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Wednesday, July 9, 2008

The State of Atlanta Sports

Editor's Note: This was written a few weeks ago and the power tripped at my office. I thought the post was lost and gone forever. Forunately, EggHead saw it saved somewhere I hadn't looked. Thanks to the Egghead. Unfortunately, the Hawks paragraph is now out of date. I'm posting it for posterity as I orininally wrote it. My new thought is that I'm happy for Childress that he was smart enough to outwit crappy management. I'm sad for my fan-dom but I like seeing smart players thumb their nose at a bad system.

That's the reason it's been quiet around these parts (well, that and the sad sad knowledge that no one reads this).

The Braves remain barely afloat in the standings. They have a profound ability this season to spoil good starts with horrible hitting and an amazing ability to make mistakes defensively late. The Franceour drama certainly didn't help morale and it seems like we play very passionless. Perhaps it is the spate of injuries that have derailed the team and their morale. Regardless, game after game the team seems to go into "hibernation mode" (as many bloggers have called it) and have an inability to score runs late. Overall they are a miserable team to try to watch play. I can only see so many McCann GIDPs, Chipper walks followed by strikeouts, and Acosta-s (that is, coming into a close game and figurately crapping yourself on the mound). I've refused to post about them for this long mainly because I'm lazy and it hurts to watch. That being said I am ready for the mirage that we aren't rebuilding to end and for the team to commit to the effort and trade some of what we have to get pieces for the future. We can accelerate our progress by moving Tex and getting something further along the development chain than the 2 first round picks we'd net if he left as a FA. We should be able to move Diaz (once he comes back) and Kotsay to contenders for some young 2nd tier prospects. Baseball is different than other sports in that you never really know who is good until they hit the big leagues. Sometimes getting 10 players and hoping 1 or 2 pan out is better than betting the house with 1 or 2 in a big trade (ask the Indians how they feel about Andy Marte right now. Or the A's about Dan Meyer).

Sadly, the most news about Atlanta sports lately is around the Hakws. Re-signing the Joshes is the most important item on the agenda (and one that I think is pretty close to happening). I don't think we had any intentions of letting Smith go to Philly and I have a gut feeling that we knew more than we let on about the Sixers looking to Brand first. The more important thing in these drawn out discussion is that our ownership mess is still unresolved. Even though http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/news/story?id=3480488 the NBA is willing to step in and assist the Sonics new ownership group, we still get the shaft and are left to have courts and appeals run their course. It's frustrating for the team to have the mess but is ridiculous that the NBA won't step in and help clean it up (after all, they approved this ownership group to begin with).

The best news for the Falcons is that there is no news. Nothing good, nothing bad is perfect for an offseason after all the issues of the last 2 years.

Fortunately, the Dawgs season begins in less than 2 months and the fight for the National Championship begins.

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