![]() The Braves leaned in when everyone expected them to tap out. The consensus around baseball was that the Braves would be sellers at the trade deadline and retool for 2022. to injury and placed Marcell Ozuna on administrative leave following a domestic violence arrest. The team lost ace Mike Soroka and brilliant star Ronald Acuña Jr. Predicted to finish in the middle of the National League pack, well behind warhorses like the Dodgers and Brewers, the Braves floundered in the first half of the season. ![]() Which, really, is a shame, because what happened on the field this season for Atlanta is one of the more remarkable sports stories of recent years. Voting rights, vaccine mandates, President Trump, the tomahawk chop … in 2021, the Braves as an organization either snared themselves or got caught up in cultural and Twitter debates about them all, and absolutely none of them had anything to do with what happened on the field. It’s part of the ongoing city-suburb, Black-white divide that’s defined Atlanta since long before the Braves even arrived in town. The team’s move out of downtown to an upscale multi-use district in Cobb County seemed a signal to many longtime fans that the Braves cared more about the dollars in the wealthy suburbs north of the city than the cheers of the fans closer to Atlanta’s center. The Braves reflect Atlanta in less unifying ways, too. It’s the shared language of heartbreak, yes, but it’s a shared language all the same. Braves fans from all over the South can gather at Tuxedo Drive cocktail parties or Peachtree Street condo balconies or East Atlanta breweries or Gulf Coast docks or Waffle House booths and talk about Chipper and Smoltzie and Freddie. Sports teams reflect their cities, and for Atlanta, baseball has served as the city’s heartbeat for 30 years now. When, at long last, the Braves’ run of division championships - a record as hollow as an empty tunnel - came to an end, I remember trying to rationalize my way through the idea that just getting to the playoffs all those times had been good, too, right? Right … ? And I remember suffering through exit after early postseason exit. ![]() The Braves didn’t win a single World Series game in the 25 years between then and last week. I remember in 1996 watching Mark Wohlers hang a curve to the Yankees’ Jim Leyritz, who hit a homer that echoed all the way to 2021. I remember the exultation of the 1995 win over Cleveland, a relief but also an expectation that this was only the first of many World Series titles. I remember the just-thrilled-to-be-here joy of the 1991 World Series, a seven-game loss to Minnesota. ![]() (At a sporting goods store during that unlikely run, I remember seeing a man holding up a ballcap to his companion and saying, “This is an Atlanta cap, right?” It wasn’t. I remember the sheer euphoria of 1991, where it seemed like the entire city piled onto the bandwagon all at once. I remember going to games at long-gone Fulton County Stadium, where attendance was so sparse that balls fouled into the seats might sit for an inning or two before someone ambled over to pick them up. (Rob Tringali/MLB Photos via Getty Images) Will Smith and the Braves won the World Series. ![]() Batter out, inning over, game over, Series over.Ītlanta Braves, World Series champions. Swanson threw to Freddie Freeman, the only link to the Braves’ golden era of the 1990s, and that was that. Then Yuli Gurriel grounded to Dansby Swanson, who grew up playing baseball 10 miles from the Braves’ current stadium. Oh God, we wanted someone to implode worse than the Falcons in the Super Bowl, but not like this … If Gurriel gets a hit here, and the Astros bat around, this would be the greatest collapse in sports history. At Minute Maid Park, champagne that had been left on pallets in the bowels of Truist Park in Atlanta two nights earlier was getting unboxed in Houston.Īnd still, Atlanta fans couldn’t help but project forward into nightmare territory. On the screen, Joe Buck was already speaking of the Astros in the past tense, trotting out the old reliable “the last time the Braves won the World Series” package (gas was 70 cents a gallon, “Forrest Gump” won Best Picture). ![]()
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