I've been following teh Apaches since I was a wee child. I know horrible!! I know Camp and Mahler horrible. I know Larvell "Sugarbear" Blanks horrible. I'm familiar with Biff Pocaroba bad.
So you're down with Gene Garber bad?
Sign Bruce Sutter and he sucks like a Hoover bad? 10-11 with 40 saves over three years while raking in $1.6 mil a year bad? I hated Bruce Sutter. Son of a bitch. That's about $120 grand per save.
348 year old Gaylord Perry bad?
Jerry Royster, Claudell Washington, Pascual Perez, Raffie Ramirez, Ken Oberkfell, Gerald Perry bad?
We didn't need Joe Torre. Hell with him. He won 80-plus games three straight seasons and finished first, second, second. If there had been wildcard teams, well. Fuck Torre. He sucks. Let's get TED to manage? Or the grizzy bastard from the Pirates.
I used to watch pretty much every game. Back in the TBS SuperStation days when I didn't have to hunt for the games on DirecTV.
Thought 1982 was going to be the year. Some great memories of that season. Watching games with my girlfriend. The extra inning games when her dad went to bed and said I could stay until the game went off. Horner's homers. The Chief in the outfield.
Good stuff. And then Neikro's hot start got rained out, the Braves had to redo and lost the series. Then Torre left and Atlanta went back to winning 60 games a year or so.
Until 1991. Funny you can look at the roster for 1988 and see people like Ron Gant, Tom Glavine and Jeff Blauser all making less than Sutter did for a single save. Each was in the 60k range. By 1989, Smoltz, Lemke, Francisco Cabrera, Jeff Treadway and Justice popped up on the roster. 1990 saw Avery and Charlie Fucking Liebrandt show up. Still won just 54, 63 and 65 games those seasons.
And then dynasty.
When Atlanta lost to Minnesota in the Series in 1991 I couldn't get out of bed the next day. I was horribly depressed. Didn't go to work. Got to remember this was pre-Internet days. I had actually taken a day off work and driven to Atlanta to get NLCS gear the day after clinched a Series berth. Loved the Braves then.
Now? I hardly ever watch the Bravos. Not sure why. After the World Series win I woke up expecting to feel something different. I didn't. And I moved on I guess.