Blogs

College football kicked off last Thursday and it was great. Not only did the SEC top the ACC in the first game of the season, but the night ended with a sucker punch and a suspended Duck. You can't make this stuff up.

Saturday may or may not have gone the way you would have liked. I would have preferred a Georgia win and a two yard touchdown following a stellar punt return rather than a penalty followed by a turnover, a Cowboy touchdown and a loss. C'est la vie.

This upcoming football season marks my 11th on the sidelines for The Citizen Newspapers. In 1998, Cal Beverly, the publisher and editor here, offered me a chance to cover sports.
“We’ll see how it works,” he told me, describing my time as a probationary period.

It has worked out fairly well so far, after all, I’m still here.

Although I had taken some journalism classes at the University of Georgia, I learned my craft on the job, thanks to the great colleagues I’ve had in the offices here on Glynn St. and also from the experience in the field.

Forget about letting Smoltz go (that doesn't look so bad these days) and forget about rehabbing Glavine only to boot him a few days before a scheduled major league start. The moves on the baseball field look, if not entirely correct, sensible.

It is some of the decisions being made involving the fan experience that give me pause and make me wonder if going to a Braves game is worth it anymore.

I almost blogged a couple of weeks ago when the Braves beat the Red Sox on a Sunday and followed it with a home sweep of the Phillies. I thought it was the sign of a complete turnaround and brighter days were ahead.
Then came the debacle in Washington and I realized this is what Braves fans were going to get all year - high points mixed with miserable lows. I suppose any baseball fan should expect the same. It is a long season, after all, and teams are never as good as their best days and never as bad as their worst days.

If you are a lifelong Braves fan, you might be a redneck. Just kidding, it really means that it's probable you were born and raised in the south - or in a market that didn't have a baseball team but had TBS.

You're welcome Iowa.

Chances are though, you, like me, aren't from around here. You've probably lived in the South for awhile and still consider yourself a fan of your hometown teams. I will always be a part of Red Sox Nation and I earned my stripes as a Patriots fan by sitting in sub-zero temperatures with my dad and grandfather back when the Patriots were rarely great.

Oh, how everything looked like a bowl of cherries and roses just a short time ago. The Braves were red hot and hosting the division leading Marlins. If they took two of three and then did the same against Pittsburgh and Washington, the crown was ready to be placed on the Braves heads once again.

O.K., that might have been getting a little ahead of ourselves, but the optimism was palpable.

Well, optimism is sleeping again and it may be awhile before he wakes up.

Six games in and the Braves are 5-1.

Two up on last year’s world champs and the New York Mets and five up on the Nationals who have already been mathematically eliminated from playoff contention. Actually, they were eliminated when Mark Texeira nearly died in a giggle fit when the Nats made their offer. Sure, it was a lot of money, but if you want to win a ring Washington isn't the place to win one.

The Braves couldn’t have scripted a better way to start their 2009 campaign.

Derek Lowe pitches lights out, Mike Gonzalez gets into a little trouble and then blows doors down to end the game, McCann hits a two run shot and Chipper scores and Frenchy and Schaefer, two uncertainties in the Braves dicey outfield this year, start their seasons with home runs.

I truly believe Schaefer has the potential to be a game changer like Jacoby Ellsbury - hopefully he won't also have Ellsbury's dropoff after opposing pitchers figure him out a little. Still, I like the defense and the speed.

I like the U.S. lineup - it is filled with players who have won or played in the World Series. A batting order that features Chipper Jones, Dustin Pedroia, Kevin Youkilis and Derek Jeter is fun to watch.

The pitching rotation could be a little better, but as long as there are guys who can keep it close, I like taking your chances with a lineup that can just plain hit.

That being said, the World Baseball Classic could do a better job of marketing itself and getting better players.

I'm going to agree with Munford that the Braves botched the Smoltz thing - even though I am super excited to see Smoltzie as a member of the Boston Red Sox. An offer of $2.5 million - when we are talking about the monopoly money of MLB - is an insult to a player who has given his all for the club and would have done so again. I understand Frank Wren's position that they didn't want to make offers to guys who could possibly break down again, but John Smoltz isn't Mike Hampton and he shouldn't have been treated as such.