Georgia overrated from beginning
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jacksonville — There must be something about annihilation that shocks the system. There must be something about getting hammered in a team’s two biggest games of the season that causes amnesia and makes everybody forget what this year was supposed to be all about.
An SEC title. A national championship. Maybe a little more ammunition for getting cut out of the title game a year ago. What happened to all of that?
Getting drilled at home by Alabama. Getting humiliated by Spurrier-esque proportions by Florida. Does it do things to the mind, other than severely dent the ego?
“I think with the expectations the media put on us this season, anything short of a national championship was going to be disappointing,” Georgia tight end Tripp Chandler said.
So now it was somebody else’s expectations. Perfect.
If Alabama and Florida are seeking a bonding moment SEC title week, they can share memories from what each did to Georgia this season. One handed the Dogs their first loss. The other affirmed that game wasn’t an aberration and exposed them for what they really are: a talented but deeply flawed team and prone to self-immolation.
Overrated or underachieving — it doesn’t really matter. The Dogs never belonged. Faster than you can say Outback Bowl, Georgia watched Florida score five consecutive touchdowns in the second half, lose 49-10, end up six feet under in the BCS and certainly restored any sense of superiority in Gainesville that might’ve eroded a year ago.
What were we thinking? Georgia allowed 90 points in its two biggest games of the year. It never competed. There can be no louder or clearer defining statement about this team.
There were no exaggerated end zone celebrations this time, just more end zone meltdowns.
Florida coach Urban Meyer managed to restrain his players but not himself. He called two timeouts in the final minute to prolong Georgia’s agony.
If he hoped to rub it into the faces of Dogs’ fans, the joke was on him. They had already left.
Meyer wouldn’t concede the timeouts were payback for the Dogs’ bench-emptying hug-a-thon last season. He didn’t have to.
Asked if the opposing coach was sending a message, Georgia linebacker Rennie Curran said: “No question. They played hard. They capitalized on their opportunities. They earned the opportunity to send that message. Anybody in their right mind would know they were trying to prove a point.”
They proved several. They proved it so many times that the scoreboard operator lost control of his faculties. Florida led, 49-3, when the Dogs scored a meaningless touchdown with three minutes left. The scoreboard official, presumably out of habit, pushed the same button he had been most of the day and initially changed the score to 56-3.
The correction was minor window dressing. Georgia fans hoped last year’s win had altered the landscape of this series. Instead, it made everybody recall the worst. The 39-point deficit was second only to a 47-7 loss in 1996.
There wasn’t anything the Dogs didn’t do wrong. They had three red zone possessions in the first half — when it was still a game. But the result was three field goal attempts — two bad, one good. Matthew Stafford missed a wide open Tripp Chandler in the end zone. Then he had a would-be touchdown pass bounce off Knowshon Moreno’s face mask.
At times, it wasn’t the limbs that failed to function, just the brain. Prince Miller had an interception nullified by teammate Jarius Wynn’s personal foul, leading to the Gators’ first touchdown. A nonsensical onsides kick early in the second quarter backfired, giving Florida a short field and leading to another TD.
The second-half? The World’s Largest Outdoor Grease Fire. The first five Georgia possessions went interception-punt-fumble-interception-interception. Three of those turnovers led to touchdowns.
The strangest thing about all of this? Georgia players would have you believe it wasn’t that bad.
“The game was closer than what the scoreboard said,” Moreno said.
“The score didn’t at all reflect how the game was played,” Mohamed Massaquoi said.
“I thought we were better team this game — just a few turnovers held us back,” Curran said.
The better team?
“Definitely.”
Some would say they’re in shock. Or deluded. Or in denial.
Regardless, this much is clear: They never belonged.
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You name it, Hampton’s had it
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
First it was the calf. Then it was the forearm. Then the back. Then the elbow, the oblique, the hamstring, the groin, vertigo, gout, brain freeze, demonic possession, high cholesterol, low biorhythms, closed chakras and going blind from sitting too close to the television.
Mike Hampton isn’t an injured pitcher anymore. He’s a wrenched ankle away from being the poor schlep on the Operation game. He’s way south of Chris Chandler and just north of Monty Python’s Black Knight.
Off go the arms.
“It’s just a flesh wound.”
Off go the legs.
“I’m invincible! The Black Knight triumphs!”
King Arthur passes.
“Oh, all right! We’ll call it a draw.”
For the 957th straight day, Hampton did not start an official major-league game Thursday night. He suffered an injury. A new injury.
A new injury? Who knew there were any left?
This time, it was a strained left pectoral muscle. He has been listed as moment to moment.
“Cold night,” Braves manager Bobby Cox said before the game. “Not good for hamstrings and groins.”
Cold night. Hot day. Leap year. Summer solstice. Like it matters.
When a pitcher goes nearly 32 months without a real start — with seven times on the disabled list and two major surgeries since 2005 — it’s safe to assume this is not all about weather conditions.
Mike Hampton suddenly has the durability of a Peep in a microwave.
If you’re Hampton, what’s keeping you from throwing in the towel? I mean, except maybe the fear of a torn rotator cuff.
“No, not really,” when asked he believed his fate seems doomed. “For the first 30 minutes I was pretty down. But I’m still optimistic.”
That’s one. He’s going back on the disabled list, and he hasn’t even thrown an official pitch yet.
“You think you’re ready to go, start the year and turn the page and …”
And then — same, same.
He said he felt soreness in the left pec — an unusual injury for a pitcher on Monday. He got treatment. He felt fine Thursday — for 23 pitches in the bullpen. “I turned it up, and it started biting me,” he said.
Trainers told him the injury is “minor.” Yeah.
Hampton’s $121 million contract — $43 million paid by the Braves in the final three years — mercifully ends after this year. When the deal expires, all parties will have paid off: the Rockies, the Marlins, the Braves and Aetna.
He last pitched Aug. 19, 2005 against San Diego. He allowed seven runs and 11 hits in 31/3 innings. In some painful foreshadowing, Hampton even was hit by a pitch by the Padres’ Chan Ho Park. He went on the disabled list with a herniated disk soon after. Other injuries and two elbow surgeries followed.
In the past several months, the Braves have watched Hampton rehab. But it seemed more like they were watching somebody stack wine glasses, waiting the inevitable crash.
“We saw him in Arizona before he went to Mexico [for winter ball], and he looked great,” Cox said.
Mexico. First game. First inning.
“He did the splits on a wet mound,” Cox said. “The hamstring went.”
Hampton made it to spring training. He suffered a groin strain, but the arm held up: a .500 medical batting average.
“I feel good about where I’m at,” he said at the end of spring.
Then came Thursday night. Lazarus, he wasn’t. It was 51 degrees but Hampton didn’t blame the weather. He didn’t really blame anything. But the strain was undeniable.
At 7:09, one minute before the scheduled first pitch, the Braves announced Hampton was scratched and would be replaced by Jeff Bennett. TV kept showing replays of his warm-up tosses, like the Zapruder film.
Hampton, who has been through quite a bit, said: “It’s the toughest thing I’ve ever had to do, step off the mound [in the bullpen] and hand somebody the ball.”
The Braves media game notes indicated Hampton is trying to become the first plus-35-year-old pitcher to win 10 games after missing at least two years since Lynwood “Schoolboy” Rowe in 1946.
Rowe died in 1961. He might have a better shot than Hampton to repeat the feat. It would be an achievement at this point if he could just make it to the mound.
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The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
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Tradition going, going .. almost gone
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
This is so ridiculous. The first couple of Major League Baseball games this season ended before many fans could yawn their way out of bed.
It’s bad enough that Opening Day is years removed from its rightful place in Cincinnati, only the birthplace of professional baseball.
But Japan?
There is no way the Boston Red Sox and the Oakland A’s should have started the season during the last two days anywhere but Fenway Park, McAfee Coliseum or any other diamond that sits between the Atlantic and the Pacific.
Then again, there is now way this madness involving American professional sports leagues playing games that count on foreign soil is going to stop.
It’s all about the potential for the greedy folks involved with these leagues to add megabucks to their megabucks. So, while the NFL already is holding regular-season games in foreign lands, the NBA is thinking about it, and baseball has joined its football counterpart by actually doing it.
I understand what’s happening here and why it’s happening. I just don’t like it, especially when the most endearing part of what was our national pastime keeps getting belted a few steroid-induced swings toward the ozone.
Tradition.
Once, the baseball opener always was in Cincinnati, and it always was the only game played that day. Now you’ve got this Japan mess, and then you’ll have the Braves becoming part of the “United States” opener on Sunday night against the Nationals in Washington D.C.
Then, on Monday, you’ll have 1:05 p.m. starts for the Kansas City Royals against the Tigers in Detroit and the Toronto Blue Jays against the Yankees in New York.
Then the Reds will play the Arizona Diamondbacks at 2:10 in Cincinnati as mostly an afterthought.
Night games in the World Series starting later and later. The DH rule. Lights in Wrigley Field. Interleague play and wild cards. The Dodgers bolting Dodgertown and the Yankees bolting Yankee Stadium. Opening Days near Tokyo Bay instead of the Ohio River.
Yes, look toward the ozone.
Tradition in baseball is going, going, almost gone.
Not that those greedy folks care.
Permalink | Comments (11) | Categories: Braves / MLB, Terence Moore
Sayonara, baseball tradition
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Baseball used to be a game played with nine men to a side, two managers, four umpires, and the major-league season always opened in Cincinnati. Come to think of it now, that would be sort of like “Gone With the Wind” opening in Valdosta. But Cincinnati had a deal, see.
The first “major league” baseball game was played in Cincinnati on June 1, 1869. The locals, the Red Stockings, eked out a 48-14 victory over Mansfield, whoever Mansfield was. So, several years ago — even the league office isn’t sure when — it became a custom that every major-league season opened in Cincinnati. Nobody played before the Red Stockings, now shortened to Reds. It was just that way. That’s how baseball is, very long on tradition. It just gets into a habit it likes and stays there.
Well, not any longer. Money can change any habit. Eight springs ago the Mets and Cubs opened the season, not in Cincinnati. Guess where? Tokyo. That Tokyo, the guys who gave us Pearl Harbor. Some people don’t like you to bring that up, trade with Japan is so hot. But I’ve got a long memory. I saw what a few bombs can do to our property.
Oh, well, ‘scuse me. It’s just tough to get away from it when you turn on your TV in the morning there are the Boston Red Sox playing the Oakland A’s in the Tokyo Dome. Not only that, but the Red Sox pitcher is Daisuke Matsuzaka, who didn’t grow up in Wampole.
Why not? A Japanese newspaper chain, Yomiuri, foots the bill for this Oriental excursion. Yomiuri is not exactly the Chicago Tribune of Japanese baseball. Yomiuri owns several teams. The Tribune owns only one team, and that team hasn’t been in a World Series since World War II. (Sorry to have to bring that up again.) Yomiuri’s team has been the Yankees of Japan, and I’m not sure, but I think they call themselves the Giants.
About Cincinnati and its dibs on opening day, that went on for years. Then the major leagues expanded from coast to coast, cramping the schedule. Television came in spreading money around like fertilizer, and things began to change. The Reds no longer had a monopoly on opening day. So they were allowed to throw the first pitch before anybody else. That privilege is gone now, but one priority remains — the Reds are always allowed to open the season at home. So much for tradition, of which about all that remains is that the baseball hides are actually sewed together by hand by ladies in some Latin American country.
They no longer play a Hall of Fame game in Cooperstown. The All-Star Game ends when the commissioner says it’s time to go home, even if the score is tied. World Series games start about my bedtime. The schedule is so jacked around that the Braves open the season with a one-game “series” in Washington, where a new ball park is being opened. There, one other tradition still prevails: Presidents still throw out first balls. George Bush gets to start the last game of his eight-year career on the mound.
It would be my guess that in Japan, emperors don’t throw out first balls, or even have any kind of presence at such a sweaty game. I saw a game in the Tokyo Dome once, but it was more dome-shaped then. It now appears to have gone oblong to oblige the new long-ball society. Managers are interchangeable, it seems. Bobby Valentine is still managing a team in Japan, and Trey Hillman, who managed five seasons in Japan, is now managing the Kansas City Royals, which, on the surface, appears to be a demotion.
So that’s where major-league baseball stands today, geographically. Not here in the USA, not in Cincinnati, not even in Kauai, but on the other side of the International Dateline. Heaven only knows where it’s headed next. They tell me they’re building a state of the Soviet stadium in Vladivostok, complete with a video screen as high as the sky, and beer sales. Oh, I forgot tell you this about Cincinnati’s sin. The Red Stockings were expelled from the league in 1880 for selling beer at the park. Think of that!
Permalink | Comments (192) | Categories: Braves / MLB, Furman Bisher
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UGA VII had an easy FRESHMAN YEAR with 4 real games: TENN, LSU, Florida, & Auburn. Tenn sux, LSU is not Great, Auburn can’t score in a W******* house with a HUNDRED DOLLAR BILL around THEIR GAMECOCKS, but THE GATORS Kicked your BUTTS and who knew... read the full comment by PI$$onaDAWG | Comment on Georgia overrated from beginning Read Georgia overrated from beginning
This just in: UGA sucks.... read the full comment by Freshmaker | Comment on Georgia overrated from beginning Read Georgia overrated from beginning
Well, I said it before and I will say it again, what happened to UGA is what I predicted and no one is surprised. From ESPN to the AJC, every media outlet is blasting the Dogs and how they cannot live up to the expectation. UF just totally shredded... read the full comment by Mike Bobo 17 INT | Comment on Georgia overrated from beginning Read Georgia overrated from beginning
Jeff - best column of yours I’ve ever read. “The World’s Largest Outdoor Grease Fire” was classic. I’m sure Richt tried to salvage the team’s crushed spirits by convincing them it was closer than the score. You... read the full comment by adam | Comment on Georgia overrated from beginning Read Georgia overrated from beginning