Look, I’ll come clean. In 1993, I was more interested in listening to Helmet and Kyuss than I was interested in baseball. I remember reading the standings in the Sporting Green every morning, and I vaguely remember watching the lead shrink and shrink and shrink, but I’m not sure if I saw a single game that year. My distaste for the Braves doesn’t have a lot to do with 1993, though I can certainly empathize with those who lived through it.
My distaste for the Braves is rooted in a couple of things:
- They’ve been good for several decades now. When their franchise-type catcher gets old, they put an ad on Craigslist and get another one within a week. When they give a big deal to an ex-Oakland ace, it works out. When they get rid of Andruw Jones, he craters. When they keep Chipper Jones, he just puts up fantastic season after fantastic season. They’ve had two seasons under .500 in the past twenty years. Seriously, that’s a bunch of nonsense. What a bunch of bourgeoisie swine. Spread it around, you jackals.
- The Tomahawk Chop. Remember when everyone was up in arms about the vuvuzela noise in the World Cup? So, so annoying. Yet I would rather listen to someone hum the melody to "Mambo No. 5" on a vuvuzela for seventeen hours straight while I tried to pass a kidney stone in the back of a garbage truck that had video of Scott Speizio’s home run in 2002 on a non-stop loop while my feet were in Kleenex boxes filled with tarantulas and A.J. Pierzynski’s toenail clippings if it meant that I didn’t have to listen to the Tomahawk Chop one more time. Truth. I would allow players to gamble openly between innings if it meant the Tomahawk Chop would go away. It’s like the worst humanity has to offer, condensed into one awful bouillon cube of awful.
- For their single championship in Atlanta, the Braves picked on the Indians. C’mon. Have a heart. You couldn’t take one from the Yankees, Twins, or Blue Jays? Bourgeoisie swine.
The Braves are a distasteful bunch. They’re also kind of good. Again. So annoying.
A quick list of the most annoying Braves of the past 20 years:
1. David Justice
2. John Smoltz
3. Ryan Klesko
4. Javy Lopez
5. Tom Glavine’s Moving Strike Zone of Pure Nonsensical Tomfoolery
6. Kenny Lofton, though he was eventually redeemed
7. Melvin Nieves
8. Jeff Blauser
9. Mark Lemke
10. Otis Nixon, but only because of those times where you felt like he was watching you from a window as you showered. Or was that just me?
11. Deion Sanders. I mean, really.
12. Did you realize that the ‘93 Braves only used 13 pitchers for the entire regular season? What kind of they-have-the-technology crap was that?
13. Oh, man, the Braves are annoying.
14. Marcus Giles
15. Keith Lockhart
16. Quilvio Veras
17. Russ Ortiz. Though the multiple 20-win seasons provided by Damian Moss did help to lessen the sting.
18. Mike Hampton
19. Seriously, the Braves have been annoying for a long, long time.
20. Edgar Renteria. Still. It’s even worse that the Braves were able to flip him for Jair Jurrjens.
So this is a thread to exorcise some demons. Get that Braves hate out in the open. Give yourself a rousing, pre-battle pep talk in the mirror. There will be a hitting preview and a pitching preview later on in the day. Right now, though, is reserved for facing the fact that the Giants are facing the Braves. I mean, my god, I lived and died with the Giants in 1993, only to have the Braves swap Melvin Nieves for a division title. I was so crushed, all I could do was listen to Helmet and Kyuss* over and over and over.