On Monday afternoon the Atlanta Braves traded Jason Heyward to the St Louis Cardinals. Other players were involved in the trade as well. There are many great articles on Talking Chop and the internet as a whole analyzing this trade from an objective perspective. This is not one of those articles.
My first loves were the Atlanta Braves and the Charlotte Hornets. Some of my earliest memories are playing baseball in my backyard wearing my Braves hat. My dad had season tickets to the Hornets and the closest baseball team to me in Charlotte was the Braves so those were the two teams I grew up caring about. Baseball was the only sport I played and as much as I loved the Hornets, the Braves were the center of my sports universe. I loved baseball, I loved Jeff Blauser (my brother preferred David Justice), I loved Skip Caray, and most of all I loved the Atlanta Braves. I remember the night we won the World Series and our power was out all night. I listened to the first eight innings on the radio in the car with my dad and the power fortuitously came back just in time to see Marquis Grissom catch the final out. The 90s were a pretty great time to grow up as a Braves fan and nothing would ever replace them at the center of my sports universe.
As often happens in life, things change. My twin loves of the Braves and Hornets both faded, with the Hornets being removed from my life entirely after they left Charlotte in 2002. The Hornets would be replaced by the Bobcats who, despite occasional attempts to get into them, never meant much to me. The Hornets were gone and the Braves had begun their transition into that good but disappointing team that most people think of them as. In 2003 the Panthers made the Super Bowl and I would say after that football was the sport I followed with the most interest. I missed a lot of the extra innings from the 2005 playoff game against the Astros because I was more interested in a Panthers-Cardinals regular season game. In the summer of 2007 I started college at The Citadel and the Braves were a poor team. The Mark Teixeira trade got my attention but if you know anything about the first year at The Citadel you know watching baseball games can be tough to do. Suffice to say my interest had waned.
What brought me back was the spring of 2010. I distinctly remember a Bill Simmons pre-season podcast in which whomever the guest was said that this Braves’ rookie Jason Heyward had a ceiling comparable to Hank Aaron. That is the sort of talk that led to some fans considering Heyward a disappointment but at the time that was a jolt of excitement that made me want to make the Braves a part of my life again. If the Braves really had a player comparable to Hank Aaron, I needed to make the Braves a priority in my schedule. For the first time in years I actually had my tv on for an opening day Braves game. They were playing the Cubs.
You all know what happened next. The first game. The first at bat. The first swing. The crack of the bat that sounded like a gunshot, the one major moment that Chip Caray actually enhanced instead of ruined, and what in retrospect would be the longest homerun Jason Heyward would ever hit in an Atlanta Braves uniform. It was a three-run homer for this new Hank Aaron and my life had changed. I was a Braves fan again. For whatever it is worth, I would not be writing this article for an Atlanta Braves website without that moment.
What followed from that was a series of moments that would define both Jason Heyward’s Atlanta tenure but the Atlanta Braves as a whole. That monstrous month of May where Heyward was the best player in baseball. That amazing rookie season where Heyward was robbed of rookie of the year by Buster Posey, who would also rob the Braves of their chance to make a World Series run in Bobby Cox’s last season. The Jose Constanza debacle where Fredi Gonzalez benched Heyward for a career minor leaguer because Heyward was battling through injuries and Gonzalez didn’t understand the concept of sample size. The collapse in 2011, the amazing catch by Heyward in the 2012 Stupid Game, the diving grab to end the game against the Mets, the fourteen-game winning streak that started with Heyward being moved to leadoff, the tying homer in extra innings of a 2013 game against the Nats where for just once Heyward let himself show a little emotion, the beaning in the face against the Mets that derailed Heyward and the season, the disaster that was 2014 where on many nights Heyward was the only reason to keep watching.
Perhaps more than anything else, the singular pleasure that I remember from Jason Heyward’s time in Atlanta was the countless times he scored from first base on a double and watching him round third. It isn’t exactly a mammoth three-run homer, but plays like that made watching Heyward play every day something to treasure. And I did treasure those moments.
What I came to realize as I absorbed the news of Heyward leaving was that for me Jason Heyward had become the Atlanta Braves. The only feeling I can recall that compares to how awful today’s news made me feel was when the Hornets left Charlotte in 2002. My love for the Braves at this point in my life is inextricably tied up in my love for Jason Heyward. He was the guy who brought me back; he was the guy who made me love the sport again. It was my love for him that defined me as a fan these past five years as I argued endlessly against the lesser crop of Atlanta fans who never appreciated Heyward.
I discovered sabermetrics in 2011 because of Capitol Avenue Club and an article about Fredi Gonzalez’s handling of Heyward. The main point was that using Constanza over Heyward was one more piece of evidence that Gonzalez just didn’t get it. My entire worldview as an Atlanta Braves fan as a young adult it tied to my love for Heyward and my certainty that he is everything good about baseball. For him to be gone is like for the Braves to be gone. What are the Atlanta Braves without Jason Heyward? Today they feel as if they are the Charlotte Bobcats.
All of this is temporary I am sure. I love the team and I love my tribe. Heyward is gone and he is gone to the one team whose success has ever made me jealous. The St Louis Cardinals have the best organization in baseball, of course they wanted Heyward. Still, I will continue to cheer the Braves and the pain will heal. I will find a new love.
But there is no love like the first love. As a child my favorite player was Blauser, but the connection I felt to Heyward as an adult was very different. Whoever becomes my new favorite Braves player will be great, but he will never be what Heyward was. He will never be the guy who saved the sport for me.
A part of me died yesterday. I think that part of me was the irrational in me. The part of me that died was a child who believed his parents could protect him from anything, who believed in God without questioning, and who believed the world could be whatever he set out to make it. Today I am a sadder person. A more rational person. I have traded emotion for a greater level of objectivity. But there is less love there. Less passion. It is a trade I wish had not been made.