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.
Simply put, the Braves weren’t just expected to lose, it was basically their destiny to lose. I don’t know what it is about Atlanta sports where they’re all just so collectively inept once the pressure begins to mount, but at this point, I’ve really stopped trying to figure it out so much as I’ve simply just prevented to allow it to bother me anymore, because it’s just so frequent.
Sure, I’d love to see the Braves break the glass ceiling that’s holding down all Atlanta sports, and I look forward to the day when I can be tragically wrong, and they cash in on the talents of Freddie Freeman, Ozzie Albies and Ronald Acuña Jr. But until that happens, I can’t say that I’d bother getting excited or feeling any optimism for the Braves or any other Atlanta sports team until they can prove jaded sports fans like me wrong.
I dunno, I read this story by Johnny Damon, detailing the locker room hijinks of his Oakland and Boston days, and I can’t help but wonder if he’s on to something. The Braves are a notoriously stuffy organization that is all about shit like “class” and doing thing “the right way,” and all sorts of other bullshit concepts that sounds nice on paper, but can really get in the way of people being themselves. Damon told stories of how either he or some of his old teammates in the past would do shit like locker room pranks, or walk around naked, and then their teammates would laugh or stop thinking about the very serious baseball game for a second, which leads to looser players, which leads to more productive players.
I feel like all Atlanta sports organizations need to learn how to relax or something, because I can’t help but feel that they have a tendency to get all wound up and take things so seriously that it makes them inept. I’ll bet that the day the Braves or any other Atlanta sports team actually wins a major championship, a lot of it will be on account of those teams being able to remain loose and relaxed, even if it means getting their heads out of their organization’s asses about trying to remain classy and doing things the right way.
When the day is over, I’m pretty sure that the organizations will gladly reap the financial gain of championships over the petty reputations of perception. But until that happens, we fans can just expect more of the same shit, no matter how different the teams may vary.
