Another Braves Post Season Consigned to the Trash Can

There was a veil of inevitability hanging over the Braves Wild Card one-game playoff against the St Louis Cardinals. The Braves have not won a post season series since 2003. Last year the Cardinals took advantage of the Braves infamous September meltdown and pipped them to the wild card berth going on to win the World Series. For the first time ever there would be two wild card teams who would compete in a one game playoff for the right to join the three division winners in the next round.

This time was going to be different. After all, the Braves had all their ducks in a row. Medlen would be pitching. The Braves had won the previous 23 games in which Medlen started, breaking a major league record in the process. The Braves had won 93 regular season games compared to the Cardinals’ measly 85. They had home field advantage with Chipper making his swan song before 50,000 adoring fans. What could possibly go wrong?

The game began reasonably well. The Braves enjoyed a 2-0 lead following the completion of 3 innings and Medlen looked comfortable on the mound. He began the 4th inning in similar fashion to the previous innings with the Cardinal Player hitting a routine ground ball to Chipper at 3rd base who had a routine throw to second base for a double play. Inexplicably, Chipper threw the ball way above Uggla at second base and it went sailing into the outfield. The Cardinals proceeded to score three runs before the innings was completed, and Chipper’s error proved to be a game changer.

The Braves made a total of 3 throwing errors, left 12 men on base and went 1-7 with runners in scoring position (RISP.) Statistics confirmed that the Braves had the best defense in the National League. Toss in a running error by the rookie short stop and there is a case for retitling the post: “Comedy of Errors” with apologies to Will Shakespeare.

During the post mortem following the 3-6 demise to the pesky Cardinals, there were debates about one of the worst calls in baseball history: to be forever known as “The Shallow Left Field Fly Rule” which helped damper a potential Atlanta rally in the eighth.

The crowd was so incensed by the call that missiles rained down on the field from the upper decks in the shape of beer cans, coke cans, water bottles, and mustard and ketchup containers. The game was delayed for over twenty minutes while the crew chief conferred with major league officials and stadium staff picked up the trash strewn all over the field.  Braves manager Freddie Gonzalez lodged an official protest against the outrageous call, but to no avail. The officials upheld the call and play was restarted.

Chipper came up to bat in the ninth innings for what turned out to be his last at bat in the major leagues. Alas he was unable to weave his magic and had to be content with a base hit. Yet another Braves attempt at a run to The World Series ended in disappointment for a capacity crowd.

I am convinced that the Braves’ franchise has never recovered from Jim Leyritz’s three run homer hit off Mark Wohlers in the third game of the 1996 World Series against the New York Yankees. The Braves had won the first two games in New York and were leading 6-3 in the third game at home. They didn’t win another game and lost the World Series to the Yankees by 2-4. Do I detect the curse of the Leyritz?

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