The Atlanta Braves, with no trio of Hall of Fame aces, no legendary manager and no backlog of World Series experience to build on, somehow found a way.
The current edition of Atlanta’s storied ball club could never equal the star power of those forebears, but it has already drawn even with them in championship trophies, achieving in one trip to baseball’s mountaintop what its predecessors could do only once in five tries.
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On Tuesday night, Atlanta Braves beat the Houston Astros, 7-0, in Game 6 to win the World Series in its first appearance in the Fall Classic since 1999.
According to the New York Times, it was the first title for the club since 1995, back when an extraordinary collection of superstar pitchers and multitalented position players, backed by the Hall of Fame Manager Bobby Cox, won the first major championship for the city of Atlanta.
Those great teams were expected to win multiple rings. They did not win a title until their third appearance in the World Series, playing in five overall, and despite a wealth of talent, never won another.
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Under Manager Brian Snitker, the 2021 team features lesser-known players like Jorge Soler and Dansby Swanson, both of whom hit thunderous home runs to propel Atlanta on Tuesday. Soler blasted a three-run shot in the third inning, and Swanson crushed a two-run homer in the fifth.
Many teams, like the Mariners, Rockies, Rangers, Padres and Brewers, would happily accept a solitary championship. But the old Atlanta teams, which won more than 100 games six times, bore the heavy tag of underachievers, especially with a pitching staff anchored by Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine and John Smoltz, and the franchise won 14 consecutive divisional crowns (there was no division title in the strike-shortened 1994 season).
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The current squad bears scant resemblance to those teams, for it was not expected to make the World Series this year, much less win it. It is a plucky assemblage of overachievers that could barely cobble together a full starting pitching staff, let alone one of the greatest ever assembled.
But Max Fried was a worthy descendant of that lineage, pitching six innings for the win, and helping to restore the image of the starting pitcher in a postseason dominated by relievers.
The team had a year marked by injuries, and the controversy surrounding Major League Baseball’s decision to move the All-Star Game out of Atlanta, but the Braves somehow bent the rest of baseball to its will.