The Atlanta Braves faithful are in mourning – again.

The Dodgers aren’t exactly America’s team – the moniker the Braves used to have after Ted Turner started carrying their games on the TBS cable superstation in 1970. But the former Bums from Brooklyn retain a huge following and broke the Bravos’ collective heart by rallying from a 3-1 deficit in the National League Championship series.

So it’s LA that advances to the World Series for the third time in the last four years after a 29-year drought from making the Fall Classic. The Braves looked headed to the Series for the first time since 1999 during their heyday under manager Bobby Cox, winning 11 straight division titles but only one world championship in the strike-shortened season of 1995. That was nothing like 2020, for sure.

Yes, the underdog Braves swept the Red and Marlins and had a commanding lead over the Dodgers in the NLCS of this altered post-baseball season.

After winning three of the first four games, they led 2-0 in game five and were threatening to blow it open, when the Dodgers defense snuffed out the uprising before beginning their own classic comeback on the neutral field in Texas, due to the pandemic.

I’m sure the Braves still have a rabid following in Atlanta, but now that every team has a cable network fans from all over the country are free to follow their favorite ball clubs from their childhood.

The current franchise doesn’t have the star power of the ball clubs with pitchers Tom Glavine, Greg Maddux and John Smoltz, who combined the win six Cy Young awards in their careers. They are more hustling overachievers who were underdogs against the Dodgers starry lineup of Mookie Betts, Corey Seager and Cody Bellinger.

They finished the interrupted 60-game season with a 35-25 record to win the National League East and had some memorable moments like when Marcell Ozuna and Adam DuVall became the first teammates in MLB history to hit three homers each in consecutive games.

And they could score runs, plating 29 against the Rangers, one short of the all-time record. They led the Dodgers in the series and game 7 twice, only to lose it on a Bellinger homer in the 8th, sadly.

 

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