It's Over

I've had to take a deep swig of reality over the past week. The Braves will not make the post season this year. I remember when i moved to Atlanta in August 1990. My dad took me to a Braves game - the place was so empty that we could hear the 3rd base coach yelling at the runner on 2nd from our seats in center field. A year later it all changed - I attended my first post season baseball game...NLCS and World Series.

The Bravos are sitting at 6 games back in the Wild Card (back in '91 there was no such thing as a Wild Card).

There are a lot of wouldas, shouldas, couldas....all the one run losses, bullpen, injuries, blah, blah, blah. The fact is there are many more team in MLB that are better than the Braves - shoot, there are three just in the NL East. The Mets are L O A D E D. The Phils and Marlins don't suck either.

Last year I bought the Post Season ticket package with the thought that I better take advantage of playoff baseball while I can. The Braves lost in the Divisional Series -- but my wife and I got to see Smoltz vs. Clemens, so that was nice...plus I got all the money back for the unused NLCS and WS games.

Here's the deal. The Braves will be better next year. Schuerholz will secure a closer - might even be Wickman. He'll add some depth to the bullpen. He'll trade a player for a player I don't know as well. I'll question him (as I did with Damion Moss, George Lombard, Tim Spooneybarger, Denny Neagle, Mark Wohlers, and countless others), then three weeks later I won't even remember the player that we sent off for the guy that's hitting .310 for us now. The guy doesn't make mistakes. Some young player will come into his own and make me wonder how we ever played without him.

I'll think back to the days of Otis, Lonnie, Sid, TP, Justice, Javy, Greg, Tom, Denny, Kerry, Rocker (!), Blauser, Treakway, Lemke, Wohlers, Merker, Olson, Stanton, Berryhill, Gant, Remlinger, Francisco, Jerry Williard, Julio Franco, Matt Franco, Bako, Blanco, and DeRosa and smile.

There's always next year.