Lavar Height’s smile was as wide as the Braves National League Champions pennant he bought and held up in front of the Braves Clubhouse Store on Tuesday.
His son, Harrison, turns 12 on Wednesday, and Height was taking home the pennant, an MLB baseball and a navy blue Atlanta Braves towel for the young fan to twirl around when they start watching the World Series on TV.
Credit: Christopher Quinn
Credit: Christopher Quinn
“We are doing a Braves birthday party. He doesn’t know it,” Height said. “He can tell you all about the Braves statistics. He can tell you all about the games.”
Height predicts his spontaneous bounty will be a hit with Harrison, who’s been smitten with the Braves since he was about 6.
The father and son have bonded over the Braves, and they’re not alone. The team has created a lot of bonds this year.
Atlanta and the region have gone bananas over the Braves’ unlikely march toward the World Series. It is not quite as dramatic as 1991′s “Worst to First” team, but for a squad that entered the playoffs with the fewest wins of any team, only to carve up the defending world champions to get this far, this current Braves team has become fan darlings.
Before the cool fall morning had warmed up enough for folks to doff sweaters, fans lined up outside the Braves Clubhouse Store at Truist Park to buy hats, jerseys, T-shirts, bats and pins.
Pam Carter and Dedra Jackson, friends and fellow traveling nurses from Birmingham, Alabama, emerged from the store with gear in hand and memories in tow.
“I remember watching the Braves with my grandparents,” Jackson said.
Carter chimed in, claiming it was her husband and daughter who are the big Braves fans before admitting she got up in the wee hours of the morning while posted in Germany to watch the Braves win the 1995 World Series.
”I’m feeling good about it this year,” Carter said.
It’s a feeling that Tom Glavine knows well.
The former Braves ace and Hall of Famer pitched on five teams that made it to the World Series, including 1991, 1995 and 1999.
“I see some similarities to our 1991 team,” Glavine said. “The excitement in ‘91 was twofold. One, we got to the World Series, but two, we were so god-awful bad the year before. So with this team, it is a similar feeling — it’s been a while since we have been to the World Series and there is a ton of excitement around that.”
World Series 2021 kicked off Tuesday night at Minute Maid Park in Houston, where Game 2 will also take place. Games 3, 4 and 5 will happen Friday, Saturday and Sunday at Truist Park in metro Atlanta. And if Games 6 and 7 are needed, they’ll be played next Tuesday and Wednesday in Houston.
The Battery, where the stadium and clubhouse store are located, has very quickly turned into a cultural gathering spot for rabid fans to gather and watch the games on the lawn.
When the Braves beat the Dodgers in the National League Championship Series, thousands of people gathered throughout the Battery to watch the games on big-screen televisions.
Kayla Curl, 26, of Atlanta bundled up with blankets in hand at the Battery to join fellow members of the Braves nation watching Game 1.
“The atmosphere here is much better than sitting on our couch at home watching it,” said Curl.
Mark Dorencz, 50, a Chicago native and Chicago White Sox fan, joined the party with his brother.
“It took 50 years for me living in Chicago to see two major league championships. It would be awesome to see a Braves champion and only take four months,” he said.
Kevin Dae, a 27-year-old laborer from Powder Springs, grew up watching the Braves with his father, who took him to his very first game. He’s been a fan ever since, and he said he is thrilled to see Atlanta’s hard work paying off.
“It’s been very heartbreaking. It’s been a lot of pain and a lot of hope, but if you are a true Atlanta fan, you stick through it no matter what because you know one day it will come.”
Credit: Sarah Swetlik for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Credit: Sarah Swetlik for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Before each game of the season, Dae says a prayer in the morning and does 25 pushups. This season, Dae said something felt different from the very beginning.
“There was something special about the team. You could just tell the chemistry was better than it has been in the past. I told friends, ‘I would not be surprised if somehow they do make it.’”
In many ways, the Braves making it to the World Series for the first time since 1999 is a microcosm of Atlanta sports. Frustration, highlighted by sprinkles of hope. Then frustration.
For a while, Atlanta United filled the city’s sports void, albeit in soccer. They took over the city in 2018 when they won the MLS Cup. They made the league championship in 2019, but have struggled to make the playoffs ever since.
The Atlanta Falcons made it to the Super Bowl in 2017 for only the second time in the team’s history. But in what is considered the biggest choke in Super Bowl history, the team blew a 28-3 lead in the third quarter to lose to the New England Patriots 34–28 in overtime.
And last year, the Atlanta Hawks — in what is considered the Trae Young era — reached the Eastern Conference Finals, although the franchise currently owns the second-longest drought of not winning an NBA championship at over 60 years.
So it is with that dread and anticipation that Braves fans are hopeful.
For 60-year-old Jerry Grillo, a Braves fan “since they were terrible,” it has been a season of growing expectation that has turned into excitement and hope.
”Since 1991, it’s always been expectation mingled with trepidation,” Grillo said, “because we always got close and usually didn’t make it to the big dance.”
Grillo said that even as the World Series was set to start, he was still in shock.
“Because, good Lord, if you had asked me at midseason — when they were barely above .500 and scraping by — about their chances, I wasn’t holding out hope,” Grillo said. “But I didn’t think they were out of it either.”
It is not lost on anybody that the Braves are playing the Houston Astros, a perennial powerhouse managed by former Brave and Hank Aaron mentee Dusty Baker.
Which puts Thomas Helland of Decatur on the edge of two dilemmas.
He grew up in Houston as an Astros fan, but moved to Atlanta and switched to the Braves in 1993, a year after the team lost its second consecutive World Series.
Secondly, he was able to snare tickets for the World Series games in Atlanta. He is looking at astronomical resale ticket prices of $1,000 or more and is tempted by the profit he could make, but the baseball fan in him is winning that argument.
Credit: Ben Gray
Credit: Ben Gray
“I am cheering for the Braves,” said Helland, who has never been to a World Series game. “I anticipate after three days of baseball I won’t have a voice. I am thrilled to be there. But I am more thrilled for the Braves.”
Dana Borda, meanwhile, said she would never consider selling her World Series tickets. She and her husband spent $1,600 for two tickets for Game 5 in the last row of the upper deck.
“That is how much I love the Braves,” Borda said. “It is just thrilling beyond words.”
Borda has been a crazy Braves fan since 1980, when she moved to Atlanta at age 6.
Credit: courtesy of Dana Borda
Credit: courtesy of Dana Borda
She was “too young” to go to the World Series in the early 1990s, “away for college” in 1995, and “too poor” in 1999 to afford tickets, she said.
“Being a Braves fan is a big part of my life,” said Borda, who was initially upset about the Braves moving to Truist Park in Cobb County, but now admits she likes the atmosphere and attends about a dozen games a year with her family.
“I haven’t gotten any work done in the last couple of days because this season has been such an unlikely come-from-behind story. It is really shocking, but amazing.”
Darren Wilkerson, a 28-year-old freelance videographer from Smyrna, has worked alongside the Braves for years, but said he was thrilled to be in attendance at the Battery as a fan. For Wilkerson, the Braves represent more than just a home team. They’re a symbol of unity among fans everywhere.
“People come together. I mean, the Braves represent the South. I feel like right now, the whole country — really the world — is rooting for the Braves. People are rallying for this,” he said.
Wilkerson wore a No. 13 necklace for Braves outfielder Ronald Acuña Jr., along with a string of pearls for outfielder Joc Pederson.
Credit: Sarah Swetlik for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Credit: Sarah Swetlik for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
If the Braves win this World Series, Wilkerson said he would be ecstatic to celebrate with his peers. “Everybody that I work with here, we’re going to be through-the-roof excited. I am hoping that they finish at Game 5 so that we can be there in the stadium and celebrate.”
Height remembers the waning days of his own youth, 1995, the last time the Braves won the World Series. He was a junior in high school.
“I was always mad at myself for not going to the parade” when the Braves brought home the trophy, he said.
In 1999, the last time the Braves were in the World Series, the parade was in New York as the team got swept by the Yankees.
“I told Harrison, ‘If they win, I am going to take you out of school and I’m going to take you to the parade,’” Height said. “I don’t want him to not experience that.”
— Kennesaw State University student journalists Sarah Swetlik and Destiny Cook contributed to this article.
