This story, by TSN Braves correspondent Tim Tucker, first appeared in the May 3, 1982, issue of The Sporting News, after the Braves opened the season with a record 13 consecutive victories.
ATLANTA — They remember hearing about the Oakland streak, reading about it, marveling at it. They remember thinking how wonderful it would be to be part of such a thing
"I remember thinking, 'Gosh, that's the way that'd be nice,'" said outfielder Dale Murphy.
"It was happening in the other league, and we had our own games to play. But you couldn't help being amazed by it," said relief pitcher Al Hrabosky.
Incredibly, one year after they and the rest of baseball gawked at the Oakland A's record-setting 11-0 start in 1981, the Atlanta Braves pulled off an even more remarkable feat. The Braves won their first 11 games, yes, but they then proceeded to win two more before losing to the Cincinnati Reds, 2-1, on April 22. Never before in modern baseball history had a team been 13-0. Not even 12-0.
MORE: Why the Rays might've been better off had their streak ended at 10
Suddenly, the Braves found themselves being talked about, written about and marveled at, just as the A's were at this time a year ago.
"Oakland was in the same situation as our club at this time last year," said Braves Manager Joe Torre. "They had something to prove, something to organize, like us. All of a sudden, Oakland came from nowhere to somewhere, like we are doing."
The Braves, it seems, are on the move. The team that finished last season six games under .500 (25-29 in the first half, 25-27 after the players' strike), the team that has finished in the second division in the National League West the last seven years, won its first six games of 1982 without trailing and then came from behind for six of its next seven victories.
"Everything is going right — everything," said right fielder Claudell Washington. "I don't know what'll beat us. Maybe if everybody comes down with the flu."
The questions, though, remained as persistent as the victories: How are they doing it? And why are they able to do it now, all of a sudden, and not before?
You keep looking for the nice, neat answer that explains the record — the staff earned-run average that hovered around 2.00 for most of the streak, the average of more than five runs per game, the whole new approach to the game.
It would be easy if you could point to one blockbuster offseason trade, but the Braves were the only team in either league that did not make an off-season trade. It would be easy if you could point to a free-agent acquisition, a Reggie Jackson perhaps, but the Braves didn't sign a free agent.
So, you are left with the fastest starting team in modern history — a team that looks exactly like its old self on paper, yet hardly resembles its old self on the field — and you have no clear-cut, irrefutable explanation for it. But the leading theories are these:
1. The team, still the youngest in the National League, has come of age. This, the theory goes, was destined to happen. Just a matter of time. Said 43-year-old pitcher Phil Niekro: "Everybody grew up a year and realized, 'Hey, we can play baseball in this league.'"
2. The new manager, Torre, and his coaching staff have gained the confidence of the team and, somehow, made the players confident of their own abilities. They have proved to the players how much fun winning can be. They have motivated. They have driven. They have been, as Reggie Jackson might say, the straws that stir the drink.
Added Niekro: "This team has been boiling the last couple of years. Joe came in and turned up the gas."
MORE: Where does the Rays' 12-0 start stack up in MLB history
Probably, the explanation is a combination of both theories and any other theory you've beard in the last couple of weeks. "There's no one fancy answer," said Torre.
But Theory No. 2 is the most alluring of the available options, and it is the one sweeping this city. But Torre, while savoring the popularity that he knows cannot last forever, points to the field. "I can't get out there and win the games for them," he said.
Remember all the things you were told in spring training had to go right for this team to win. Bob Horner and Dale Murphy had to produce. Brett Butler had to reach base. Rafael Ramirez had to play decent shortstop. The bench had to be improved. The starting pitching had to come through.
And consider what had happened through 12 games. Horner and Murphy had six game-winning runs batted in between them. Butler had reached base an average of two times per game. Ramirez kept his batting average around .350 and had committed only one error. The first player off the bench, Rufino Linares, had six hits in his first nine at-bats with four runs scored and one game-saving defensive play. Even without the injured Niekro, the top three starters — Rick Mahler, Bob Walk and Tommy Boggs — were a combined 5-0 with a 1.82 earned-run average. Walk was the losing pitcher April 22 when the Braves finally were beaten.
Torre praised coaches Bob Gibson and Dal Maxvill for the Braves' turnaround. Gibson, the Hall of Famer, is the Atlanta pitching coach and Maxvill has spent many hours working with Ramirez on shortstop techniques.
The Braves, like the A's in their streak last year, were playing aggressively, hitting and running, swinging at 30 pitches, taking the extra bases. But, in contrast to the As, the Braves got only two complete games in their first 13, six times going to the bullpen before the sixth inning. But the bullpen was outstanding, at one point allowing just one earned run in 31 innings
As the winning streak continued, as the national media descended on his clubhouse, Torre often thought back to the first six games of spring training. That, he is convinced, led to all of this.
"Winning those first six exhibition games was a big thing." be said. "You can talk about instilling a winning attitude in a team, which is the biggest thing we wanted to do here, but you need some wins to accomplish It. You can tell players they'll have a better chance to win if they do this, this and this and if they think this, this and this, and when they go out and win the first six games after bearing that stuff, it gives credence to what you are saying.”
Question: If the Braves had not won those first six exhibition games, might all that has followed — the 18-7 Grapefruit League record, best in club history, and the record start — not have happened?
"It might not have happened so fast," Torre said. "I think it eventually would have happened, but it might have taken a little longer.”
The Braves haven't turned up the music in the clubhouse more than a decibel or two. They haven't switched from beer to champagne. They haven't fallen into a starry-eyed daze or any other state of euphoria.
The Braves, for the most part, continued to treat their unprecedented start like an everyday occurrence, like it was as familiar as Owner Ted Turner's rantings. The team that suddenly could not lose for winning responded to this burst of upward mobility as if it were scheduled all along.
Has this team come of age, both on and off the field?
"The people in Atlanta and around the league are trying to romanticize this thing," said Torre, "but the players are not getting carried away, not getting overly excited, and that is the most healthy part of what is happening. You can look at them and tell they are not surprised by this, and we don't want them to be.
"This is our attitude: 'Why shouldn't we be doing this? Why shouldn't we be winning? Why not us?'"
"The reason we aren't going through the roof," said Horner, "is that we were convinced before the season started that we could win. We're doing what we knew we could do."
"This team came to spring training," said relief pitcher Gene Garber, "with the attitude it was time to put up or shut up. We'd been trying to claim we had pretty good talent for the last couple of years, but we hadn't won consistently. This spring, there was just the feeling, 'Now is the time to do something.'
"I think the big difference was that we analyzed, 'Obviously, something is wrong. Let's try it another way.' Now, we are playing as a unit, guys playing together, believing in themselves as a unit. Everybody feels, 'I'll do the best I can, and if that's not good enough, maybe somebody else will pick me up.'
"But we expect to win all season — it's a long season — and that's why you have to keep things on as much of an even keel as possible."
The Braves' long-suffering fans, though, lost their even keel about halfway to the record. There had been other historic moments at Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium — Hank Aaron's 715th bomer, Hoyt Wilhelm's 1,000th game, the end of Pete Rose's 44-game hitting streak — but perhaps no moment ever so aroused the crowd as when Cincinnati's Dan Driessen lofted Garber's 3-2 fastball to left fielder Murphy for the final out of victory No. 12.
Garber thrust his right fist triumphantly into the air. Players embraced one another. Hundreds of fans poured onto the field. Losersville bad become Winnersville.
The Braves, too, had to deal with the intoxicating reality of having done something no one else had ever done. They couldn't help wondering why no one else had ever been 12-0. "I guess you do wonder, when you think about it," Garber said. "If we've done it now, why hasn't someone done it before?"
The Braves, though, saw the record as more than an emotional moment, more than an historic moment. They saw it as a point that will separate their past from their future.
"We wanted the record because it was an immediate goal that would help us get the respect we desire," first baseman Chris Chambliss said. "Sometimes, it takes a tremendous thing like this to go on the board, and that's what we were after. We are very excited about what we have done, about the attention we are getting.
"In order to change the attitude of everybody toward Atlanta, it took something dramatic, and this record is dramatic. Now, I think we'll be looked on as a winner instead of as a loser. I think this changes things."
The rest of the league might still be having difficulty deciding what to make of the Braves ("Check the averages in June," advised Cincinnati's Dave Concepcion), but Ted Turner has no doubts.
"I don't see any reason," the Braves' owner said, "why we won't run away with the pennant.”
Postscript: The streaky Braves — they also had an 11-game losing streak in 1982 — managed to win the NL West, but by only one game on the last day of the season. Then, in the NLCS, they were swept in three straight by the eventual world champion Cardinals.