Hanson Sharp – Bats Wake Up, Fish Fileted

By now you will all know that Tommy Hanson found his fastball and his slider last night, scattered 4 hits and struck out out 5 through 7 shutout innings to filet the Marlins. The return of Hanson is heartening to Braves fans and I’m sure Tommy was glad to see his pitches going where they were supposed to go. I suspect the biggest sigh of relief came from Hanson when the Braves bats actually arrived at a game he started. Most notable of the arrivals was Nate McClouth who acted exactly like a number 2 hitter should. With two out in the third he drove in Martin Prado with a double into right and used his speed to score on Chipper’s RBI single. In the fifth he followed Martin Prado’s leadoff double with a sweet sacrifice that sent Prado to second allowing him to score on Chipper’s single. I hope that’s a sign of things to come.

As noted Prado stayed hot as did Chipper continued to deliver, those RBI were number 1498 and 1499 for the future Hall of Famer. Brian McCann added his first homer, Jason Heyward his third and Dan Uggla delivered his first hit against his former team stretching a dying quail to right into a double in the fifth.

The defense sparkled behind Hanson as well. Alex Gonzales turned in two spectacular plays at short and combined with Uggla for s nifty double play to get Hanson out of a jam. Speaking of the much maligned Uggla he made a superb over the should catch of a pop fly behind first then turned to make a good throw to hold the runner at second. Uggla may make some errors as we gone on that will make us groan but so far he’s been very good.

Tonight we face the Marlins #1 starter Josh Johnson. Johnson is a stud. He pitched well in his first two games, beating the Mets but let down by his defense against Nats when he allowed one earned run and didn’t walks anyone in six innings. He’s 4-3 against us with a 2.48 lifetime ERA. Tim Hudson goes for the Braves. Huddy is 9-3 lifetime against the fish with a 2.84 ERA. Everything points to a low scoring, fast paced game. Hopefully the reawakened bats will come to the game for the Braves tonight and support Huddy as they did Hanson.

So the bats heated up and the defense sparkled, sadly only about 13,500 folks were there to see it. What is the matter with baseball fans in Atlanta? I know it was Tuesday night but surely you can do better than that. heck the independent league down the road gets 8000 in a town of 88,000. It’s sad to see be too far (1000 miles) away to take advantage of the empty spaces by going to the games.