Friday night having become Saturday morning in Braves Country, Atlanta pitcher Mike Foltynewicz met with the media to discuss the one-hit wonder he'd just thrown at the Oakland A's in a 3-1 Braves road victory.
It was a win made all the sweeter by reliever Jim Johnson striking out the side after Oakland's Matt Olson ruined Folty's no-hitter by leading off the bottom of ninth with a home run.
"It was very weird," Foltynewicz told MLB.com. "After about the seventh or eighth, our side of the dugout was loud. I was, like, 'Whoa, this is weird.' But that was a very cool feeling getting taken out of the game (after the Olson homer, with A's fans cheering him as he walked to the dugout). And all that stuff after the game, it's something I'll never forget."
If they continue at their current pace - Saturday's 4-3 victory over the A's improves them to 39-41 (.488) - the Braves may be engineering a season their fans may never forget, whether or not they ultimately reach the postseason in what appears to be, overall, a quite average National League.
Indeed, this whole season is starting to resemble that feeling you get after a special first date, when it's too soon to think about this one being The One but you just know this person's going to be a special part of your life for a while.
These Braves, if they stay healthy and the minor league talent - especially the pitchers - continues to blossom, are going to make our summers special and memorable for more than a while, perhaps for a decade or longer.
Nor does this warm and fuzzy feeling have much to do with Atlanta currently standing in second place in the NL East, because that's second with still a losing record.
But look closer at the Braves' toughness and improvement over the past few weeks - and all of it coming with franchise player Freddie Freeman out for more than a month with a left wrist fracture - and there's something more intangible and emboldening going on here.
Now slated for rehab work with the Gwinnett Braves, Freeman was batting .341 with 14 home runs and 25 RBIs in 37 games before his injury. Without him, the Braves should have collapsed. Instead they've gone 23-20 since May 18, the day after his injury.
Yet that's not what may be most impressive about either the Braves in his absence or Freeman's attitude while injured. As if to erase any doubt that he's about more than numbers, Freeman apparently will attempt to move from first to third base when he returns to the lineup to keep current first baseman Matt Adams - who was acquired from St. Louis after Freeman's injury - and his powerful bat on the field.
When your best and highest-paid player is willing to attempt such a switch for the uncertain good of what's still a pretty mediocre team, you've got yourself a championship leader with which to build a championship franchise around.
Yet Freeman's unselfishness isn't the only reason to like this team beyond the fact that it's won five of its last six series. Or that the bullpen was 7-1 in June and is now 1-0 in July. Or that Atlanta quite amazingly leads the majors in ninth-inning game-winning hits with eight.
There's also a camaraderie about this team that brings to mind, dare we say it, the Big Peach's worst-to-first heroes of 1991.
Merely consider this quote from closer Johnson after he surrendered a hit before striking out the side to save Foltynewicz's big win.
"I didn't want Folty to feel bad," Johnson said, "so I gave up a hit, too."
And when reliever Arodys Vizcaino gave up a home run Saturday that tied the game at 3 in the eighth and cost the ancient knuckleballer and former Tennessee Vol R.A. Dickey a win, shortstop Dansby Swanson had this to say about his winning RBI: "Viz has picked us up so often. It's fun to pick Viz up when it matters."
No matter how it ends in the won-lost column, this season is shaping up to matter much toward Atlanta's future. This is the season that could lay the foundation for championship seasons to follow. This is the season that, at least for now, shouts that the front office work of John Hart and the ageless John Schuerholz are expertly cleaning up the mess created by former general manager Frank Wren.
Swanson's continued heroics after a horrible April in which he was often batting closer to .100 than .200 - he's now hitting .228 with 35 RBIs - earned him a nickname from announcer Chip Caray after Saturday's win.
Following a comment by fellow announcer Joe Simpson regarding the Vanderbilt product Swanson, Caray said, "That might be Dansby's new nickname: The Big To-Do."
But this is the biggest to-do about the two-games-under-.500 Braves 80 games through a 162-game regular season.
Said manager Brian Snitker, who probably deserves NL manager-of-the-year consideration if Atlanta finishes .500 or better: "We keep coming back. And it's always somebody different."
That's also when you know you've got a team that just might prove hard to forget for years and years to come.
Contact Mark Wiedmer at mwiedmer@timesfreepress.com