There hasn't been much reason lately to wish the Atlanta Braves ill. Bobby Cox, by all accounts one of the game's greatest managers and a real mensch, is retiring after this season with fragrant wreathes garlanded upon his wrinkly brow. In the past few years, the Braves have been quiet. Their last division title was 2004, and the intervening years have even brought a rare 90-loss season. The recent Atlanta ebb tide has had a rough parallel to the Giants, it seems, and their meetings have generally been low-key affairs.
It wasn't always so. I have two numbers for you: Nineteen. Ninety-three. That got things off on the wrong foot, and then Larry came along. You might know him as "Chipper." A few years later, this game could have been the epitaph on the Giants' 1997 season if it weren't for Brian Johnson's Stick-rocking home run three days later. It all turned out fine, at least until the playoffs, and what didn't kill us only made us age a decade within a 48-hour period. (And led to one of my favorite pieces of newspaper writing.) But I still have a bad reaction when I see certain public service ads.
The Giants got a measure of revenge in 2002 by beating Atlanta in the division series, but it's cold comfort anytime you tune in and are forced to listen to the sports world's most idiotic stadium sound-bite, the Tomahawk Chop. The very idea of it is ridiculous -- 30,000 overweight mostly white people mimicking a Native American war cry. Adding injury to insult, the musical snippet that prompts the chant sounds like it was composed on a Casio keyboard in 1983. It probably was. You know the Saturday Night Live characters Bobbi and Marty Culp, the high-school band teachers who play in airport lounges and such? They wrote it.
In the next four days, we will cringe in embarrassment for those people, who do their silly little hand gesture and have trouble filling the stadium for playoff games. (Say what you want about brie-nibbling, wine-sipping Giants fans, but come playoff time, we rip each other's ears off to get tickets. Pry them from my cold dead hands, commie!)
Now it's 2010, and the Braves are again riding high, perhaps buoyed by the emotion of their manager's swan song, more likely by very good pitching and the fine hitting of Brian McCann (as usual) and Martin Prado, who quietly has become an excellent leadoff hitter. They also have a guy named Jason Heyward, who should publicly disavow his nickname or face eternal ridicule. He's also the Georgia-raised National League rookie who is not National League Player of Month. And Larry. He's still there. Larrrrr-yyyyy.
The only non-Dodger rivalry that's made Giant blood boil in my lifetime was the late '80s contretemps with the Cardinals. Hac-Man's one flap down, Candy Maldonado's flying haymaker, Will Clark's high-pitched chirps and squeaks, John Tudor's recessed chin. It got ugly. I don't think Giants-Braves will ever get there. Too professional. Too respectful. Unless Posey and Heyward have unfinished business from their high school days, the best we can expect is a lot of quiet Atlanta fans sitting on their chop-free hands.
Oh, and Denny Bautista was cut today to make room for Todd Wellemeyer.
It wasn't always so. I have two numbers for you: Nineteen. Ninety-three. That got things off on the wrong foot, and then Larry came along. You might know him as "Chipper." A few years later, this game could have been the epitaph on the Giants' 1997 season if it weren't for Brian Johnson's Stick-rocking home run three days later. It all turned out fine, at least until the playoffs, and what didn't kill us only made us age a decade within a 48-hour period. (And led to one of my favorite pieces of newspaper writing.) But I still have a bad reaction when I see certain public service ads.
The Giants got a measure of revenge in 2002 by beating Atlanta in the division series, but it's cold comfort anytime you tune in and are forced to listen to the sports world's most idiotic stadium sound-bite, the Tomahawk Chop. The very idea of it is ridiculous -- 30,000 overweight mostly white people mimicking a Native American war cry. Adding injury to insult, the musical snippet that prompts the chant sounds like it was composed on a Casio keyboard in 1983. It probably was. You know the Saturday Night Live characters Bobbi and Marty Culp, the high-school band teachers who play in airport lounges and such? They wrote it.
In the next four days, we will cringe in embarrassment for those people, who do their silly little hand gesture and have trouble filling the stadium for playoff games. (Say what you want about brie-nibbling, wine-sipping Giants fans, but come playoff time, we rip each other's ears off to get tickets. Pry them from my cold dead hands, commie!)
Now it's 2010, and the Braves are again riding high, perhaps buoyed by the emotion of their manager's swan song, more likely by very good pitching and the fine hitting of Brian McCann (as usual) and Martin Prado, who quietly has become an excellent leadoff hitter. They also have a guy named Jason Heyward, who should publicly disavow his nickname or face eternal ridicule. He's also the Georgia-raised National League rookie who is not National League Player of Month. And Larry. He's still there. Larrrrr-yyyyy.
The only non-Dodger rivalry that's made Giant blood boil in my lifetime was the late '80s contretemps with the Cardinals. Hac-Man's one flap down, Candy Maldonado's flying haymaker, Will Clark's high-pitched chirps and squeaks, John Tudor's recessed chin. It got ugly. I don't think Giants-Braves will ever get there. Too professional. Too respectful. Unless Posey and Heyward have unfinished business from their high school days, the best we can expect is a lot of quiet Atlanta fans sitting on their chop-free hands.
Oh, and Denny Bautista was cut today to make room for Todd Wellemeyer.
