Former Brave of the Fortnight – Ron Gant

            Ronald Edwin Gant played just under half of his major league seasons in Atlanta; during and after his Atlanta tenure, he taught many fledgling young Braves fans the gritty realities of life including the injustice of man, the injustice of the universe, the fragility of the human body, the heartbreak of parting, betrayal, and desperation.  Gant opened our idealistic eyes to the harshness of sports fandom again and again, but so sleek were his exploits, so prototypically old-school was his skill set, and so genuine was his story that all is forgiven and forgotten; Gant’s story defined us without anyone ever realizing it.

            Gant was born in Victoria, Texas on March 2, 1965.  He was drafted by the Braves in the 4^th round of the 1983 amateur draft.  A power-hitting second baseman, Gant made it through the minors to Atlanta in 1987, impressing in 21 games with a couple homers and a respectable average (.265).  He earned the starting nod in 1988 and returned the favor with 19 homeruns, 60 RBI, 19 steals and a .259 average.  He finished fourth in Rookie of the Year voting, and appeared to be a long-term fixture in the lineup, although his sketchy defense at second base drew concerns.  The team experimented with a move to third during the season, as Gant’s 31 errors all but canceled out his offensive contributions.

             Gant flat-lined in 1989, hitting just .177 with 16 more errors at second as the team began transitioning him to the outfield; Gant spent the summer back in the minors learning the new position.  Gant spent the following offseason in the gym, bulking up to fill his six-foot frame with corner outfielder muscle.

            Gant returned to Atlanta in 1990 as a new player.  The lithe infielder with compact power was replaced by a chiseled specimen.  Gant’s physique betold his prowess on the diamond; he batted .303 with a .357 OBP, 32 homers, 84 RBI, and 33 stolen bases.  This feat was prodigious – at 25, Gant was the third member of the back-to-back 30/30 club.  Gant’s fluid blend of power and speed foretold illustrious fortunes.  On a beleaguered last place team, Gant was a seed of hope for tomorrow.

            Turns out, Gant was one of many seeds sown, and the 1991 Braves rocketed to first place with the young slugger as an offensive lynchpin.  Now playing centerfield, Gant went 30/30 for a second time as he knocked in 1005 RBI, though his high average proved unsustainable (he dropped to .251, with just a .338 OBP – still acceptable numbers at the end of the baseball’s Age of Innocence).  Only Willie Mays and Bobby Bonds had ever hit 30 homeruns and stolen 30 bases in back-to-back seasons.  Gant finished sixth in the MVP voting and helped the team to the World Series.

            Gant ran his way into ignominious controversy in Game 2 of the 1991 World Series.  Avoiding relay throw on a single to the outfield, Gant lunged back to the bag, whereupon first baseman Kent Hrbek applied the tag as he lifted Gant’s leg off of the base.  Gant was called out, ending the top of the third inning with Lonnie Smith on third base and David Justice due up.  The Braves lost 3-2.

            Gant was no goat – rock-solid as he was, he still weighed in the 170-pound range – compared to Hrbek’s 6’4”, 235 pounds.  He couldn’t have been prepared for Hrbek’s underhanded cheating.  Atlanta fans never blamed Gant, accurately turning their venom of Hrbek.  Nevertheless, the Twins took the Series in Seven.

            Gant regressed a bit in 1992, ironically making his first All-Star team along the way.  He hit .259 with a .321 OBP, 17 homeruns, 80 RBI and 32 steals while moving to leftfield to accommodate Otis Nixon, who was no longer suspended for his love of cocaine.  Those numbers were nothing to sneeze at, but Gant responded with a resounding splash in 1993, crushing 36 homeruns and 117 RBI to go with 26 steals.  He also hoisted his average to .274 with a .345 OBP.  The team fell short against the Philadelphia Phillies in the 1993 National League Championship Series, but were establishing themselves as a dynasty in the making, with Gant as a cornerstone.  Gant himself was on the precipice of his prime, and the Braves rewarded him while securing their own future with a big long-term contract, paying Gant $5.5 million a year (one of the richest contracts in team history at the team).

            The ink was hardly dry on Gant’s shiny new deal when he took a spill on an ATV ride and shattered his right leg.  The news broke to broken Atlanta fans – the Gant who looked so invincible on the field was now out for the season and likely out of Atlanta for good as the team voided his contract and released the peaking star who now prepared to spend a year of his prime rehabilitating a devastating injury.

            The team soldiered on until the player’s strike wrecked everyone’s 1994 season.  The lack of all baseball mitigated Gant’s absence, and by the time 1995 rolled around and Gant showed up in the heart of the Cincinnati Reds’ lineup, it seemed far less strange than it should have.  Gant was a different player; though his plate discipline was as strong that year as any of his career (.386 OBP), he wasn’t the same ball of power and speed that seemed so routinely poised to electrify in Atlanta.

            Of course, Gant quickly did his best to re-open old wounds, playing his way to his second All-Star Game with a .274 average, 29 homeruns, 88 RBI and 23 steals.  Gant won Comeback Player of the Year honors, and did his best to throw salt on the wound when he and Deion Sanders spent a post-victory locker room interview praising the positive atmosphere of the locker room in Cincinnati, explicitly contrasting it with the Atlanta clubhouse.  Easy as it was to attribute their hurtful words to latent bitterness – Gant over his contract being voided, while Deion’s over his desire to play center and bat lead-off, which led to a rivalry with Otis Nixon, who also happened to prefer both things – the sting was there, as two of the most-loved Braves appeared hard at work burning bridges.

            After the Braves vanquished those Reds in a squeaky-clean NLCS sweep, Gant’s one year flyer with Cincinnati earned him a big payday in St. Louis.  Star-crossed to the end, Gant’s Cardinals promptly became a player in the National League, meeting the Braves in the 1996 NLCS.  They were helped to that stage by Gant’s .259 average, .359 OBP, 30 homeruns, 82 RBI and 13 steals.  Gant homered twice in Game 3, helping the Cardinals take a 3-1 lead in the series.  In shocking twist of fate, Gant was exceptionally close to becoming a premiere Braves villain.  His every at-bat was terrifying, not just for his prowess at the plate, but for the cosmic dalliance of fates.  The Cardinals couldn’t make good on the prophesy, though, and collapsed, with the Braves outscored them 32-1 in the remaining three games behind dominant turns from Smoltz, Maddux and Glavine.

            Gant began his steady decline the following season with a .229 average and 17 homeruns.  He rebounded a bit in 1998 with a .240 average, .331 OBP, 26 homeruns, 67 RBI and 8 steals.  That offseason, he was traded to the Philadelphia Phillies.  In keeping with Gant’s post-Braves series of battles with Atlanta, he was a member of the squad (though Gant himself was not prominently involved) that ignited the present Braves-Phillies feud over Eddie Perez’s predilection to being drilled by Paul Byrd fastballs.  Of course Gant would be playing for the opposition in one of the biggest bench-clearing brawls in the Bobby Cox era; our former son again at odds.

            For someone whose career came so close to being cut short early, it was startling to see Gant became an ageless wonderer.  After Philly traded him to Anaheim during the 2000 season, Gant bounced around to Colorado, San Diego and Oakland.  He had one-season resurgence in San Diego, hitting 18 homeruns at age 37 for the Padres in 2002, then washed out in Oakland in 2003, languishing with a .146 average in 17 games.  He was released that summer and retired at 38.

            Though Gant kept finding himself in heated rivalries with his former time, time healed well and Gant returned to Atlanta in 2005 as a color commentator.  He has since found work as an analyst and television personality on Braves broadcasts, his ringing voice a welcome reminder of our glory days, his beaming smile a beacon of atonement.  In our fanhood, we were enamored by Gant; we glorified him, wept for his loss, bristled at his denunciation, feared his retribution, admired his longevity, and welcomed his return.  By the end, Gant was no more a ballplayer than an emotional experience.

Part of the magic of Gant was the way he lurked just below super-stardom.  No individual number was ever staggering; the beauty was in the combination.  Gant made just two All-Star teams, though he finished in the top 15 of MVP voting four times.  This is not a wildly shocking revelation; in fact, it is wholly Gant-like.  He was always bigger than his numbers.  When he went 30/30, it felt titanic, yet simultaneously natural.  Gant was homegrown in baseball parlance and mythic stature - his legend eclipsed his own exploits.  He was a comic book character made real when his right leg snapped.  This cartoonish element was part of Gant’s legacy, he always seemed animated, whether as the lightning bolt of his youth or the relentless ironclad of his later years, he was more figure than fact.  Gant’s legacy could only have come about on a team like Atlanta, in a time like the late 80s/early 90s.  He will always be remembered as being better than he was, because his imagery outshined his statistics.  Yet those statistics remain duplicitously impressive and archaically impregnable.  He was our legend rising, our fallen warrior, our prodigal son.  We may not have known exactly what “Being a Brave” meant, but for a time Gant felt like the textbook definition.  Don’t stop the Chop.

Pitchers and Catchers, Reported

At last.  Amid Lin-sanity and the TCU football team turning into The Wire, baseball is finally kind of, sort of on the horizon.  Pitchers and catchers have reported, and, before we know it, ESPN will be showing cheap-camera highlights from jealousy-invoking warm Florida and Texas split-squad Spring Training games.

Usually, this is the time for writers to rehash the big offseason moves and make clichéd predictions for new arrivals.  The Braves, coming off a devastating late-season collapse survivable only by the simultaneous Red Sox disaster, remained remarkably silent this winter.  While Boston all but firebombed the clubhouse to get out the chicken-grease stains, Atlanta will bring back an almost identical squad.  This seems to contradict conventional wisdom, but maybe it makes sense.  This team was all but a shoe-in for the wild card spot, and, unlike Boston’s hired gun and aging home-grown collective, the Braves squad was an overachieving young team with loads of still-developing talent.  Frank Wren rolled the dice that the team learned for last season and will continue to grow, which, honestly, is probably a less risky proposition than blowing up a nucleus when the obvious answers (a big bit in the middle and a proven shortstop not allergic to productive at-bats) weren’t really out there, at least in Atlanta’s price range.

Here’s an incredibly short list of the team’s offseason moves, and my incredibly brief thoughts on them:

Alex Gonzalez signs with the Milwaukee Brewers.

            Watching Alex Gonzalez play defense was no longer worth watching Alex Gonzalez play offense.  Jack Wilson and a rookie are the best replacements.  We’ll see.

3 out of 5 Schuerholzes 

Derek Lowe and cash traded to the Cleveland Indians for Chris Jones.

           

            Derek Lowe was the worst player on our team for most of last fall.  He was the best player on our team for most of fall 2010.  He is also very old and would have blocked a rotation slot for one of our young, high-upside arms.  We can pretend the $10 million we are paying him not to play for us is actually being spent on finding the real Fausto Carmona if that makes us happier.

5 out of 5 Schuerholzes

Nate McLouth signs with the Pittsburgh Pirates.

           

            Nate McLouth forgot how to play baseball.  Maybe his life is a cheesy drama and he’ll remember how to play in Pittsburgh.  At least I won’t have to wonder why Nate McLouth isn’t good 162 times this year.

3.5 out of 5 Schuerholzes

That’s pretty much it.  Seems boring, but remember, as sour the taste in our mouths was last October, this team has lots of room to grow.  And Albert Pujols betrayed the Redbirds, so at least they’ll probably fail.  Let the games of catch commence.  Let the Chop spring.

I Had a Dream Yesterday

I had a dream yesterday.

I dreamed of Jason Heyward.

In my dream, his swing was syrupy-sweet.

And the baseballs flew off his liquorice-black lumber.

It was a day game in my dream.

They caromed like specks across the cloud-pocked blue sky.

And into our arms, beyond the outfield.

Heyward showed no fear.

He waited patiently for his pitch

but never too long

and he yanked inside fastballs

down the line.

He smiled, big and clear

as he took the bat from Chipper

who ascended into the sky.

O Dr. King,

I pray to you

Make this dream come true.

Make Jason Heyward not make us sad.

Holiday Break

I'm taking a Holiday break this fortnight, but the Chop shall return shortly.

Merry Belated Christmas From the Saddest Team in Baseball.

http://deadspin.com/5870256/the-atlanta-braves-wish-you-a-merry-christmas-by-performing-the-worst-rendition-of-jingle-bells-imaginable

Former Brave of the Fortnight: Marcus Giles

The younger brother of one of his era’s most unsung superstars, Marcus Giles may have been genetically predisposed to a superb batting eye, but nothing could have foretold his sudden loss of talent.  While the elder Giles enjoyed a lengthy career as a criminally underrated slugger, Marcus enjoyed just three peak seasons before an intense decline forced him out of the game far too early.

Born in San Diego, California, Giles was drafted by the Braves in the 53^rd round of the 1996 Amateur Draft.  At the time, brother Brian was a hot prospect with the Cleveland Indians, who foolishly traded him to the Pittsburgh Pirates for Ricardo Rincon after the 1998 season.  Marcus lit up the minors, cranking an absurd 37 homers in Single-A Macon and raking all the way through to spot duty in the major leagues by age 23.  Giles shared time at second with Quilvio Veras and Keith Lockhart, and was impressive, if not spectacular, in his part-time rookie season, hitting .262 with a .338 on-base percentage and nine homers in 273 appearances.  By this time, Brian Giles was a star in Pittsburgh, putting up .300 averages, .400 OBPs and 35+ homerun seasons on the regular and spurring optimism regarding his little bro.

2002 was not kind to Marcus Giles.  He suffered a personal tragedy, the death of his prematurely born daughter, and a sprained ankle in late May.  Giles struggled greatly, hitting just .230, and was demoted for a spell upon his return from the injury.  He came back to the big leagues for more part-time duty in August.  Expectations were tempered now, but Giles immediately restored our faith.

In 2003, the Braves second base job was his alone, and Giles cashed in on his sibling pedigree.  He ripped off a .316 average, .390 OBP, 21 homers and 14 steals, making his only All-Star team (Brian himself was criminally underrepresented on All-Star squads, making just two in his career).  In Giles family fashion, those numbers were a bit overshadowed by the overall success of the bombastic ’03 team, led by Gary Sheffield and Javy Lopez’s exhaustive supply of Homerun Growth Hormones.  Giles was one of the few Braves who kept up the pace in the first-round loss to the San Francisco Giants, hitting .357 with a homer and three RBI in the short series. 

Though underrated among the team’s plethora of bats, Giles still excited fans – with proven production, his brother’s gaudy numbers, and youth on his side, Giles looked to join upper class of second basemen for a long time coming.  He came out gangbusters in 2004, raising his average to .339 by mid-May.  Alas, on that ill-fated May 15^th , a pop-fly led to a brutal collision with centerfielder Andruw Jones.  The crash actually looked worse than it was, which is saying something, considering Giles broke his collarbone and right wrist, and suffered a concussion.  Watching the play live, it seemed impossible that both players would actually get up; Jones, in the midst of his trademark ball-tracking sprint, inadvertently decked the drifting Giles like an unpadded linebacker cheapshotting an overthrown receiver.  Giles missed 52 games, and was never quite the same afterwards, though he did finish the year with a .311 average, .378 on-base percentage, eight homeruns and 17 steals. 

2005 was a fine year, statistically, for Giles, but it marked the last time Giles spent as an upper-tier second baseman.  He hit .291 with a .365 OBP, 15 homers and 16 steals; those numbers were great for any second baseman, but slightly regressive after his past two campaigns.  Braves fans weren’t necessarily worried; even if Giles’ ceiling was lowered a bit as he entered his prime, getting that kind of plus production for the next 5-10 years was plenty to help cushion the blow of a soul-crushing 18-inning playoff lost at the Houston Astros.

Here’s where things get curious for Giles.  The Braves lost Rafael Furcal to free agency after 2005, and plugged Giles into the leadoff spot.  This was a pure Moneyball move – Giles was not a typical leadoff hitter at all, but his high walk rates made him an appealing table-setter.  As the Oakland A’s found out, baseball is still more than a numbers game, and intangibles still inhibit the consistency of plug-and-play lineup-tweaking.  The stats suggested he should have been just fine even with atypical leadoff speed and plate approach, but Giles never really worked out of the spot.  He stated openly that he was uncomfortable in the leadoff spot – for whatever reason, this discomfort affected his play.  Giles’s numbers took a big hit – his average dropped to .262, his OBP to .341, and his homers and stolen bases dropped to 11 and 10, respectively.

Giles complained of chest pains that September.  He was hospitalized and tested for damage to his heart valve; fans were concerned about the livelihood of their slumping second baseman for several days, until he was diagnosed with acid reflux and cleared to play.  The incident was isolated and strange; foreshadowing the weird demise of his playing career.

Following 2006, Giles’s still relatively hefty price tag, declining numbers and attitude/discomfort about his lineup spot caused the Braves to let him walk as a free agent.  A soon-to-be 29 year-old middle infielder with solid defense and a track record of prime offense was a big draw on the free agent market despite a subpar walk year, and the San Diego Padres reached out to Giles, uniting him with his older brother, who had been a mainstay in San Diego since a mid-2003 trade that sent Jason Bay and Oliver Perez to Pittsburgh.  The tandem didn’t deliver; Brian remained a consistent hitter despite declining power, but Marcus could not adapt to the spacious bat-zapping Petco Park.  He hit .229 with a .304 OBP and just four homers in 476 at-bats.  Giles was hugely disappointing and the Padres released him following the season.

He was scooped up by the Colorado Rockies, in what seemed like a career-resurrecting opportunity.  Scores of hitters have risen from baseball’s ashes in the thin air of Coors Field, and 30-year old infielder who should have been in the tail end of his prime was the perfect candidate for a big return.  Alas, whatever was zapping Giles’s talent could not be ailed with the change in altitude, and he never even made it onto the field at Coors.  He bailed on an agreement to terms with the Los Angeles Dodgers, and bided his time until the season was out.  The Philadelphia Phillies gave him one more shot in 2009, but again, Giles couldn’t even get out of spring training.  It made no sense, but Marcus Giles turned out to have played his last major league game at only 29 years of age.  His brother finally fell of the cliff as well that season; Brian retired in the spring of 2010, at age 39. 

Revisiting Giles’s legacy, it’s odd that his sudden disappearance from the sport was viewed so nonchalantly.  Position players in baseball tend to have some of the longest careers of non-specialist athletes.  Their primes typically fall in the ages of 27-29; Giles was done by 29.  His bloodlines even suggest longevity, as Brian lasted a decade longer than the younger Giles.

One guess that might be hazarded speaks to the current state of sports medicine – perhaps Giles suffered long-term effects from concussions?  He had two diagnosed during his playing career.  The first, the result of a baseline collision with Mark Prior, kept him out for a week; the latter, from the Andruw Jones explosion, was treated alongside the broken bones that kept him out for over two months.  He did not appear to show post-concussion symptoms, but neurological attention to brain injuries was light years behind where it sits now.  Could Giles’s rattled head have permanently affected his performance?

Another potential culprit, as is always the case for players in his era, is steroids.  Access was certainly not a problem for a player coming of age in the Lopez.Sheffield era.  Though he was never linked to ‘roids directly, Marcus’s sudden decline (and Brian’s exceptionable longevity) can be a seen as a signal of juice usage.  It’s quite possible that he rode steroids to early fame, then peaced out when drug testing went into effect.

 Maybe not.  Perhaps Giles just one of many players to lose it suddenly for unknown reasons - or possibly no real reason at all.  Whether Giles should have still been an impact player from his 26^th year into his 30s does not dispel the fact that he wasn’t – Giles was involuntarily retired from baseball because three different teams saw no salvageable talent left in him.  A non-violent domestic abuse charge leveled against him in San Diego didn’t help his cause, but lesser players have been forgiven for far more egregious offenses.  Giles inability to find a team willing to pay him to play baseball was almost singularly because of his diminished ability to hit baseballs.

Marcus Giles’s career felt like a cautionary tale, yet it is impossible to say exactly what his story cautioned against.  His precipitous decline made so little sense that is made perfect sense.  He was enigmatic in the least compelling way, and left baseball with barely a whisper.  We’ll remember him for the sweet-hitting Furcal/Giles double-play combo, his spot on the best offensive Braves squad of our generation, and for stepping out of the shadow of his older brother in a big way, for a short time.  Over time, we’ll continue to forget how unnatural his departure from the game was, and that we ever even envisioned Giles as a long-term lock in the middle-infield.  His name was just big enough, his looks just good enough, his talent just short enough of elite, and his early-career tragedy so “bigger-than-the-game,” that little misfortune could ever garner him the sympathy of fans.  We took no schadenfreudic pleasure or attached pain in his demise; he merely left the Braves and went out-of-sight, out-of-mind.  His skills may have eroded prematurely, but, as a Brave, Giles gave all he had, then fought no more forever.  Don’t stop the Chop.

Former Brave of the Fortnight: Fred McGriff

           His Atlanta debut was stuff of forced mythology, a coincidence turned canon by circumstance and fate.  The story would instantly become his legacy; that the preordained tale held true is only reaffirmed his place in Braves lore.

            Fred McGriff was born in Tampa, Florida and drafted in the ninth round of the 1981 draft by the New York Yankees.  He was traded to the Toronto Blue Jays as a minor leaguer; he debuted with the Blue Jays and provided immediate power.  McGriff hit 20 homers in a partial 1987 campaign, then launched 34 in 1988, his first full year in the Bigs.  McGriff led the league the following year with 36, and didn’t slow down.  After the 1990 season, he was traded to the Toronto Blue Jays , along with Tony Fernandez, for Roberto Alomar and Joe Carter.  McGriff continued to rake in San Diego, but the team’s potent offensive weaponry (McGriff played with Gary Sheffield, Tony Gwynn, Bip Roberts and Benito Santiago) weren’t enough to overcome holes in the lineup and suspect starting pitching, and the Padres meddled just above .500. 

McGriff arrived in Atlanta on July 18, 1993.  For his services, the Braves sent the Padres prospects Vince Moore, Donnie Elliott and Melvin Nieves.   This trade would become one of the Braves biggest coups, as Vince Moore, Donnie Elliott and Melvin Nieves all turned out to be terrible at baseball.  McGriff, however, ignited the Braves. Following the stadium light fire that coincided with his debut, McGriff led the slumping team to a division title, hitting .310 with a .392 on-base percentage and 19 homers in the final 68 games of the season.  The team went an absurd 51-19 during this stretch, eventually losing the National League Championship Series 4-2 to the incorrigible 1993 Philadelphia Phillies.

            McGriff continued to hit with Atlanta, forging his place in the heart of the lineup and the fans.  Tall, sleek, lithe and powerful, he became entrenched at the clean-up spot.  The chiseled lefty, with his big, shallow Motown mustache and era-perfect close-cut flat-top, looked less purely athletic than highly refined at distinct baseball skills.  He was the big robotic lefty, a power guy with a long carved swing.  When it was on, we salivated at replays of his longball shots, all ending with McGriff - bat artfully slanted in one hand - almost taking a scissor-step towards the mound.  At the plate, his perfect posture and robotic motions made his stance perhaps the most instantly recognizable and imitated on the team, as well as practically a template for video game first basemen.

When balls didn’t leave the park, McGriff was notorious for his slow speed on the bases, but the phrase “pretty fast when he gets up to speed” was an oft-used and apt descriptor.  McGriff ran the bases like an 18-wheeler coming out of an interstate stoplight, churning and jerking as the engine revved before finally coasting along at a seemingly unstoppable rate.  Watching him try to stretch a stand-up double into a triple was one of the rarest and most exciting experiences a Braves fan could ask for.

Following the 1997 season, in which the Braves fell to the mercenary Florida Marlins in the NLCS, McGriff’s contract was purchased by the expansion Tampa Bay Devil Rays.  His power had been dipping slightly already, and he hit just 19 homers in his first year with the team.  But he soon experienced a resurgence, hitting 32 in 1999, with a .310 average and .405 OBP.  In 2001, he was traded to the Chicago Cubs, but had just one more productive year, hitting .273 with 30 homeruns in 2002.  After a largely unproductive 2003 with the Dodgers, McGriff, at 40 years old, played 27 games with the 2004 Devil Rays.  It would be his last season in the big leagues.

            McGriff’s power was potent, but not quite prodigious.  He homered in throwback fashion, regularly if not immensely.  McGriff was among the last of the old-school sluggers, at a time when McGwire and Canseco were already pumping themselves full of pick-me-ups in Oakland men’s rooms.  McGriff led each league in homers, with 36 in the ’89 AL, then 35 in the ’92 NL; by the end of his career, those totals were achieved by a handful of middle infielders.

            McGriff’s Braves legacy makes Atlanta one of the few places he will be remembered more for his play on the field than his endorsement off it.  McGriff was the celebrity spokesman for one of the longest-running commercials of all time, Tom Emanski’s Baseball Training videos.  With an un-bent foam trucker’s cap so comically placed it seems almost intentional, McGriff (introduced as “Major League Super Star" Fred McGriff) deadpanned his endorsement of the video drills used to produce back-to-back-to-back AAU champs.  The video was unavoidable during ballgames and weekend cartoons.  McGriff appeared between low-quality cuts of horrifying amounts of children identically completing specific drills – hitting balls of tees with a disjointed swing, throwing a baseball in a plastic tub from the outfield – and made every little leaguer fear his coach would actually subscribe to the successful tactics and make summer baseball practice even more boring than it already was.

            In Atlanta, McGriff’s firestorm arrival at least equaled his Emanski notoriety.  Symbolic and absurd, it set the stage for a memorable run.  In the aftermath, McGriff’s nomenclature was so similar to that of basset hound/detective/children’s safety advocate McGruff that no one could find a nickname for McGriff that didn’t end in dog.  Crime Dog and Fire Dog both floated about, with Fire Dog particularly relevant and unfortunately less catching.  At some point, the distinctive ring of ‘Fred McGriff’ proved enough to quell the search for a more fitting nickname, and Fred McGriff went eponymous.

            McGriff’s baseball legacy finds him alongside Jose Canseco and Rafael Palmeiro - company he’d surely just as soon not keep, for myriad reasons - on the borderlands of a milestone and on the outside looking in at Cooperstown.  McGriff finished his career with 493 homers, begging for a contract but ultimately shut out, retired against his will on the cusp of 500..

            Five hundred home runs was once an instant ticket to the Hall of Fame, but McGriff fell just short of the marker.  As demonstrably unfair as this fact is, it has enveloped McGriff’s legacy.  Though McGriff seems to feel that seven more bombs would have punched his ticket, it’s more likely that even 507 wouldn’t get McGriff to baseball’s Ragnarok.  He was the first case study in an era of re-examination for the 500 Club; his candidacy suffered under the closer scrutiny of raised standards, just prior to the mandatory contextualization of steroid enhancement.  Shortly after McGriff retired, Jose Canseco tested the Hall of Fame concept to its limits with his failed admittance and bitter exposal of baseball’s deepest secrets.  McGriff has avoided steroid scrutiny, but he remains linked to an era in which power numbers are graded on a scale.

            Ironically, McGriff was both overrated and underrated statistically as the result of his tweener-era status.  He retired with a .284 batting average and .377 on-base percentage.  The average was respectable, but the on-base percentage was wildly underappreciated in the pre-Moneyball era.  Had McGriff retired five years later, his on-base percentage would have been a key point of discussion; five years sooner, his power numbers would have been more appealing.  As it is, McGriff was born at the exact wrong time and, over 19 notable seasons, fell just short of his Cooperstown dream.

            McGriff will always be remembered as one of the most unintentionally hilarious Braves.  The fire, the Fire and Crime Dog nicknames, the Emanski hat, the baserunning, and even his tragi-comic career curtailment; all emotionally endearing, especially for a man as consistently stoic as McGriff himself.  But his public perception never entered into his play, where he gave Atlanta power and [atience in the heart of the order, at the team’s loftiest heights.  Whether he was ever in on the joke or not, McGriff’s affective comedic stylings only enhanced the memory of his time in town.  Though the Hall of Fame may never find him, he will live on infinitely on a smaller scale, in the hearts and souls of die-hard Braves fans.  Don’t stop the Chop.