Sid Bream Slides by: TTM from a Brave Great

When researching Sid Bream's career, I was surprised to find out he stole 50 bases over his 12 years in the bigs. The 40 CS by comparison was no surprise at all, save for the fact that the slow-footed Bream attempted a grand total of 90 stolen bases. In sum, I'm not at all sure what to make of that.

Any way you look at it, though, it is kind of odd that Bream will always be best remembered for scoring the winning run in the Braves 1992 NLCS victory over the Pirates. If you were a Braves fan in the late-80s, those NL titles in the early-90s were a glory to behold. And they did it with guys like Bream and another CCC favorite, the man who drove Bream in, Francisco Cabrera. Since I already have a Cabrera auto from 1990, before all of this, I decided it was time to give Bream a shot. He didn't disappoint.

Here's Mr. Bream on his first Braves card. Man, if we all knew then what the next few years had in store. 

For some reason I think of Bream as being a Dodger more so than a Pirate, but he was a Pirate nonetheless. You wonder if those fans have any regrets?

And here's another look at the Cabrera hit and the Bream slide. You can never get enough of that. 

Have a good one everybody and goodnight Pumpsie Green, wherever you are!

Thor as a 5'10" White Guy: Lemmer

This is the other card I pulled when going down memory lane the other night:

This is Mark Lemke circa 1990. In case anyone forgot, the Braves at this point are something of an abomination. They haven't been relevant since 1982 when they lost to the Cardinals in the NLCS. Sure, in they finished second in the old NL West in '83 and '84, but starting in '85 they'd go on an EPIC losing jag in which they'd lose 90+ games in 5 of the next 6 seasons. The exception was '86 when they lost 89. They were bad. This cat here was bad. They were ALL bad, in fact. So bad in '87 they traded they lone effective pitcher to the Tigers for some minor leaguer. Things sucked.

Then this happened. And this guy, this guy who even in the season had an OPS of .617 went NUTS to the tune of 1.170. 

This, I'd like to think, is one if the things that makes baseball great. It's not just the one guy who comes through in a big way and his team wins. There's also the career-OPS .641 2B who blows up over a period of days, a guy who had 63 hits all season who has 10 in a few days, and 4 of those were XBH. He had one of the greatest WS ever. And yet his team still lost. Now that I'm older, I think we're all there at some point. 

Any who, when I was a kid this wasn't quite an auto of Christ himself, but it was pretty darn close. 

Have a good one everybody and goodnight Pumpsie Green, wherever you are!

Old School Auto: Francisco Cabrera

My grandmother passed away about 2 years ago. She'd been living with my folks for several years, and they're just now getting around to going through her stuff. Understandable, I guess. On Sunday my dad told me he and my mom had found two autos I got in the late-80s at a Braves game: Vida Blue and Atlee Hammaker. Apparently they were in an envelop my grandmother had kept for years.

Anyway, that got me kind of sentimental. After my granddad passed away in the mid-1990s my grandmother always came over for dinner. In the summer and into the fall, she stayed for the Braves. In honor of gramma, I pulled out this card:

I got this card "the year before," but that doesn't make it any less awesome. If I remember correctly, I obtained the card and the auto at a Braves Caravan back when the Braves had a rabid regional following. Like my Glavine and Smoltz autos, when I got this Francisco Cabrera was nobody. 

But he'd very quickly become a somebody, one of the greatest somebodies in Braves history.

This video is here. I many ways, it's kind of a "shot heard round the world." Cabrera's BB reference page is even sponsored by a Pirates fan who says, "He ruined my childhood and destroyed a franchise. The only thing I can do now is make sure a Braves fan can never sponsor this page again." Dark stuff they talk over at Where have you gone Andy Van Slyke.

Anyway, get your EJ's out, trade bait coming out soon!

Have a good one everybody and goodnight Pumpsie Green, wherever you are!

This Man Will Save Your Team: Starring Nick Esasky as Jesus Christ

First, don't forget to check out the group break SMG and I are putting together, here. 13 teams left!

If you followed the Braves at all in the late 80s and early 90s, where do you begin the story of Nick Esasky? In 1990 he was coming off a career year in Boston with 30 HR, a .277 AVG, and a 133 OPS+. He was going to SAVE a franchise that was badly in need of some saving. 

Sadly things did not turn out that way. At. All. In something that could only happen to the Braves around that time, Nick arrived in the ATL, developed an ear infection that lead to him developing vertigo, and basically never played again. He was in 9 games in 1990 and NONE thereafter. That's some snake-bit luck for a snake-bit team. It's also terribly unfortunate for a guy who was coming off a career year and seemed to be hitting stride in his prime. 

This card is another one courtesy of Tribe Cards. It's a 1990 Fleer, so my first thought is it's gotta be airbrushed or EARLY spring training 1990. There's nothing obvious about the photo's quality, so I'm guessing the latter. It would also have to be RIGHT before the vertigo incident, if only because it derailed him early in spring training so that there was pretty much never a question of Esasky's playing. Pretty weird.

Have a good one everybody and goodnight Pumpsie Green, wherever you are!

Greatest Moment on Cardboard: Treadway Takes a Walk

My scanner won't quit cropping white border cards and I'm tired of wrestling with it. But don't let that detract from the absolute insanity of this card, Jeff Treadway.

Seriously, when was the last time you saw a dude take a WALK on a baseball card? And the fuzzy security guard in the background (I'm assuming that's why he has a tie) is another weird touch. Why aren't there more walks on baseball cards? In fact, is there even another in existence?

Treadway was a hard-nosed utility guy for the classic comeback Braves of the early 90s. Jeff was a pure Georgia boy, as in from GA, plated ball for GA, drafted by the Reds but played the meat of his career with his home state Braves. He's one of the guys you wish could have been on the WS Champion team since he was there at the beginning of the turn around. A suitcase kind of guy, he just showed up, did his job, and went home, a real pleasure to watch.

Have a good one everybody and goodnight Pumpsie Green, wherever you are!

Glavine as an ABC: THIS is a Brave in a Throwback Uni

Yep, this is how we do it. With all the uproar of Nat'l Chicle, I thought I'd throw out a card with a Brave in a throwback uni to remind those folks not just how it's done, but how THEY have done it in the past.

OK---the 1999 Topps Chrome doesn't scan well, but you get the point. Great card, great execution, NO fooling around.

Moving Cardboard: Braves for Trade Edition

OK, so I am going to start listing more cards for trade by teams. First up: Atlanta Brave, with two #ed Chipper Jones cards from 2001. And don't forget, I'm also looking to move this Glavine auto. As always, looking to land some CCs!

Topps Archives Reserve Murphy RC

1989 Topps Tiffany Dale Murphy

2002 Topps Dave Martinez Gold, /2002

Maddux insert

Maddux insert

2001 Topps Finest Greg Maddux

1993 Classic Chipper Jones

2001 Topps Finest Chipper Jones Refractor, 30/399

2001 Topps Finest Chipper Jones, 352/1999

Bowman Heritage John Smoltz Shiny

Goodbye Tom Glavine

A while back I was talking to a good friend of mine about the different teams we follow. He's from LA and a die-hard Dodgers fan. When free agency came up he said that he was team first players second, and that seeing different players depart the team didn't pain him all that much. I owe him a lot, because that's the moment I realized my fandom is player first, team second. Tom Glavine has always been one of my players, and I guess that his departure breaks the last tie I had with the Braves teams of my youth.

See, although my family travelled to many a Braves game in the dark era of the 80's, I guess you could say I was a "fan" but not a fan. That changed when, in 1989, the Braves sent a group of young players (+ Dale Muphy, who arrived to late for me to see him that day) on a tour of the South. This turned out to be the single coolest moment of my 12 year-old's existence. The only thing I knew about them was that the one guy I recognized as the person they got in the Doyle Alexander trade, which if you were a Braves fan in 1989 looked pretty bad on the part of the Braves as Alexander went a ridiculous 9-0 with a 1.53 ERA to close out the season.

1989 would be another losing season, but I hung on every pitch with Tommy Gregg, Pete Smith, John Smoltz, and Tom Glavine. I wasn't picked to go meet them and get their autographs, but a kid near me was. He must have been really cool, because he took a stack of baseball cards up for me, and the Glavine autos here are from that stack. These two cards predate the division championships and the series runs, and they were signed by a guy who had tied for the league lead in losses the year before. I guess that hearing the news yesterday that he had been released pretty much does it for me as a Braves fan. It's like a lot of relationships one has over the years where the crossing of a pivotal juncture means that the relationship, though still ongoing, will forever onward only be a shadow of its former self. I'll watch the Braves, I'll follow them, but I guess I'll never be a fan again like I am a fan of Tom Glavine.