October 17, 1996 feels like forever ago, especially to someone like me, who was born in 1990.
“Macarena” was the No. 1 song, while “Independence Day” was the No. 1 movie.
Atlanta was just months removed from hosting the Olympics.
Walt Weiss still had four years left in his major league career, while Matt Olson was two years old and Ronald Acuña Jr. was still over a year away from being born.
That was the last time the Atlanta Braves won a winner-take-all postseason game.
Until Thursday. The Braves exorcised
three decades worth of demons, and some particularly pesky recent ones, with their 6-2 win over the Philadelphia Phillies in the decisive third game of their NL Wild Card series, snapping the franchise’s six-game losing streak in elimination games.
Fittingly for a night of such catharsis, the Braves left little doubt.
From the moment Michael Harris II delivered a first-inning haymaker in the form of his three-run homer off Aaron Nola, the game never really felt like the Braves were teetering on the precipice of danger.
Sure, there may have been that “here comes the five-run inning for the Phillies” thought that you couldn’t quite get out of your head, but the reality of how it played out on the field was it never felt like that was coming.
After the early blow, the Braves kept the Phillies at arm’s length. The rare Philadelphia hits were never further complicated by additional issues. The Phillies scored their only two runs on an RBI groundout and a sacrifice fly, finishing 0-for-6 with runners in scoring position.
It certainly didn’t hurt the feeling of comfort that the Braves kept adding on. Ozzie Albies’ fourth-inning two-run shot made it 5-0. And after Philadelphia got on the board in the sixth, Matt Olson responded with Atlanta’s third homer of the game.
Not long after that, Chris Sale, the baseball robot that he is — his own words he said this week— took care of the final four outs in typically dominant fashion.
“I can’t say enough about this group,” Braves manager Walt Weiss said postgame. “I’ve been saying it, repeating myself, but I said it on Day 1 of Spring Training that it was going to take more than our talent to get to where we wanted to go. We had to have the right mentality. We had to come together. We had to play for each other, all those things that you can’t quantify.
“They’re game changers, and I always felt all along — and I was saying at the end of Spring Training— I felt like we had the right guys on the bus, man.”
The way in which Thursday’s game played out was cathartic enough. That it happened against the Phillies made it a potentially spiritual experience for Braves Country.
The team that ruined Atlanta’s strong 2022 and 2023 seasons. The team that had been the thorn in the Braves’ side, both in the NL East and in the postseason. The team that seemed dead late in Wednesday’s game before rallying and bringing in what was widely believed to be a better pitching situation entering Game 3
The Braves’ strong performance made sure none of that remotely mattered or was a lingering thought in peoples’ heads this time.
”Definitely feels amazing to win against the Phillies,” Albies admitted.
Mauricio Dubón and Mike Yastrzemski said pregame that the team was loose and there was no tension in the air from Wednesday’s blown chance at a sweep.
How the game played out proved they were right.
“I think in baseball you can’t do anything but try to stay loose. If you put more pressure on yourself, it’s just going to eat you up,” Harris said. “I felt like in the clubhouse today we talked more about fantasy football than baseball. It kept us ready. Once we had our meeting, we kind of locked in and knew what we wanted to do when we came out.”
And with a few monkeys firmly removed from the team’s collective back, the “house money” portion of the Braves’ postseason begins. Beating the Dodgers in the NLDS would be a bonus, but they certainly aren’t a trendy pick to knock off the two-time defending champs.
That being said, if the Braves are able to channel the same focus and clutch moments they delivered in this series finale, maybe they can drag the Dodgers into a contested series.
After all, they did beat them five out of six times in the regular season.
