Long, long way from home....

I'm just going to say it. I miss my Braves baseball. Right now, sitting in Southern Siberia (Cincinnati) the city that denies that its southern because its in Ohio, I miss my Braves baseball.

Why can't we go back to the days of the superstation? You, I suppose could argue that if I miss it so much, I should just by the MLB package on DirecTV or MLB.com. And you know what; you are right, I could spend the money, but that would take only part of the pain away.

Even when we lived in Atlanta, we didn't go to a lot of the games. Sure, I would work them from time to time and there was a stretch where I would take my credential and just go and hang out, but that is no longer an option.

((Braves Spring Training//Courtesy: Me))

You see, I grew up on Braves baseball. When I was a kid, we didn't have a Major League team playing in Florida, now there are two. Sure, they came for Spring Training, but that is not quite the same thing. No. The closest thing we had were the Braves. WTBS was on the cable as far back as I can remember and we could on occasion pick up 750 WSB Radio.

My first Major League regular season game. A Braves game. In 1976, we saw the Braves play the Pittsburgh Pirates at Fulton County Stadium. I don't remember much other than they lost and Richie Zisk had a ton of RBI's.

Even as I got older. I would make the pilgrimage. In college, we went once or twice. Got cheap centerfield tickets and made our way around the stadium. The Braves weren't very good back in the 80's (understatement) and you could get away with it because there might have been 5,000 people in a 50,000 seat stadium.

I had to live without them for a year or so when I moved to my 1st job in Virginia, but I came back. My parents moved to Atlanta by 1990 so I always had an excuse to come visit and I would drag the Chief (father) with me. He's not much into baseball, but always humored me.

There were more trips. The drunken Jacksonville sojourn with 3 some friends from work. Seeing my 1st World Series game in 1996. Unfortunately it was the Game 6 that the Braves lost late to the Yankees and ended up losing the series. Heck, I even got to see the Braves play the Cubs...at Wrigley Field (Scratch one off the list).

Once I got to Atlanta, I lived the dream, I got to cover my favorite team. The 1st time that I walked into the locker room, the producer I was with had to punch me in the arm to keep me from drooling. I got to know some of the guys. Good people. Sure, they sort of lived in their own universe, but pretty friendly. I would run into a handful of the guys at the LA Fitness that I was working out in for awhile. They would play pickup basketball. I played a couple of times and we got some good laughs out of it.

Now I'm not anywhere close to Atlanta (7-hours away). Plus I work on the weekends. We get a steady diet of Cincinnati Reds baseball. Yeah, we've been to a few games. The stadium is actually very nice, a comfortable place to go watch baseball. But when the national games are regionalized on TV, we get the Northeast team. Not the Southern team.

We do have tickets to see the Braves when they come here and we are really looking forward to it. I still know a few of the guys on the team and who work for them, but I probably won't get to visit. But I'll be happy. I'll get my Braves fix. I'll see my team play in the town I'm currently located in. Not ideal....but it will do....for now.

Check this out. The Superstation TBS Braves Open from 1986. Pretty Cool eh? Thanks You Tube:

Spring Training...The Best Time of the Year

For some reason, this year is a little different than years gone by. Well, I guess last year was too, but I wasn't stuck up in Southern Siberia last year either.

Anyway, today's topic is one of the truly great Sports times of the year. No, I'm not talking about Super Bowl week or the NCAA Tournament, though those are both special times. Really, what has me reminiscing all week is baseball's best time of the year: Spring Training.

((1st day BP//Courtesy: Me))

Growing up in Florida, Spring Training was always special. When I was a kid, most baseball teams trained down there. When I was really young, we had the Yankees and Orioles who at the time were in Ft. Lauderdale. As a teenager, there was the Twins in Orlando, Astros in Kissimmee, the Royals in Haines City and the Reds in Tampa. And when I first started in TV, I got to cover the Red Sox in Winter Haven and later in TV, my favorite, covering the Braves at Disney World.

We always went to games when I was a kid. Usually it was with school, but sometimes I could talk the Chief into taking me. One of my favorite memories was as a teenager. For my 14th birthday, we drove to Tampa and saw the Reds and Pirates play in Spring Training. We sat right behind the dugout and talked to the Pirates catcher Edd Ott for pretty much the whole game. He was very funny and we had a good laugh and thoroughly enjoyed it.

((Mark and I posing//Courtesy: Eric Hager))

My other memories which always make me smile were professional. My 1st TV job was in Lynchburg, Virginia and we had a Red Sox Minor League team in town. My boss, the Sports Director, Dennis Carter talked his way into he and I taking a week to go down to Florida with them. We had a blast. For those who remember, it was also the week that Wade Boggs was in the news for some to do with his wife and believe it or not, we saw Barbara Walters at a game sitting with the wife, watching Wade play. Funny stuff.

Perhaps my favorite professional memories though were in Atlanta. We got to go down and spend the first few days of Spring Training with the Braves. One, they were my favorite team since I was old enough to follow baseball and two I was getting paid to be with them for 4 days with all the access I could ever use.

The trips were always simple. Intrepid Sports Anchor Mark Harmon and I would load up the Sports Van and drive 6+hours to Orlando. We'd get there the night before the whole team reported. The next morning, we were up and at 'em, at the Ballpark at 8am. We might wander into the locker room to talk to a couple of the guys but usually we just waited in the dugout. Me and Mark, Sam and Kenny from the NBC station, Eric and Chuck or Bill from the ABC and Blaine and Buck from Fox. We'd sit there and laugh, waiting for everyone to roll in. Chuck would bring a box of donuts for everyone and then it was time to get started.

((The gang eagerly awaiting getting to work//Courtesy: Me))

As it got closer to 9, the guys would start filing into the dugout. Some would come over and say hello, most were just joking, laughing like kids on the 1st day of school. At 9am and 9 exactly, with a crowd in the stands, they'd take the field...well, they'd run out of the dugout and take a lap or so around the field.

I could go on for a long, long time about the traditions. Bobby Cox giving his state of the team, he always wanted to talk before BP and get it over with. He retires after the 2010 season, a good man, the ultimate baseball lifer, he will be missed. He presided over the whole scene from a golf cart. Going out to the bullpen, raised over the right field wall and watching the pitchers. Just seeing the fans roll in on a sunny late winter morning...it is really hard to describe something so visual.

We had traditions. We would all go out as a group to dinner. The Columbia restaurant in Disney Celebration. Usually 6-8 of us together, laughing. We'd always run into a couple of the Braves players. They'd come by and share a laugh and go on to have their dinner. The best dinner was probably my last, in 2007. Bill Hartman, longtime TV Sports Guy in Atlanta was there for the last time. He sat and told stories, things like interviewing Mohammed Ali and old school Georgia stories, we had such a great time just listening.

As I sit here right now typing away on my computer here in Cincinnati, I can't help but smile a bit thinking about those memories. I know that the rest of the guys are there, right now, today, as I type this and I am not. I really miss that but I also know that the cycle of things works like that. You can't do things like that the rest of your life, as much as you might have wanted to, sometimes things change. Though I'm not real happy with the situation I'm in at the moment, I know that too will change, things always do...you just have to be patient, keep plugging away and moving forward...and eventually the good will come back...I know it will.

((Mark and I actually working//Courtesy: Eric Hager))

Here is one of my favorite stories that Mark and I did down there, from 2007. I don't know how it got on the You Tube...but it did. Enjoy it.