Chipper Is an Old Braves Chap

Hey baseball fans!Today, you are about to hear about one of the greatest players in Braves history. He recently retired and is one of the greatest switch-hitting power hitters of all time. I think you can all guess who I’m talking about: Chipper Jones! Jones played his entire 19-year career with the Atlanta Braves from 1993-2012 […]

What Sunk the Braves

Good teams don’t fold for no apparent reason. Though buried by the publicity piled onto the Boston Red Sox, who also slipped out of the playoff picture in September, the Atlanta Braves should have seen their slide coming. Plagued all season by an inability to score runs, the Braves plodded through the 2011 season by […]

Something Stirring Beneath the Surface

The younger set cannot remember one of the iconic pictures of my youth: Nikita Kruschev, Russian Premier and head of the original Axis of Evil in Moscow, angrily banging his shoe on the desk at the United Nations, screaming to the US envoy to the UN, “We Will Bury You!” It was the headline in […]

Lessons from a Legend

One of the most compelling aspects of sports or reality television is that while they are simply games, life lessons are readily available. That is the premise of Lang Whitaker’s “In the Time of Bobby Cox.” A native Georgian turned New Yorker, Whitaker gives Cox credit for shaping many of his views. Read this book […]

2011 Pre-Season Preview: NL East – Atlanta Braves

Braves 3B Chipper Jones The Braves begin the new season without long-time manager, Bobby Cox, who stewarded the team to a succession of fourteen consecutive division titles (from 1991-2005, absent the strike-shortened 1994 season), five World Series appearances and a world championship in his 20+ years at the help. The 2011 season will usher in […]

The Class of 2010 – the New Hall of Famers

At the beginning of the 2010 baseball season, there were eight active major league players who had already earned obvious Hall of Fame numbers during their careers.  Here are those players: Alex Rodriguez, Manny Ramirez, Ken Griffey, Jr., Chipper Jones, Derek Jeter, Jim Thome, Jason Giambi and Mariano Rivera. By the end of the 2010 […]

Braves endure schizophrenic campaign

No wonder Bobby Cox is retiring: he can’t stand the schizophrenic play of his ballclub. The Atlanta Braves have had a nine-game losing streak. They have also had a nine-game winning streak. Their long-time icon, Chipper Jones, said he would retire at the end of the season if he didn’t hit better than he did […]

Player of the Fortnight vol. 3

It’s been a few weeks since we handed out any hardware, so we’re excited to present our third edition of Players of the Fortnight. (All stats courtesy of the inestimably valuable Fangraphs.)

Cardinal Comeback

First off, I want to say thank you to everyone who has expressed kind words over the Cardinal Blogosphere Guide.  I hope that it results in increased traffic for the blogs listed and that you can find another source of can’t-miss Cardinal writing. Perhaps it was just me, but it seems like if this was […]

Cox preaches patience on Bad-News Braves

After making more errors than runs during a three-game disaster at CitiField this past weekend, the Atlanta Braves are poisoning the well of good will left by the pending retirement of manager Bobby Cox. Meeting with reporters before Sunday’s game in Flushing, Cox probably felt like applying the local name to most of the men […]

NL East Preview

Who can beat the Phillies?  The Braves have some of the best young talent in the game, but no one will catch them.  The arrival in 2010 of young phenoms Stephen Strasburg and Jason Heyward will be highlights in the NL East.  The ultimate story will be Roy Halladay as he carries the Phillies back […]

News and Notes from the Grapefruit League

Like the Army, baseball is filled with Hurry Up & Wait situations. That’s especially true for writers, who arrive hours before gametime in an often-frustrating effort to pin down players or managers for interviews. There’s competition for each player, with the biggest stars commanding the most attention from media types, and a pecking order that […]