Another baseball season is here. I’m hoping my hometown Atlanta Braves get back into the division title habit. But that seems selfish and trivial in light of some more historical developments.
This will be the final season for Yankee Stadium, the House That Ruth Built and perhaps baseball’s best-known monument. It likely means I’ll never get to attend a game there, but what memories are associated with that storied edifice. As my tribute, I’m including a New York Times photo slideshow of the stadium.
However, the Los Angeles Dodgers, another tradition-rich team, did its part to keep the past alive on 3/29/08. The Dodgers played an exhibition game in the venerable Los Angeles Coliseum, their initial home in L.A., and the game drew 115,000 people. Cool!
Back to the mundane present: I think this will be the last season for a while that the Braves will have a chance to win any kind of title.
John Smoltz and Tom Glavine likely are in their final seasons. Mike Hampton is injury prone, as is aging Chipper Jones, one of the last links to the glory days of the ‘9os. And Bobby Cox won’t manage much longer. Sure Braves fans got spoiled then, but it’ll be fun to see if those guys have one title left in them. Play ball!
