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<\/p>\nBRISTOL, Tenn. \u2014 It\u2019s on pace to be the lousiest Atlanta Braves season since 2016, and might end up the worst since the late 1980s, considering their 9-22 record in the past 31 games and the depleted state of their pitching staff.<\/p>\n
Yet, tens of thousands of Braves fans turned out for the Speedway Classic game Saturday night in Bristol.<\/p>\n
Thousands were also in Cincinnati on Thursday and Friday, making it sound like a Braves home game when Atlanta scored eight in the top of the eighth inning of the series opener. (Before giving up eight in the bottom of the inning, but that\u2019s another story.)<\/p>\n
\u201cThis year hadn\u2019t gone anywhere close to what we\u2019ve wanted, but we\u2019ve still got fans that are pulling for us on a nightly basis,\u201d Braves third baseman Austin Riley said. \u201cEverywhere we go, there\u2019s a huge group typically behind our dugout. There\u2019s a lot of loyal fans.\u201d<\/p>\n
People like Kevin and Stephanie Lanke, a couple from Terre Haute, Indiana. They bought tickets soon after this Speedway Classic game was announced. The Braves\u2019 woeful season was never going to deter them from coming, nor was a calf strain that landed Braves superstar Ronald Acu\u00f1a Jr. on the 10-day injured list last week.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Kevin and Stephanie Lanke (David O\u2019Brien \/ The Athletic)<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were coming either way,\u201d said Kevin, athletic director at Saint Mary-of-the-Woods College in Indiana. \u201cThis event is bigger than how the individual year is going. Obviously, we were disappointed Acu\u00f1a got hurt on Tuesday, but it is what it is, and we\u2019re just excited to be here and represent Braves Nation.\u201d<\/p>\n
As they spoke, Braves fans filed out of the Paramount Bristol, a restored downtown theater that was the team\u2019s fan headquarters the past few days. The Braves\u2019 game at Cincinnati on Friday had just aired live on the big screen.<\/p>\n
It was for Braves fans from anywhere, but especially those who\u2019d arrived early in Bristol for the series finale, a one-off game Saturday that was expected to draw an MLB-record crowd of more than 85,000 to Bristol Motor Speedway and was played on a field built just for the occasion in the middle of the famous track\u2019s infield.<\/p>\n
\u201cDude, this is awesome,\u201d said Dillon Long, a Braves fan from Toccoa, Georgia, as he glanced around the massive speedway Saturday. He was sitting with his wife, Kaitlan, and their two kids, ages 8 and 9, ready to order dinner from a concession stand on the speedway infield.<\/p>\n
The first pitch was delayed nearly 2 1\/2 hours by rain, and scheduled Braves starter Spencer Strider was scratched, replaced by Austin Cox. It only began raining hard just before the scheduled first pitch, bringing out the tarps. The game was suspended in the bottom of the first with the Reds leading, 1-0, and will be completed Sunday at 1 p.m.<\/p>\n
The Longs had been in Bristol a few days, staying in their RV at the speedway campground. They were at the watch party Friday at the Paramount, a block away from the Birthplace of Country Music Museum.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s plenty to do in Bristol, a charming town that straddles the Tennessee-Virginia border. But the Longs were here to see their beloved Braves, regardless of the team\u2019s 46-63 record before Saturday and unaccustomed position near the bottom of the standings in both the division and wild-card races. Their run of seven consecutive postseason appearances, including six National League East titles before last year\u2019s wild-card berth, is almost certainly about to end.<\/p>\n
Nevertheless, it\u2019s been a very good seven years to be a Braves fan, they said.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou know, (a bad season was) always due,\u201d Long said. \u201cYou got too many people that think they know everything and how to solve the problems. I\u2019m not that guy. We just love baseball as a family.\u201d<\/p>\n
He noted that they are about 2,500th on the waiting list for the Braves\u2019 \u201cA-List\u201d membership, which includes access to special events, discounts on merchandise and other perks. \u201cSo we\u2019ll get our shot,\u201d he said, laughing. \u201cBut we got these!\u201d<\/p>\n
They bought Speedway Classic tickets as soon as they went on sale to the general public in December.<\/p>\n
Long can remember when a season like this wasn\u2019t unusual for the Braves, and that\u2019s without going back to the 1980s. Atlanta was third or fourth in the NL East in four consecutive seasons from 2006-2009, finishing 18 games back in the first season of that stretch and going 72-90 to finish in fourth place, 20 games back, in 2008.<\/p>\n
\u201cOh, yeah, in the early 2000s it was tough,\u201d Long said. \u201cBut we love the organization from top to bottom. We\u2019ve gone (to minor-league games) from Columbus to Rome to Augusta, Gwinnett, all of them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Braves mascot Blooper was also at the Paramount on Friday, along with the Braves\u2019 Heavy Hitters drumline and some former Braves who greeted fans and signed autographs. The fans watched their team lose 3-2 in Cincinnati on the Paramount screen, falling to a confounding 14-27 in one-run games.<\/p>\n
\u201cI mean, it\u2019s been tough. Obviously, it\u2019s been tough,\u201d said Kelly Thorndyke, 50, a Braves fan from Greenville, N.C., as he left the Paramount Friday.<\/p>\n
He was here for the Speedway Classic and drove over from Greenville with his wife, Lori, and their friend Bobby Williams, 51, a high school basketball coach and assistant baseball coach at D.H. Conley in Greenville. All went to the watch party and the game on Saturday.<\/p>\n
The three love their alma mater, East Carolina University in Greenville, and they love the Braves.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m a Dale Murphy guy all my life,\u201d Williams said. \u201cMy childhood home still is nothing but Dale Murphy posters that my mom and dad won\u2019t take down out of my childhood room.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s probably not going to say,\u201d Kelby Thorndyke said of Williams, \u201cbut this dude has pictures on Dale Murphy\u2019s front porch.\u201d<\/p>\n
Williams smiled and said he didn\u2019t mind if that went public. He loves him some Murph.<\/p>\n
\u201cSuper human being,\u201d said Williams, who added that his aunt and uncle have Braves season tickets, which also helped stoke his long fandom.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I started, the early years, the Murphy years, around \u201982, \u201983, they struggled,\u201d Williams said. \u201cAnd then we hit a great stretch. Now, this year has been, obviously, ups and downs. If something bad can happen this year, it\u2019s happened.\u201d<\/p>\n
When the Lankes finished work Thursday \u2014 Stephanie works for Thomson Reuters and trains CPAs around the country \u2014 they got in the car in Terre Haute and drove to Bristol, arriving around 1:30 a.m. Friday.<\/p>\n
Lenke said of this 2025 season: \u201cIf this is the penalty for (Atlanta winning) the 2021 World Series, it\u2019s okay.\u201d<\/p>\n
He smiled when he said that. Age allows him some perspective that some young Braves fans do not have. He doesn\u2019t see this season as a disaster that signals the end of a winning era and the beginning of some dark period in team history.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is part of what happens,\u201d with franchises, he said. \u201cThere\u2019s ups and downs. I wish they\u2019d have done more at the trade deadline, but it\u2019s okay. You know they\u2019ve got a plan in place. Obviously, Alex (Anthopoulos) knows what he\u2019s doing. The team knows what they\u2019re doing. They wouldn\u2019t have won a World Series in \u201921 if they didn\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Thorndykes said they wished that Anthopoulos, the Braves\u2019 general manager and president of baseball operations, had made at least one or two significant moves at Thursday\u2019s trade deadline, which they said would show that the team is preparing for the future.<\/p>\n
They had read and heard so much talk of the Braves being likely to trade one or both of high-profile pending free agents Marcell Ozuna and Raisel Iglesias.<\/p>\n
\u201cOzuna from the Braves,\u201d Lori said, smiling at the reference to an infamous incident when Ozuna told a cop who\u2019d pulled him over for suspicion of drunk driving, at which point Ozuna said \u201cI\u2019m Ozuna from the Braves.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI felt bad \u2014 Ozuna, Raisel,\u201d Kelby said, naming the players he\u2019d heard were most likely to be traded. \u201cBut then I also understand that maybe they\u2019re not getting the value (they sought in trades). And, like (Thursday), do we win that game without Iglesias, if there\u2019s someone else in there?\u201d (Iglesias pitched a scoreless 10th inning for the save at Cincinnati.)<\/p>\n
The Thorndykes never considered changing their plans for the Speedway Classic, even as the Braves\u2019 losses and injuries mounted.<\/p>\n
\u201cRoller coaster is not the right word,\u201d Thorndyke said, then paused but couldn\u2019t come up with a better one. \u201cI would say, you hope every game\u2026it\u2019s like a new year. You hope every night is going to be like this; this is what they\u2019re going to do from here out.\u201d<\/p>\n
He pointed to recent improvement by long-slumping Michael Harris II and Ozzie Albies as an example.<\/p>\n
\u201cFinally,\u201d he said. \u201cSo now I\u2019m like, okay, here they go. Now is everyone else going to come along?\u201d<\/p>\n
Lori interjected, \u201cAnd then Acu\u00f1a gets hurt. I mean, it\u2019s like there\u2019s always something going on.\u201d<\/p>\n
Still, they watch. And watch. Almost every game on TV, and some at Truist Park when they can get to Atlanta.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt the end of the night,\u201d Kelby Thorndyke said, \u201cI look at her and I say, why the hell did we watch this?\u201d<\/p>\n
He smiled. \u201cIt\u2019s been tough.\u201d<\/p>\n
But they also know that fans of almost every other MLB team would swap places with them and have a team that has been to the postseason the past seven years, won the World Series in 2021, not to mention one that was the so-called \u201cTeam of the \u201990s\u201d with multiple Hall of Famers, 14 consecutive division titles and a 1995 World Series win.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have been spoiled, for sure,\u201d Lori said.<\/p>\n
Lanke said he\u2019s one of the many Braves fans whose initial attraction to the team was because of the Braves\u2019 daily presence for six months a year on TBS in the 1970s and 1980s, when Braves and TBS owner Ted Turner\u2019s SuperStation beamed Braves games across North America.<\/p>\n
\u201cOh, for me, they were just so bad when I was growing up,\u201d Lanke said of the Braves, who finished below .500 \u2014 usually well below \u2014 thirteen times in a 16-year span from 1975 through 1990, before the worst-to-first season in 1991 when they went to the World Series.<\/p>\n
\u201cNinety-one was a miracle,\u201d Lanke said, \u201cand (fans) can get spoiled if they get used to them being that good in the \u201990s, if you don\u2019t know how it was before. I\u2019m just glad they got another one in my lifetime. In \u201995, when they won, I was in college. But \u201921 was just icing on the cake.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was a fan in the bad days in the 80s to the good days in the \u201990s, and then from (2018) it\u2019s just been great.\u201d<\/p>\n
Until this season.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe season, obviously, hasn\u2019t been what we had hoped, for a lot of reasons,\u201d Braves manager Brian Snitker said before Saturday\u2019s game. \u201cBut it\u2019s amazing, the fans that I\u2019ve talked to, how supportive they still are. They\u2019re appreciative of everything we\u2019ve accomplished over the years, and I think they understand, you know, that these things happen.<\/p>\n
\u201cLike I\u2019ve said, it\u2019s a special group of people. I\u2019ve seen a lot of Brave jerseys driving in here (to the Speedway Classic), and so I think it\u2019s going to be really special for a lot of people, including us.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
(Top photo: Jamie Squire \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BRISTOL, Tenn. \u2014 It\u2019s on pace to be the lousiest Atlanta Braves season since 2016, and might end…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":115717,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[1280,1266,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-115716","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-atlanta-braves","9":"tag-mlb","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-united-states","12":"tag-unitedstates","13":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114965116668780573","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115716","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=115716"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115716\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/115717"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=115716"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=115716"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=115716"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}