Tom Glavine: A Class Act Comes Home

Being 20-years-old, my knowledge of sports extends back...well, not very far in comparison to others.

I grew up in Alabama, and, clearly, we don't have a pro baseball team. So the closest thing is the Atlanta Braves. For some reason, Alabama has adopted the Braves as its team. And why not?

Who else are the fine Alabamians going to cheer for? The Florida Marlins? The Tampa Bay Devil Rays? I think not.

In the '90s, when my childhood was in full swing, it was a great time to be a Braves fan. With more than a decade of consecutive NL East titles, the Braves were always fun to watch. It never failed. No matter how bad the team was out of the gate, all you would have to do was wait for the heat of the summer, and the Braves would get hot and win the division.

For me, these Braves were heroes. Of course, the team always changed from year to year. I remember when Terry Pendleton was swinging a bat and not serving as a coach.

I remember chanting "Javy" at the television as catcher Javy Lopez would never fail to disappoint. I remember Sid Bream, David Justice, Steve Avery, John Rocker, the beginning of Rafael Furcal's career, the emergence of Chipper and Andruw Jones, and a host of others.

However, the most vivid memories of those great Braves teams was the pitching.

Smoltz, Glavine, Maddux. The big three.

No matter who else was on the team, these three were the constants. You could count on these three to be there and be solid every year.

Sure, Chipper now trumps all but Smoltz with his tenure as a Brave, but these three pitchers were such an oddity.

Even now, how rare is it to have three dominant pitchers on a team for the better part of a decade. The closest thing to the Braves' big three was the A's (Hudson, Zito, and Mulder), and they couldn't keep those three together for more than a few years.

However, as I learned in my childhood, all good things come to an end. As the 2003 season rolled around, I saw Glavine get shipped out to New York. I couldn't believe that my team would let this talent walk as they would do soon with Maddux, as well. That's baseball, I thought. And that was the end of an era.

Though it seemed like the end of the world at the time, the departure of Glavine wasn't a death sentence for the Braves.

Since 2003, the Braves haven't exactly tanked. They have been to the playoffs all but '06 and '07 since Glavine left for the Mets. They have only missed out on their division twice in that same time frame. 

Though the Braves haven't gotten out of the first round since 2001, the team hasn't been doing half bad without him. However, the last two years have been rough for Braves fans all over.

We have watched Philadelphia emerge and Glavine and the Mets dominate. For a Braves fan, two years without a playoff appearance is criminal. We need someone to help and we need it fast or else it will be a third straight year without the postseason in Georgia.

Where did this team of my childhood go? Where is Maddux? Where is the crime dog Fred McGriff? Where are the Atlanta Braves?

Luckily, this year's offseason held some answers.

Let's go back a few weeks to the offseason.

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