Brian Jordan filed for free agency on Halloween, letting it be known that he was going to try and scare his body into making it through one more Major League season. Currently Jordan is getting no love from our poll of "which free agents our Talking Chop readers would most like to keep" - not one vote. I thought there would at least be a sentimental vote or two - people who remember the Jordan who was the cog in our lineup at the turn of the century, the Jordan who finished in the top-20 in MVP voting twice between '99 and '01, and the Jordan who was an All-Star in his first season as a Brave.
Maybe it's not that BJ is unloved, perhaps it's just that people realize the Jordan we saw the first time around was one who was in his early 30's and at the peak of his game, and the one we see now is one on the edge of 40 and far past his prime. At one time he may have been the poor-man's Dieon Sanders, but in every way he was a whole lot better at baseball than Neon Dieon.
Mac over at Braves Journal doesn't even consider him one of the 44 best Atlanta Braves - clearly an oversight because of what he meant to a winning Atlanta team. (He actually lists Lonnie Smith at 38!)
It's a shame that if the Braves do try and bring him back in Spring Training, there won't be too many people rooting for him. Maybe it's a testament to a baseball player's desire to keep playing the game, or maybe it's just that some of them don't want to believe it's time to "hang 'em up," but Jordan's career as a Major Leaguer is undeniably at an end. Even when he's healthy enough to be in the lineup, he is now just a weak hitter marred by an excessive amount of strikeouts.
I guess we have to remember the good times of Brian Jordan - the years when he held the heart of the order together as the cream in the Jones boys Oreo. I know I'll miss the professionalism that Jordan brought with him, as well as the blips of magic he provided for a few seasons at the beginning of the decade, and I'll try to forget the run down beat up old version of Jordan that's still trying to lace up his cleats and get on a baseball field.