But Philadelphia is a better baseball town than Atlanta is. Better than your town too, wherever my zero readers might be, unless it’s also Philadelphia.
After the Braves were unceremoniously bounced from the go-zillionth NLDS, once again by the Phillies, I got to thinking. No, I’m hardly mad just disappointed whenever this happens, but the Braves will always be the Barves barring me having any more kids, which ain’t ever going to happen again, but I always think about why it is that the Braves just can’t stop transforming into the Barves, pretty much every single October throughout history, before by brain shuts down on baseball entirely until the following season.
I actually saw this outcome coming, because the way the Braves limped to the end of the season was pretty telling that they were in trouble once the playoffs began. Immediately after winning the division, the team entirely went on vacation and got clobbered by the Marlins, dropped 2/3 to the Phillies and then ended the season on an L to the Nationals. Max Fried and Charlie Morton went on the injured list, and it’s easy to say that the Braves were resting starters, but if you looked at the box scores, the starters were all playing starters’ innings for the bulk of the games after clinching.
I actually was a little optimistic when news came out that the Braves would be playing scrimmages against their minor leaguers during the Wild Card round, because it was evident that the first round layoff the Braves had last year dulled them once the Phillies came around, and they were proactive in trying to prevent that from happening again. And I was hoping that allowing fans to come watch, would’ve been like in Ted Lasso when AFC Richmond opened their practices to the fans, and they grew and increased, and it helped create a stronger bond between players and fans, which propelled them to later success.
But when the Braves got dropped by the Phillies in a glorified bullpen game in the first game of the NLDS, the sinking feeling in my gut returned, and I just knew that the Braves were going to lose in four games; and not just in four, I knew the sequence that the Braves would win game two, but then lose the two games once the series moved to Philadelphia, because it was the same script from the year prior. Once you’ve watched sports as much as I have, there are just patterns and feelings that make it easy to predict certain outcomes, and especially when it comes to the Braves, and their postseason success. But believe me, as much as I love being right about sports, this prediction coming true does not bring joy.
This year though, my brain took a different route, and stopped thinking about why the Braves suck in October, but more pondering on why the Phillies are so good once again, once the playoffs began. In fact, for those paying a modicum of attention throughout the season might’ve noticed, the Phillies were an outstanding team for the better part of the entire season, it’s just that the Braves were having a near-historically good season in their own right; but make no mistake, if not for the massive division lead that the Braves built in April and in June, the narrative of the season would’ve been way more interesting in September.
But it goes back to a storyline earlier in the season, where the Phillies’ shortstop Trea Turner was having a complete bomb of a season, and considering the fact that he had signed with the team to an 11-year deal worth $300 million, it looked like we were on the cusp of witnessing the newest edition to the endless list of bad contract free agent busts.
However, in a strange turn of events, there was a particular game where Phillies fans for one night, stopped acting like typical Phillies fans, and they did something collectively surprising and impressive; they cheered the fuck out of Trea Turner in the midst of his slump, and gave him a series of standing ovations every time he stepped to the plate.