“It’s hard to dismiss the obvious symmetry between Longo [Evan Longoria] and the franchise for which he’s now the poster-child: for the player, Hondo Junior College to MLB All-Star … for the team, worst to first.”

“The Indians franchise is more than a century old. It’s been called the Blues, the Bronchos, and the Naps. It’s also been called a lot worse during hard times when the team wasn’t winning.”

“Free agency changed the baseball landscape in many ways. It created more opportunities for players, but it also meant increasingly fewer players would spend an entire career playing for one franchise—and that’s especially true for players capable of becoming “legends,” the ones in such demand on the free agent market.”

“There are many ways to measure a manager’s success and contributions to a franchise ... but in this case the two numbers that illustrate it best are eight and four: Bobby Cox’s #6 jersey was just the eighth number retired in franchise history, and of the remaining seven, four of them played for Bobby.”

“It took only three years for Jonathan Papelbon to surpass Bill Campbell, Lee Smith, Tom Gordon, Sparky Lyle, Derek Lowe, Jeff Reardon, Ellis Kinder, and Dick Radatz as he climbed the franchise leader board into second place all-time for saves. Papelbon closed out 2008 with 113 career saves—and on July 1, 2009, with his 20th save of the season he surpassed Bob Stanley to become the all-time franchise leader in saves.”

“It was like the baseball gods were showing off just for him, in honor of his first day of big league baseball. And surely the baseball gods were smiling that day, because the next batter was Larry Brown, and he was a scrawny, scrappy 23-year-old kid who’d never hit a big league home run. And yet he stepped to the plate and became just the second player in baseball history to connect and give his team four consecutive home runs.”

“Cable TV brought the Braves into homes all across America in the 1970s, by the 1980s the Braves were “America’s Team,” and by the 1990s the Braves were the most dominant team in baseball.”