John Schuerholz Moves On

John Schuerholz has just announced that, after 17 years sitting in the big chair, he is no longer the General Manager of the Atlanta Braves. Those 17 years saw 14 consecutive division championships, 5 league championships, and one world championship. It is a run of success that has known no equal.

Every couple of years now, Braves fans and sports beat writers have had to write "end of an era" columns about the gradual breakup of the Atlanta Braves as one future Hall of Famer has departed. Five years ago, Tom Glavine left. Four years ago, Greg Maddux found more money elsewhere. Two years ago, Leo Mazzone departed to join a childhood friend, Sam Perlozzo (fired this year), on the Orioles. Two weeks ago, John Schuerholz announced he wouldn't make an offer to resign Andruw Jones. Three hours ago, he announced his own departure. (Actually, Schuerholz will now be team president, so he'll still have a nice chair and an affiliation with the organization. But he'll be a figurehead rather than an active force.) In the next couple years, we'll have to bid adieu to Bobby Cox and John Smoltz, and not long after that, Chipper Jones.

It's not a stretch of the imagination to say that Maddux, Glavine, Smoltz, Mazzone, Cox, Schuerholz, and Andruw and Chipper Jones are headed to the Hall of Fame. While Mazzone would be the Hall's first pitching coach inductee, his reputation with the Braves is sufficiently sainted that he will almost surely blaze the trail. Bobby Cox's reputation is even more certain -- he has the fourth-most wins ever. Maddux, Glavine and Smoltz have been sure things for a while now, and continue to add to their legacy. Andruw Jones, the best defensive center fielder since Mays, would be a serious Hall of Fame contender if he retired tomorrow, and he's only 30; and Chipper Jones, though he plays at the most underrepresented Hall position, is the best offensive 3B of his generation (other than Alex Rodriguez). And Schuerholz will almost certainly join Bill Veeck and Branch Rickey in the tiny General Managers' wing, as he has been incontrovertibly the best general manger since Rickey. He brought in Maddux to join Smoltz and Glavine, and discovered Andruw in Curaçao. Then around them he built a team that won, and kept winning.

And, of course, Schuerholz outranked all of them. He can take as much credit for their wins and losses -- and they won more than anyone else, while he was at the helm -- as any of them, because he assembled the team that took the field, and kept all those Hall of Famers together for nearly a decade and a half. His demeanor was like his forever-suspendered wardrobe: tight, conservative, pursed-lipped, oblivious to outside appearance in favor of internal effectiveness. He won respect from his opponents even as he beat them. They kept calling him because he didn't draw attention to himself or flaunt his ego, and he never tried to hoodwink anyone. He simply won because he was smarter, better, and worked harder.

Many will write more eloquently than I can about his gifts and flaws. The Braves will not fade; they will remain a fine ball club for a good many years into the future. What they have lost is not hope for the future but another part of the unbroken legacy of the immediate present and past. And it's one of the greatest legacies in all of professional sports.

I'll miss you, John. Thanks for the memories.

Comments

[CatfishJohn]

..."a run of success that has known no equal"???...HUH???...well, i see from your bio that you are of the espn generation and likely spend more time immersed in the gadget-tech toys of your generation than reading sports history 101, so to help edify you:
1. 1 world title does in 17 long years does not equate to much ...in america, the winner is the heralded winner and the miss america runner up disappears into the anonymity of becoming a housewife in demoines.
2. with all that talent, the braves in history emerge as little more than the buffalo bills of baseball....october chokers...
3. if you want a real individual to accurately rhsapsodize about " a run of success with no equal" in professional sports dial back to 1957-1986 and zero in on Boston and arnold auerbach and the incomparable dynasty of 16 world titles (!) , numerous hall of famers, mentor of numerous successful nba coaches, a team that won 8 world championships in a row and a man who integrated professional basketball. that is the legacy of the one and only arnold auerbach of the Boston Celtics...he makes your guy puny by comparison...coach, gm, team president, innovator- supreme of fast break basketball, fearless racial integrationist in professional hoops, genius on draft day ( russell, havlicek, cowens , sam jones) and in making player trades (mchale, parrish, walton) and late in their career acquisitions (howell, embry, dennis johnson)...
please spare us the maudlin hyperbole about some guy whoe engineered one championship ring for his organization...red auerbach had 16...

[AlexRemington]

Auerbach, who is justly celebrated, is usually called "Red." His teams were quite good and it's a shame that the Celtics have fallen into such disrepair since he stepped down from active operations.

The New York Yankees won 5 straight world series between 1949 and 1953, a mark that will likely never be equalled; between 1965 and 1979, the Montreal Canadiens won 10 championships; between 1953 and 1980, Real Madrid won 18 La Liga championships. All these achievements are impressive and noteworthy, and you'll note that all of them began before the ESPN generation and TV dollars resulted in the mergers of the ABA and NBA, the AFL and NFL, and expansions in all of the major American professional sports, making dynasties far harder to sustain.

There have been many dominant franchises in world sports history. The Atlanta Braves are one of them, and by the measure of consecutive first-place finishes -- which I judge the most important, considering that the baseball season is by far the longest of all the professional sports -- the Braves are the most successful modern baseball team.

Moreover, the Buffalo Bills have 6 division titles within the last 20 years, and no championships. The comparison is hardly appropriate.

[lodipete]

"Those 17 years saw 14 consecutive division championships, 5 league championships, and one world championship. It is a run of success that has known no equal."

Obviously the author has never heard of the New York Yankees.

[AlexRemington]

In the past 17 years, the New York Yankees have 3 wild card berths, 10 division championships, 6 league championships, and 4 world championships.

Wild cards, burnished silver medals, don't impress me as much as winning the gold. Finishing first 14 times in a row is more impressive than finishing first 10 times non-consecutively.

[MrLion]

Fourteen division titles in a row. The mind boggles.

[php25]

GO CUBS GO!

[DumbDad]

AND built the major league franchise on the strength of the riches of the farm system developed by his predecessor as GM: Bobby Cox!