This series is dedicated to R.L. for your first birthday.
Kshof took me to my first baseball card show yesterday. Several tables set up with striking sports memorabilia. Cards, coins, pictures, balls, autographs, jerseys and the like. I was looking specifically for a Chipper Jones rookie card for R.L.'s first birthday, and Kshof found one for us, professionally graded and encased, preserved forever. Larry "Chipper" Jones is my favorite baseball player of all-time.
It got me to thinking. My personal standards for greatness have a lot to do with the baseball players that I watched and/or heard about growing up. Baseball was paramount in the "F"amily home. Longtime Braves voices Skip Caray, Ernie Johnson, Pete van Wieren, and Don Sutton helped Dad raise me. From the day that he subscribed to cable TV in Columbia, through my Camden High School and Mars Hill College summers, until the day that H and I left for Arkansas, we watched more TBS-televised Braves games than we missed. We were dazzled by Phil Niekro knuckle balls and Dale Murphy home runs. We saw Glavine and Smoltz and Maddux pitch most of their games in Braves uniforms. He would fall asleep upside-down in the lazyboy and snore, and I would sneak upstairs usually about the eighth inning unless there was a chance for a complete game or a save. He tried to take me to games in Fulton County Stadium every so often too. We'd stop at The Varsity on the way into town and then go to the game wearing baseball gloves and binoculars and listening to Skip on headphones,and we'd eat boiled peanuts and hot dogs. He got a smile out of Chipper once with his booming game-voice. We were sitting in right field, and Chipper was warming up out there, playing catch with Deion Sanders and "Crime Dog" Fred McGriff. Then, he'd drive us home safely while I slept, east into the early-morning Carolina summer air. My buddies and I danced in the halls of the dormitory when Smoltz shut out the Pirates in Game 7 of the NLCS in '91 to go from worst to first in the National League. He was the first person I called. We couldn't even talk over all the ruckus. That started a run of fourteen consecutive division championships for our Braves, the most stunning feat in the history of sports if you ask us. We had watched the whole thing develop from the ground up, across two decades, and that's how we learned to communicate with one another, and it's how we became best friends. We still attend games almost every year at Turner Field. My standards for greatness stretch beyond Atlanta Braves. Dad taught me about lots of players and teams.
Today I'm starting a series on greatness through baseball based on the Family way. Things I learned from Dad and Skip and Ernie.
#44 Hank Aaron. We have to begin with him. 6', 180. Bats right. Throws right. Right field. Best Brave of all-time. Purest power hitter ever. Under-appreciated as a fielder. Humble. Determined. Serious and often silent ambassador. He got to where he was with talent and hard work, not performance-enhancing equipment or drugs. Hand-eye coordination and strong wrists. 755. A complete man, R.L.
--MJF
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