The Braves and Dodgers are currently meeting in the NLCS (well, maybe not currently currently; you could be reading this right when it goes up, or you could be reading this two weeks from now. I have no way of knowing these things), and it is therefore my duty to come up with some reasons that a Giants fan would want to root for the Braves in the postseason this year. I’ve done this bit over at MCC for a number of years, and it’s always a fun way to kill time and give you something interesting (hopefully!) to read.
Also, like, screw the Dodgers.
Ronald Acuña Jr is a gosh darn delight.
It goes beyond the talent, and the spectacular athleticism. Acuña’s on field intensity makes everything he does unmissable. I mean, here he is just jogging home, for Pete’s sake:
Tell me you don’t want to see that guy play as long as possible into the postseason. You can’t. It’s impossible.
They have so many ex-Giants
Mark Melancon! Will Smith! Adam Duvall! Charlie Culberson! Pablo Sandoval! Melancon and Smith were part of the Giants bullpen just last year, and yes, having either one of them on the roster probably would have meant the Giants made the playoffs this year, but it’s no use crying over spilt saves. Duvall went to the Reds in the Mike Leake trade and, while he’s had some ups and downs since, has had a really nice career for himself, and it certainly isn’t actively painful that he became an effective left fielder just as the Giants were desperate for anyone to become an effective left fielder.
And then there are Culberson and Sandoval, the two heroes of the 2012 postseason. Sandoval, of course, hit 3 homers off of Justin Verlander in Game 1 of the World Series that year and went on to win the World Series MVP, while Culberson got traded to the Rockies for the eventual NLCS MVP, Marco Scutaro. If you think about it that way, they are both Giants legends. How could you not wish them further success?
Their franchise history of playoff failure is endearing
Is it good that the Braves won 177 division titles in a row and only one World Series in that time? Yes, except for all the winning they did, which I do not approve of. But those playoff failures have (fairly) tainted the memory of those great Braves teams as “Good, but not good enough.” They can, therefore, be tossed a measly one nickel by winning this series. It won’t heal the pain of the past, but that pain is what makes the Braves the Braves.
They certainly don’t have a racist chant and gesture strongly associated with their team that will cause you to realize this entire business of assigning moral imperatives to sports is folly, based solely on arbitrary accidents of geography
At least, not that I’ve heard this postseason!
They bilked Cobb County for like a billion dollars to build a new stadium that will enrich Braves ownership without doing much for the greater Atlanta area
Wait, no, I don’t like that.
Part of the reason they wanted this new stadium was that it was in the suburbs, away from the poorer and blacker parts of Atlanta
Hey, that’s awful!
Seriously, that chant is racist as fuck
Can we get back on track here? I’m trying to ignore all that to-
1993! Remember 1993?
I DO remember 1993. You know where I was on the last day of the 1993 season? At DODGER FUCKING STADIUM, WATCHING THE DODGERS EMBARRASS THE GIANTS TO KEEP THEM OUT OF THE PLAYOFFS.
The Braves are young, their players are likeable, they have a lot of ex-Giants, and I’m going to ignore literally everything else about the franchise and its history to root for them in this series. No, this is not the “moral” choice or whatever, but you can have my Dodger hatred when you pry it from my cold, dead hands.
Go Braves. Beat the stupid Dodgers.