Thanks For The Memories

Timing is everything.

The first year I was old enough to remember being an Atlanta Braves fan was the year after they won the National League West. I came along at the beginning of a downward spiral that would see them finish last or next-to-last six straight years. The year of my thirteenth birthday they lost 106 games and finished 39.5 games out of first place. Let that sink in. In a season of 160 games (two rainouts weren't made up), they managed to finish nearly 40 out of the playoffs. The Braves like to tout themselves as the oldest continually operating franchise in baseball. The only year worse than my thirteenth? When they lost 107 games...as the Boston Rustlers...in 1911.

There was a running joke in Atlanta back then about winning a contest. First prize? Two free tickets to a Braves game. Second prize? Four free tickets to a Braves game.

But I was hooked for life. I loved the game (still do). I loved the team (still do) and I loved watching Skip, Ernie and Pete every summer night on TBS (wish I still could).

From left: Skip Caray, Ernie Johnson and Pete Van Wieren

Turns out, as we are unfortunately learning again, the benefit of being lousy is that you get the top pick in the following year's draft, meaning you get to pick the best amateur player in the world. During the summer of my fourteenth birthday, thanks to 97 nights of disappointment the summer before, the top pick belonged to the Atlanta Braves.

As is currently the case, the Braves were using their picks to stockpile young arms (see also: Glavine, Tom and Avery, Steve). That year the top young pitcher in America was a Texas high schooler named Todd Van Poppel. The story goes that the Braves wanted Van Poppel, but Van Poppel wanted nothing to do with the Braves. He made it clear he would not sign with the cellar-dwelling Braves if they drafted him. I remember as a teen growing up in Gwinnett County thinking, "If he doesn't want to come to Atlanta then we don't want him to come to Atlanta". Instead he ended up going to the defending World Champion Oakland A's with the fourteenth pick.

The rest is (Braves) history, as they say. Atlanta turned its attention to a high school shortstop in Florida named Larry Wayne (Chipper) Jones, on whom they used that No. 1 pick. Had Atlanta not lost 97 games the previous summer they might have gotten Van Poppel, who spent his major league career bouncing from team to team winning just 40 games in 14 seasons. Instead the Braves got a future Hall of Famer who spent his entire 19 year career in Atlanta and has repeatedly said "I never wanted to play anywhere else".

Four years later I was a freshman in college and the Braves had gone from worst-to-first, won three consecutive division championships and captured the hearts of the nation via the Superstation. By that year Chipper was the top prospect in the Braves organization and ready to become the Braves' regular leftfielder. But the baseball gods had other plans.

I was watching that spring training game against the Yankees on my little 13-inch dorm room TV, anxious to see the prospect play for the first time, when he landed awkwardly while running out a play at first base and crumpled to the ground. Torn ACL. His rookie season over before it began.

You know when you hear about the Braves' string of 14 consecutive division championships from 1991 to 2005? Well it would have ended at three were it not for the players' strike of 1994. The Braves were six games behind the ridiculously loaded Montreal Expos when the season came to an abrupt halt. The Braves had lost 6 games in the standings in the previous three weeks and were headed in the wrong direction. Montreal would have won the National League East that year, but either greedy owners or ungrateful players (depending on which side you were on) intervened and no one won anything that year (especially not us fans).

So rather than burst onto the scene in that ill-fated 1994 season, Chipper assumed his full-time role in the Braves lineup in 1995. You may have heard of 1995. To this day it's the only championship season in Atlanta sports history. Chipper was named Rookie Of The Year, hit two home runs in his first postseason game and took his first steps down the road to Cooperstown.

1995 World Series (cleveland.com)

Timing is everything.

I can't imagine what winning a championship in your rookie season does to a player, but I have to imagine you expect there will be more. As fans, we assumed there would be many more 1995s. But there haven't been. You know the rest. The Braves' frustrations have been well documented: 14 consecutive division titles (with the above mentioned exception), 5 National League pennants...and only one World Series trophy to show for it before Chipper retired after the 2012 season. He was National League MVP in 1999...but the Braves were swept by the Yankees in the World Series and haven't been back since.

Along the way there were too many big hits to recall (often against the Mets, so much so that he named one of his children "Shea" after the Mets' former home). There were impossible-to-believe plays at third base and, yes, even a few in left field. There was the home run in front of the home crowd at Turner Field during the 2000 All-Star Game. And then there was the Grand Finale...

After 467 career home runs, and six months after he announced that the 2012 season would be his last, Chipper stepped to the plate late on the Sunday afternoon of September 2nd trailing the much-hated Phillies 7-5 with two outs in the bottom of the ninth. His three-run home run off of the then-virtually-unhittable Jonathan Papelbon earned that season's "Walk-Off Of The Year" in the Greatness In Baseball Yearly (GIBBYs) Awards. He would have 70 more official at-bats as a major leaguer after that day, but that would prove to be his final and, in his words, most ecstatic home run.

"Nothing beats that," he was quoted as saying later that night. It was Roy Hobbs knocking out the stadium lights in his last at-bat, with the role of the lights being played by the Philadelphia Phillies.

Saving his best for last.

Timing is everything.

The following season the Braves retired Chipper's number 10 at Turner Field. During his acceptance speech he was sure to thank Todd Van Poppel. Every Braves fan of a certain age still does.

Braves retire Chipper Jones's No. 10 (AJC)

We didn't know it at the time, but that was the beginning of the end for the Braves as we knew them. The Chipper-less Braves won the East again the next year but broke our hearts in walk-off fashion in the Division Series in L.A. In 2014 they lost 16 of their final 20 to miss the playoffs, which led to the complete rebuild in which we currently find ourselves.

This year we are told there is hope. A new General Manager. A new top prospect in all of baseball. Sounds familiar. Sounds like 1991. Maybe this is the year our dreams in Spring Training finally become October reality. Maybe this is the year we reclaim our rightful spot in the postseason. Maybe the Braves' return to baseball royalty will coincide with Chipper joining baseball's most exclusive club.

After all, timing is everything.