I’m going to miss him when he’s gone. But, thus far, he’s making the most of his curtain call. (That said, Braves still don’t appear to be capable of taking a series from the Phillies.)
Category Archives: General Sports
Oh, the Ignominy
There’s been little to cheer in the Seattle Mariners’ 35 years of existence. There’s the “Mendoza Line,” named for the sub-.200 hitting Mariners shortstop. Former Mariner Ken Phelps broke up a perfect game bid by Brian Holman with a home run with two outs in the ninth 22 years ago. They are, along with the Montreal Expos/Washington Nationals, the only franchise never to have even made it to the World Series. It took them until 1991, their 15th season, to even get to a winning record. That was promptly followed by a string of two world championships by the Toronto Blue Jays, who joined the league the same season as the Mariners. Despite racking up the sixth-best single season winning percentage ever, in that glorious 2001 when the team won 116 games, the Mariners missed the big show by losing in 5 games to the Yankees in the ALCS. And in 2008, the Mariners were the first $100 million payroll team to lose 100 games (101 to be exact).
And so it’s come to this: the Mariners are the victims of the 21st perfect game. So accustomed to failure are the Mariners fans that they were actually cheering for Chicago White Sox pitcher Phil Humber in the ninth inning.
So what ignominy comes next? One shudders to think.
Guest Post: At Least We Went to Playoffs 14 Seasons in a Row
The 1992 National League Championship Series was a high point in a 15-year string of dominance that netted the Atlanta Braves one piddly World Series title.
Excepting those two games played in Japan last week, which no one seemed to notice, I feel confident proclaiming that baseball season is upon us. To mark the occasion, I recruited a very old friend of mine and fellow Braves fan to put together a recap of the greatest decade-plus of sports fandom ever experienced by people who admit to others that they’re from Atlanta. It was also, as you can imagine, one of the most frustrating spells in the history of sports appreciation, as multiple World Series that seemed to be within a tomahawk’s chop of being ours were frittered away (or just stolen).
Below is a quick recap of the period, which we’ll call The Silver Age of Baseball in Atlanta. With that, I’ll turn the reins over:
*Full disclaimer, this blog post was originally written five-plus years ago (on Myspace of all places) on September 25, 2006. Then I deleted it. So, this is somewhat of a reconstruction. I have tried to re-write from memory and maintain as much of the original sentiment as possible.*
The end of the Braves/Mets game last night was an insignificant game in the 2006 season, but was a pretty big milestone in the history of the Atlanta Braves franchise, the MLB, and sports in general. The loss mathematically eliminated the Braves from the postseason, ending a decade and a half of dominance over the rest of the National League and, at times, the entire majors. The Braves won the NL West Division title in 1991 and went on to win another 13 straight division titles. Those 14 years covered the majority of my formative years, and I can usually recall a Braves memory associated with significant parts of my personal life.
After this loss, I thought back on all the seasons and recapped what I remember of the postseason for each division title (yes, postseasons only because outside of a few broken records, fights and mostly lame All-Star games, the postseasons are what really matters). Sadly, it was more lows than highs.
’91 – The miracle season capped off by the greatest World Series ever. Even losing the game 7 could not put a dark cloud on the season. We even had a parade for our lovable losers.
’92 – Two on and two out in the bottom of the ninth. Sid Bream comes lumbering around third and barely beats a weak throw by Barry Bonds. The Pirates franchise goes into a tailspin. The Braves continue their run. Another great season, but with more disappointment in the World Series.
’93 – Another disappointment, this time getting beat by a bunch of hoodlums. This year sealed my intense dislike of all things Philadelphia—specifically, when the Braves’ bus was attacked by fans after the clinching game.
’94 – Shortest season in the run = shortest memory
’95 – Finally! The redemption year! What a game six, with Tom Glavine and David Justice both coming up big. And what a call by Skip Caray on the final out, “Yes! Yes! Yes! The Atlanta Braves have given you a championship! Listen to this crowd!”
’96 – The season’s World Series started off memorable: A scrawny 19-year-old kid from the Caribbean belting two home runs in the opening game, and the Braves leaving New York with a 2-0 series lead and home field advantage. Then Denny Neagle and Jim Leyritz struck. The opportunity truly to dominate the ’90s quickly slipped away. We watched the pinstripes win four straight and celebrate their first WS win 18 years. It would be the first of many I’d have to endure.
’97 – Eric Gregg – the man whose appetite was eclipsed only by his strike zone.
’98 – A truly dominant team entering the playoffs that ran into the buzzsaw that was the ’98 Padres. The errors did not help at all, and it continued the disappointment that was Braves’ postseasons in the ’90s.
’99 – Instead of the ’90s being the decade of the Braves, it belonged to the Yankees. Another embarrassing exit, with the salt in the wound being a World Series sweep.
’00 – Another division title, but still no ring to show for it. The “at least we”-excuses begin. Here: At least we did not lose to the Mets.
’01 – The team that was built on pitching was absolutely destroyed by a team with even better pitching. At least we did not lose in the wild-card round.
’02 – Barry Bonds gets his revenge on the Braves. At least we won another division
’03 – A year marked by an explosive offense, only to be completely shut down by superior pitching. At least we made it to the playoffs.
’04 – The only highlight of this short postseason stint was watching Rafael Furcal hit a home run to help win game 2 against the Astros. As soon as the season ended, he was to start a jail sentence for drunk driving. He delayed it by at least 2 days. At least we made it five games.
’05 – The end, though no one knew it yet. The night the Braves lost to the Astros in extras—after being ahead 6-1. At least we had a good run.
Seahawks’ Unis Unwelcome, Unnecessary
The Seattle Seahawks unveiled new uniforms today and whoo boy are they ugly. Fans can at least take heart that a national audience won’t see these stinkers in this season’s playoffs, Matt Flynn notwithstanding.
This latest iteration gets the Hawks even further away from their fine-looking royal blue and kelly green uniforms of the ’70s and ’80s. There was nothing broken about those jerseys and they didn’t need any fixing, particularly the silver helmets with the stately seahawk. Pacific Northwesterners can thank Nike for today’s “gift” after the athletic shoe giant oversaw their redesign as part of taking on the NFL apparel contract. Cue the fretting that the Seahawks are Nike’s NFL version of the Oregon Ducks.
Particularly disappointing is the fascination with neon green, which now is splashed over the shoulders, gloves, pant legs and around the numbers. No one asked for more neon green and no one wants it. Is there no institutional memory of the Squawks’ ill-fated green jerseys of a couple seasons ago?
The Seahawks already inspire little fear in opponents, but now they just look silly doing it. Thank you, Phil Knight. Thank you, Seahawks, you really are coming up small.
So This Is What Misery Feels Like …
The Braves epic September 2011 swoon helped propel Atlanta to the top if Forbes' Most Miserable Sports Cities
This is a blog that basks in the misery that underachieving sports franchises inflict on their respective fan bases, from the rabid, rust-belted Dawg Pound inhabitants of Cleveland to the new moneyed, good ol’ boy transients who fein to support Atlanta teams. The authors, which include a Seattle native still so distraught at losing the Sonics to OKC that he’s yet to post anything, are constantly quibbling about which of their hometowns is in fact the sorriest of sports cities.
On Leap Day 2012, it is I who can claim the title, as an independent arbiter, Forbes magazine has declared that the loss of the NHL Thrashers (honestly, no one cares) and the epic September collapse of the Braves (don’t really want to talk about it) makes Atlanta more pitiable than Sonics-less Seattle. Yay! (I guess.)
Here’s how the Coming Up Small team took the news:
ATLSwami: CAME up small!
ValmiCLE: You can have it. Totally impossible to take that list remotely seriously. Puts Denver ahead of Cleveland. DENVER! With this: “A great run from 1996 to 2001 (four titles) doesn’t quite mitigate a long bridesmaid history for the Mile High City.” Four fucking titles in the last 15 years gets less weight than 0 for 45? Blech. Worst one of these lists I’ve ever seen. Buffalo? Seattle? No problem. But putting Phoenix and Denver up there?
ATLS: Phoenix? They had the one Dbacks series. Anything else?
VCLE: Years and years of the Suns being good. Went to a Super Bowl. Dbags more recent than Atlanta’s.
ATLS: So, y’all have been to multiple World Series and an NBA Finals.
VCLE: This is a zero sum game. Been to 3 championship rounds in my lifetime and lost each in a horrible way. Can’t argue with zero titles in over 40 years. Who cares if the hockey team leaves Atlanta? No one in Atlanta clearly. Let’s not go over what happened when Cleveland lost its most popular team. In that time, ATL’s been to a Super Bowl and as many World Series [5, actually, to the Indians’ 2] and managed to win one. Winning matters. No comparison. Winning before 1964 doesn’t matter unless you’re old enough to remember it. And even then.
ATLS: It’s not about you, dude. It’s about the city.
VCLE: Shut your word hole
ATLS: Cleveland was there before you, and, this might be a stretch, it will outlast you.
GreggySEA (in his first appearance on the blog): Damn, swiped first place from us.
ATLS: If it makes you feel better, I don’t value the loss of the Thrashers as even being in the same ballpark as the loss of the Sonics.
GSEA: It does make me feel better. And we just lost out next best hope with Sacramento staying put.
ATLS: Did KJ ever frustrate you back in the day? Cause he’s certainly doing it from Sacto’s mayor’s office.
GSEA: Yeah, fuck that guy.
VCLE: Drafted by the Cavs and traded for Larry Nance, if I recall.
Posterized!
My guess is kids today (holy shit I sound old, which is fitting since I’m in the space between being younger than Steve Nash but old enough to be Kyrie Irving’s father) are still high on the posters, right? When I was a teenager, there wasn’t an inch of the gray wood paneling in my bedroom that wasn’t covered in them. This was abetted by both my brother and I working in music stores, where we got loads and loads of promo posters and such. Hell, my brother even had his ceiling covered. But I did supplement those with a couple of sports-related ones. At some point early on, I wanted, but never actually purchased, a few of the posters made by John and Tock Costacos, a couple of T-shirt guys that had the idea of making these bizarrely themed sports posters that sometimes used athletes’ nicknames and sometimes just made em up, so far as I can tell.
“We wanted to make the athletes into comic book heroes. They’re larger than life. They’re Superman. They’re Batman,” one of the Costacos said (Kevin Mitchell literally being Batman in one of them). “They’re Hollywood action stars that kick the shit out of 20 bad guys always living to fight another day.”
Riiiiight. I know that’s what I always thought of Lester Hayes and Steve Largent.
At any rate, there’s an exhibition of these curious abominations that’s about to close at the Country Club and Mondrian in Los Angeles, and Sports Illustrated put up a slideshow of a bunch. More can be seen here. The Costacos are apparently still in the poster business, but not with the same batshit level of dementia that you can find in these. There’s about a million baffling details to parse in each one–from the overall theme (Kirk Gibson as a hunter, James Worthy as an attorney) to tiny things (Chuck Person’s too-small chaps, or the intimate caress between Jim Everett and one of his linemen).
So I naturally gravitated toward the two Cleveland posters: Bob Golic as some kind of greased hair metal canine fetishist with an exploding doghouse, and Cory Snyder as a gunslinger with smoking balls, more tiny balls on his belt, and a general look of confusion about where he is (is it all about his ability to throw out runners—I spent far too long trying to figure it out).
Super Bowl in Four Words
Sports Guy Bill Simmons encapsulates the Super Bowl with brilliant concision on his Twitter feed. (Posts were roughly four hours apart.)
Super Bowl Forty-Meh
The Pats don't really need another Super Bowl win. For that matter, neither do the Giants.
To borrow (or rather skewer) a line from the post-Camper Van Beethoven band Cracker, “What the world needs now is another New York or Boston champion like I need a hole in my head.”
Ugh. Super Bowl XLVI is like the Bush tax cuts for the sports world. The rich get richer, no matter who comes out on top in this one, folks. (ESPN The Magazine even allowed the two over-publicized cities to shit-talk one another, perhaps forebodingly, via hometown comedians, Artie Lange and Denis Leary.) Though, in the new century, I suppose Boston currently sits atop of the sports town heap, having won at least one championship in each of the four major sports.
To hear Bill Simmons talk about the manner in which the Pats found themselves moving on to the Super Bowl was to hear an entitled fan spoiled from too much recent success. On his B.S. Report podcast from Monday, Simmons says, “That was so much more of a loss for Baltimore than it was a win for the Patriots. … Your watching it going, ‘These can’t be the two best AFC teams. It doesn’t seem right.’ That was probably Houston’s conference. … Maybe [the Pats] didn’t back in. Maybe they just got lucky because of the Houston thing.”
If the Falcons made it to the Super Bowl because their opponent’s bus broke down on the way to the game, I’d be beyond elated. A well-defensed pass and a rushed, hooked kick? I’d probably be excited enough to turnover a car on my own.
Can you even imagine being so blasé about your team making it to the Super Bowl?
The Cleveland-Duke Conundrum
Championship ring from the last major title of any kind in the city of Cleveland--1964. Dammit. At least it's classier than the newer bling-era Liberace rings.
Before we discuss loser-on-loser violence in response to atlswami’s last post, I must note that it is just after halftime of the Ravens-Pats game for a trip to the Super Bowl. Dear Ravens: Lose please. I hate you. Naturally I’m bitter about that team’s ongoing success, hard-nosed running and defensive identity, even the rivalry with the stupid Steelers (these two teams of remorseless, jackbooted headhunters deserve each other—it blows that they have to constitute one-quarter of the Browns’ schedule every damn year—and it makes the battle for third with Cincinnati our only real rivalry, which is just sad), and, especially, their Super Bowl victory four years after leaving Cleveland. That falls into the expanding category of unique, innovative ways that fortune stabs Cleveland fans in the neck. I certainly can’t think of another beloved franchise stolen from one town that won a chronically elusive title (Browns one of four teams with no Super Bowl appearances) within five years. As big a middle finger at a town I can imagine, worse than The Decision, especially since the WoA is still without a title as yet. Compound this with the fact that my favorite player when I was a child, Ozzie Newsome, is their goddam awesome GM. Another Coming Up Small city, Seattle, is starting to understand what this feels like, but OKC needs to win a title first. Side note: Simmons and his ilk recently discussed somewhere how poetic it would be if Baltimore won a title in Indianapolis (site of this year’s Super Bowl, and I must confess that I freaking love that stadium’s design), the city that stole its Colts franchise in 1983. Blech, who cares. Indianapolis more or less sucked donkey balls until Peyton arrived. Baltimore got its justice. I’m just waiting for the wheel to turn and “hapless Ravens” to enter the SportsCenter lexicon. I wish them ill.
Yes, I did evince a little hope for the Cavs future–there’s a ton of young players on that team, likable guys who are starting to distinguish themselves. Irving, Thompson, Casspi, I like these guys. A couple of pieces and some experience away from being interesting. Play hard, good coach, fun to watch, what’s not to like at the moment? At least we’re not Washington Wiz (the major omission in the Coming Up Small lineup of sports towns at the moment). They’re a cavalcade of awfulness because their young promising players are like torture to watch, hot dogging when they’re getting blown out and ball-hogging all the time. Yech. Concern with the Cavs now is maybe winning too many games and fouling up their lottery ticket in a strong draft. So thanks Hawks for setting us straight. I’m happier with the Cavs situation than I think atlswami is the with the Hawks. Sure, the Hawks make the playoffs every year, but they’re stuck in the ghetto of mediocrity, and it’s costing them an arm and a leg. Sparing Dwight Howard, they’re not getting any further until they blow it up and start over again, I figure. So Cavs, step one in rebuilding the right way under way. Kudos, fellas. We could look like Oklahoma City, Denver, or the Sixers in a few years, and maybe take Miami out of the playoffs once. That’d taste like truffles, man. That’ll do, pig. That’ll do.
Finally, the Duke-bag issue requires some explanation. I came by Duke fandom honestly–I went there for college, and it’s impossible not to absorb some of that culture. If pain is the engine of solidarity in Cleveland, persecution does it for Duke fans. The vitriol that goes their way, delightfully saucy stuff. But yeah, it’s awful weird for a Cleveland fan to also have the Yankees of college basketball in his personal stable (and the two have several connections–Danny Ferry, Trajan Langdon, Carlos Boozer, and now Irving). I actually do know what it’s like to have one of my teams win a title–two, actually, since I matriculated in 1993. Begrudge me that? Meh. Your prerogative, Bobby. I’m not gonna fight you. As much as I enjoyed those Duke titles, that fandom really doesn’t measure up to being a Cleveland fan. Not in the slightest. Being a Duke fan is easy. Being a Cleveland fan is hard.
When Falcons Once Soared
The greatest moment in Falcons' history? Yup, probably.
SI.com has a list of the “Best NFL Conference Championships of All Time.” Look what came in at #9. Dirty Birds!
coming up small 