So Long, Andruw

I never really liked Andruw Jones. I emphasize "really" because I loved him for a short while at first. What Braves fan didn't? In games 1 and 2 of the '96 World Series, this kid came out of nowhere and hit two home runs against the Yankees we hated more than Clinton. For a brief while, all of two games, Andruw was our hero. And then we lost the Series 4-2. Our streak of bad luck has continued ever since.

Maybe he's to blame, then. I'm only kidding, of course, but it's worth a consideration, at least. The Braves never had much success in the playoffs following that '96 Series with the Yanks. Sure, we made it to the Series a time or two after, but we never won. Most years, it was plumb disappointing, losing to Houston or some other wildcard team in the first round.

A few days ago, I was looking back at old stats, looking at the Braves W-L record in the late '90s and the first few years of the century. We did pretty well. We probably averaged 100 wins from '98-'05. You'd figure we'd get lucky one of those years, like the Marlins, Angels, or Cardinals, but we never did. It didn't make any sense why we weren't winning in the postseason, when it mattered.

Try to remember those years, if you can. If you followed baseball, even peripherally, try to remember. The way I remember it, Andruw Jones never made it big. Sure, in all, he won 9 straight gold glove awards; he's one of the greatest center fielder of all time. But what does that mean to an American audience saturated by the media with famed athletes from dozens of sports all over the globe? If you're playing baseball, and your name isn't ARod, Bonds, or Clemens, no one's going to think much about you. Players like Vlad, Manny, Big Poppy, Andruw, and a host of others are decent gamers, but they're not great. Maybe what they have in common is that each has the ability to be great, but none has the consistency to be great.

Andruw never excelled as a batter. There was a year he hit over .300, but for all the Braves baseball I watched growing up (and I watched a LOT), I never wanted him batting in the clutch, with two on and two out. He could hit homeruns, but he couldn’t hit. I wanted Chipper, or Javy, even Klesko some years, but I never wanted Andruw. I always thought he would ground into a double play. Most of the time, he did.

Andruw might have been the last great player to come through Greenville. I think Jermaine Dye passed through AA a few months before Andruw showed. Dye always struck out, but when he hit the ball, it was beautiful; that's how you knew he was going to be good, sort of like Francoeur. We never saw Andruw swing the bat much, but when he did, he was great. After just 40 games, he was off to Richmond. This kid's star was always on the rise. Some players struggle to find their footing in the minors; most never do. Andruw soared through Greenville with a batting average near .350, 37 RBIs in as many games. He was supposed to be great.

As I said before, the sport I grew up in love with is almost dead. Few people care to watch it relative to just a decade ago. Blame the strike of '94, the constant shift of players from team to team, the steroids. I just don't feel as if I can relate to baseball players anymore. I feel as if I knew Sid Bream, Jeff Blauser, Terry Pendleton, Fred McGriff, and Mark Lemke. Those guys were your average run-of-the-mill ball players. They made me believe they played, as the cliche goes, for the love of the game. I can see those guys as kids, playing on a sand lot.

I loved the Cecil Fielders and John Kruks of the sport, the guys who weren't uber-athletes, but who played with heart. I can't recall anything these days that makes me the feel the same way Sid Bream did, huffing and puffing his way from 2nd to home to the cry of "Braves win! Braves win!", or the same way Kirk Gibson did, slamming one of the most memorable homers in baseball history and pumping his fist as he rounded first.

Guys back then didn't play for a salary or leave the teams they loved for more money; at least not as much as they do now. They loved baseball and everything else--their fans, their city, their teammates. Back then, we had teams to cheer for, groups of guys we'd recognize when we saw them on TV! Nowadays, with players switching jerseys on a monthly basis for higher salaries and hopes of greater popularity, you can hardly recognize the guys on "your" ball club.

All this raises another issue--are the Braves even my team anymore? All the guys I grew up cheering for, the guys I admired, are gone, save Smoltz. I recently moved to Arlington, VA, 700 miles from Atlanta. But it's not so much what I've done; it's what the players have done. They've started selling themselves to the highest bidder. Fans don't control the players anymore. Maybe we never did, but at least the players showed us respect. Now they couldn't care less for respect, but why should they when they're getting paid millions regardless of whether we like them or not?

It's possible I don't keep up with baseball as much as I used to, but I'm not so sure about that. I still watch it quite a bit, and I always keep up with the stats. I'm fascinated by statistics, and I'm not quite sure why. They're only numbers, and they're usually the same each year. I'd like to think it's not the numbers, but what they stand for.

For all the pitches fouled off, all the swings that slice air, all the balls low and away, one pitch on a full count can end all hope, that last pitch, a strike, taken, looking, that makes you 0-1 for the game, that makes your average dip .003 immediately, that makes your season average end up .003 percentage points short of the NL batting title for the 2007 season. But it's just one statistic. 0-1.

As baseball has died off as a sport and football has risen to the ranks of royalty, few baseball players are outstanding enough to catch the attention of the media, to make a splash in the human interest stories. Players like Andruw Jones are old news, a consistently good defensive player with only a semi-decent swing. Every now and then, he'll generate some hype with an incredible catch, but he'll always be overshadowed by the home runs and the 5-5 days of the guys who can hit.

In football, the Peyton Mannings, the LTs, and the Chad Johnsons--the guys who score, the guys on offense--make the highlight reel. Still, in football, defensive players can make a name for themselves, guys like Champ Bailey and Sean Merriman, and show up on TV quite often. Maybe baseball's sunk so low that defensive players aren't even in the ranks of the "almost" famous. Seriously, who's the second best defensive outfielder in the majors? Who even wins the gold glove awards these days?

It's sort of sad, the slow death of baseball and, now, the departure of Andruw Jones from the Atlanta Braves. I don't feel as if I'll miss him as a player, though, but I'll miss what he takes with him. See, he played for the Braves in the '90s with the likes of Glavine, Maddux, Smoltz, Klesko, Javy, Chipper, Wohlers, and Rocker. I miss that he'll take those memories that seem like family memories to me. He doesn't deserve them as much as I do.

He played pathetically all year long. He never came out of his slump. It was painful to watch him swing and miss so many times. Even batting in the 5 spot, he couldn't drive in 100 runs. Andruw undoubtedly played 2007 with 2008 on his mind. Unfortunately for him, 2008's going to be here soon, a lot sooner now that the Braves failed to make the playoffs. There isn't a single at bat left for him to improve his pitiful .222 average, an average that isn't going to impress a single team out there, certainly not the guy cutting the salary checks.

Maybe Andruw always failed when he felt pressured to do well, like in the postseasons. From '97 to '05, he never did surprisingly well in October, certainly not as well as we'd hoped he would when we saw him play in Greenville as a kid or the '96 Series as a rookie.

If there was a reason we didn't make the playoffs this year, it was him. All those strikeouts, all those double plays added up. No one on the Braves played as poorly as he did. Well, maybe Scott Thorman, but only by 2 points on the average. And when we start comparing Andruw Jones to Scott Thorman, it's time to say farewell, Andruw, and good riddance.