With the Braves 5.5 games out of the wildcard race in the National League and light-years behind the Mets in the NL East, this may be the first season in over a decade that Atlanta has not made the division championship series.

Hopefully we won’t have to go back to a 1990-like year, when the Braves were dead-last, to get to a 1991-like year, when the Braves almost won the World Series (they played amazingly and the championship was essentially stolen from them, if you consider the gaffe in Game 2, when the Twins’ Kent Hrbek lifted Ron Gant off of first base to tag him, and the ump actually called Gant out!). Even though Atlanta lost, that may have been the tightest, most exciting World Series ever.

In 1990, the Braves finished with a Win-Loss percentage of .401, the worst in baseball that season. Today they aren’t too close to .401; at .476 they would have to lose 23 games in a row to get there. It is possible, but let’s hope it doesn’t happen. My prayer is that something else will happen, besides lots of losing or another General Sherman, to light a fire under Atlanta.