Atlanta Braves: An Ode to Freddie Freeman
By W. M. Lawson
On Wednesday, Freddie Freeman was hit with an errant pitch, was injured, and had to leave the game. The magnitude of it looms for the Atlanta Braves.
Any reasonable Atlanta Braves fan coming into the 2017 season had tempered expectations. No clear thinking person would contend that they would contend for championships. But there were hopes. Half steps and measures of improvement to look forward to. Wednesday’s turn of events might spoil that.
Freddie Freeman’s injury on Wednesday has been widely discussed. No need to go over it again here. What has also rightly been the topic de jure in the last 48 hours has been what to do at 1st. Can the braves hold on until he gets back? How competitive can they be? How could this happen?
And there will be a lot of ink spilled here, and other places, that will tackle those topics. For these purposes, though, I’d just like to take a step back. A small step back to get the wider picture. A wider picture that offers up appreciation.
Having grown up in the Roswell area, and being a man older than 30, I remember what it is like to love bad teams that featured amazing talent. Dale Murphy. Deion Sanders. Nique (had good teams some years). Gerald Riggs. All of those dudes were the best in the business, but on awful teams.
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Atlanta Braves fans got spoiled in the 1990s. A fantastic team with a loaded roster dominated for 14 straight divisional titles. And even into the 2000s, it didn’t exactly feel the same, but the Braves won. We got spoiled.
Here we are in 2017 and the team is listless and rudderless of recent. The Braves Front Office is in the middle of a total reconstruction. It is a long, complicated, arduous, and tedious process. It can be ugly.
But there was always Freddie Freeman. Yes, he has been injured significantly twice in three years now, but when he is out there, dude is the baller. There is nobody else better on that field.
He isn’t on that field now, though, and won’t be for close to three months. Maybe more. And here is the point: We won’t always have Freeman.
“Freddie Free” is a notoriously slow starter to the year at the plate. But until his injury on Wednesday, he had raced off to a .341 average. A career .290 hitter who starts slow but closed the first 6 weeks of the season at a .341 average? The sense was that this was his breakout career year. The one that puts him up there with the best.
There, again, is the point. Notice, if you will, that as the talent around him got worse, Freeman kept getting better. That is almost impossible to do. Unless, you are special.
Freddie Freeman is a special player. In our “fansided” fire to build plans and scheme wins for our beloved Braves, we take for granted that the rock at first will be out there. That he will cornerstone our grand plans to championships.
When this writer takes a step back he sees a player in Freddie Freeman who is generational special. A dude whose absence could derail an entire season for a professional baseball team. A 1st Baseman who leads in the clubhouse and who steals bases (he has 4 in 2017). A never complainer. An always raker.
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Freeman will be missed, but he isn’t done yet. In his absence we should take time and appreciate what he has been, and hopefully will be for our Braves: The latest in a long line of dudes…Aaron, Murph, Smoltzy, Glavine, Maddux, Chipper, B-Mac, and now Freeman…who were the heart, soul and muscle of the team. Our team. Our Atlanta Braves. His Atlanta Braves.