Catcher’s Blog

This is my review post on the Braves vs. Marlins game from August 28, 2008. The link to all the pictures will be below the review since there are 85 pictures; it would take too long to include all of them in the post. Some are linked in the post, though. Please continue reading if you wish.

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Today I was sent an article in one of my alert e-mails from SI.com writer John Donovan and he brings up a good point about the NL East when he says it’s the toughest division in baseball. But this particular part caught my eye and I agree:

Right now, the Phillies are staggering. The Mets are playing their best ball of the year. The Marlins are sticking around. The Braves, the one-time king of the division, are … I don’t know. What the heck are the Braves doing?

Every Braves fan seems to be asking that very question to themselves and other Braves’ fans. What the heck are the Braves doing? This past series seemed to be looking good in the first game and that we were picking up where we left off before the break, with almost everyone contributing, getting hits, and stealing bases, but the last two games in the series were played by a completely different team altogether. I really don’t know an explanation for any of it. How do we play well the first game and then the last two we act like we have no clue as to what we’re even doing out on the field? How on earth do we let a last place and current worst in baseball team beat us like it was merely batting practice? And former cast-off Braves at that. And why in the world do we sit arguably our best hitter right now in Brian McCann, especially right after the All-Star break? I just do not get this team sometimes.

The AJC made a good point that Mac is playing with urgency and getting fired up when it seems no one else on the team will. I have noticed him playing with a lot more fire underneath him than the rest of the team seem to want to play with. I just don’t get why they don’t get it. Something needs to happen or we won’t even get a sniff of the post season. We’ll be sitting right at home like the past two years, watching other teams play in the post season. It’s just stupid. The team and players say they want to win and they say it’s frustrating to lose, but if we really wanted to win, we would find ways to do it. No matter what it took. I just don’t see us doing that at all. We seem like we’re playing because we have to and that’s not how it should be at all.

The next two series against the Marlins and Phillies will set the tone for the second half and if the Braves want a shot at the post season, they better start playing better baseball. No one is going to hand it to them or roll over and die. They need to play and they need to start to doing it now.

This is my review of the day game in Atlanta on June 25, 2008. It was good trip, it was a very, very hot that day, and we played a good game. I got decent footage and pictures below. The footage is a little shaky and I apologize for that. That would be from me not being able to hold my camera still hardly at all. I can’t sit or stand still, so that’s probably why. The footage was clearer on my computer before I uploaded it to photobucket, so know that it wasn’t my camera. The only bad thing about that day was that it felt like it was 100 degrees, literally, with no shade hardly at all and the seat digging into my leg the whole time, resulting in my leg becoming almost numb when I did finally get up around the 8th inning. I’ll save the rest for the review. The review is under a cut for length purposes.

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I wasn’t going to post at all until I finished my review post of the game I went to, which I’m still working on, but since I received this in my inbox today reminding me that Mac still needs more votes to go to the All-Star game with only two days to vote, I thought I would post it. It’s way too cute not to post.

That would get me to vote for anything that has to do with Mac. I don’t think it would matter what it was for, just because of that face, I would vote for or support it. This will always be how I think of Mac, even when I see pictures like these. There’s not a thing he could do to change my mind of his cute, teddy bear-like appeal. Well, okay, I can maybe think of a few things, but I doubt he would ever do those things, or at least so no one sees him doing those things.

vote for Mac!

While the first game of the Mariners’ series looked like it was going to result in a sweep by the worst team in baseball, we came back and won the last two in great fashion. Teixshy seems like he’s gaining confidence at the plate and all us fans really hope he is coming out of his long slump. We knew he started off slow, but we weren’t thinking it was going to end up being this slow. If he heats up, maybe he can make up for the absence of Chipper in the lineup and keep us going in a good direction.

And how awesome is Mac? He is single-handedly leading this team right now, while Chipper is out, with his awesomeness of a season he’s having. He’s up to 14 homers and he had only 18 total last season. He’s hit .300+ for most of the season and I think he’s only going to get better. He is catching a majority of the games and he will, but usually his second half is always better than his first. I don’t know how much better he could do than he is right now. He busts his butt out there every game he plays to try to help this team win and it shows. I’m not saying other players aren’t, but he’s out there every single day that he plays, every single inning giving 200%. I think he’s more of a leader than Frenchy at this point, since Frenchy is having some kind of funky time as of late or most of the year rather. Mac really does deserve to be the starting All-Star catcher.

Tonight the Brewers come in for three games. As you probably remember our first series against them in Milwaukee was not that great, having two one-run losses that were heart breakers and one lopsided-scoring game, which seems to be the norm with this team. Jo-Jo has pitched well his last few outings and if he can keep this up, good things are to come for him and the team. Hopefully he keeps it up again tonight against the Brewers ace, Ben Sheets, who is 8-1 with 2.74 ERA. If Jo-Jo pitches well and our offense shows up tonight, we should be able to get a win.