My Ideas to End the Braves' Slump

In case you have been living a hectic life, celebrating the early days of summer or continuing your indifference toward baseball over the past eight days, you're quite lucky. You've missed eight consecutive Braves losses, a run differential of 46-21, and one hit by Brian McCann. You've also missed the slide from a 1.5-game cushion for first place in the NL East to a 4-game deficit and a share of last place in perhaps the toughest division in baseball.

I had yet to attend a game in this 2012 season, so my father and I decided to try our luck and hoped to end the team's (at the time) seven-game slide. Unfortunately, we didn't provide the boost that the Bravos needed. Hanson couldn't keep the Cardinals off of the bases and the chunky Lance Lynn (dubiously listed at 250 pounds) made quick work of the Atlanta order in four of his seven innings while munching on Twinkies in between batters.

I blame my father; as we walked out, he couldn't remember the last time he had seen an Atlanta team win in person. He believes it may have been Game 2 of the 2011 WNBA Eastern Conference Finals when the Atlanta Dream defeated the Indiana Fever (http://espn.go.com/wnba/recap?gameId=310925020). On an unrelated note, the Dream's Top Performer, Iziane Castro Marques, has never been photographed. 

So, without further ado, here's what the Braves should do to turn their luck around.

1. Brian McCann needs to change his walk-up song to any song that is not "All I Do is Win." Sure, the song was cool back in 2010 when it accompanied McCann to the plate for the Wild Card winning Braves. Now, Turner Field is the only place that dares to play this wretched DJ Khaled-produced garbage. Might as well have named the song "All I Do is Cringe," for obvious reasons.


To what should B-Mac change his walk-up song to? Anything is better, even Carly Rae Jepsen's "Call Me Maybe" or One Direction's "What Makes You Beautiful." I could listen to those songs in 10-second spurts for the rest of my life.

2. Let Two-Bit win the Home Depot Tool Race just once!!! For 21 games, the hammer, saw and paintbrush have bullied the poor drill by pushing him from behind, checking him into openings in the fence and tackling him at the start (http://photos.braves.com/images/spacer.gif). Who knows? Maybe we are suffering from "The Curse of the Drillbino."


3. Call in Dr. Lou to give an inspirational pre-game speech to the players. Does he know as much about baseball as Chipper? No way. Fredi? I can't be certain. But we need to go to drastic measures and I'm not sure there is a more drastic measure than this.  Just be sure to equip all of the players with ponchos and goggles and cover the floor with a tarp to prevent massive flooding from his spit.

Hopefully, someone engages one, if not all, of these emergency action plans and helps our Braves out of their rut. Or maybe a starter could complete seven innings (hasn't happened in the last six games). Or maybe they could score more than four runs (hasn't happened in the last ten games). Those would work too.