The Braves run is over....

[aukevin]

Re: The Braves run is over....

I understand the sentiment but realistically I think it's better to trade what little true comodities you've got in order to reload for the future. It's sentiment that makes great teams become mediocre.

you still want the fans to be happy though. A lot of people's favorite players are Chipper and Smoltz and they wouldn't want them to be gone I think.

[cbgatorade0202]

Re: The Braves run is over....

Cox? He wont go no where, Why would he get fired or anything after 1 bad season? My man won coach of the year the last 2 years

Smoltz, I just dont see him going no where at all..He's pretty cheap this year and next year for a Quality Pitcher you get, Plus he's the Main Brave left

I think We should look into seeing what we can get for Marcus Giles, and Even Edgar Renteria. Edgar maybe has been about our best player but that could work out b/c we could get the most for him, and just let Wilson play Shortstop...I mean it cant hurt now, Might as well see if he can play full time

[ehh]

Re: The Braves run is over....

You can just see it in Bobby Cox's expressions. The Braves are done for the time being.

[skitch]

Re: The Braves run is over....

Edgar maybe has been about our best player but that could work out b/c we could get the most for him, and just let Wilson play Shortstop...I mean it cant hurt now, Might as well see if he can play full time

I understand that it can't really hurt us at this point, but seeing Betemit at shortstop full-time would just be painful. Not that he's a bad fielder, he's just so freakin' slow. I say hold on to Edgar, but if Atlanta is interested in moving him for more help, call up one of the young guys we have to fill in the void at short. Pena looked good there earlier in the year for such a young player.

[rsox]

Re: The Braves run is over....

The Braves don't really need to worry about trading Renteria since the Red Sox are picking up the bulk of his contract. And with His poor showing in Boston last season contending teams (especially in the AL) may shy away from him.

[stalsy2310]

Re: The Braves run is over....

WOW......they've been saying it for 15 years and you are the one who finally got it right. Congrats to you and the Brew crew. I said before the season I didn't think the Brewers would finish above .500 ..... wonder how many seasons I've gotten that right so far, Bud?

Come on dont be sorrow because your braves are sucking it up this year......it looks like the braves will be below .500 for the next 15 years and the brew crew will be over .500.

[TheMatrix31]

Re: The Braves run is over....

You wish.

[skitch]

Re: The Braves run is over....

Come on dont be sorrow because your braves are sucking it up this year......it looks like the braves will be below .500 for the next 15 years and the brew crew will be over .500.

Now you're pushing it. There's no way the Braves are under .500 for fifteen years. The organization has accomplished too much to become that low.

[BGarrett7]

Re: The Braves run is over....

I didn't realize Ray was older based on the way the Jays radio crew described him.

BGarrett I'm not even a Braves fan but that post made me very depressed.

Really good article on Kenny from today's AJC...

Ray of hope kept dream alive for Braves rookie, 31

By MICHELLE HISKEY
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 06/25/06

The Atlanta Braves' losing season may be a nightmare, but pitcher Ken Ray is living his dream.

He's a 31-year-old rookie from Roswell High School who never gave up on playing in the big leagues.

He has been through two arm surgeries. He made countless bus trips to Podunk minor-league games. He spent offseasons loading Christmas merchandise at a Costco warehouse in the middle of the night so he could work out during the day.

Acting as his own agent, he made relentless calls to professional front offices. Just give me a chance.

Last season, when time really started ticking — his first child, son Bryce, was born during the playoffs — Ray nearly gave up. Just when he thought he was through, his chance came to join the Braves bullpen.

Like everything the national pastime has thrown him, the Braves season is full of pain and promise.

Ray has shone — "He's one bright spot," said manager Bobby Cox — amid a group of much-vilified pitchers with the worst performance of any National League team.

Belief in himself has carried Ray this far, and even though the Braves — the team he watched as a child and later admired for its 14 consecutive division titles — have plummeted, he's not about to lose hope.

"Whether we are struggling or not, I show up at the ballpark the same every day, just as happy as I can be," said Ray, who leads the Braves' regular bullpen with four saves and a 2.80 ERA, the measure of how many runs he allows over a nine-inning game. "As long as I play, I am grateful for what I am doing right now."

Ray's past remains so obscure that even the Braves' Web site lists "no biography information for this player." Yet it began a few miles from Turner Field. His parents still work as janitors for the Fulton County school system.

"Typical blue-collar working family; never had anything given to us; you work for what you got," Ray said.

Braves tickets were special. Fittingly, the first game Ray remembers was a comeback story.

"Dale Murphy had stitches in his hand, and it was his first game back, and he hit a two-run homer," Ray said. "It was a game-changing moment."

Glimpse of The Show

Ray was a fastball pitcher in 1993 rookie ball in Florida. Drafted in the 18th round — 497th overall — by Kansas City, he paid to put his dream on his body, a tattoo on his left shoulder of the Major League Baseball logo.

Only baseball seemed bent on showing him he wasn't as tough as he thought. He languished in the sport's lower ranks, following the warm weather for new opportunities to prove himself.

He was among the few players who stuck around for three autumns in the Arizona fall league. The upside was the chance to see his girlfriend. Brandi Wickander had graduated in marketing from a nearby small private Baptist college. They had met at a fitness club.

They got engaged in 1999, amid candles and roses and him on one knee, when baseball's promise still shone bright. The Royals called him up that summer for 13 games as a reliever. Like a taste of water that keeps someone alive for days, that brief memory of The Show would keep his dream going in the seven dry years ahead.

Struggle to get work

He spent their first Christmas away from her, playing in Puerto Rico, pitching through shoulder pain he didn't want to reveal.

That would lead to back-to-back surgeries for a torn labrum, the second required after the first didn't work. He left the sport for 18 months.
A patched-up pitcher doesn't hold much promise for pro teams, but he kept trying. He played for 15 teams in 13 leagues, through cities like Omaha; Huntsville, Ala.; Victorville, Calif., and teams like the Winston-Salem Warthogs and Yuba-Sutter Gold Sox.

"I still had the same focus I do now, on the sight I set for where I wanted to be, regardless of how bad it got," he said. "I knew I had the ability and the knowledge to make it back to the major leagues."

Through that journey, family backed him. His wife was the pragmatist, figuring out how to pay the bills while he called everyone he knew to try to stay in the sport.

"He struggled after his surgery, but knowing a lot of people, he was on the phone trying to get a job," Brandi Ray recalled. "A lot of people don't understand the politics of it. Sad to say, it's not just based on your talent. Teams invest a lot in a player, and they didn't want to pick up Kenny if they had put a lot of money into a kid in their organization. It was hard for him to get in.

"He was always calling people. He knew a lot of scouts and people who knew people and Kenny would call and tell them, 'This is where I am.' ... And wherever he went, whatever they needed, that's what he could do. If the Braves told him tomorrow he would be a starter, that's what he would do."

For two years, the couple lived with her family outside Phoenix.
Her father built Ray a chainlink target in their backyard, to practice throwing. Brandi Ray played catch with him, too.

They supported him even at age 29, when he was where he had been at age 18 — pitching in the Class A minor leagues.

"I think they fell in love with the Southern mannerisms," said Ray of his in-laws.

"I like everything about him," said his mother-in-law, Ardi Wickander. "We had to believe that they knew what they were doing. As long as they were happy, as long as they had their dream, we couldn't tell them that he better quit baseball right now. But at times I'd think, 'Is anyone going to see him [pitch]?' "

"We believed because he believed in himself," Brandi Ray said. "He's always been positive. Through our entire marriage when things happen, I'm more of the realistic person, and he's more of the dreamer. He doesn't think about all the details. He's more, 'We will get there, and everything will work out, and don't you worry about it.' "

Baseball split them apart geographically. Ray's baseball earnings barely paid his expenses. She stayed home and worked as an accountant for her father's company and later with a property management firm.

Baseball split their time together. In the offseason, he worked as a Costco warehouse stocker from 3 a.m. to 10 a.m.

Baseball put a family on hold. They didn't want to raise a kid when the sport offered so little security.

Quick change of fortunes

Last week, the Rays said they're still dazed at the lightning speed at which their fortunes changed.

"What happened is a storybook, for us to be here, near his family and to be in Arizona in the offseason," said Brandi Ray, whose mom stays with her when Ray goes on the road. They can afford such luxuries now.

They just moved into a furnished Buckhead condo, and living among someone else's belongings seems fitting because their new life seems to belong to someone else. Surreal — that's what it feels like when a long-held dream comes true.

One conversation they have goes like this.

Ray: "Do you remember when I was just about ready to give up, and I asked you if I should quit?"

Brandi Ray: "Aren't you glad I didn't tell you to?"

What she did tell him two seasons ago, when he was making $1,300 a month in Class A ball and she was 31 and working full-time, was this:
"We can't wait much longer if we want to have a baby."

They agreed to give the dream one more year.

She was three months pregnant when the White Sox cut him five days before the end of spring training. She doubted they could stand chasing the dream much longer.

Ray joined the North Shore Spirit in Lynn, Mass., and he placed his most critical phone call. He dialed Mike Alvarez, a coach from his Royals days now with the minor league Richmond Braves.

"I was desperate to move and asked him to send someone out," Ray said of the scout dispatched to North Shore. "He said he would, and the rest was up to me. ... If that scout hadn't been there at that game and time, I wouldn't be sitting here right now."

Richmond picked him up. Pitching 2,500 miles away from his pregnant wife — they could only make ends meet living apart — Ray looked good enough last season for the Braves to notice and to sign a well-paying gig in a Mexican winter league. During spring training, the Braves got him out of minor league camp to fill out the roster for a road trip.

Just give me a chance.

When he struck out four New York Mets in two innings, heads started turning. When he notched his first save May 26, Ray had a 1.57 ERA in 23 games.

"He's never given up," Cox said. "He has tremendous passion for the game. Every once in a while a guy like that pops up."

Closer to the dream

This month has been rockier for Ray and for the Braves.

When he gave up a home run and a three-run lead at the Florida Marlins on June 14, his wife turned her head away from the TV. She gave their son a bath during the rest of the game.

The struggles of baseball remain close. She prays every time he takes the mound for his health and pitch selection. Afterward, she thanks God for being able to stay home with their son.

"I just get overly nervous because he's not someone experienced in the big leagues, and if he has a bad outing, he always has that chance that someone's going to take his job," she said.

She didn't quit work until April 6, when Ray got called up from Richmond. That first game, he struck out Barry Bonds with four pitches, and his change-up earned praise. That's the off-speed pitch that he says has resurrected his career.

"There's a lot at stake. He has to perform well," Brandi Ray said. "They can send him down [to the minor leagues] any time. It's all based on performance."

Cox, though, has hinted that Ray may take over duties as closer. While that achievement — and any of Ray's so far — may appear bittersweet because the team is losing, Ray doesn't see it that way.

He seeks out the good. After losing the Marlins game, Ray focused on the two strikeouts he had.

He's the same way at home, as 8-month-old Bryce Dean Ray crawls, pulls up and tries to walk. The Rays wonder how his first birthday party will be on Oct. 14, because they expect the Braves to be in the playoffs then.
Wednesday night, Ray pitched a scoreless final inning against Toronto, with two strikeouts. He did his job, but the Braves lost 6-3.

For Ray, believing in this team is a natural extension of believing in himself for so long.

"I think you never want to give up on your dream," he said. "This was something I always wanted to do. I got a chance in 1999, and that gave me a taste that would drive me. That, and my friends and family."

AJC.com