Wickman Yet to Get Save Op
Between Ken Ray's self-destruction last night and the rainout today, we have yet to see Wickman take the mound in a Braves uniform. I do believe that the Braves will get their money's worth out of him, given that the sacrifice they made was quite small. I saw Max Ramirez catch for Rome earlier this season during my disappointing trip to the new Greenville ballpark (see "Highway to Hell" below), and thought he looked O.K.; but the Braves have an overabundance of catching talent in their organization, including better prospects than Ramirez. In sum, it was a good trade, and perhaps the only one that they will make.

Braves Acquire Wickman from Indians

It looks like the Braves may have finally found themselves a closer, and didn't have to pay a huge price for him (minor league catcher Max Ramirez).

The second half just might be interesting after all.

More Ugliness From Former Home of G-Braves
It seems that the Greenville Drive mascot, Rip-It the Toxic Waste Frog, has been accused of feeling up a female fan in a stairwell.

With full recognition of the fact that the accused is innocent until proven guilty, I feel compelled to say: YEEEEESH!

More on this later.

From First to Worst
In a way there is far too much to say, and in a way there is nothing that can be said that would do the situation justice. As I sit here watching the bullpen blow yet another game, I will say that in the 30+ years that I have followed Major League Baseball, this is the worst skid that I have ever seen a team on. It is not necessarily the worst in terms of morale; the '77 Reds, among other teams of the past 30 years, have approached or surpassed the '06 Braves on the funk-o-meter. But I don't think that I've ever seen a team play so consistently badly for so long.

It's getting painful. My wife, father-in-law, and I had purchased tickets last month for Tuesday night's game against Toronto, which we all had begun to regret by last weekend. Our enthusiasm had waned, but we had already spent $120 on tickets & a parking voucher, so we were committed. It was nice to get down there, as it is only a 2 1/2-hour drive and Turner Field -- despite its amusement-park atmosphere and $6.50 beers -- is a nice facility; it was hot, which contributed to the wilting of our enthusiasm for the game -- which, true to form, they lost after a bad bullpen performance. On the way home we listened to the post-game show on 96 Rock, which consisted of Lemke and Billy Shanks reviewing all the reason why the Braves suck really badly right now: but like everybody else, they didn't seem to have any viable solutions.

A couple of mornings ago, I was listening to our local NPR station, which runs BBC news in the mornings. The anchor, in reference to two World Cup soccer teams who were out of contention but about to face each other in a consolation round, said that they were "playing for pride." I thought about what an alien concept that was for American sports teams in general, and in particular for the Braves, full as they are of fuzzy-faced Atlanta suburbanites who have been bred as winners and led to believe that they are entitled to add a little blue flag to the rim of their fancy ballpark every season, out there with the Cingular ads and the Tyrannovision and the meat-market beer courts.

Well, there won't be one going up this year, and I'm not sure just how they're going to cope with that: but I'm willing to bet that it won't be by "playing for pride."

Update
I have been busy lately. Very, very busy. Too busy even to think about this blog, and really too busy to pay much attention to the train wreck that is the Braves this 2006 season -- although I always have them on in the background to provide some farcical diversion to the rigors of writing for hire.

It's pretty obvious by now that they are done -- 13 1/2 games out in mid-June is simply not survivable, I don't care who you are. My lingering concern is that Cox and Schuerholz will not be able to accept that this is a rebuilding year, and thus will trade away a bunch of young talent that would perhaps help them start another streak of division titles (and would come back to bite them in the ass if dealt off somewhere else) for some expensive, overrrated malcontent who doesn't want to be there and will not be around next year. Todd Hollandsworth, anyone? Rey Sanchez? Caminiti?

Highway to Hell, Part II:
As I indicated in the first part of this post, my wife and I did not have great expectations prior to attending our first Greenville Drive game; but we were not ready for what we experienced that evening. For years there has been a running debate about the "cool factor" of downtown Greenville, and this has been a favorite PR vehicle for the downtown business elite, who even compiled a committee of twentysomethings with various metallic objects protruding from their skins to make suggestions for how the powers that be can price them out of the market while simultaneously creating and maintaining a laid-back, southern-boho facade.

Suffice to way that no semblance of downtown cool, genuine or phony, can be found it West End Field. The only resemblace to downtown, other than the half-finished condo buildings lining the outfield fence, is the stadium's alcohol policy, which requires one to show one's ID at a central location and be fitted with a paper wristband, which is how drinking at street festivals has been regulated for years now. I have grown to like that policy, as it only requires one to show one's ID once. Yet that is where the similarity, and my tolerance, ended.

I received the first sign that something was not right when we took our seats behind the plate, surveyed the field, and realized that its dimensions were not posted on the outfield fence. Has anyone ever been in a minor-league ballpark where the dimensions were not posted on the fence? I haven't. Most high-school fields have the distance from home plate posted down the foul lines and in centerfield. What gives? Did they just not care about that little detail? Did they assume that the fans wouldn't notice or care? Are they hiding something? The answer to one or more of those questions has to be yes.

A second, and more glaring problem, became evident around the middle of the second inning, when the seats in our section began to fill with chronically-late Greenvillians. I had noticed when we took our seats that our usher had not checked our tickets when we started down the aisle, but had merely returned our eye contact and said "enjoy the game." Now, I can excuse the gentleman for not getting up to greet us, for, you see, he was in a wheelchair, and while I am a strong advocate of ADA and of hiring the disabled, it occurs to me that policing an entire section of seats to which the only access is a narrow row of steep concrete steps is not a good job to give to a man in a wheelchair. There were many, many other jobs in the stadium that this man, whom I'm sure is quite capable, could have done -- checking my ID and giving me a wristband, for example.

Nevertheless, I don't think that it would have made a difference had an ambulatory person been assigned to the section; for there seemed to be no oversight of seating whatsoever anywhere in the ballpark. Now, in thirty-plus years of attending games at various levels, I have come to accept that ballparks are full of fans, and fans sometimes are rowdy, and although it grates at my nerves sometimes, they paid for their tickets just like me, and anyway, they aren't hurting anyone. But there's a difference between normal fan behavior and asshole behavior, and the non-presence of the ushers was a tacit invitation for those inclined to behave like assholes to do what they do best. And while I was not offended by the loud profanity going on behind me, it is possible that the families in front of me, many of whom had small children, might have been.

Yet the larger problem with the lack of seating supervision was the rampant seat-stealing that went on around me during the course of the game. Around the third inning, a family three rows down from me, a couple with a small child and an infant, left their seats for a few minutes only to return to find a group of frat boys and their girlfriends occupying them. They chose not to press the issue, instead sitting a couple of rows forward and politely asking the chuckling young men to hand their belongings down to them. Why they did not attempt to get a usher, I did not know. They would not have had to at the old ballpark.

But back to what was happening on the field: beyond the centerfield fence was a large video screen similar to the electronic scoreboards found in all major-league and most minor-league parks; yet this was no scoreboard. It displayed no information on the game, no profiles of pitchers or hitters. It did, however, show commericals and a feed from an in-house minicam showing fans in their seats and close-range shots of the evenings, uh, entertainment, which I will discuss later. The only game information it displayed was the purported speed of the pitches, which were curiously fast. Single-A pitchers don't typically throw in the upper '90s, yet the screen was frequently displaying readings of 98, 99 MPH, and rarely clocked even a breaking ball below 90. After an inning or so of this, my wife walked over to one of the scouts sitting across the aisle with radar guns and asked him how far off it was.

"They're both getting it up there pretty good," he replied, "but they're not that fast -- around low-to-mid '90s."

The rationale for not using the video screen for a scoreboard was presumably to keep fans' attention on the manual scoreboard in the "green monster" replica of a left-field fence (which one of the women behind me called the "green giant")-- which would have been fine, had the person operating the scoreboard bothered to keep it updated. As it were, one had to devote one's entire attention to the game to know the number of outs, the ball-strike count -- you know, those things that scoreboards normally keep track of so you don't have to.

Then there was the "entertainment," which put the cap on this cheap sideshow that we had foolishly mistaken for a baseball game. I also know from experience that baseball and cheesy entertainment go together: after all, there are lots of kids there, and they have to go for the lowest common denominator. Yet there was no commonality in the asinine fare offered that evening and, I'm presuming, every evening. Lulls between innings at the old ballpark were filled with the family-fun time typical of minor-league ballpark: promotional games and giveaways, t-shirt cannons, etc.. What we got instead at West End Field was a clowning dwarf, whose schtick consisted mostly of ridiculously-oversized props, exaggerated dancing, and on one occasion, pretending to call the pitcher's warmup tosses like an umpire while wearing a Darth Vader helmet. By this point, I had passed beyond annoyed into the realm of embarrassed: embarrassed for my city, embarrassed for my country, and embarrassed that I had willingly, albeit not knowingly, purchased a ticket to this foul spectacle. Apparently, we were not alone in our belief that this crap was not funny, for few people around us were laughing (not even the loud morons behind us), and some of them even looked disturbed by it. It was typical of the level of humor that pervaded the evening (playing the sound of glass breaking over the PA everytime a ball is fouled out of the park is not funny the first time, much less the 36th) with the added dimension of being quite offensive -- and as anyone who knows me can tell you, I am not easily offended.

We left after the sixth inning, and although I no longer say never about very much, I can say that I have no plans ever to return to West End Field, even if the Rome Braves are in town. The whole thing smacked of arrogance, of cavalier treatment, of greed.

I can see them now, sitting in their meetings, dinners, receptions, clubhouses. I can hear them planning how to get the lintheads and rednecks through the turnstiles: don't bother with painting the dimensions on the fence: we had to make it too short, and most of them can't count that high anyway; jack up the radar gun, so they think they're seeing 100-MPH fastballs out of these kids; my sister's no-account son-in-law needs a job, maybe he can work the scoreboard; don't worry about the seating policy, they like to steal seats from each other, they're a bunch of animals, anyway; give 'em a dancing midget, they like stuff like that.

That's really cool, Greenville, really hip. Face it; you got a pig in a poke. An expensive pig, an expensive poke.

Enjoy the game.

Highway to Hell: Greenville Drives Away Quality Baseball
With the Braves in the doldrums (I know; last night was nice, but who knows how long it will last?), I would like to take this opportunity to shift the focus a bit(Why not? I'm not only this blog's author, I'm its only visitor) and vent over something that still eats at me about this town, and likely always will. I enjoy living here. I really do. There is a lot to like about the Greenville area and a lot to like about downtown, which is about 12 minutes away from me by car and a nice place to walk, run, eat, drink coffee, or just sit and relax if the weather is right.

But if I think too hard about it, or even if I think at all, I can find a lot to be bitter about as well. One thing that is sure to send my mind to a dark place is reflection upon the way this town lost the Braves by dragging their feet on a new ballpark, then following a year of languishing after the Braves announced their intent to leave, spent an enormous amount of effort to build a brand new park for a low-A Red Sox farm team.

For ten years my wife and I watched future major leaguers come through this town -- too many to mention here without making an entry already destined to be long that much longer. The way that Greenville let the Braves go was disgraceful -- and I do blame Greenville more than I blame the Braves. They dragged their feet for years while the Braves waited for a plan -- just a plan -- to build a new ballpark. And it certainly appears that much of the foot-dragging was deliberate on the part of the downtown business elite, perhaps because they knew that they would never be able to wrest baseball once and for all from the hands of the mill people unless they got rid of the G-Braves franchise. For baseball and the textile mills were inextricably bound together in this town for generations, and the downtown elite always looked down upon it -- that is, until they saw the opportunity to make big bucks from building a new ballpark and developing the real estate around it.

And wrest it away they did. It mattered not to them that they were driving away the AA franchise of a team 2 1/2 hours down the road, for which dozens of future major leaguers had played and many more (including John Smoltz, several times) had logged rehab time, for the low-A farm team of a club nearly 1000 miles away, in a league made up of teams located in towns like Rome, GA and Hickory, NC. They were getting a ballpark. It was going downtown, near land that they had already seized for development (and are paying millions for now after a court judgement went against them), in a place that they had been trying to make safe for gentrification for some time now.

There's only one problem -- actually, there are many, but the worst one is that they don't know how to do baseball. Not at all. But they think they do, or at least they think they know what to do to keep the unwashed masses entertained. More on that in the next post.

O.K. -- I'm Over It
Now that I'm a little calmer, allow me to attempt to state rationally why I believe that the Braves are finished this year. It won't be hard, and it won't take long. In fact, it all comes down to this:

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Put simply, the Braves do not have the financial resources to compete with the Mets, who have spent multimillions this year on building a team capable of ending the Braves' remarkable 13-season division title streak. I know what some of you are saying (or would be saying, if anyone but
I were ever to visit this blog): the Mets have tried before to purchase a title, with disastrous results; what's more, the Braves don't needs as large a payroll as other teams because of the depth of talent in their farm system; besides, money may be able to buy talent, but it can't buy clubhouse chemistry, can't buy motivation, cant't buy makeup, can't buy heart -- indeed, can't buy the very things that the Braves look for in their players, managers, coaches, and staff.

Still, after witnessing the abysmal performance of the team this week, which included a series split with the Rockies and a loss last night to a Phillies team that tried like hell to lose, I cannot help but believe that they are done. And I fear for what is going to happen next. The Braves have inadequate pitching because they had an inadequate budget with which to purchase adequate pitching in the offesason. Now they are stuck with what they have. In my opinion, the smart thing to do would be to treat this as a -- gulp -- rebuilding year, and try to develop some of the young guys for a run at another championship streak, starting next year. How much do you want to bet that that's not what John Schuerholz, Bobby Cox, or anyone else in the organization is thinking, even though to do so would be consistent with the organization's long-term vision.

No, I'm betting that instead, there will be trades. Perhaps several of them, if the Braves wind up where I think they will by the All-Star break, which is 12-15 games down and in third place. In a short period of time, the will give up a great deal of talent, perhaps mortgaging what could well be a bright future for the club for the next five to ten seasons.

Only time will tell. But right now, time does not appear to be on the side of the Atlanta Braves.

Enough
I don't know about the rest of you (who am I kidding: no one ever visits this blog), but I've had about all I can fucking take of this goddamn pathetic excuse for a team. After watching this game, I don't know what's worse: the fact that the Braves can't afford a decent pitching staff, the fact that their much-heralded bats could only deliver two runs in such an important game, or that Major League Baseball is apparently incapable of fielding a crew of four competent umpires. This whole sorry spectacle makes me SICK. I have wasted far too many potentially productive nights for this crap.

Yet it was my decision to start this blog, and it is out there for the record regardless of whether anyone actually visits it, so I might as well close this rant with a prediction:

Third in the NL East. Back home golfing, hunting, fishing, and impregnating their wives by the first week in October.

How's that? Can I go now? Good.

P.S. -- TODD PRATT??!! TODD PRATT??!! The bases are loaded with two out in the ninth with a solid hitter coming to the plate in Brian McCann, and you decide to play percentages by sending out TODD PRATT to strike out on three pitches? Has Bobby lost his fucking mind? Pratt didn't even smell that last one.

Torborg comes away from this game thinking that the Braves looked much improved, and it's going to be a "nice pennant race." Torborg's a fucking idiot.

I think by now, there is no denying that the Braves might be in serious trouble. A week ago, that looked like a certainty; but since then, the starting rotation has turned in three CGs, and the two out of three in the first Mets series wasn't half bad either -- especially after the New York press prematurely declared the season over and the Mets winners of the NL East.

That's the last thing any team with designs on winning that division needs: their hometown newspaper calling out the Braves in a particularly brazen manner, after you just defeated them at home, in the first series of the season, with your ace on the mound. The results were predictable, and immediate; for the next night's pitcher (I forget his name) tries to pitch like Pedro, but is -- regrettably for him -- not Pedro. Then Glavine turned in a fine performance yesterday, but Hudson, who came into the game with an ERA equal to the gross national products of some third-world nations, turned in a finer one. What's more, these two victories were achieved without the benefit of half their infield and their hottest hitter, Andruw notwithstanding.

So did the New York press speak two soon? Hell, yes; they are morons, and that is a condition that will remain constant as long as our civilization survives. Will the Barves manage once again to prevant the Mets from purchasing a division title? That one is still debatable.