Rick HoneycuttATLANTA — In a little more than two hours it would be all about the competing players on the Los Angeles Dodgers and Atlanta Braves. About hitting and pitching and defense, which L.A. had a good deal more of than the Braves on Thursday night in winning the first game of this best-of-five National League Division Series 6-1.
But before it began, Turner Field basking in a setting sun, L.A. pitching coach Rick Honeycutt looked around the Ted and said of the Braves franchise, “They’ve set the standard. They’e what the Dodgers want to be.”
Arguably the best baseball player to come out of the Chattanooga area, the former Lakeview High School and University of Tennessee star is now 59 and seven years into sculpting the standard for major league pitching staffs.
The Dodgers have the best cumulative earned run average in the major leagues since 2006. Now all they need is their first world championship since 1988, when Kirk Gibson launched that magical homer against the A’s, then hobbled around the base paths as announcer Jack Buck shouted, “I don’t believe what I just saw!”
But we digress. Nearly destroyed in the spring by the pitching losses of Chad Billingsly and Josh Beckett, a dismal 12 games under .500 on June 21, the Dodgers won 42 of their next 50 games, the second-best stretch over a 50-game span by any major league team since 1900.