Change Is Good

Like the last living confederate soldier, ace Braves pitcher Tom Glavine could tell his youthful teammates war stories of a bygone era in Atlanta. Glavine, a 34-year-old lefthander, could tell them he has been around so long that both he and the ancient Warren Spahn can claim to have been teammates of Phil Niekro. He could tell them of a season in which he lost 17 games and had what was then an embarrassing 4.56 ERA (which happened to be the National League average last year), about how he played with Ken Griffey Jr.'s father and how he pitched for a Braves team that fell 106 times. Glavine, however, chooses to spare them the Ken Burns treatment. "They never ask, so I just don't tell them," Glavine says. "I think they know we once stunk, but they don't know how badly we stunk, and they don't care. The only thing I say is this: Once or twice a year I remind them that going to the playoffs is not a part of the standard player's contract."

Atlanta has been so good for so long that trying to remember it as bad is like trying to recall Bill Gates as poor. The last time the Braves didn't make the playoffs—1990—their current starting shortstop was 10 years old. The quick ascension of Rafael Furcal, 19, to the majors is typical of how Atlanta has remained at the top while always retooling.

Ever since a young Glavine and Co. rose to prominence, in 1991, the Braves have marched on like the guards at Buckingham Palace. The cast may change, but darned if anyone can detect the slightest dilution of standards. This season has been no different. Half of Atlanta's starting position players didn't play for the club last year. Nonetheless, the 2000 Braves have one important characteristic in common with their nine predecessors: They're the team to beat in the National League.

Before dropping two games last weekend to the Philadelphia Phillies, these Braves became the first Atlanta team to start a season 21-7. In doing so they ran off their league's first 15-game winning streak in 49 years as well as their first 12-game home winning streak since they moved to Atlanta in 1966. At this rate, or even a bit worse, the Braves would become the first team in baseball to win 100 or more games in four consecutive seasons. Even more astounding, in those four seasons the Braves would have used four primary starters at second base, three at first base, three at shortstop, three in leftfield, three in right-field and three as closers (chart, page 52). "I'm more proud of that than anything else we've done," said general manager John Schuerholz last Friday.

While it's way too early to tell if this will be the best Atlanta team of the bunch, it's certain that it's the most intriguing, as was apparent in the Braves' clubhouse after a 6-5 win over the Phillies last Friday night. On one side of the room infamous reliever John Rocker attacked yet another splinter group—the wooden director's chair at his locker—after he had blown a three-run lead. On the other side 38-year-old cancer survivor Andres Galarraga dressed in front of a foot-high ceramic Virgin Mary in his locker, one of several likenesses of the Blessed Mother he keeps near him at almost all times. Somewhere in between, Furcal slipped out unnoticed, as if it were perfectly natural for a kid who would be young if he were a member of the Backstreet Boys, never mind the best team in baseball, to rap two hits, steal a base and play spectacular defense on his first day as Atlanta's everyday shortstop. (Incumbent Walt Weiss is sidelined again, for at least two weeks, with leg-muscle trouble.)

"I don't know if you can say it's our best team at this point," says Glavine, who stood to run his record to 6-0 before the melt-downs by Rocker on and off the mound on Friday. "It's hard to say any team is better than the 1995 team because it won the World Series. It's hard to say any team can play better than the '93 team did after the All-Star break [54-19]. That was ungodly. It's hard to say any team is better than the '98 team, which won 106 games. But there are a lot of things I like about this team. It's the deepest one we've ever had, and it's the most well balanced we've ever had."

How have the Braves avoided even one season of retrenchment? The foremost reasons for their success are:

?The Big Three. From the start of the 1993 season through Sunday, Glavine and righthanders Greg Maddux and John Smoltz (who will miss all of this season to recover from ligament surgery on his right elbow) had started 62% of Atlanta's regular-season games and 82% of its postseason games. Those three, with a combined record of 349-167, had more than half the Braves' wins over the past eight seasons.

?Player development. Atlanta has brought impact players to the big leagues on an annual basis: catcher Javy Lopez (1994), third baseman Chipper Jones ('95), centerfielder Andruw Jones ('96), righthander Kevin Millwood ('97), reliever Kerry Ligtenberg ('98), Rocker ('99) and now Furcal.

?A near-perfect batting average in trades. Schuerholz has made 60 deals as the Braves' general manager. Only once has he been burned: his March 1997 trade of outfielder Jermaine Dye, along with a minor league pitcher, to the Kansas City Royals for outfielder Michael Tucker and infielder Keith Lockhart. (As K.C.'s cleanup hitter, Dye had a .374 average, 13 home runs and 33 RBIs through Sunday; after two seasons Tucker was traded to the Cincinnati Reds; Lockhart is a Braves backup.)