It would not be inaccurate to look back at the Atlanta Braves' organization over the past couple of decades and compare it to those Las Vegas tourism ads: What happens inside their inner sanctum stays within that inner sanctum.
Fort Knox and the CIA are easier to penetrate than the Braves. Their public persona is one of everything's, well, peachy. So it would theoretically only be conjecture to say with certainty that just-fired general manager Frank Wren pretty much had burned his organizational bridges as if he were William Tecumseh Sherman marching to the sea.
But as ESPN's Jerry Crasnick noted Monday in discussing Wren's firing from the post he'd held for seven years (and a franchise he's worked with for 15 years), when former manager Bobby Cox omitted Wren's name from the people he wanted to thank in his Hall of Fame induction speech this summer, "It publicly substantiated the notion that the relationship between the two men was beyond strained."
And once your relationship with the immensely popular Cox is beyond strained, you're probably beyond retaining your job.
So the first shoe has fallen in the Braves makeover for 2015. And swiftly, too, less than 24 hours after Atlanta officially was eliminated from the playoffs for the second time in the four years that Fredi Gonzalez has managed the team following Cox's retirement at the close of the 2010 season.
And given that, plus the abysmal finishes the Braves have delivered under Gonzalez -- never batting above .235 in September, thrice posting losing September records in those four seasons -- it would stand to reason that Fredi Fade would soon follow Wren to the unemployment line.
Just don't expect Cox to take that view publicly at the moment.
In a Monday news conference in which it was announced that Cox, team president John Schuerholz and interim GM John Hart would form the search committee to replace Wren, someone asked Cox if he would encourage the new GM to retain Gonzalez, who was once one of his assistants.
"Yes," he said. "Absolutely."
This doesn't mean Gonzalez is 1,000 percent back. But if early reports that current Braves assistant GM John Coppolella is the clubhouse leader to replace Wren -- or should Kansas City GM Dayton Moore, a former Schuerholz aide, return to the Braves -- it's also not hard to see Gonzalez retaining his job.
And that's OK, one supposes. Over the 20-plus years that Cox managed the Braves, including 14 straight division titles, he understood the grind of 162 regular-season games as well as or better than anyone ever. And Schuerholz certainly kept the talent coming, both in acquisitions such as Greg Maddux and Fred McGriff and through what was arguably baseball's best farm system.
But those times are not these times. As more than one media outlet pointed out Monday that when the Braves won the 1995 World Series they had the third highest payroll in baseball. Four years later, when they were swept by the New York Yankees in their last Fall Classic appearance, they still stood sixth.
This year's opening-day roster of just under $111 million ranked 14th in the majors. Check Monday morning's standings and 15 teams had better records than the Braves heading into the last week of the season, with eight of those owning higher payrolls than Atlanta. Moore's Royals, with baseball's 19th highest payroll, entered Monday night as the American League's second wild-card team by a single game.
But payroll didn't seem to be on the minds of Cox and Schuerholz on Monday as they discussed how to return the Braves to baseball's elite. Instead, Schuerholz spoke of intangibles, of something felt as much as seen.
Calling it the "Braves Way," he said, "It's a special way of identifying young players who you want to become part of your organization ... that when they put on a Braves uniform, they'll be taught well, instructed well. Their makeup and their character will allow them to turn into winning championship-caliber players. They'll fill the pipeline of this organization with highly capable, high-character, young winning men who help you win many, many championships on a major league level, year after year after year."
And that they did for 14 straight years under Cox, who was swiftly joined by Schuerholz in the early 1990s.
But those were highly paid players, also. And unusually talented, as witness the Hall of Fame inductions of pitchers Tom Glavine and Maddux, who almost assuredly will be soon joined by John Smoltz.
Gonzalez does not have that kind of talent, let alone possess the ability to inspire the talent he does have when it matters most.
And given such evidence over the past four years, it would have been refreshing to see the Braves reach out to someone outside the organization such as our own Rick Honeycutt, currently the Los Angeles Dodgers' pitching coach but a sharp enough batsman to have once led the Southeastern Conference in hitting, batting .404 one season at Tennessee.
Honeycutt undoubtedly would retain current Braves pitching coach Roger McDowell, a close friend who may be the organization's lone coaching bright spot of late. He'd bring Southern manners and charm, which have always seemed a major part of the Braves Way. But he'd also bring a fresh perspective, which the organization sorely needs these days.
And whoever becomes the manager needs to make a strong play to get another soon-to-be Hall of Famer from the team's glory years, Chipper Jones, to be the hitting coach.
"It is our goal to find that Braves Way again and invigorate it," Schuerholz said
Unless they again find those old Braves payrolls, it seems that clinging to that past might be just as likely to implode the organization as invigorate it.
Contact Mark Wiedmer at mwiedmer@timesfreepress.com.