I've had that hypothetical question with my sports' friends all the time. Would you take a decade of dominance with one title or suck in 7 years and win 3 titles?
My friends and I have reached a consensus that we rather have a decade of dominance with one title rather than 8 years of suckiness with 2 titles. But it's at 3 titles that the scales are tipped. What about you guys?
Good point, at least you knew your team could dominate 4 other teams in MLB, and make the playoffs every year. "Hey, we got our money's worth, Braves are in the playoffs again" But to me, thats kinda like cashing in an MTT, then going right out, over and over.
Bills made 4 straight super bowls, and dominated the weaker AFC for years. So what, still ended every season with a loss.
This may be a weak analogy, but if I play the
wsop main event every year for the next 10 years and just cashed 9 out of 10 of them, I'd feel empty, even though I'd have a nice profit.
I lived in Atlanta(Lilburn) in 1978 and 1979, during Bobby Cox 1st tenure there and I became a Braves fan. 2B Glenn hubbard was my favorite player, with Jerry Royster a close second. I remember going to Fulton county Stadium and there would be about 5000 fans on average for a major league baseball game.
Outfield seats were $1, and once you got in, you could sit basically anywhere you wanted. The Indian used to do his little dance on the pitchers mound, then sprint out to his teepee in left field to smoke crack. Ted Turner always sat in his box behind the home dugout and by the 5th inning he was drunk as a skunk. One night with his speech slurred, Turner came on the PA system and announced, this team is so bad, anybody who wants to come back tommorrow can get in for free. The night I met turner, a local Italian restaurant was having an all you can eat spaghetti on the field after the game(back in those days, you could run a promo like this because there weren't many fans), as we clammored down to the field we passed Ted Turner(he was so drunk, I remember thinking how cool it would be someday to be rich, own a MLB team, and drunk every night!), I stopped and said, hey your Ted Turner, he said yes I am young man, we shook
hands and proceeded to the more important task at hand, gorging ourselves with spaghetti.
So thru all that, when I moved back to Pa., I remained a Braves fan, and with TBS was able to follow them every night. Even though my true allegience was with Philly teams, I really enjoyed the Braves rise to dominance, having been there when they stunk so bad.
But still, in the end, to me, winning only one world championship with that kind of pitching staff was a failure. If Larusssa, Torre, or any of the good managers had run that team, they would have won more championships.
Bobby Cox had no clue....
So, with all that said, yes, I feel that if the Phillies go on to a 3rd straight WS, and win it a second time in 3 years, they will have accomplished way more than the Atlanta Braves did, while they ruled the NL east.
First they have to get there, game one Saturday !