The Curse Lifts, At Least For A Moment

Two Atlanta legends — Hank Aaron and Phil Niekro — passed away this year. Neither won a championship there (Aaron won one in Milwaukee).

There are numbers that, to the sports fan, tell stories. Throw the number 56 at a sports fan and he’ll know that’s Joe Dimaggio’s hitting streak. 2000 is Simpson, Dickerson, Sanders or Henry running down the football field. 100 is Wilt Chamberlain laying the game’s only century on the Knicks. 715 is Henry Aaron triumphing over racism.

The sports history of Atlanta can be summed up by a number. Or rather two of them.

28-3

Oh, the history of Atlanta’s misery runs very deep. Over 100 seasons of Hawks basketball and Falcons football have produced zero titles but plenty of heartache. One of my earliest sports memories was the 1981 Falcons blowing a late lead to the Cowboys. For 25 years, the Braves were the league’s doormat¹ and then became the league’s class — at least until October hit.

To be an Atlanta fan is to see a yellow flag flying at Jake Matthews. It’s to see DeVonta Smith wide open on 2nd and 26. It’s to see Lonnie Smith stuck in quicksand at second base. It’s to see Tim Welke getting in Jermaine Dye’s way. It’s to see a 50+ year history of either blundering incompetence or trophies slipping from fingers at the last moment. Blowing a 25-point lead against New England was the apotheosis, the encapsulation of everything. Atlanta sports history distilled into its purest form. It was a moment that can cause your mild-mannered writer to conjure up Melville:

All that most maddens and torments; all that stirs up the lees of things; all truth with malice in it; all that cracks the sinews and cakes the brain; all the subtle demonisms of life and thought; all evil, to crazy Atlanta, was visibly personified, and made practically assailable in Super Bowl LI. They piled upon the game the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by the whole city from 1965 down; and then, as if their chests had been mortars, they burst their hot hearts’ shells upon it.

I won’t say that last night’s triumph in the World Series exorcises those demons. There are more demons in Atlanta sports memory than the devil had when he came down to evaluate string instruments and the skills exercised thereupon. But … it felt good. My goodness did it feel good.

On July 29th, the #Braves' odds of winning the #WorldSeries were 0.4%.

Zero. Point. Four.

After the trade deadline, they ripped off a run to win the NL East, beat Milwaukee in the NLDS, topple the Dodgers in the NLCS, then top Houston in the Fall Classic pic.twitter.com/bX5OtwCZ5m

— Grant McAuley (@grantmcauley) November 3, 2021

I would not have bet ten cents on the … Ok, I would have bet a few bucks just for the lark. But no one in their right mind would have bet a huge amount of cash on the Braves in July. Their entire outfield was injured², including their best player and MVP candidate Ronald Acuna. Their pitching staff was a mess. They were starting to fade in the NL East race.

But then … something miraculous happened. Alex Anthopoulos picked up Eddie Rosario for … well, actually the Indians gave him half a million to take him off their hands. He picked up Adam Duvall for a prospect. He picked up masher Jorge Soler for, as far as I can tell, three buckets of baseballs and an option on a Papa John’s pizza. He shored up the pitching staff with guys like Tyler Matzak, who had been out of baseball for several years with a severe case of the Yips.

Somehow, this clinking, clattering cacophony of collagenous cogs and camshafts managed to win 88 games and the division. They faced off against a 95-win Brewers team that no one gave them a chance against. They beat them in four games. They then faced the defending world champion Dodgers, in the midst of a nearly decade-long dynastic run and coming off a dominating 106-win season. The previous year, the Braves blew a 3-1 series lead. This time, they won handily in six games, with the series MVP going to Eddie Rosario, that outfielder the Indians threw at the Braves.

They then faced the Astros, another regal dynasty coming off a 95-win season. The Astros had crushed of the Rays and Red Sox in the playoffs and were looking to silence the haters after their cheating scandal. More injuries hit, including one of their best pitchers breaking a leg. But they still pulled it out, throwing out 27-year-old rookies and minor leagues scraps to somehow shut down the best offene in the game. And the series MVP was Jorge Soler, which may vest the Royals’ pizza option.

How? How does a team built out of spackle and duct-tape do this? How do scrap heap relievers suddenly become unhittable? How do trade-deadline outfielders hit home runs that may not land until Groundhog Day? How does a team just keep hitting inside straight after inside straight like that?

Because … that’s baseball. Because the difference between the best team in the league and the worst team in the league is not as huge as we think. Because anyone who can even make a major league team is so insanely talented, they are capable of being Superman for a week. Because sometimes, the breaks just go your way and you beat three teams you have absolutely no business beating and bring a title home to a long-suffering citizenry. And you do it under a manager who has been with the organization — as a player and a coach — since Jimmy Carter was a fresh-faced hopeful President. You do it in a year when you lost two of the best men — Aaron and Niekro — to ever play in a Braves’ uniform.

The last Atlanta champion — the 1995 Braves — were an all-time great team that oozed with baseball royalty. Five of them, including the manager, are in the Hall of Fame and Fred McGriff will probably join them. Maybe this team will have some Hall of Famers one day. Freddie Freeman is on that track but has a long long way to go yet. A few of the kids look good but they have an even longer road to walk. But most of this team are journeyman and kids. Game six winner Max Fried has all of 40 wins to his name.

But I’ll take it. Because it’s so rare that the fates smile upon you. It’s so rare that things go your way, that you have to enjoy them when they happen. I’ve seen great Braves teams that died in the first round. And I’ve now seen a Howl’s Moving Castle of a team crush their way to glory. Both have their charms. But both of their flags fly forever.

1. Lewis Grizzard once quipped that Michael Jackson and the Atlanta Braves had one thing in common: they both wore one glove for no apparent reason.
2. Well, technically Marcel Ozuna was on administrative leave for assaulting his wife. And he can stay there as far as I’m concerned.