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Letters to the NL East, Part 3/5

(To read past year’s letters, click here)

Letters to the NL East, Part 3 of 5. (part 1, part 2)

atlantabraveslogo

Dear Atlanta Braves,

Oh how the mighty have fallen! I barely even have any ill will towards you anymore.  It’s been five years since you won the division and it’s been a long five years.  You don’t appear to have the tools to make it this year either, although the rotation does have some promising young arms in it.  Had you not traded Vazquez, I’d almost be worried.

I don’t have a lot of faith in your bullpen holding up long term, as it feels like you downgraded there as well.  Your offense has long been a weak point, and it probably still will be barring Heyward having a rookie season to rival Pujols and Reyes for the MVP and Larry Jones being healthy enough for the entire season.

You’re one of those middling teams that no one really wants to play because you’re not a push over, but you’re also not good enough for a rivalry either.  Just boring.  It’ll be interesting to see if you guys finish above .500 this year or not, and maybe you can help out the Mets a little by playing the Phillies hard.

One thing for sure, Bobby Cox is not getting another title before retiring this year.  Maybe you should’ve beaten the Yankees another time in the 90s.  Oh well.

Your former rival,

Optimistic Mets Fan

Feel free to head over to The Real Dirty Mets Blog for discussion.  Once the season finally starts, I’ll be contributing (at least) a weekly Optimism Report over there.

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Chipper Jones on the BQE

Just finished listening to Ed Randall interviewing Chipper Jones on WFAN. He happened to mention that he was in the car with Smoltz driving to Shea Stadium. Can you imagine driving on the Grand Central and you look over and see those two next to you?

If you haven’t heard, Chipper won’t be playing today because of back spasms, and might miss some of the Nationals series next week too.

Randall brought up the comment Chipper made years ago about Mets fans not needing to be so upset, they can just go put on their Yankees gear now. We all thought he was betraying Boston-type ignorance about the incapability of rooting for both teams, but the way he explained it today, it was more of a jibe than ignorance. He says he made the comment later after seeing one of those idiots behind the dugout who was wearing one of those half-Mets half-Yankees caps and was disgusted by it.

He also said he’s not changing his son Shea’s, name but that he hopes he grows up to be a great ballplayer one day and gets to hit in Citi Field.

So that’s my interesting Larry Jones tidbit for the day.