ATLANTA – Other than another victory, it ended the way it should have for retiring Atlanta Braves skipper Bobby Cox on Monday night. It ended with sweet tears all around for the best regular-season manager ever.
“There wasn’t a dry eye in the place,” said Chipper Jones, who might have helped take the Braves to a different place than a first-round exit against the San Francisco Giants if he hadn’t blown out a knee in August.
“I’ve never seen Bobby crack. Bobby has always been pretty sure about what he’s going to say. But he couldn’t get it out.”
What Cox could get out once he reached the public setting of the news conference following the season-ending 3-2 loss was this: “I’m proud of this team. They played their hearts out and I’m going to miss them.”
Not as much as the Braves will miss Cox when spring training begins in February. You can argue over his single World Series crown in five attempts. You can even point to all those playoff series lost on home soil (8).
But 14 straight division crowns from 1991 tp 2005 is both without peer and without argument. It may be the single greatest accomplishment in managing history. Beyond that, as ESPN analyst Jayson Stark noted earlier this week, what if the Braves’ closer had been the Yankees’ Mariano Rivera instead of a cast of thousands?
Think Bobby would have just one World Series ring? Think Joe Torre would have four rings?
But neither Cox nor Torre will be managing the Braves in 2011. According to multiple media reports Tuesday night in Atlanta, former Florida Marlins skipper Fredi Gonzalez – the Braves’ 2003-06 third base coach – will take over, a move certain to please the current Braves.
“I just hope it’s someone who’s familiar with and appreciates the way we’ve done things around here,” Jones said. “Other than that, I’ll wait until someone is named to say much.”
The way they played for their skipper this season says much about the character and class throughout the roster that Gonzalez, or another choice, will coach.
As relief pitcher Peter Moylan noted late Monday, “You lose two starting pitchers, you lose two No. 3 hitters, two third basemen, [pitcher Eric[ O’Flaherty, [closer Billy[ Wagner, it’s like [big laugh[, it’s hard to even imagine we got as far as we did.”
Added Jones: “I think 99 percent of the rest of the teams in baseball – with the injuries to the players we had injured – all those teams would have folded. But this is what happens when you’ve got gritty, gutty ballplayers who leave it all out there every night.”
Indeed, in spite of the seven errors they committed against the Giants in the NLDS, these were never so much the Bad News Braves as the Band-Aid Braves, seemingly held together with chewing gum and baling wire.
But it is also a team that should have fairly imposing talent when it reconvenes in the spring.
“Looking forward, what I love about this team,” began pitcher Derek Lowe, “is that any time you can go into the offseason not needing starting pitching, that’s a great thing.”
Exactly. In Lowe, Tim Hudson, Tommy Hanson and injured pitchers Jair Jurrjens and Kris Medlen – once he returns from Tommy John surgery late next season – are one of the top three or four starting staffs in the National League, just behind the Phillies and Giants.
Despite needing to make a decision about a closer to replace Wagner, the bullpen also looks strong.
And when it comes to the position players, the Braves seem set as long as they can shore up the outfield in left and center.
“Definitely a great nucleus here,” said Hinske, who had been on three straight World Series rosters before coming to the Braves. “A lot of young flamethrowers, a lot of young position players and an old one [acknowledging Jones with a grin].”
Said old man Jones” “Any time you’ve got good pitching you’ve got a chance, and we’ve got an abundance of it. The middle of the lineup’s intact. We need to decide about how we replace Wags, and we need a right-handed power hitter. But I’m very encouraged about the future.”
Yet whether Gonzalez will be announced as the Braves skipper of the future today or later in the week, the Braves skipper of the past will leave a lasting impression long after the image of his No. 6 jersey is scrubbed from the Turner Field on-deck circles.
“He’s been the Rock of Gibraltar around here for a quarter of a century,” said former general manager John Schuerholz. “There will never be another Bobby Cox.”
And pity the fool who doesn’t understand that.