Braves baseball then and now

The reason I suddenly posted about baseball was my learning that the Atlanta Braves finally won the World Series after 26 years. That's a pretty long spell for a team that consistently won in the 1990s until the mid 2000s. I watch a resurgence in the last 5 years but always thought their teams weren't good enough to get past the National League given the competition. Pundits sure didn't expect them to win it all this year being team with the least wins (88) in the playoffs and just getting in because of a poor NL East Division. The San Francisco Giants and the Los Angeles Dodgers both won more than 100 games in the regular season and featured superior pitching and hitting all season. And yet, here were the Braves to win it all, beating a 95-win Houston Astros in the World Series.

I first became a fan of the team back in the early 1990s when they battled and lost a couple of finals to the Minnesota Twins and the Toronto Blue Jays. They won in 1995 against the Cleveland Indians before heartbreaking losses in the next so many years at the National League (they were the top team so many times but were upset in the NLCS) and twice to the New York Yankees, which, to be fair had superior teams back then. I admired their pitching and who couldn't with the trio of Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine and John Smoltz practically beating most teams every night they start for the Braves. I recall they pitched deep into the game with a complete game not far off when they're on. Nowadays, they seem to be pitching by committee with the starting pitchers lasting only a few innings. In the recently series, it was rare for a Braves starter to last 4 innings. While I admire the relief pitchers and the closer, I think they should some really good starters if they want to sustain their winnings. Or is the time of the dominant pitcher already gone?

My first baseball cap was an Atlanta Braves cap I got in 1996. I got it for what I recall was 5,000 yen from a vendor in Harajuku, Tokyo.

The ball cap is basically in great shape considering its 25 years with me.

Back of the cap

This is a New Era field cap, which means this is a cap the players use in games.

Politics aside (and there are many controversies about the Braves out there), I do hope they continue their winning ways and perhaps be champions again in the near future, if not back to back.

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