something smells familiar


it's kind of hard to believe that it's been over eight months since i've given the braves more than a passing thought here on HACAM. over eight months and, wow, a lot has changed.

as i packed "my" braves away for a long fall and even longer winter, i remembered how so much national attention was placed on them in the spring of 2008. jayson stark of espn had anointed them the team to beat. ken rosenthal of fox was in the boat with him. it was becoming borderline trendy to talk about how much you liked the look and feel of last year's group. and it all made sense until they started playing actual games. pitchers' arms started falling off early. the braves "next dale murphy", jeff francoeur, fell into a deep coma and it will take the first month of 2009 to know if he's been awakened from his slumber. chipper, naturally, got hurt some. more pitchers' arms fell off. they traded tex at the deadline and that was it. dead and buried. there were sixty games left last year when i raised the white flag. it was the most painful thing i had experienced in my life as a sports fan since, gosh, probably the 2007 braves season. the braves kill me every year. get it? i hate the braves.

this year, they have gone from being the team to beat to being lucky to being some national airbag's (i am looking at you, orestes destrada) nl sleeper. 60 percent of the rotation is new this april. derek lowe? javy vazquez? kenshin kawakami? really? alright. i guess i'll take middle of your thirties innings-eaters this year over the over-forties that are bound to break down of last year. tex, of course, is now a yankee. i made fun of casey kotchman last year. i am going to try and embrace him now. another ex-laa angel is in left part-time. mcann stopped eating cheeseburgers and looks like a baseball player now instead of a beer-league softball pitcher. chipper sucked it up for the us in the wbc, but he's still chipper. the old adage with him has not changed. if he plays 140-145 games, the braves will win 85 of those games. they come up with 7-10 more after that, they win the wild card. it could happen, right? it could if gonzalez and sori and moylan are all really healthy. and that's a big if. it's a weird feeling, but a familiar one. the underdog suit always fit the braves better. the defending champs are in the division. that bodes well for atlanta.

that and their "new hope" in centerfield. does anyone remember andruw jones as a 19-year old? he and i are about the same age and he came along about the same time i was beginning my new life as an adult fan, not just a kid who wished he could be his favorite player in the backyard. he splashed onto the scene in 1996 and immediately joined chipper as the obvious foundations to the braves future. he could hit. he could throw. he could cover more ground with more grace than any outfielder that i had seen and been able to appreciate. he had a great arm. and sure enough, for ten years, he made braves fans happy that "we" had him and somebody else didn't.

well, i teased him a few posts back, but the braves' permanent replacement to andruw in center made the team and will be starting tomorrow night. jordan schafer, andruw without the krispy kreme gut, got one guy he was competing with traded and sent the other to triple-a. he's the same guy that braves vets, reportedly, hated last spring because he showed up at the park with his chest stuck out, walking with a "player" strut and pretty much acting like he owned the place even though he had accomplished nothing at the highest level. he followed that favorable first impression up by getting suspended for 50 minor league games last season after testing positive for hgh. after missing almost half his year, he came back and finished up his 2008 minor league campaign strong but under the radar. close that chapter. everything i've read about his 2009 spring camp experience has been totally different. he still knows he's good. but he's been humble. he's been productive and, maybe most importantly, he's gotten the vets on his side. up until the last week of the spring, he was batting around .400 and went from a guy that would probably be called up sometime later in the year to the guy in center, beginning day one. incredible.

if i haven't made my feelings obvious enough, i love jordan schafer. no, i am in love with jordan schafer. for many of the same reasons i fell in love with julio jones. for one, his talent is so immense that i will enjoy watching his every move, every at-bat that i can, every time he glides towards a fly ball and wish that i ever could have been that good. he is just a rookie. and he will struggle. if you watch enough baseball, though, you know when you are watching a guy that has it. and he has it. for two, he represents to the braves what julio represented, not with his signing, but with his arrival on that first day of practice, when he, as a "rookie", was undoubtedly the best player with the most talent on alabama's football team. schafer is like that now. because of chipper's advanced baseball age, schafer is already the most talented guy there. and the braves can stand up and try to raise themselves to that standard like the tide did last fall. or they cannot. if they do, though, and he has anything close to a "rookie of the year" season, the braves will be back in the postseason. mark it down.

what's that? optimism?

yeah, i guess it kind of is. after losing out on peavy during the offseason, i really had been hum-drum about the atlanta braves, version 2009. jordan schafer changed all that for me. now, i can't wait for them to break my heart all over again.

i hate you, braves.

and i mean that in the best way possible.