Good Mornin’! Good Mornin’!
There are 27 World Series titles hanging in my baseball team’s home park.
The Atlanta Braves have three – 1914, 1957 and 1995. I’ve never been a Braves fan. In looking up their history, they began as the Boston Red Stockings. Maybe that’s why. I never want to see the Red Sox succeed even though they have at my displeasure.
Oh, and I did enjoy talking to Boo Ferriss over the years on the phone. He made the Red Sox a bit palatable for me.
But the Braves? Well, those powder blue softball looking uniforms of the ’70s didn’t do much for their swagger with me.
They had some players that were characters and fun to follow. Dale Murphy, the clean cut Mormon outfielder who hit towering home runs. Bob Horner at third then first hit a slew of home runs. But it seems never enough to fill all the programming slots that owner Ted Turner had open on his cable channel, WTBS.
I think the Red Sox connection and Ted Turner are the reasons I never became a Braves fan. It seems they were crammed down my throat anytime the TV was on and we didn’t even have cable.
But you heard about the Braves. And later when I had cable in college, it was either the Braves or the Cubs fighting it out on their cable channels. But neither was a winner. My memory might be failing me but I don’t remember any rabid Braves fan in my circle of influence. There were plenty of Cardinal fans but they were successful and played great baseball and the summer of 1983, I worked at WCLD in Cleveland and I sat through a summer full of games behind the radio board with Jack Buck telling me what was going on.
But the Yankees were my team and not because they were always winning. It was because of Mickey Mantle’s backup for a couple of seasons, Silver City’s own, Jack Reed. I’ve mentioned this in several columns and stories over the years. He connected me to a dream, to a place in time that will always be incredible, to the New York Yankees.
When the Yankees lost their play in game to the Red Sox (insert Yosemite Sam cussing here) at the end of this season, my interest in MLB waned.
That’s a normal reaction these days with so many distractions and obligations and sadly, I can’t recite the starting lineup anymore. I wish I could. I’ll have to put that on my bucket list for this next season.
There’s a chance I’ll get to sit down with Yankee infielder DJ LeMahieu in the next few months with one of my part-time jobs. That should rekindle the embers of my fandom. I’m going to ask him if he knows of Jack Reed and maybe tell him my Yankee story if time allows.
I have my little league All Star Trophy on my work desk from 1976. That’s about when I met Mr. Reed. It takes me back to a time of fun, hard work and striving for wins. I reckon my team was more Braves than Yankees though we don’t have the championship hardware to compare. Hopefully, the Braves will pull it together for my boss’s sake. He’s the biggest Braves fan I know these days. So, I’ll say it once, for him, Go Braves!
But you know, I’ve eaten a Dodger Dog at Dodger stadium when I lived out there and I bought a hat so that kinda makes me a … baseball fan.
