Dear Dickie,

Agreed, I am nuts. Any Braves fan, especially at this point in the season, worrying about their team achieving a particular number of wins or topping a certain winning percentage has too much time on his or her hands. (I’ll also admit that I often spend well over half my weekends either watching football or scrounging the Internet for that one last bit of Falcons, Braves, or Bulldogs-related trivia that has otherwise eluded me.) Barring a last minute meltdown or the return of John Rocker to the uniform, the Braves have yet another, the 13th in fact, unprecedented Division Title to add to the trophy case.

That said...

Sometimes, believe it or not, it sucks being a fan of the team that, like a professional, emotionless hitman, puts a bullet in the head of all NL teams in the regular season only to shoot himself in the foot during the post season. Except for the 1995 World Series, we fans have had to turn off the TV set or go home a little earlier than hoped. From 1992-94 and 1996-2003 (11 years altogether – not even Buffalo Bill fans suffered that long!), we’ve pulled out and reused the old all-too-familiar maxim of hopeful optimism: “There’s always next year.” But, regardless of the final regular season record or who’s in the line-up, no Braves fan can forget all the blown close games and/or the outright blowouts of past post-seasons and say with any sort of confidence: “We’ll win it all this year!”

Don’t get me wrong. We’re spoiled. We get, on average, 85-90 good games of baseball a year. And sometimes an October or two is exciting. Having all this now, I would never - like you said -- want to go back to being as unfortunate as a fan of the Kansas City Royals, or – my God! – the 2003 Detroit Tiger, or this year’s Mets, etc. etc.

In the 80s I and all the other Braves fans hunkered down in our lonely boats drifting idly and aimlessly in the waters of the baseball world’s horse-latitudes. But in 1991, unexpectedly, Dave Justice, Tom Glavine, Steve Avery, John Smoltz, Deion Sanders, Ron Gant, Terry Pendelton, Rafael Belliard, Sid Bream, and Greg Olson (among others, of course) kicked up a gale-force wind and knocked all of us into a full decade of winning baseball. That season was -- to use a trite, but appropriate adjective – magical, and the final 7 championship games against the Minnesota Twins were just as suspenseful and well-played as 7 of Alfred Hitchcock’s best thrillers. When the World Series celebrated its 100 year anniversary last year, by the way, ESPN, rated the Braves-Twins masterpiece 7 game set as the best ever in the history of the game.

Those days, however, are long gone and winning is just an everyday, ho-hum thing around Atlanta. John Smoltz, the only Braves player remaining from the original 1991 roster, has said he thinks this year has the same tingle of excitement that that team 13 years ago felt. He speaks of the pre- and early-season “low expectations,” and how that actually has made this successful year mean so much more to him than the past 12. Maybe for him, but the fans, who – like those pundits and critics – may not have expected a 90-win season still know they won’t get any relief until their team takes 4 of the ULTIMATE final 7.

We Braves fans keep waiting and hoping that our team will finally “give us a break” from the late October doldrums. Until then, though, we’re like billionaires suffering from prolonged depression: All anyone on the outside sees is the money, wondering why – with all that good fortune – those “poor” rich folk can’t buy their happiness.

So, good luck to your Dodgers. May their fate be a different one from that of my Braves. For selfish reasons, though, I hope you’ll have to wait until next year for a World Series ring.

Sincerely, and a pox on the New York Yankees,

Jamie Bishop