Braves.Today.Com

By Bud L. Ellis
braves.today.com

ATLANTA — Congratulations, Braves Nation. It’s just about over.

You’ve made it to the final day of 2008, a year that we’ll never forget … for all the wrong reasons.

Whether it was the best-laid plans spiraling out of control on the field, or the death of a franchise icon off the field, 2008 delivered the Braves one crushing blow after another. It was the year where Jeff Francoeur fell from golden child to Double-A, where a rotation with four 20-game winners turned into a modern-day version of a M*A*S*H unit, where the voice of a generation was silenced on a day that put all of the failures on the field in tragic perspective.

Suffice to say, this franchise and its fan base is ready to turn the page. After all, the arrival of New Year’s Day makes all of us believe the salad days are about to return, regardless of what reality may spell out in black and white.

Fact it, there remains plenty of work to be done if the Braves wish to be contenders in the suddenly tough NL East. But just the fact that, starting in a few hours, 2008 will be behind us, has to give all of us reason to smile. A blank slate is about to be positioned in front of us.

What that slate ends up looking like this time next December is anybody’s guess, but I’d be willing to bet right now that it will look better than what we’re looking at as 2008 draws to it’s long-awaited close.

The Braves lost 90 games this season. The Braves lost most of their starting rotation to injuries. The Braves lost a ton of games they never should’ve lost. The Braves set a major-league record for futility in one-run road losses. The Braves lost in every way imaginable, from dropping the final out of a game that would’ve been a win, to hitting a batter with the bases loaded in extra innings.

The Braves also lost Skip Caray, the voice of this team for more than 30 years who passed away in August. It’s fitting that the man who called so much bad baseball through his years behind the mike, who called Sid’s slide and Grissom’s World Series-clinching catch, would have the final word as we close out the toughest of years.

“So long, everybody.”

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