Awesome night card, pt. 82

Before something changes -- after all, both teams won last night -- I better get this written quickly.

I'm feeling a strange kinship with Braves fans these days. That seldom happens. And I know it won't last. But the seasons of the Braves and Dodgers have been fairly similar after the first month.

Both teams are unexpectedly at the bottom of their respective divisions. Both are 9-14. Both are decent at home, horrible on the road.

Both have dealt with injury issues, to the starting lineup and the pitching staff. Both have outfielders in extended slides.

And both, most importantly, have an excruciating, infuriating, maddening, pull-out-my-eyeballs-and-fling-them-into-the-air inability to score runs. Players get on base, enjoy the surroundings, chat with the fielders, work a crossword puzzle, settle in for a picnic, take a nap, wake up to realize they're STILL ON SECOND, father a child (they're major leaguers, they can do anything), compute how many cars they will own in their lifetime, send their fathered child off to college, grow old, WITHER AND DIE! ... over and over again. The Dodgers and Braves have actually made 40 undetected roster changes apiece because players keep dying from neglect while on base. Oh, it's ugly. And the groundskeepers keep quitting. It's not good.

Also, there are ex-Braves on the Dodgers (Furcal, Anderson) and ex-Dodgers on the Braves (Lowe, Saito, Ross). Oh, and each team's manager is a Hall of Famer and quickly approaching geezer/ol' perfesser status.

So I'm throwing this night card up of Chipper Jones before all good will goes out the window. Because truthfully, I'm yearning for the days when the Dodgers were quite excellent and beat the Braves senseless every single meeting, and every time I tuned into TBS, Skip Caray was lamenting how "Steve Sax just kills us."

Yeah, I want it like that again. Or a reasonable facsimile.

So enjoy the kinship stuff while it lasts.