Sports - it's the best unscripted reality show on television. Regardless of where you live or where you're from, you cling to a team or two and hope for a fairy tale ending each season. However, the joy we experience from it's unpredictability can also provide us pain and anguish.
Here in Atlanta, Braves skipper Bobby Cox is managing his team for one final week. After this season he will do something he hasn't done in over 30 years, leave the game of baseball.
The final chapter of this fairy tale began in early Spring and continued throughout most of the summer. It has been quite the page turner with an old grizzled veteran character going down (Chipper Jones) halfway through the story and minor characters stepping up to become grand slam heroes at times (Brooks Conrad and David Ross).
This final chapter also had it's fair share of villains. Some appeared to be harmless on the exterior (Washington Nationals, Florida Marlins), but the minute the Braves let their guard down, they were tomahawk chopped right between the eyes, left for dead, and looking up at first place in the division. Like any good story, the biggest, baddest villain of them all (the Phillies) usually finds himself in a showdown with the main character in the final scene. This will be the case Friday, Saturday and Sunday when the division nemesis comes to Atlanta with intentions on destroying any hopes of a happy ending for these Braves.
In an ideal world we would skip ahead these final six pages (games) to sneak a peak at how this will all end. Will there be sadness or jubilation? Ahh, but in this cruel world of sports, we all know that's not possible. Those final six pages have yet to be written. The only guarantee we have right now is that when the last page is turned and we close this book for good, it's main character, Bobby Cox, will ride off into the sunset. We can only hope he lives happily ever after....
I would like to say the Braves will win their last six games, make the wildcard, sweep their first round opponent, whip those Phillies in the LCS, and then either take a title away from the Yankees and Rays. It's looking like that last game with the Phillies will be a lot of sentiment and an abrupt end.
ReplyDeleteI'll miss his quirky lineups, calling 38 year olds kid and putting a y on the end of everyone's name and yelling it from the dugout. Hope the HoF takes him asap.