Atlanta 4, Jack Sparrow 1

Game Notes...

- It's amazing how a potentally great play can turn into a terrible result. With two outs, Chipper Jones sent a 1-0 drive to right-center. Xavier Nady, hardly an accomplished center fielder, caught it briefly, but the ball was dropped as he smashed into the wall. Zach Duke was trying to keep a 1-0 lead, but he left a fastball over the middle of the plate and Andruw Jones murdered it to deep center for a two-run homer. Duke did the exact same thing to Jeff Francoeur on his next pitch and the result was exactly the same as well. The Braves would add a fourth run on a Scott Thorman double, but had Nady made that catch, the inning would have been over.

- It would have been over for Kyle Davies' first victory in over a year, too. He was very solid, throwing seven innings and allowing seven hits. He only threw 87 pitches and 58 of them were strikes. 18 of the 27 batters he faced saw a first pitch strike. Of the nine who didn't, 33% of them came in the second inning; the one inning he looked like the Davies of the last year-and-half. Beyond that, he looked like a guy with the potential to be a consistent major league starter.

- The fourth inning was very strange. Chipper Jones nearly killed himself trying to hurdle Jose Bautista. The heart of each Braves fan got caught in their throat before Chipper said he was okay. Still think he should have been called out, but I will take it.

- Kerwin Danley is a shitty umpire. This is all.

- Andruw Jones...en fuego. Hit a homer, robbed Xavier Nady of a probable extra base hit, and simply looked like the Andruw we love rather than the Andruw we hate.

- Big first win. Winning the first game of the series is how you win series-after-series and the Braves keep doing that well.