MPH
10-03-2007, 12:01 PM
Some old codger in denim overalls and a flannel shirt climbed down from his mule on a dusty road in the middle of a Dakota town, and yelled, "Thar's gold in them thar hills!"
A century and a half later we have a similar source of treasure: the B-N gamethreads.
Yeah, that's a metaphoric stretch, but there are quite a few nuggets buried in the thousands of pages of gamethread ore we have generated since April, so I dug up a few, and offer them to you for assaying.
Stoney ably recapped the season here: http://www.braves-nation.com/forums/showthread.php?t=7011 so I won't try to add anything to his comprehensive stat summaries. Instead I just want to capture some of the themes and memories, some of the things we will remember about the season, and some of our feelings about stuff as the season progressed.
Please read through some of the old gamethreads and add on to the list.
We expected a good rotation and a great bullpen, then Hampton went down and Gonzo went down, and we were left with an average rotation and a merely good bullpen.
We knew Wilson, Redman and Langerhans were gone long before they actually left.
As early as May we noticed that the Braves and Mets were treading water after great starts, while the Phillies seemed to be steadily recovering from a lousy start.
We joked about Wickman's weight and speculated about the reasons for his astounding home/road splits, but never threw him under the bus until we learned he was a an unpopular teammate.
This wasn't really in a gamethread, and nobody has actually said it, but there are strong indications that we all felt kinda happy and proud at McCann's self-effacing, bashful performance in the All-Star game interviews - and we loved him for it (in a totally non-gay way).
AJ sucked all season, beginning to end, but as late as August many of us thought he would turn things around before it was over.
Gamethreads were much livelier whenever BravesfaninNC was on. His good humor, prolific posting, and earnest cheering kept the threads moving and entertained us all.
Renteria has done a really fine job for the Braves since he got here, but for some reason we just haven't adopted him. We seem oddly resigned to the notion that he will be traded for a #3 starter in the off-season.
I have to come clean on one thing: I never actually calculated the Braves OBP by rally babe or baby. I just liked that butt-pic of Alba. (Anecdotally, however, she did win a few games for us.)
Most of us had Salty on the untouchable list until he was traded, and as usual JS out-thought everybody and got Tex. Has anybody computed where we would have ended the season with AJ batting cleanup in the last 54 games instead of Tex? Or anybody instead of Tex?
Owning the Mets most of the year was pretty cool, but getting swept by them in our last series doomed us.
Chipper could have sat out the last 4 games of the season and won the batting title. He didn't, he didn't want to, we didn't want him to, and he's the god of baseball for it (gods are cooler than batting champs).
Seeing the Mutts take the worst nosedive in history was great. Their fans made fun of us for winning 14 division titles in a row and winning only one WS; so we are allowed some glee in seeing they won only one division title in a row before reminding the world that winning it twice is pretty damn hard.OK, that's it for me. Read back through the gamethreads, see what other precious veins you can find, and share your favorites with the rest of us.
A century and a half later we have a similar source of treasure: the B-N gamethreads.
Yeah, that's a metaphoric stretch, but there are quite a few nuggets buried in the thousands of pages of gamethread ore we have generated since April, so I dug up a few, and offer them to you for assaying.
Stoney ably recapped the season here: http://www.braves-nation.com/forums/showthread.php?t=7011 so I won't try to add anything to his comprehensive stat summaries. Instead I just want to capture some of the themes and memories, some of the things we will remember about the season, and some of our feelings about stuff as the season progressed.
Please read through some of the old gamethreads and add on to the list.
We expected a good rotation and a great bullpen, then Hampton went down and Gonzo went down, and we were left with an average rotation and a merely good bullpen.
We knew Wilson, Redman and Langerhans were gone long before they actually left.
As early as May we noticed that the Braves and Mets were treading water after great starts, while the Phillies seemed to be steadily recovering from a lousy start.
We joked about Wickman's weight and speculated about the reasons for his astounding home/road splits, but never threw him under the bus until we learned he was a an unpopular teammate.
This wasn't really in a gamethread, and nobody has actually said it, but there are strong indications that we all felt kinda happy and proud at McCann's self-effacing, bashful performance in the All-Star game interviews - and we loved him for it (in a totally non-gay way).
AJ sucked all season, beginning to end, but as late as August many of us thought he would turn things around before it was over.
Gamethreads were much livelier whenever BravesfaninNC was on. His good humor, prolific posting, and earnest cheering kept the threads moving and entertained us all.
Renteria has done a really fine job for the Braves since he got here, but for some reason we just haven't adopted him. We seem oddly resigned to the notion that he will be traded for a #3 starter in the off-season.
I have to come clean on one thing: I never actually calculated the Braves OBP by rally babe or baby. I just liked that butt-pic of Alba. (Anecdotally, however, she did win a few games for us.)
Most of us had Salty on the untouchable list until he was traded, and as usual JS out-thought everybody and got Tex. Has anybody computed where we would have ended the season with AJ batting cleanup in the last 54 games instead of Tex? Or anybody instead of Tex?
Owning the Mets most of the year was pretty cool, but getting swept by them in our last series doomed us.
Chipper could have sat out the last 4 games of the season and won the batting title. He didn't, he didn't want to, we didn't want him to, and he's the god of baseball for it (gods are cooler than batting champs).
Seeing the Mutts take the worst nosedive in history was great. Their fans made fun of us for winning 14 division titles in a row and winning only one WS; so we are allowed some glee in seeing they won only one division title in a row before reminding the world that winning it twice is pretty damn hard.OK, that's it for me. Read back through the gamethreads, see what other precious veins you can find, and share your favorites with the rest of us.