ATLANTA – Seasons come and seasons go and the focus always seems to train on the players the Braves lost from last season. They won’t be as good, most predict. They are vulnerable, others opine. They just aren’t the same as when they had Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, John Smoltz and – fill in the lefty’s name (Steve Avery, Kent Mercker, Denny Neagle) – forming the game’s best rotation.
Such talk is all the rage during spring training and often heats up across the summer, before dying down and drowning in the champagne of another division-clinching celebration.
The wasted words are beside the point. The Braves of today never have to be as good as the Braves of yesterday. They just have to be better than the rest of the teams chasing them in the National League East. They have won 10 division titles in a row.
To watch Henry Blanco’s titanic shot to straightaway center for a two-run home run off Mets reliever Scott Strickland in the eighth was to see an 11th consecutive division title on the horizon.
Riding the wave of last night’s 6-4 victory over the Mets, the Braves return to work today seeking to sweep a series shortened to three games by Tuesday’s rainout.
Blanco is the latest of Greg Maddux’s personal catchers, filling the shinguards worn by the likes of Damon Berryhill, Eddie Perez, and Paul Bako. Blanco catches Maddux, Javier Lopez catches the other four starters.
“It’s been that way ever since my first year when Bobby Cox told me Greg Olson was catching everybody else and Berryhill was catching me,” Maddux said. “I said OK. People want to second-guess it, but I think it’s worked OK for us the last 10 years. I think it’s great for the team. One of the reasons Javy’s had so much success is he’s fresh in September, when most of the rest of the catchers in the league can barely walk. I think it helps having the same catcher every start. It helps me and it helps the other four starters.”
Having a personal catcher is nothing personal against Lopez, Maddux insists.
“I threw to Javy one year and I had a great year,” he said. “Javy’s a good catcher. Everybody looks for reasons why and everybody thinks I’m lying, but I’m not lying.”
Blanco isn’t the first backup catcher to make the Mets hang their heads. Perez, playing full-time for the injured Lopez, was named the 1999 NL Championship Series MVP. He, too, was a defensive specialist.
Blanco, in the big leagues because of his receiving and throwing skills, came out of the evening with a .194 batting average and his third game-winning hit. He also won a game with a 10th-inning home run in Milwaukee.
“Sheff [Gary Sheffield] and I were just talking about how we can’t be expected to do it every night,” Chipper Jones said. “Some nights belong to Timo Perez and Hank White.”
Perez rifled a Greg Maddux changeup over the right field fence for a home run. Hank White? That’s Chipper’s version of an English translation of Henry Blanco.
In the Mets’ dugout, Blanco earned a new nickname last night: Forevermore, he’s Henry “Freaking” Blanco.
“He’s hit two game-winning home runs for us, not to mention he’s the best defensive catcher in the league,” Jones said.
Blanco was acquired from the Brewers in a spring training trade that barely made the agate type.
“This feels pretty good,” Blanco said. “Especially because I’m in Atlanta now. Last year didn’t count. Last year, I was in last place. We’re in first place and hopefully we’re staying there.”
The Mets don’t look to be up to shoving them down a spot any time soon.