the next big thing?


about a month ago, i teased a forthcoming series of posts that would feature the potential future face of atlanta braves baseball, a young player by the name of jason (julio...it's not his real nickname, but it will be mine) heyward.

what i didn't realize at the time, though, was that i was already behind the curve. unlike with julio version 1.0, i wasn't one of the first on the bandwagon. about a week after mentioning julio heyward on HACAM, both ESPN and SI released their respective "top prospects in the game" list. who was number one on both? heyward. bobby cox has said that the sound the ball makes off of heyward's bat sounds a lot like it did off the bat of a pretty good player in his own right, one mr. hank aaron. my brother, ken, and i were e-mailing back and forth about heyward yesterday and he told me the atlanta media had dubbed him a wicked hybrid of ryan howard and willie mays.

suffice it to say, i will not be shedding any light on some diamond in the rough when it comes to julio heyward. the cat is already out of the bag. up until his last game on the 20th, he had reached base in his first 9 spring games. even with an 0-fer on saturday, he's batting .387 through ten games with an OPS of over 1.100. no one has come out and said he's locked up the starting job in right just yet (in much the same way my boy jordan schafer was left to wonder last spring if he had nailed down centerfield 'til the week of opening day), but the depth chart on the braves website leaves us a not-so-subtle hint that he's in control of his own destiny at this point.

so, what does this all mean?

well, really, nothing yet. as "baseball people" are quick to remind everyone that will listen, spring training doesn't mean anything. those same baseball people will try and tell you sometime mid-summer that games in april and may don't mean nearly as much as they do in august and september. as i have noted here a couple times before, that is the most retarded thing any "baseball person" will ever say in their whole baseball life.

nevertheless, making the team or starting on opening day does not change the world. we have to look no further back than opening night, 2009. schafer pounded a home run in his first at-bat of the season. the braves pound the would-be national league pennant winners. all was merry and bright for exactly two more days. having started the season 2-0 and up 8 runs with three innings to play for a season-opening sweep, schafer hurts himself and the braves bullpen gives up the game. bobby cox kept sending schafer out hurt, effectively ending his season before it even began. he mangled the bullpen more often than not. the braves brought up tommy hanson a month too late. they had a pretty good season, but still finished a few games out of the wild card.

i say all that to say this. jason heyward could be the next dale murphy or he could be the next hank aaron or the next chipper jones or the next whatever great brave you want to name or the combination of all of them, and bobby cox could still find a way to screw it up.

but one of the things that we, and by "we" i mean "i", will follow this baseball season is this. what if julio heyward can somehow manage to change the culture of the braves in the same way that julio jones changed the culture of alabama football just by signing his letter of intent?

when julio made it onto youtube by beating first-team all-sec safety rashad johnson deep in one of his first practices, he announced without having to say a word (not that he could since saban won't let freshmen speak to the media) that something had turned for the positive.

in the same way, what if all these stories of heyward's mythical batting practice sessions translate to the field during the first month of the season? sure, mccann's great. tommy hanson could be great. chipper was great. but none of them are transcendent. none of them bring the casual fan out to the ballpark to see what all the fuss is about.

what if heyward did that? what if he raked for the first couple of weeks and casual atlanta fans starting coming out to the ballpark again? what if, for the first time in a decade, the casual fans added to the already there diehards created a real life homefield advantage. and what if that homefield advantage led to four or five more wins for the braves this season.

all other things being equal to last year (and even adding my darling timmy back into the mix), what if this was enough to get the braves back into the playoffs?

what if the braves matched up with the dodgers, cards or phillies in the playoffs and had a first three of hanson, jurrjens and hudson, maybe mixing in a little lowe in a seven game series??? holy shit. i'd take that against halladay, hamels and whomever. every day of the week, i would!

you see what i mean? what if the heyward effect could last longer than the schafer effect. bobby cox broke jordan and the schafer effect lasted three days. what if julio heyward could prove everybody right and change the course of franchise's fate?

no pressure, right?

but, you know what? there was never any more pressure put on any one athlete that i've ever followed closely than a young man named julio jones. the batshit crazy thing about his hype and his pressure is that he lived up to every bit of it. and thanks to him and saban, alabama went from also-ran to champ in two years.

it can be done.

i believe in jason (julio) heyward.

do you?