When it comes to the Braves moving out of Atlanta, don’t hate the player, hate the game

91 Comments

CSNBayArea.com’s Andrew Baggarly has a sharp piece today taking the Braves to task for moving out of their still quite new ballpark in Atlanta and heading for the suburbs of Cobb County:

The Braves’ new ballpark might make financial sense. It might be too sweetheart to turn down. But every baseball ownership group should see itself as stewards for the franchise and the community, both those who are economically important and those who are less so. And that’s what makes this wasteful flight to Cobb County such a disappointment. It just feels wrong.

I agree with much of what Baggarly has to say here. Turner Field is still a nice ballpark that several teams would kill to have. Leaving the city that the team will still slap on the front of their road uniforms and heading out of town will abandon a lot of fans who live in the city is hard to take, philosophically speaking. It’s clearly a money move and most of the statements Braves and local officials have made about it have been self-serving and laden with euphemism and p.r.-speak.

All of that said, is it terribly different than what a lot of other teams have done or are trying to do?

It is certainly different in the sense that most teams who make that grab for the dollars grab while sitting in an older or decaying ballpark while the Braves are doing it from a perfectly nice stadium. That cannot be denied and that does set this situation apart. But that’s a function of opportunity on the part of the Braves — they were given a lease with an unusually early and easy out by the city — not one of especially egregious greed, thoughtlessness or, as Baggarly subtly implies, racism. Indeed, it was the normal brand of greed exercised by baseball owners, just on a shorter timeframe.

Beyond that, though, what the Braves are doing is remarkably similar to that which other teams have done and will always do, the San Francisco Giants (which Baggarly covers) included: they have gone to where the money is. Or, at the very least, to where the people with the money are. And where those people happen to be and what those people happen to look like are a function of forces far more powerful than that which any one baseball team can muster or control.

Cobb County is a far northern suburb of Atlanta. It’s where the rich people live in Atlanta and those rich people are overwhelmingly white. The reasons for this are rife with racial conflicts, socio-economic conflicts and history, but they are the facts of the situation on the ground. These factors were not caused by the Atlanta Braves and are unquestionably out of their control. They are a business seeking to maximize profit. While it would be far nicer and far more inspiring for the Braves to make a stand against racial, social and economic segregation by committing themselves to downtown Atlanta and the people who live there, such a stand would not and likely never will be rewarded. As a society we have, for better or for worse, accepted profit as the signature motivation and value for businesses in this country, and within that context the Atlanta Braves — a business, not a civic institution — are acting entirely rationally.

In doing so they have done what the Giants have done. Twice, first when they moved from New York to the Bay Area and then when they moved into AT&T Park. San Francisco does not have the same racial legacy as Atlanta, obviously, but it has its own set of particular problems these days. Scarce and profoundly expensive housing fueled by the tech boom and gentrification have priced people out of the city. Regulations in the region are making building houses for anyone but the rich increasingly difficult and the effects are spilling over into all manner of day-to-day life. San Francisco is becoming, in many important ways, a city for the rich and only the rich. Against this backdrop there is simmering resentment against the tech companies which have fueled the boom and officials who aren’t too terribly concerned with its effects. It’s a big problem and there are no easy solutions to it.

The Giants, like the Braves, are rational actors. They did not build their ballpark next to Candlestick. They built it in SoMa which, even before the time of its groundbreaking, was beginning to become gentrified with museums and clubs taking over old warehouse space and with savvy developers already envisioning the condos that would house the armies of upwardly mobile workers for the growing tech sector. While it would be far nicer and far more inspiring for the Giants to have made a stand against gentrification and the inevitable displacement of the poor by committing themselves to the area around Candlestick or someplace more accessible and affordable for the working class, as a society we have, for better or for worse, accepted profit as the signature motivation and value for businesses in this country, and within that context the San Francisco Giants — a business, not a civic institution — are acting entirely rationally.

Again, I do not mean to equate gentrification with racial segregation or the social issues with which San Francisco is struggling with the issues Atlanta has faced for centuries. I am merely pointing out that the Giants, like everyone else in San Francisco, rode and continue to ride a wave that has led to something of a troubling identity crisis in San Francisco, just as the Braves are riding a wave that reflects a troubling set of issues in Atlanta. The problems are different in type and degree, but the motivations and actions of the baseball teams involved and their owners are really not that different. They want their ballparks near the rich people and they want as many butts in the seats as possible. This goal, while not laudable in my view given the larger world in which companies act and my ideals about how I wish they would act, is perfectly understandable and pretty much inevitable.

Put differently: it’s perfectly fine to hate the game, as the game here is one that controls life, business and culture in this country far beyond its control of baseball teams and where they play. A game so large and omnipresent that hating the player — in this case the Atlanta Braves — seems sorta pointless.

Doval escapes in the 9th as Giants hold off Yanks 7-5

Getty Images
0 Comments

NEW YORK (AP) Camillo Doval retired Giancarlo Stanton on a game-ending, double-play grounder with the bases loaded and the San Francisco Giants hung on for a 7-5 victory over the New York Yankees on Saturday.

Doval gave up Aaron Judge’s RBI single in the ninth, the slugger’s third hit, but earned his first save when Stanton hit a ground ball to shortstop Brandon Crawford, who started a double play that withstood a video review. Second baseman Thairo Estrada made a low throw to first baseman LaMonte Wade Jr., who scooped the ball.

“Live and it looked before they paused, he kept it long enough,” Crawford said of Estrada. “LaMonte was definitely on the bag. I wasn’t too worried.”

There were four pitch clock violations, the most of any game in the first three days of the new rule. Two were by Doval in the ninth inning, and the Giants’ Taylor Rogers and the Yankees’ Albert Abreu had one each.

“We didn’t see any of that sort of thing in spring training,” Giants manager Gabe Kapler said. “We saw a good mastery of it. This is a different environment and it’s understandable that things sped up a little bit, but no pitcher’s going to survive giving away balls like that. It doesn’t matter how good you are.”

New York’s Anthony Volpe got his first two big league hits and became the first Yankees player to steal a base in each of his first two games since Fritz Maisel in 1913. No major leaguer had accomplished the feat since Billy Hamilton in 2013.

But the 21-year-old shortstop also had Estrada’s RBI single carom off his glove as the Giants scored twice in the sixth inning for a 5-3 lead.

New York built a 2-0 lead helped by pitcher Alex Cobb’s throwing error and Stanton’s first home run, a 112 mph drive to the opposite field down the right-field line. But the Yankees went 3 for 11 with runners in scoring position and stranded eight runs as the Giants rallied.

Joc Pederson hit a solo homer and Crawford hit a two-run drive in a three-run fourth against Clarke Schmidt, the first home run for the Giants on a 3-0 pitch since Buster Posey in the 2021 NL Division Series.

Crawford went 3 for 5 with a double and scored twice to go along with a stolen base. It was the second time in his career he a three-hit game with a double, homer, two runs scored and a steal.

“It was a good day. I guess my best game of the year so far,” Crawford said with a laugh.

Anthony Rizzo’s RBI double off Jakub Junis (1-0) tied it 3-3 in the fifth, and the Giants scored two runs in the sixth without hitting a ball out of the infield.

Wade Jr. hit a go-ahead RBI single when his soft hit went to the third base side of the mound, and David Villar scored the go-ahead run when Michael King (0-1) and catcher Jose Trevino converged and could not make a throw. King was making his return from a broken elbow last July 22.

After King struck out Michael Conforto, Estrada hit a liner to Volpe, who charged in and had the ball go off the heel of his glove. Volpe was unable to get the force at second as Crawford scored to put the Giants up 5-3.

“It was a tough one,” Volpe said. “Probably keep me up at night thinking about that. I definitely feel like I should have had it. It was on me.”

Josh Donaldson homered in the eighth off Rogers, three innings after the crowd booed Donaldson for taking a called third strike that stranded two runners.

Mike Yastrzemski added an RBI double and Crawford hit a run-scoring single in a two-run ninth off Clay Holmes.

STARTERS Schmidt allowed three runs and four hits in 3 1/3 innings. Schmidt threw a cutter that he added in the offseason 27 times, including three straight to Pederson for a strikeout in the first.

Cobb gave up two runs and four hits in 3 2/3 innings.

TRAINER’S ROOM Giants: C Joey Bart (back tightness) was a late scratch. Kapler said Bart tweaked his back in batting practice.

Yankees: RHP Luis Severino (right lat strain) threw Friday and Saturday and felt good. … OF Harrison Bader (left oblique strain) took swings in the pool Friday and Saturday and could take swings in a cage next week. … RHP Lou Trivino (right elbow strain) threw off a mound Friday.

UP NEXT New York RHP Jhony Brito makes his major league debut Sunday against San Francisco RHP Ross Stripling. — AP MLB: https://apnews.com/hub/mlb and https://twitter.com/AP-Sports