When does a team win 106 games in one season and still have to say it’s sorry?
When it’s the Atlanta Braves, America’s Team.
The team of the ’90s has been caught and passed again, reduced to inhaling exhaust fumes again.
The Florida Marlins grew up in a hurry Tuesday night, a night they claimed the National League pennant with a 7-4 victory over the stunned Braves, who began their admirable run of six straight postseason appearances two years before the Marlins were even born in 1993.
The Marlins’ expansion partners, the Colorado Rockies, made the giant stride of reaching the playoffs in just their third season. But no franchise, not even the miracle Mets of ’69, reached a Fall Classic so quickly.
The Marlins got only one start this series from Alex Fernandez before he was diagnosed with a torn rotator cuff and just 15 innings from Kevin Brown, who was supposed to start three games. The Marlins were batting .177 for the series before Tuesday night, when Brown was the horse who carried them to the World Series.
That’s one five-year plan. Since the Cubs won their last World Series in 1908, that would mean 18 five-year plans that haven’t worked as well as Florida’s one. Oh, well.
If pitching is 80 percent of the game, and the Braves have so much, how is it possible they have taken another early bow? Perhaps we should have known from the first inning of the first game, when the Marlins scored three unearned runs against Greg Maddux, the best pitcher of the generation.
The Marlins beat him twice and Tuesday night they whipped Tom Glavine, who wasn’t himself. He is best beaten when solved early and the Marlins jumped him for four runs in the first inning. But even after he appeared to settle down by the third, he did some uncharacteristic things.
With two out and a man on in the fourth, he walked two straight batters before yielding a Bobby Bonilla rocket that Kenny Lofton hauled down in center field. If the ball wasn’t caught, it would have been 7-3 instead of 4-3.
In the sixth, Bonilla came up again with the bases loaded and none out after Glavine had walked his sixth Marlin, believe it or not. Bonilla’s infield single to deep short made it 5-3. Moises Alou’s fielder’s choice sent another run across.
When Craig Counsell tapped yet another grounder to short, where Jeff Blauser failed to come with the ball, the Marlins had their seventh run, and Glavine was lifted. Glavine was here 10 years ago when the Braves were awful. He has been a constant through the franchise revival. But when the left-hander walked off the mound Tuesday night, it was cold at Turner Field. A change in seasons seemed imminent.
True, the Braves have come up short in recent Octobers, but they would like to point out that they are always there. That is not necessarily a losers’ lament, especially considering the teams that have eliminated Atlanta, only to engage in remarkable flameouts.
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The Minnesota Twins, who edged the Braves in the 1991 World Series, haven’t been near the playoffs since. Toronto ousted Atlanta in the 1992 World Series, then won the Fall Classic in 1993, but the Blue Jays since have been in full retreat.
The Philadelphia Phillies upset Atlanta in the 1993 NLCS, but have been brutal since. And the New York Yankees, who conquered Atlanta last season, were bounced in the first round this season. Ironically, the Cleveland Indians–Atlanta’s only World Series victim–are one victory over Baltimore from returning to the big show.
But the Braves won’t be there, again.