This week, we lost two key figures on Atlanta Braves history. Ted Turner accumulated discounted media, bought the Atlanta Braves, and built and rode the cable television wave to a fortune and brought the America’s Team to millions across the country. Bobby Cox served forty plus years in baseball and helped build, nurture, and inspire the Atlanta Braves to fourteen straight division titles, one World Series Championship, gaining undying loyalty and a record-setting number of ejections. If you’re in a younger generation, you barely know them or just caught the tail end of the story. But we’re learning again about their greatness and some of the lost lore is starting to emerge.
They’re as Atlanta Brave as it gets. It makes me wonder how everybody thinks about when they think about the Braves. I remember this conversation with my mother from a few years during probably the last time we watched together.
Mother: Why are the Braves wearing orange?
Me: Mother, that’s the Mets. They’re the home team.
No it isn’t. The team wearing black is the Mets.
That’s not black. It’s a really dark navy that looks black.
It’s ugly.
Yeah I don’t like it either, but they’re short-sleeved and some pitchers like it.
Where’s Bobby Cox?
They have a new manager now.
Is his brother managing?
His brother?
Yeah, him and his brother used to set next to each other and his brother would just rock back and forth just nervous about everything. He looks just like him.
So to my mother, Bobby Cox and Leo Mazzone plus red, blue, and mostly white uniforms equaled Atlanta Braves. Which is fair, I think, if you folded laundry and talked on the phone while I had the Braves on. So who is Braves Baseball to you? If I picked three, it’s probably Bobby Cox, Andruw Jones, and John Smoltz.
Probably my favorite Bobby Cox memory was a game in 2003. The umpire told Kevin Grybowski to take off a gray bandage on his pitching hand. Not on the fingers, on the wrist because it could deceive the batter. This was after he had already thrown 15 pitches. Bobby Cox blew a gasket, pulled Grybowski off the mound, and got tossed. Lots of times his anger was theatrical, but it wasn’t that night. He tells the media afterward that “these hitters can come up to the plate with all this body armor on and the pitcher can’t even wear a bandaid.” He protected his player, got tossed, and Barry Bonds took a stray. That’s a Bobby Cox trifecta there.
I don’t have my three in any order and they’re not necessarily the most important to the 15-year run. But those are the ones I think when I think Braves. There are no wrong answers here or decade limitations. If Ronnie and Ozzie are the Atlanta Braves to you, then they are.
