A sad day in Atlanta

yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away

baseball was just another game to play



Yesterday, Greg Maddux (aka. pest pitcher of the modern era not on steroids) retired officially from Baseball. From 1992-1995 Greg Maddux won 4 Cy Young awards and amassed a 1.98 ERA. A brief look at his career statistics showed 20 walks total in 1997, in 232 innings. He won lots of gold gloves. He won lots of games with bad run support and crappy bullpens. I think 355 wins in all. Pretty amazing. You can marvel at his statistics yourself at the official braves website. I am not going to take the time rightnow on this slow computer to do it myself.



Anyways, I have been braves fan ever since watching Otis Nixon bring back a would be Pirate home run in the 1992 NLCS (I think that´s right, those details were´t so importatn to me at the time) and then watching Sid Bream charge into home, beating a Barry Bond´s (he had smaller arms at the time) throw to home, to win the series, I have been a Braves fan. Actually I think I might have just felt bad for the Braves because everyone else in my family was rooting for the Pirates. I felt bad later when my brothers were crying and I was happy.



Since then, I spent hours with a tennis ball and glove in front of our brick fireplace (the outside part) pitching balls, pretending to be alternatly, Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, John Smoltz, and Steve Avery (remember him? he was supposed to be great and was my favorite for a while). When my pitches weren´t great, Otis Nixon, Marquis Grissom, David Justice, Mark Lemke (my favorite playoff time second baseman, Jeff Blouser, and others would make diving catches to save me. SOmehow the imaginary Braves always won, and for the better part of my life that was actually true in real life too. Now the Braves are struggling a little bit and I have to live like every other baseball fan not knowing for sure that my team would make it to the playoffs. The Braves used to have three potential aces, now, with Tim Hudson´s injury, they are struggling to find one (and yes, I blame the Yankees and their greedy ways for that).


Now we´ve got some good guys like McCann and Escobar, and good ole Chipper Jones is stillwithus, but the days will never be the same as those fantasy days with (young) Maddux, Glavine, and Smoltz dominating the NL.

Today, the Braves are lost without a single ace and the retirement of Maddux has brought to the forfront of my mind how far gone that "yesterday" really is.

Jordan

I hope like probably every other Brave´s fan that one day he will return as a pitching coach.