Honestly, I’m just glad that the Braves won a game. I’d have been very not mad, just disappointed had the Braves gone into the playoffs and gotten swept and embarrassed like the Rockies or Indians did, and at least they can hang a single laurel that they put up a modicum of a fight before the inevitable Atlanta tradition of getting bounced from the playoffs came to fruition.
I haven’t really written much, if anything about the Braves (baseball team, not ownership) this season, because really there wasn’t really that much to talk about. Sure, the team of the future arrived a little bit earlier than schedule, and jump started life into the franchise, powering them to a surprise division title and an actual playoff berth. But there was one part disbelief that the team would actually achieve success and that between the Nationals or Phillies, they’d have gotten upended in September and miss the playoffs, and there was another part that simply didn’t want to tempt the laws of fate and risk jinxing anything, when the team was going so well.
But either way, when the race for all the divisions were settled, and it was apparent that the Braves were in, I can’t say that I was really at all that excited, and this just might be the sentiment of all fans of sports that live in the Atlanta area. I can’t speak for anyone but myself, but I can’t help but feel that the curse of Atlanta sports is just too strong, and as exciting as the 2018 Braves were, were just too young, and really achieved as much success as they did, heavily on the notion that their divisional rivals were all just that bad. I didn’t just predict that the Braves were going to get bounced in the first round, I’d have put actual money on it, because that’s simply what the Braves do.
Seriously, the Braves haven’t made it out of the first round of the playoffs since 2001, and they’ve made the playoffs eight times since then. That’s eight times getting bounced in the first round, and almost always, by a team that was seeded lower than they were. And that’s just the Braves; as far as other Atlanta and Georgia sports are concerned, most of us here remember the epic historic Super Bowl 28-3 collapse of the Falcons. The Georgia Bulldogs proceeded to lose the National Championship in similar fashion months later. The Atlanta United soccer team made it to the playoffs in their first year, only to get bounced in the first round by the lower seed, and even the Atlanta Dream WNBA team made it to the WNBA Finals, only to get swept.