As a Mets fan, nothing makes me happier than seeing the way they have been playing this season; best record in baseball, possible NL MVP, lock for the playoffs since June.  Although they have not officially clinched their division just yet (current magic number is 3), last night’s Mets win officially eliminated the Atlanta Braves from contention for the NL East. 

As a Mets fan, I have hated the Braves for many many years and of course I have quite enjoyed watching them stumble this season.  However, as a fan of baseball and sports in general, I have to tip my hat to the Braves and what they have been able to accomplish over the past decade and a half.  This season will mark the first since 1990 that they will not be division champions.  That is quite a remarkable feat.  Consider what has taken place since the last time the Braves failed to win their division:

- Major League baseball has expanded not once, but twice, adding 4 teams

- interleague play was instituted

- Major League baseball split the AL and NL into 3 divisions, doubling the amount of playoff participants

- eight teams have not won a single division championship and four have won their division only one time, while the Braves have won fourteen!

- five teams have not reached the playoffs even once and three have only qualified one time each

Each of those things may not seem so remarkable, but try to think back to a time when there were only 26 teams, one round of playoffs before the World Series, no interleague and the Yankees were bad (they finished 1990 at 67-95!).  It’s been THAT long since the Braves failed to win their division!

The Braves may only have one World Series win during their run, but their regular season dominance is nothing short of incredible.  I know that there are those who will say that they choked in the playoffs every year and I can’t argue with that, but the fact that they were IN the playoffs every single season for the past 14 years is a remarkable and unprecidented accomplishment.  Perhaps some Braves fans would trade their lone championship for the two championships won by the Marlins (which were sprinkled around nine losing seasons).  But I would have to say that the consistent winning by Bobby Cox and the Braves organization deserves a hell of a lot of respect for not only being in the playoffs for 14 straight seasons, but being a division champion every time.