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A team unfulfilled Braves wrestle with game's greatest disappointment
Posted: Friday October 29, 1999 03:33 PM
NEW YORK -- Three decades ago, Brooks Robinson played on the best baseball team on the planet. The Baltimore Orioles of 1969-71 were a powerhouse that had it all: wonderful pitching, big hitting, a stellar defense and a crafty manager who seemingly never made the wrong moves. The Orioles of Brooks Robinson and Frank Robinson and Boog Powell and Jim Palmer and Davey Johnson and Mike Cuellar and Paul Blair and Earl Weaver and so many others won at least 100 games in each of those three years. They made three straight trips to the World Series. They were a dyed-in-the-wool-uniforms dynasty, ready to be feted with the greatest of Yankees teams. But they never quite made it. They lost to the Miracle Mets in 1969, even though Brooks Robinson says that was the best Orioles team ever assembled. The O's beat Cincinnati in 1970 in the Series, but they blew a 2-0 lead to the Pittsburgh Pirates the next year. And now, in memory, they stand as this: A good team, maybe a great one, that never fulfilled its promise. "It takes a lot away from it, you're darn right," Robinson, the team's Hall of Fame third baseman, was saying the other day in Atlanta. "Sure I'm disappointed. I would have liked people to come up to me and say 'You were the best of whatever.' That's what it's all about." When baseball historians write the chapter of the '90s, the Atlanta Braves will be a major character. Nobody won more games in the decade, no one went to more World Series. The Braves had marvelous pitching for nearly the entire decade, power hitters that made a mark, a consistently good defense and a crusty manager in Bobby Cox who pulled it all together. But they won only one World Series out of the five they played. They blew a 2-0 lead in the '96 Series and were swept in this latest one, the New York Yankees doing them in both times. The Braves of the '90s will go down as another great promise unfulfilled. Even now, before time puts the Braves in their proper perspective, the sting of their failures is becoming too much for these men to handle, even as they acknowledge their vast success. "A lot of parts of us suffers every time we don't win," says John Smoltz, the Braves pitcher who, along with pitcher Tom Glavine, has been the backbone of the Staff of the '90s. "I keep going back to spring training and thinking 'What could we possibly do different?'" Smoltz, the Game 4 loser, stood patiently -- sometimes defiantly proud, sometimes painfully introspective -- in front of reporters Wednesday around midnight. The '99 Yankees have been an awesome team, undoubtedly the best team in the Series, undoubtedly the best in all baseball. The Yankees are now, without a doubt, the media-dubbed Team of the '90s. "They should," Smoltz said Game 4, "be called up to a different level." But to Smoltz and the rest of the Braves, it barely mattered that the Yankees were clearly the better team. Losing, even on a team that won more games in the past decade than anyone else, has a way of chomping away at the competitive spirit. A decade of it in the game's most important showcase can be devastating. "Not yet, not yet," Smoltz said when I asked him if all the Series losses will have a debilitating effect on the team. But then he added "If we get back next year, it [another possible loss] becomes almost too much of a thought to bear." Years from now, when Smoltz looks back on the Braves' marvelous run through the '90s, he will remember all the wins. He will remember the team's sole championship in '95 and the four other Series he played in, something most ballplayers never get a chance to experience. He'll remember the closeness of teammates and heart-pounding wins and triumphant personal moments. But, most of all, he will remember what could have been. It is one of the chilling realities of making a living playing a game in which someone always loses. "It just sometimes," says Smoltz, who know this more than most, "doesn't work out." John Donovan is senior writer for CNNSI.com. Comments? To e-mail Donovan, click here.
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