Not so fast, my friend

So, as you may remember, I'm quite the Atlanta Braves fan. If a game has been on regular cable since the start of the season I've seen it. I occassionally listen to ESPN Radio during the day, as well as watching SportsCenter and Baseball Tonight. Until Tuesday, On TV at night, as well as every 20 minute radio update all day long, I had been hearing ALL about how the NY Mets are 9-2, and they have built a 5 game lead in the NL East, the fastest that's ever happened in MLB history. EVERYBODY was fawning all over the Mets. Nevermind the fact that their first few series were the Marlins, the Nationals (twice), and the Brewers. Forgive me if I don't roll over and quit watching the rest of the season since the Mets have already wrapped things up.

Jeff Schultz from the Atlanta Journal Constitution summed things up nicely after the Braves bounced back from Tuesday's 4-3 loss to spank the crap out of the Mets at Shea. You can read the whole thing here, but here are a few highlights, (which, I remind you, we can all read for free now..):

New York — If there was one thing that we all learned about the Braves on Tuesday night, it’s that they’ve got spunk. I mean, here it is the dog days of April, the division race over — and yet the Braves managed to pull together for one magical night to slay the mighty New York Mets, who were 10-2, toppled several countries and ate Godzilla.

Oh, they’ll be talking about this for years. The morning after the Mets’ resounding, dominating, dare I say overwhelming, 4-3 win over the Braves, a headline in Tuesday’s New York Post blared: “BRAVE NEW WORLD. Mets show Atlanta who’s boss.”

In the Daily News, the game story began: “Don’t worry Braves, there’s always the wild card.” It’s a wonder anybody made it to game two of the series, what with parade traffic.

Then the Braves won, 7-1.

Just so you know, I did the math. The Mets’ magic number to clinch the National League East over the Braves remains at 145.

Let me ask you this, if you went to Vegas and saw some guy at the craps table on the most unbelievable roll EVER (kind of like 14 straight pennants), would you EVER bet against him until he rolls junk and loses all his money? Even right this minute I'm listening to Harold Reynolds on Baseball Tonight telling all of us, based on the first 2.5 weeks of the season, that there's no way the Braves are repeating.

14 straight and Bobby Cox at the helm apparently just doesn't mean as much as it used to....

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On another note, the Icehouse is finally open. They got a 30 day temporary certificate of occupancy permit from the city, so they have 30 days to get their parking lot paved and drainage stuff finished. The Bride and I went over tonight and had some wonderful food, very tall cheap beer ($3.50 for a 22 oz Shiner), and fantastic conversation with two New York-based German journalists who are in town covering the Shiny Wal-Mart Best Foot Forward Open and Friendly Media Extravaganza. The Bride had met them this afternoon and told them about the Icehouse, so when they showed up, they came over to our table and visited for a few minutes before we just invited them to sit down.

We all hung out and talked about everything from NYC to the World Cup to silly French people for several hours. Here's to our new friends Thomas and Martin!

The Icehouse is at SE D Street on SE 5th Street in Bentonville for the uninformed. Use google maps if you're directionally challenged. Go and check it out!

read more: baseball, atlanta