Living proof that last year is over
PHILADELPHIA -- Apparently, it isn't last year anymore.
It's easy to notice that on Opening Day, for us astute baseball observers. But just in case we might have gotten caught in a time warp and forgotten, the Phillies and Braves spent 2 hours, 22 minutes Sunday night doing all kinds of stuff that just about never happened in 2008.
It definitely isn't last year for the World Series champs. That's our first order of business.
For one thing, they lost a baseball game. At home. What a concept.
The final score was Braves 4, Phillies 1. And if that didn't remind anybody of life in Philadelphia last October, there's a good reason. You might recall that the Phillies didn't lose ANY baseball games at home during their magical month of October (when they went 7-0).
But that was then. And this is That Dreaded Year After.
So one minute the marching band was playing and the championship flag was waving and the citizens of Philadelphia were loving life. And like 12 seconds later, Brett Myers had given up 1,250 feet worth of homers, the champs were four runs down before Ryan Howard's first at-bat of the season, and the boos were flowing, just like old times.
"That was our goal," laughed the Braves' Jeff Francoeur. "To hear some boos in Philly."
And speaking of Francoeur, it definitely wasn't last year for him, either.
A year ago, he had himself a season that was uglier than a four-car pileup on I-75. He had the second-worst on-base percentage (.294) of any everyday player in the National League and the fourth-worst batting average (.239). And detours on the road to stardom don't get much more disastrous than that.
But on Opening Day 2009, he smoked a solo homer in his first swing of the season. And he was actually happier, he said, about his second at-bat, because he worked his way through a real, live seven-pitch at-bat -- which wasn't exactly his house specialty last summer.
Asked afterward if there was any player in baseball who was happier to see this Opening Day arrive than him, Francoeur replied, succinctly: "Noooo. I told [the Braves beat writers] last year, when we sat in Houston [on the final weekend of the season], 'No one is going to look more forward to coming to this place next year than me.' Just to erase last year. I'm sick and tired of hearing talk about last year."
Well, welcome to Opening Day, when talk about last year can magically become about as extinct as the brontosaurus.
How different was this opener from the baseball that unfolded before our eyes last season? Here are just some of the highlights:
• Two Braves outfielders homered -- in the same game (Francoeur and center fielder Jordan Schafer). That happened exactly THREE times all last season, when all Braves outfielders combined to hit 27 home runs. That's the fewest by any outfield in baseball. Not to mention 10 fewer than Ryan Ludwick hit all by himself.
• Myers gave up three home runs just in his first turn through the opposing lineup. No starter in any opener did that last season. In fact, Myers was the first Opening Day starter to do that in either league since 2002 (when Chris Carpenter and Jeff Suppan did it). He's also the first Phillies starter to serve up three homers on Opening Day since Andy Ashby in 2000. And he's just the third to hit that trifecta in Philadelphia in the past 52 years, joining Steve Carlton (1977) and Robin Roberts (1957). Ohbytheway, Myers faced 359 hitters last season after he returned in July from his minor league banishment -- and allowed a TOTAL of five home runs.
• Derek Lowe, in his first start as a Brave, blitzed his way through eight spectacular two-hit, no-run innings. How many opponents did that to the Phillies in their home park last year? That would be zero, of course. In fact, only one other starting pitcher in the history of the park has thrown eight or more innings of two-hit, shutout baseball -- Lowe's old teammate, Tim Wakefield, back on June 24, 2005.
• And, finally, just the sight of the Braves beating the Phillies at all was an official it-isn't-last-year-anymore kind of development. The Braves went 4-14 against the Phillies last season -- including an unfathomable 0-9 in Atlanta. So "it was nice just to win a game against the Phillies," Francoeur chuckled. "We forgot what that felt like."
But beating the Phillies wasn't the only thing the Braves forgot to do last season. They also forgot to contend, or even finish above .500, for the first time in nearly two decades.
So after their first 90-loss season since 1990, they were about as ready to turn the page as any team in baseball. And nothing flips those pages like a win on opening night.
"It's like Yogi [Berra] said," manager Bobby Cox philosophized -- or at least attempted to philosophize. "Uh, what did he say again? Ten percent ability and 90 percent mental or something? Whatever it was."
Fortunately for Cox, that reach into his Yogi quote book was about the only thing that went wrong Sunday.
Last year, the Braves employed exactly one starting pitcher who worked enough innings to qualify for the ERA title. That didn't work out so hot. But this year, Cox got to run an Opening Day starter out there (Lowe) who has AVERAGED 208 innings a season over the past seven years.
And Lowe -- in his first start after signing a four-year, $60 million contract in January -- promptly went out there and became the first Braves starter to get through eight innings on Opening Day since John Smoltz did it in 1997, and the first to do it in his first start as a Brave since Greg Maddux in 1993.
"But he did go to three balls twice tonight," Cox deadpanned, "which I'll talk to him about."
OK, no he won't. Lowe controlled this game from his first pitch through his last pitch. He walked zero. He got 13 ground-ball outs. Only four outs all night carried beyond the infield. And he even made a dazzling Web Gemmish play on a Jayson Werth rocket up the middle in the sixth inning.
"I think I'm leading in the Gold Glove department," Lowe quipped. "No one else has played, right? So I've gotta be there. I wish the season could just end tonight."
That, of course, is unlikely. But by remarkable coincidence, in another one of those it's-a-whole-new-year plotlines, Lowe's season last year did end against this same Phillies team. And the last game he pitched before this one was in this very same ballpark. That was Game 1 of the 2008 NLCS, when Lowe was still a Dodger.
He rolled through five shutout innings in that game, but it sure didn't end like this one. Chase Utley and Pat Burrell mugged him for two game-turning homers in the sixth inning. And Lowe -- and the Dodgers -- never recovered.
Asked Sunday if that game stuck in his gut all winter, Lowe didn't pretend that was just another day at the yard.
"Well, I know what happened," he said. "But I don't believe in five-month revenge, just because they won the World Series and we went home."
What he does believe in, though, is the new, improved rotation he's now anchoring, with Jair Jurrjens, Javier Vazquez, Kenshin Kawakami and Tom Glavine lined up to pitch behind him.
They have a tradition of pitching greatness to uphold. And no one is more aware of that than Derek Lowe.
"It goes a long ways back," Lowe said. "I said when I signed here that I don't think that any of us have a chance of doing what they've done. But there's nothing wrong with respecting what they've done and admiring what they've done. But if I'm going to go out there and say I'm going to try and be like Greg Maddux, I'm probably not going to get there."
But if what he did Sunday was any portent of things to come, the Braves will take whatever semblance of a Maddux impression Lowe feels like giving. This is a team trying to rub 2008 right out of the old memory bank. So the Braves couldn't have scripted this Opening Day any better if Maddux, Smoltz and John Grisham had written that script themselves.
Now they have a day off Monday to savor their undefeated record and the new beginning that goes with it. So the manager is thinking about kicking off the hunt for a return to October with the hunt for a steak dinner.
"Yeah, maybe," laughed Cox, now that last year is finally in his rearview mirror. "And maybe I'll buy Lowe one, too."
Jayson Stark is a senior writer for ESPN.com. His new book, "Worth The Wait: Tales of the 2008 Phillies," was published by Triumph Books and is available in bookstores and online. Click here to order a copy.
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