If you wait long enough in professional sports, everything that goes around comes back around. The Green Bay Packers earned their third Super Bowl win at the close of the 1996 season, 29 years after they claimed their second. The Boston Celtics won their 17th NBA title in 2008, 22 years after No. 16.
Unfortunately for the Atlanta Braves, when their 51st season representing the Big Peach begins Monday afternoon against the Washington Nationals at Turner Field, they look far more likely to duplicate 1990’s 65-97 season than 1991’s 94-68 National League championship run.
But former Braves player and current broadcaster Brian Jordan believes the franchise will return soon to its past glory days, when the team won 14 straight division crowns, reached five total World Series in nine years and won it all in 1995.
“If you go back to 1990, just before the Braves started winning championships, they had the No. 1 farm system in all of baseball,” Jordan said during a speaking engagement in Chattanooga a few weeks ago. “That went away under previous management. But it’s back now. The farm system is No. 1 again, and I think the big-league Braves won’t be far behind.”
Indeed, from Hall of Fame pitcher Tom Glavine to future Hall of Fame player Chipper Jones, Atlanta became the envy of baseball throughout the 1990s for its homegrown champions. But as the farm system dipped in recent years under the leadership of former general manager Frank Wren, so did the product on the field.