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Comments
Agreed, I recall about 7-8 years ago both the Red Sox and Braves entered September with 7-8 game leads in the wild card spots (my wife is from MA) and neither made the playoffs! If I recall they won about 9 games between them!
Teams can lose leads this big. Happens all the time. BTW it's 4.5 now.
But if the Braves lose the NL East now it will have way more to do with their collapse than anything the Phillies did.
Braves rip off a few here and the Phillies play someone other than the Marlins and Nationals and it could be right back to 9.5 in July.
Or the Braves collapse could continue and the lead will continue to shrink.
Dang. Slumps su.ck
Injuries. This is NOT our regular starting lineup. We were hotter than hot, now were not. Swilk pointed the finger at the right place. 7, 8, 9 in the order are in the top 6 spots at the moment. Kind of on par with the Angels. I like the addition of Bart, a solid catcher who is still catching up to malor league pitching. He's looking a little better as a Brave. On to Frisco, need to win that series! Go Bravos.
One of the best teams I ever saw was the '98 Yankees. They didnt have a single guy hit over 30 homers that year. But every spot in the lineup was filled with guys like Paul Oniell and Bernie Williams. Maybe they didnt have the best guy at each position. But they were incredibly strong top to bottom. Even if you did pitch a decent game against them eventually the grind facing that lineup would wear you down.
These days with the Braves once you get to Riley it's a black hole until you roll it over. Stark contrast to early days when Dubon could be left down there and was a tough out.
That has to get fixed and I dont think we can do it thru trades. Gonna need a starter or two for that. We have to depend on some guys coming back or getting back on track.
Riley is part of the offensive black hole too, though his defense has been borderline spectacular. It's a team slump, so far, its been about 15 games. It is so curious that Riley hasn't solved any opposing pitchers, other then one 3 hit game that the Braves lost. A .500 record the rest of the way may get us a wild card, but we'll have to play close to .600 for a division title. I was fretting last night and my wife reminded me that with 30 losses right now, the Braves still have to lose another 40 games just to be "normal." Our first date was at Fulton County Stadium on a broiling Sunday afternoon in September before a massive crowd of about 4500 people. It was the day that the polarizing Jim Bouton made his MLB comeback debut. Man, the Pirates were, quite literally, acting like they wanted him DEAD!
when Ronald is back, Riley will be the only remaining weak spot. Sure wish I knew what is wrong with Riley - he just looks "lost" at the plate. I'm figuring it's mental as he has all a good hitting coach. Maybe they should flu Chipper in to help him? I'm sure they haven't "forgotten" how to hit and that the offense will bounce back. But now the pitching seems a little off. People on this board know what's wrong with the Dawg's offense, Can't they help the Braves?
Seems like I remember Chipper "fixing" him one time before in a previous season of struggle.
Mentioning Ronald, the question after he comes back, how long will he be back? I looked up his career stats and was surprised at how few games he has played. Only 2 seasons of more than 150 games, 2019 156 games and 2023 159 games. In 2024 49 games and 2025 95 games, for his amazing talent his legs reminds me of M Mantle whose knees were his undoing.
Yes, I agree. He seems kind of injury prone/fragile. A shame. Kind of Mike Trout like. Mantle was a boyhood hero of mine. Many think he could have been the greatest if he had not had to play with those bad knees. Ronald seems to be in a similar boat. For sure, the Braves need him healthy.
At least they didn't lose last night.
Got to meet Mickey once. He was signing stuff at the local mall. The pic is 11 year old me with Mickey.
Dad told Mickey he pretended to be him many times in the back yard. Then asked if Mickey ever pretended to be him in Yankee stadium. Which drew a big laugh. Pops was like most boomer kids Mantle was his hero growing up. At the time Roger Maris was dying of cancer which was public. I recall Dad asking about Roger and Mantle saying he wasn't doing very well. Mickey also commented on the pennant which you can see in the foreground. Saying he hadn't seen one in a while. It's a special thing to me that I still have. He signed it. If that wasn't enough Mickey even signed more for us than he was supposed to. The extra's were for a kid on our baseball team who had Leukemia.
Shame he didnt take better care of himself when he was playing. He was just a boy from Oklahoma who got thrown into stardom in NYC. Didnt handle it well but many others wouldn't have either. Include myself on that list.
In the end he did the right thing warning others of the dangers of drinking etc.
What a life that guy got to live. Legend.
👍️👍️
A treasure for sure!
Still have it 41 years later Donnie. Its yellowed some but still in good shape.
Mantle signed a ton of stuff. It's how he supported himself later in life. So it's not super rare or valuable. But I don't think there are a ton out there with his signature on a pennant like this one.
No plans to ever sell it with the obvious sentimental value.
Anyway this isnt some sort of brag. But I did think the pennant and the story would interest you and other fans of Mantle around here.
swilk:
for sure it's of interest. I was a kid, on the West Coast, a Yankee fan mainly because my grandpa, an Italian immigrant, who by the way taught me to play the accordion, before I became an 80 year old first year violin student, was a Yankee fan because he came thru Ellis Island when a young kid named DiMaggio was patrolling CF for the Bronx Bombers. When the Mick took over as the main Yankee, he was my idol. I can recall being so disappointed when I found out the Mick and **** Ford would smoke cigarettes on the bench during a game. Crazy, eh?