Hang In There: Watching the Braves Struggle

I threw a remote yesterday. I didn't want to do it, but my fiancee was on the phone with her mom, making plans for my future, while the Atlanta Braves were simultaneously letting go of theirs, and throwing the remote was all I could do to quit from screaming. They say love hurts, and I hope it doesn't; but if it's anything like baseball than it's got to be absolutely devastating.


You watch all summer, trying to stay grounded, trying not to put the cart before the horse, and then, on a golden Sunday afternoon, the shit hits the fan--runners in scoring position lead to pop ups and strikeouts and everything the once lowly Washington Nationals do is a reminder that your team might not even be classified as up and coming anymore, that the time is now, and the time is peeling back under your claws like bark, because one day very soon they might be much better than you.

And this feeling of everything slipping away was most evident when backup catcher David Ross waved a white flag, trying to bunt, with two strikes, against Nats reliever Henry Rodriguez, whose every pitch was in triple digits, making the young Jason Heyward's bat speed appear slow and arthritic. It was disgraceful. It was terrible. It was a Braves collapse a month earlier than we're used to witnessing.

But, hey, at least I'm not a Red Sox fan, you know, like the woman sitting on the couch next to me, planning a wedding.