Braves).

Maddux retired with 355 career victories, 8th on the all-time list and one ahead of Roger Clemens, which I think is significant, and appropriate.

Significant because I think Maddux wanted to finish ahead of the Rocket, and appropriate because I think he deserved to.

For much of the two pitchers’ careers, the debate raged about which was the greatest pitcher of the era. Over recent years, the argument had tilted in favor of Clemens, who continued to be one of the best pitchers in the game while Maddux increasingly looked like a 40 year-old who used to be good (eerily similar to what happened with Barry Bonds and Ken Griffey Jr.).

Of course, then all the allegations of Clemens’ steroid use came out, and Roger joined the ranks of Bonds, Mark McGwire and the rest of the baseball stars who have fallen from grace.

And his sudden distancing of himself statistically from Maddux late in their careers made a lot more sense.

Clemens (like Bonds) was a great player who possibly could have been the best of his era, but Maddux (like Griffey) came by his numbers cleanly and deserves the distinction instead.

And really, maybe that would be the most fitting legacy of all for the Steroid Era.

Bits And Pieces: 5.1.08

A few things on my mind on this windy Thursday morning:

• I don’t like complaining about gas prices, but I noticed on the way to work this morning that it’s now $3.55 for a gallon of regular unleaded. If this continues, I might have to take drastic measures—like learning how to drive my wife’s manually-transmissioned, more fuel-efficient car.
• So the Shaq experiment didn’t seem to work out so well with the Suns losing in the first round of the NBA Playoffs to the very team they hoped to beat with Shaq’s help, and reports suggest that Phoenix Head Coach Mike D’Antoni is on his way out. I don’t know how much I like D’Antoni, but it doesn’t seem fair for him to have to take responsibility for a busted trade that the GM and owner also signed off on.
  
• After losing 3-2 to the Nationals last night in the 12th inning, the Braves are now 0-9 in 1-run games. I’m not trying to be an alarmist or anything, but that doesn’t really seem to bode well for the team. If John Smoltz actually returns to the bullpen though, maybe that will change…
  

Why Do I Put Myself Through This?

So one of the interesting things about being at camp (by the way, I had a very good, if very tiring week) is that while I’m there, I’m pretty much out of touch with civilization.

Since camp is in late June, that means that I basically go for an entire week without hearing an Atlanta Braves update, which always makes me extremely nervous.

I got to see a newspaper early in the week and discovered that Atlanta beat up on the BoSox 9-4, but hadn’t heard anything since. Then I got home yesterday, and apparently, over the last five days, everything has fallen apart. Consider the following:

• The Braves have lost five games in a row.
• Over that five game span, they’ve been outscored 27-1; that’s right, they’ve scored 1 run in five games.
• We’ve now fallen to third place in the NL East, behind the Mets and the Phillies.
• Andruw Jones’ batting average has fallen below .200, and his on-base percentage is below .300 (this explains his facial expression in the picture above: Andruw is somewhat bemused because while he can remember a time when Major League pitches weren’t so absolutely baffling to him, he certainly has no clue how to handle them now).
• Bobby Cox got thrown out of another game to tie the all-time record for most ejections.
  
• John Smoltz and Chipper Jones, Atlanta’s longest tenured veterans and the collective bedrock of the team, are both somewhat injured and are apparently feuding with each other.

Things are bad. Atlanta is still only 4.5 games out of first place, but if they don’t make some adjustments soon, I’m afraid they’ll find themselves in serious trouble.

Still, it could be worse—we could still be trotting Mark Redmond out to the mound every five days.

Bound for the Hall

Forty-year-old John Smoltz pitched seven shutout innings tonight to give the Braves a 2-1 victory over the Mets, bringing Atlanta within a game and a half of the New York in the NL East.

The win was Smoltz’s seventh of the season, which leads the National League, but more importantly, was the 200th of his illustrious career.

Smoltz became the 106th pitcher in Major League history to reach the 200 win mark, but is the first pitcher ever to get 200 wins and save at least 150 games.

Although milestones probably shouldn’t be such a big deal statistically, they are a big deal in the minds of Hall of Fame voters, and Smoltz almost certainly cemented his place in the Hall with his victory tonight.

I’ve always been a Smoltz fan, partially because he’s the only player who has been around for Atlanta’s entire run of 14 division titles but also because he is one of the nicest players in the game, and I’m glad that he is getting the recognition and acclaim that he deserves.