behind the dugout

You never know what you’re going to see when you attend a baseball game. A pitching duel turned home run barrage or a comedy of errors and rain delays.

On the hill on Tuesday night for the Atlanta Braves was 40-year old John Smoltz. A career spanning 20 seasons, 200 plus wins, 154 saves and a CY Young award in his pocket I’ve seen it all when it comes to Smoltz.

Well almost everything.

The Atlanta Braves, a team I had watched on television even before they won their first division title in the 90’s, oddly remained a team I had never seen in person.

In the mist of a two week long road trip and still faced with 26 hours of driving I checked out the Atlanta Braves website to see if they had a home game on Tuesday. After all the trip from Maryland to Texas runs though Georgia and a few minutes out of the way and a deserved break would be a plus.

I didn’t even notice until later that on Tuesday night John Smoltz would be pitching against the Washington Nationals just four strike outs from 3,000 a magical number that only 15 others have reached.

As we approached the stadium I could feel the excitement in my stomach. I knew history was going to be made and I was going to be there.

We stopped off at Wendy’s and picked up a bit to eat, pulled into the parking lot ($12) and perused around the outside vendors buying a Jeff Francoeur t-shirt for Carrie ($15) and a foam tomahawk for the baby ($5) before walking though the stadium gates.

The Braves do a buy one get one free ticket on Tuesday and spending $8 for two seats is never a bad thing.

The ballpark is pretty good sized and the main entrance was spacious and decorated with statues of some of the teams greats though the years such as Warren Spahn, Phil Niekro and Hank Aaron in addition to Ty Cobb.

I was surprised that the park opened 2 1/2 hours prior to the first pitch allowing fans to even watch the home team take batting practice. I could continue to talk about the park but I’ll sum it up by saying that it was far nicer in person then it has been portrayed on television and the internet. In addition I found the staff to be more then polite and accommodating, though that may have had something to do with the 2 week old that accompanied us.

Some 23,482 was the listed attendance a number I expected but still figured was a bit low considering that was on the line.

As the game began and Felipe Lopez had his back against the wall with two strikes the crowd erupted into a frenzy. Some 23,000 sounded more like 50,000.

Smoltz got though the first inning in 1-2-3 order but registered no strike outs. In the second he started off the inning by striking out Nick Johnson and Austin Kearns before back to back doubles by Lastings Milledge and Willie Harris gave the Nationals a 1-0 lead.

John Lannan became the next victim and then Felipe Lopez struk out as Smoltz reached the 3,000 strike out plateu. I can not describe the joy I felt or how loud the crowd was at this point. Everyone was out of their seats and remained that way as the inning ended and Smoltz tipped his hat to the crowd, being greated by catcher Brian McCann and others as he exited the field.

A video of his career strike outs displayed on the huge video board in center and interesting enough Smoltz was even the first batter up for the Braves in the bottom of the inning.

Smoltz exited after 7 innings allowing five hits and an earned run. He finished the game with 10 strike outs but left with his team behind 1-0.

Unfortunately the Braves were unable to mount anything on the offensive end and following a disastrous ninth inning took the loss 6-0.

It would have been nice to see the Braves win the game but I suppose that spending a total of $40 bucks to see John Smoltz reach a milestone was worth it.