The 1993 Braves: McGriff, the Fire and the Last Great Pennant Race

The Braves winning the 1995 World Series was glorious and is easily the greatest moment in Atlanta Braves history. I was out of the country at the time, living in Pforzheim, Germany during an exchange, and in a time before internet streaming I saw none of it. My good friend Arne did call me after Marquis Grissom sealed it with his catch in center. I was asleep thanks to the time difference, but most enjoyed the few seconds as he screamed into my ear: "Ostwald, die Braves haben gewonnen!!!"
Several days later I also received a letter from my then girlfriend describing her experience while watching game 6. She even gave me a play-by-play of sorts in the letter and on the back of the envelope, which I am posting here.

I must admit I have a certain amount of nostalgia for that mode of communication and the effort Amy put into bringing the game closer to me. Nonetheless, I wasn't there, so it is hard for me to view it as one of the defining moments of my Braves fandom. Almost twenty years later, I can now watch the entire game on youtube thanks to MLBClassics. This truly is amazing, and I encourage you to watch it, either for the first time or again because it is so sweet! 

Even though I wasn't in the country for 1995, and I also missed the worst to first run in 1991 due to another exchange in Germany, I was around for every pitch in 1993 as the Braves made one of the greatest runs ever to pass the Giants on the last day of the season. It didn't end well as the Braves lost to the Phillies in the playoffs in six games, but baseball for me has always been about the long haul. I watch most every day, and when I joke with friends about every game counting, even game 65 in the middle of June, I actually mean it. 

Twenty years ago today on July 31, 1993, the Braves were 7.5 games out of first and according to coolstandings.com had a 10.1% chance of making the playoffs (POFF). Looking at the graph below, it was a position the Braves stayed in for much of 1993 until all of a sudden they jumped up to above 90% in September. In comparison, as of today (July 31, 2013), the Braves have a 10 game lead over the Nationals, who have a 7.1% POFF. The difference is that the Braves on July 31, 1993 were 20 games above .500, whereas the Nationals are 3 games under .500 going into today's action (and are currently losing 10-1 in the 7th inning in Detroit). The 1993 Braves and Giants were amazingly good teams and there divisional pennant race down the stretch was epic. 

Coolstandings for 1993 Braves

In the summer of 1993, I had just graduated from Wofford College, was living in the guest house behind my parents' house (not my Mother's basement), worked for my Dad cleaning cages and washing dogs at his animal hospital, was still living the college life being that I was living in the same town where I went to college and watched a bunch of Braves, often with Amy, the super nice girlfriend mentioned above. 

The Braves were a good team, but it didn't look like they would have a chance of catching the surging Giants that season. But on July 19, the Braves made a trade deadline deal that brought Fred McGriff to town. Here is the NY Times write-up of the trade. I was excited about the trade and thought to myself at the time that the Braves would have to win every series for the rest of the season to have a chance. Looking at the 1993 Braves schedule at baseball-reference.com, they came close in winning 19/22 series from July 19 to the end of the season on October 3. 

McGriff's arrival on July 20 coincided with a huge fire in the Fulton County Stadium broadcast booths and press box that broke out during batting practice. The game against the Cardinals took place that evening, and McGriff homered in his debut. This youtube clip narrated by Bob Costas details the homer and the fire: 

One game that encompasses the drama of the 1993 stretch run took place on September 15 against the Reds. The Braves were down 6-2 going into the bottom of the ninth inning and scored 5 runs including a Ron Gant walkoff home run to win the game. The follwing video clip made by somebody filming their television set is glorious for many reasons: Chipper Jones makes his second ever plate appearance, Ryan Klesko hits a home run and gives a bat flip for the ages, Rob Dibble throws one pitch to Gant before the game ends and current Nationals manager Davey Johnson was the Reds manager at the time. Unfortunately, I cannot embed the video here but it is worth clicking on this link to watch the 14-minute replaying of the ninth inning. 

The Braves won the division on the last day of the season by finishing with a three-game win streak. Having played before the Giants, fans and players alike stayed behind in Fulton County stadium to cheer on the Los Angeles Dodgers as they defeated the Giants 12-1 on that final day. The Braves finished with a 104-58 record, one game better than the Giants who would have no postseason in the last season before the advent of the Wild Card game. It was also the last season the Braves would play in the NL West. Realignment moved the team into the NL East, and no longer would Braves fans have to stay up near as many nights during the summer to watch West Coast baseball. The following video clips "Re-live the moments" of 1993, the season that boasts the last great pennant race, and is arguably my favorite season as a Braves fan. 

No-Knead Bread

This recipe has brought me and many others a lot of happiness. While living in Germany for approximately 12 years of my adult life, bread became a big part of my daily existence. I often told people that it was the bread, not the beer, that was irreplaceable in the US. Then I discovered this recipe, and it comes as close to anything in mimicking good, hardy, thick-crusted German bread. The secret is time and the Dutch oven within a very hot conventional oven. Here's the recipe, with my tweaks, I got from the NY Times.

 

No-Knead Bread

---

November 8, 2006

Adapted from Jim Lahey, Sullivan Street Bakery
Time: About 1½ hours plus 14 to 20 hours’ rising

·        15 oz. all-purpose or bread flour, or 10 oz. AP/5 oz. Whole Wheat (I use King Arthur brand for both)

·        ¼ teaspoon instant yeast (Rapid Rise)

·        1.5-2 teaspoons salt 

·        Cornmeal for dusting

1.     In a large bowl combine flour, yeast and salt. Add 1.5 cups water, and stir until blended; dough will be shaggy and sticky. Cover bowl with plastic wrap. Let dough rest at least 12 hours, preferably about 18, at warm room temperature, about 70 degrees. 

2.     Dough is ready when its surface is dotted with bubbles. Lightly flour a work surface and place dough on it; sprinkle it with a little more flour and fold it over on itself once or twice. I find corn meal to work the best. Then gently and quickly shape dough into a ball.

 3.     Place a sheet of parchment over a bowl and spray with non-stick spray. Place dough ball into bowl, loosely cover with plastic and rise 1-2 hours. When it is ready, dough will be more than double in size and will not readily spring back when poked with a finger.

4.     At least a half-hour before dough is ready, heat oven to 450 degrees. Put a 6- to 8-quart heavy covered pot (cast iron, enamel, Pyrex or ceramic) in oven as it heats.   

5.     When dough is ready, carefully remove pot from oven. Lift dough parchment paper and place into pot; it may look like a mess, but that is O.K. Cover with lid and bake 30 minutes, then remove lid and bake another 15 to 20 minutes, until loaf is beautifully browned. Cool on a rack. 

 

Gangy

My 91 year-old Grandfather passed away on Friday, and this is the eulogy I wrote wrote for him and gave at the service. I managed to slip in a nice depression-era baseball anecdote into it. 

Gangy 

It’s an honor for me to be up here today talking about my Grandfather, I have always been so proud to have the same name as he does. All my email addresses start with some form of Oswald, OHK4 or OHK IV because that is who I am. However, OH King, Jr. is known by us in the family as “Gangy,” because that he is who he is to us, simply “Gangy” a one word name that means so much.

I have been thinking over the last couple of days what I want to talk about, and even though this is sad occasion I have often found myself smiling at the memories I have of Gangy, and I know all of you hear today have similar memories of him. I know Gangy had positive influences on us all, I saw it through the years on me, on my siblings Kelly, Elizabeth and Hamilton, and on my cousins Dee, Tom and Phil. I wish Greg and Charles could be here today, too, but I know they are all together now with Gangy aggriavating them like he always enjoyed doing. Telling them “don’t break my floor” when they fell down or just saying “Bamalam” like he always did to get our attention in a playful way. Charles would have been up here today speaking to you all, and I will attempt to do his memory proud.

On Friday, I took the cross country route from Upstate South Carolina to South West Ga that I have taken hundreds and hundreds of times to get to “home”- from Athens to Madison to Monticello and Forsyth, Roberta, Butler, Buena Vista and then on to Preston, Weston and Cuthbert before getting on 27 and heading to Blakely, where I was born. It is a part of the world, Early and Randolph counties, Blakely and Cuthbert, that has defined my life. It’s a place, it’s red clay dirt, it’s the farm, the soy beans, the cattle and the peanuts and at the center of it all was Gangy. He was what held this family together, not with force, but with his mere presence that inspired so much love and respect. So many of my friends in South Carolina and in Germany know my Grandfather by what we called him – Gangy. And they also know “Mama King” even if they never met them. Their influence on me and many of us here was so strong that to know me you knew them as well. The most concrete example of this is Peanut Brittle, or as Gangy called it, simply “candy.” They couldn’t get enough, and I would tell them the secret is in the stretching on the marble slab. They then would ask “why aren’t yall millionaires with this stuff?” Well, we never became millionaires, but we can all be happy to know that there are many, many people who turn their noses up at store-bought peanut brittle because of Gangy’s “candy.”

There are so many memories of the times I spent with Gangy, and at the center of so many of them is the farm. You might have seen the picture slide show last night, and to see him driving the truck in his khaki shirt and pants with one of his many hats on is a memory I am sure we can all call up immediately. And he loved to give tours of the farm, slowly driving around the bumpy roads from one corner to the other telling you what you were looking at then but also who might have been there and what they were doing 50, 60 and 70 years ago. I spent last summer in Cuthbert and had the privilege of spending every Monday with Gangy and Mama King. We ate lunch together, we watched TV together, especially the Braves, and I made sure they took their medicine. Mama King is a good medicine taker, but Gangy was a little ornery at times. He enjoyed having me there, but when I would insist on him taking his pills, he would give me a sly look and say, “you sound like you’ve been talking to them women folk (meaning Aunt Gail and Aunt Joan), they have gotten to you.”

But mostly, we talked. He loved to talk about the farm and one of the best stories he told me was about baseball, how he would listen to games, the NY Yankees then, at Davenport filling station where he would get repair work done on his truck or car while I am sure he was drinking a co-cola. And he told me about the baseball games they played out of the farm. As he was talking I was busy typing away on my phone to make sure I could record as much as possible while he talked. Gangy was the pitcher for both teams and this was how he described it:

“Most of the ball playing was Saturday evening and most of the ball players were older than I was. Yeah those boys out there would be called rough players because they played kinda rough. We had a pretty good slope down from the catcher’s mitt to third base, second base too. Wasn't like fields now. Pitcher to catcher was uphill and you had a pretty good base running area … They wanted me throwing for both teams. I didn't throw at anybody. I was clean in that matter. Other people would throw at people no matter what. I wasn't all that big, but I knew what a day's work was.”

I asked him how he pitched and he said: “I guess I memorized the way they batted because I tried to throw it where they couldn't hit it. I reckon I did okay, they didn't do a whole lot of walking and they didn't do a whole lot of hitting." I can just picture him out there in field where they played with him being a crafty left-handed pitcher who was smarter than the bigger and rougher boys he played with. It’s a great image and I often think about it when I am watching the Braves today.

We all know Gangy was a farmer for his entire life, and he was good at it and it shaped his identity. But as Daddy and I were talking about recently, he was a misplaced educator. As the oldest son, he was called back from the University of Georgia to run the farm when WWII broke out, and I know he never looked back with any regrets. But he remained a teacher his entire life. He enjoyed every moment with his Grandchildren, Great Grandchildren and Great, Great Grandchildren, which luckily are all mentioned on the program because I don’t think I could have kept all the numbers straight in my head. He taught us all by example, he taught us that you pronounce the “g” in “fishing” and that “fixing” was what you do to a bike, not what you are getting ready to do. Ultimately, he taught us how to live, and he did so with patience and love. I am a German teacher, and teaching kids in the classroom is very rewarding to me. I know it was for Gangy, too, which is why he spent his retirement years as a substitute teacher at Early County High School. He would tell stories about his interactions with the kids there with his glint in his eye and you could tell how much he enjoyed it.

We are gathered here today to celebrate a life. O.H. King Jr. was a great man, an outstanding farmer, an amazing husband, father, and Grandfather, all of which can be summed up by the one word we called him. He was Gangy, and I am going to miss him. 

Baseball and Baking

I bake a lot, and enjoy meticulously following a recipe in order to create something that people think is voodoo or magic or alchemy.

I watch a lot of baseball and most enjoy it while thinking about such sabermetric concepts as wOBA, wRC+, OPS, DRS and K/BB%. I loathe bunts, IBBs, batting average and RsBI and don't believe in intangibles or  grittiness.

Put it all  together and you have Saberbaking. I am just not sure exactly what that means right now.