The boys and my wife (a teacher) had a day off from school recently, so we took the long weekend as an opportunity to take a mini-vacation. It had to be somewhere within driving distance, and we noticed the Braves were in town taking on the Texas Rangers, a great matchup. Our boys had never been to an MLB game, so we decided to grab tickets to Friday night's game, and spend the rest of the weekend enjoying Atlanta.
While we did a few other fun things in Atlanta that weekend (Georgia Aquarium for one, which is top notch, by the way), it ended up being a baseball filled weekend focused on the Braves. Game one of the series, Chris Sale was on the mound for the Braves, and started off by giving up leadoff home run to Marcus Semien. But he settled in and pitched a solid 7 innings. But the real story of the day, and of the weekend for the Braves, was Travis d'Arnaud.
This was a guy who was batting .200 coming into the game, hitting 8th in the lineup, and had yet to do a whole lot offensively. Well April 19th was the day that would change. In the second inning, with the game tied at 1, d'Arnaud homered to left field off of Andrew Heaney, his first home run of the season.
Next at-bat, d'Arnaud again homered off Heaney to left field, almost the same spot. Braves up 3-1 at this point, with two solo home runs from d'Arnaud.
And in his next at-bat, with the game tied at 3 and the bases loaded, d'Arnaud hit a grand slam off of Jacob Latz, and this was one of the most electric sports moments I've witnessed in person. With my family next to me, including my two sons (7 and 4) at their first Braves game and showing some significant interest in baseball, it was special. Truist Field was rocking. I'm a d'Arnaud fan for life after this game.
It's been years since I bought a Topps Now card, but this was a time to. It hasn't arrived yet, it makes sense to go ahead and share the image.
After all the fun from Friday, we decided to go back Saturday night. And with the Braves leading 3-2 in the 8th, d'Arnaud smacked another 2-run HR to left to seal the game.
The Topps Now card was my first baseball card purchase for my collection recently, and this red border parallel from 2023 Topps Heritage was the second. Just a great looking card from my favorite baseball set year over year.
After this weekend, I've got a house full of Braves fans who are really into watching this year's team, and two boys who want to grab packs of sports cards every time we're out of the house! They each have their teams and players they are looking for. It's special for me - I collected cards with my dad growing up, have great memories of going to games and to card shows, and now I'm sharing that with my sons.
I've mentioned several times on this blog that even if I'm not always actively collecting baseball cards (I've been steadily collecting basketball for a long time), I end up returning to baseball cards for one reason or another. Well the Braves weekend, and my sons being interested, are the reasons this time. More posts to come!
