Braves Watch: Game 160

It’s tough to watch the Braves finish like this. All the “fans” come out of the woodwork and say such idiotic things. Talk of “epic collapses” aren’t qualified with who got hurt (and other variables). Player salaries are brought up, but not how the twenty teams already eliminated have players with similar salaries. Even if the Braves make the NLDS, it won’t be pretty. But any team can catch fire at any moment.

McCann is really slumping right now. Uggla, Prado, and Freeman aren’t at the top of their games. Born looks tired and frustrated. He’s played in every game since he’s been here (have I said that recently?). Heyward has been relegated to the bench.

Chipper is hitting better than anyone, but you can tell he’s hurting. Last night he had 2 of the Braves 7 hits, plus a great barehanded play at third base. Playing in, he just missed grabbing that Victorino grounder. Watching Will play third, I know what a tough position it is. After he grounded into the double play, bloggers wanted to know why he was still in the game. But had he not played, the same bloggers would’ve been all over him for being soft.

Looks like O’Flaherty, Venters, and Kimbrel will be available for all three games this week. Martinez, too. Starter Delgado looked good, except when he tripped over first base.

What is your opinion on batting coaches? Are they just figureheads? An extra coach whose time is devoted to helping hitters, since a manager can’t do everything? How much blame should they get when a team slumps? Is Larry Parish good or bad? I haven’t heard much about him all year.

Moneyball: I haven’t read all the articles about it, but the one in SI was good.

Last night Passion City Church had a webcast worship service for college students. I don’t know how many students were down at the church for the live event, but over 2000 college campuses were represented on line, in at least 54 countries. Louie had gotten his start leading a Bible Study at Baylor, and has focused on college students ever since then. Ceil and Anna had it on the computer.

I kept the TV on the Braves, because I was “working” on my computer. Plus we had the Passion service going on the computer, in the same room.

Since Matthew had been making contact, the coach batted him third Saturday. Had two bad plate appearances against two fastballers. He also made a lot of contact at last night’s practice. I pitched extra BP to him, Jessica, and Marlon. My pupil has wanted to keep his poor fundamentals because they’re comfortable, but last night he hit better than he has all year. Barring rain, tonight we’ll see if he can hit in a game. Several players were goofing off while Matthew was hitting, and the coach challenged them to do their best. Then Matthew hit one through all of them.

Will skipped Matthew’s practice to attend Scott’s mugging at Living Science, a good thing to do. The Hurt girls were there. Sunday I watched the Braves with Joel, after he gave Matthew a guitar lesson and before Will got home. He and Kevin had attended the previous Sunday’s Braves/Mets disaster with David and Haley Hurt.

Tuesday evening both W and M play 6 pm games, at different parks. I’ll have to miss Will’s game.

Monday afternoon things are work were going as normal, then about three things when horribly wrong…all on the same part. Spent several hours fixing it.

I had heard of Stan Cottrell before, but had to look him up on the internet to make sure. Does he have an Atlanta connection? I used to run a lot of road races around town, maybe that’s where.

I was wondering about Terra Nova. I always forget about those shows on network TV. Sometimes Anna knows about a singoff show, and she’ll watch that. I’m always interested in what “stars” are on Dancing. A lady here at work loves Nancy Grace, so I’ll have to ask her if she’s watching DWTS.