{"id":36,"date":"2007-03-07T20:05:35","date_gmt":"2007-03-08T01:05:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/velcroblog.com\/?p=36"},"modified":"2007-03-07T21:47:51","modified_gmt":"2007-03-08T02:47:51","slug":"the-death-defying-atlanta-braves","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/velcroblog.com\/?p=36","title":{"rendered":"The Death-Defying Atlanta Braves"},"content":{"rendered":"

First, our new bench coach had his SUV flip on the way to the park<\/a>. Thankfully, he came away with just bruises. Then, Orr nearly offed Kelly with a line drive to his throat<\/a>. And today, Smoltzie took a line drive to the chest while he was on the mound<\/a>. He’s okay, very luckily. A major injury to Smoltz in spring training is just . . . really unthinkable. <\/p>\n

What do all these close calls mean? Hopefully things like this come in threes and we’ve seen the last of them. I’m glad I wasn’t able to listen to the first half of the game today; I can only imagine how scary it was to see Smoltz take a liner to the chest. Yikes.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

My two favorite managers, together at last! If they coached a team together, they would be unstoppable. Dave O’Brien, who worked for the Marlins while Leyland managed there, got some pretty good quotes from him in his blog:<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I can tell you this. Hands down, take it to the bank, John Smoltz is the best postseason pitcher I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve ever seen — by far. Such a competitor. I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know him very well, but I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve always had the utmost respect for what he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s accomplished. But he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the best I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve ever seen in the postseason.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

Then I said Smoltz wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t bad in the regular season, either.<\/p>\n

And Leyland said, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Slam dunk Hall of Famer. He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a special guy. One of those freaks who\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d He stopped to re-phrase. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153There are certain players and pitchers who, when they come on the field, people — fans, other players — stare at them a little longer and say, \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcWhat is it about this guy?\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s something special, an air about them.<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Even as an opponent, I enjoyed competing against John Smoltz. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s what this business is all about.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

Then Leyland turned to go do his group press conference with Detroit writers. But he stopped and said again, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153But without question, best postseason pitcher I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve ever seen.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Repeating himself for emphasis is classic Leyland. There’s a great anecdote in Dave Rosenbaum’s The Year the Marlins Bought the World Series<\/em> (one of my all-time favorite books for the Leyland quotes alone) about Leyland saying over and over again, in astonishment: “It only took Elton John an hour to write Candle in the Wind.” <\/p>\n

Oh, and apparently Moylan doesn’t want to be friends with Dave O’Brien, either<\/a>. He’s not having much luck with the relief pitchers. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

First, our new bench coach had his SUV flip on the way to the park. Thankfully, he came away with just bruises. Then, Orr nearly offed Kelly with a line drive to his throat. And today, Smoltzie took a line drive to the chest while he was on the mound. He’s okay, very luckily. A […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[22,2,6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/velcroblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/velcroblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/velcroblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/velcroblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/velcroblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/velcroblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/velcroblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/velcroblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/velcroblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}