Firstly, baby luck is real, boys. If you want to see your team win a championship, go have a kid. I’ve seen it work for the Cubs. I’ve seen it work with the Nationals. Both those teams were laughing stocks not very long ago, and good friends of mine with their then-new children, got to witness the pinnacle of baseball fandom.
Despite the fact that the Braves lost megastar Ronald Acuña, Jr. to a blown ACL, Mike Soroka blowing out his arm, and Marcell Ozuna getting suspended indefinitely for a domestic abuse incident and were sitting as low as fourth place in the division at one point, #2 was born, the Braves stopped sucking just enough to win a horrid division, and then got hot at the very right moment, and rode the momentum all the way to the top.
And now baby luck has worked for me, finally getting to witness a reality where the Atlanta Braves are World Series champions. How can anyone not love baseball when an 88-win team that had no business making the playoffs ends up winning the whole thing?
Honestly, I never thought I’d see this in my life. Between the Braves, Virginia Tech football, Korean national teams in, anything other than video games, I don’t have a lot of world championship potential, so y’all will have to excuse me if I’m still in a little bit of disbelief at the fact that the Braves are actually champions.
I wasn’t a Braves fan in 1995, when they won the World Series previously. Growing up where I did, the team to root for was Cal Ripken, Jr. and the Baltimore Orioles, and the O’s got bounced by the same Cleveland Indians who went on to lose to the Braves in that World Series, but I make no claim to that championship. So 2021’s World Series, really is for me, as it is for all Braves fans who have waited over 20 years for another championship.
Poor mythical wife had to put up with all of my absurd superstitious idiosyncrasies throughout the entire time, specifically me adamantly not watching any of the fucking baseball games like Billy Beane doesn’t, described in Moneyball, because I control the entire world and my mere participation would indefinitely guarantee the Braves losing in the first round. So one day, I’ll look back at the 2021 World Series Braves, and very easily be able to be all like “I remember where I was…” because I was literally anywhere other than in front of a television, radio, or internet feed. Trying my hardest not to pay attention, distract myself with chores or remaining handcuffed to #2, and then hoping it was late enough in the evening to check the scores, where miraculously, the Braves were winning more games than they were losing.
The closest thing I got to watching was in game 5 of the Series, when I had accidentally caught wind that Adam Duvall had clobbered a grand slam in the first, and things were looking very good for the Braves to close it out in five. But as I always say, first inning runs don’t mean a lot, because there’s a ton of game to be played left, but I figured the Braves could hold a four-run lead. I asked mythical wife late in the evening, to simply let me know if she thought I should come in and watch, meaning if the Braves were in a position to actually win, I’d like to watch. She shook her head, and I learned that the Astros small-balled their way to a 9-5 win, and the existential dread that I had poisoned the Braves crept in, and all hope was lost, and it was my fault that the Braves were going to blow the 3-1 series lead and choke back in Houston.
Fortunately, that didn’t happen, and two nights later, it was late in the evening, and mythical wife stops me and simply tells me that I should probably go tune into the game, to which my eyes grew wide with disbelief, and she showed me her laptop, and the Braves were up 7-0 in game 6. Suddenly, 17 years of anticipation, hopes, dreams and mostly disbelief bubbled up, and the realization that it was finally going to happen was just a half inning away, and even the woeful Braves didn’t seem capable of blowing a 7-0 lead in a single inning. I went downstairs and turned on the television, and for the first time, in fact, all entire season long, watched an entire half inning of Braves baseball, the one that mattered the most.
I don’t know if many people caught this, but on the final play of the game, when Yuli Gurriel grounded to Dansby Swanson, there was a split second where Swanson thought about flipping the ball to second for the easy out, but instead he threw to first. I felt like that it was a deliberate move done, so that Freddie Freeman, the face of the Braves and basically the nicest guy in the entire game, got to be the guy to record the final out, and be the very first guy to celebrate the victory. Whether it was deliberate or not, it was still the best feeling, and nobody more deserving to be the very first glimpse of a championship than Freddie Freeman, whom I’m the happiest for of all the guys on the entire squad.
Freddie could very well leave the Braves now that he’s a free agent, but he’ll always be a legend in Atlanta regardless of what happens in coming months, because he delivered a championship to Atlanta, which is something so very few before him can say. So I say, go get you paid, even if it’s not with the Braves, although I hope it is. He’s earned all the success in the world, and I’ll always love the guy.
Throughout the last few weeks, I’ve been saving all sorts of stories and articles to read later, because in line with my not watching the Braves, I also avoided all conversation and news about them as well. Although the headlines led me to believe that they’d probably all just piss me off, I still wanted to read them at some point, just if anything at all, to use as fodder to write something in defense of them, because shitting on the Braves or Atlanta in general are like mom jokes, where it’s okay if I make them, or any Braves fan or Atlanta native can make, but those on the outside can go fuck themselves.
And speaking of fucking, the national media can go fuck themselves throughout the course of the playoffs. Shitting on Atlanta because the Dodgers and Giants both choked, and the reporters don’t get to hang out in smarmy LA or San Francisco hotels and eateries and have to hang out in Smyrna instead. Or dragging out the tried and true and really fucking tired PC bullshit about how the Braves name is racist, the tomahawk chop is racist, and how the organization is trash for being racists.
Seriously, shitheads like Jeff Passan would rather pull for known cheaters over a popular subjective opinion, because it’s really cool to look like allies to Native Americans. Y’all can go fuck yourselves.
Georgia politics can go fuck themselves too, with top shithead Bubba Kemp first and foremost, who tried to inject himself and politics into the Braves’ miracle run, dragging up spineless and tactless dead horses like the pulled All-Star Game over Jim Crow 2.0. Last time I checked, the Braves played on a baseball field and not the state capitol, and there is nowhere in the world where Bubba Kemp and the Atlanta Braves baseball team need to be discussed in the same breath.
Fuck all the stat geeks and armchair analysts who dehumanize the game with WAR, WPA, VORP, WHIP, BABIP, SIERA, and all sorts of statistics that try to find rationalization in every single action and reaction. Yes, I understand them all too and know how and when they apply, but just because the Braves are a statistical wtf at times, doesn’t mean it’s not just fun to sit back and watch from afar as they defy their win total, run differential, or pitching staff’s ERA to continuously keep winning?
This is a win for all Braves fans who have suffered for decades at all the failures, collapses and close calls. It’s a win for all baseball fans who just love the game, and know that the inexplicable is sometimes possible.
This is for 2004, and 2005, the two years where the Astros sent the Braves packing. Fuck Chris Burke and Lance Berkman. Fuck Joey Devine and Kyle Farnsworth.
This is for 2006, the year the Braves’ streak of division titles ended at 14-straight.
This is for 2010, Bobby Cox’s last season, where he made the playoffs, only to lose to the Giants in the first round because Brooks Conrad made a million errors in the 9th inning.
This is for 2012, and the bullshit first-ever Wild Card game where a completely blown infield fly call tarnished what would be the final game in Chipper Jones’ illustrious career.
This is for 2014, when Craig Kimbrel sat unused in the bullpen while David Carpenter coughed up the lead to the Dodgers who sent them packing.
This is for 2018, when the Braves got gamed hard by PC pressure, because a white guy on the Cardinals pulled out his 23andMe card to show that he was like 0.2% Native American, distracted the Braves, and they collapsed in the NLDS despite having a 2-1 series lead.
This is for 2020, when the Braves choked away a 3-1 series lead on the Dodgers in the NLCS. So few times do teams actually get the opportunity to have a redo, much less against the exact same team that sent them home the previous year?
And this is for all of Atlanta, even though the Braves play in Smyrna, because it’s impossible for that to not be brought up in this day and age. But with no intentional disrespect to Atlanta United, a championship in baseball, football or basketball was the only thing that was ever going to get the proverbial monkey off the back and the chips off of the shoulders of this city. Take Atlanta’s name off of the list of most suffering sports towns. This is for 28-3, this is for all the times Georgia choked against Alabama, and all of the playoff exits from the Hawks. And I couldn’t be happier that it was the Braves that finally succeeded in doing it, and bringing a little bit of honor to town.
