ATLANTA – Dansby Swanson knows. He knows more than any other Atlanta Brave, even more than fellow Big Peach native Austin Riley – if only because the 24-year-old Riley is three years younger than Swanson – what it’s like to have your heart ripped apart time and time again by Atlanta sports teams, especially the Bravos.
“Just being here, understanding what the sports culture is like here,” said Swanson a few hours before he would score the winning run in the bottom of the ninth late Sunday night to make Atlanta a 5-4 winner over the Dodgers and secure a 2-0 lead in the best-of-seven National League Championship Series.
“Understanding how invested people are and ultimately kind of how this city has fallen short a lot of times, has led to a lot of frustration.”
Oh, do we all know the frustration of what it’s like to root for the Braves, the NFL Falcons, the NBA Hawks. Even the Georgia Bulldogs, though Swanson probably doesn’t emotionally share in those Dawgee Downers since he went to Vanderbilt, where he won an NCAA baseball title.
Still, Swanson remembers the Falcons leading the Patriots 28-3 in the Super Bowl only to lose. He may not be old enough to remember the Yankees’ Jim Leyritz homering at Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium to turn around the 1996 World Series but he’s surely heard about it. And he lived last year’s NLCS loss to these same Dodgers after the Braves led the series 3-1 only to drop the last three in a row.