Dirty South Pride

Its been quite a year for Atlanta fans... the Braves' demise, the Falcons' rise and the Hawks' surprise (and at least the Thrashers try). But another year come and gone without bringing home a major championship. Sure it'd be fun to live in Boston with the Patriots, Celtics and Red Sox, but we can't all enjoy that kind of well-rounded success. The rest of us have to find other reasons to have pride in our teams. Things like damn good hot dogs or kiss cams or Marta access. But seriously Atlanta fans, when some joker from Boston or Florida starts giving you the business about how irrelevant our teams are... here's six good reasons to laugh in their face:

• Michael Turner
• Roddy White
• Joe Johnson
• Ilya Kovalchuk
• Chipper Jones
• Brian McCann

These are your Atlanta All-Stars. These six players were named the best of the best this year. No Bostonian can come into the dirty south and claim we have no good players or we have no good teams. With two playoff teams and six all-stars, I'd say we're sitting pretty. There's 30+ teams in these leagues, and only one can win the championship each year. And its been a long time since that team was the Yankees, Cowboys, or Lakers. Sports isn't all about the championships. Sure it'd be nice to have a couple more World Series titles and a Super Bowl win, but its hard not to feel proud about our boys when you go into the stadium and see those banners hanging: division champions, conference champions, league champions... or when you turn on the All-Star game or Pro Bowl and see your boys taking the field alongside the game's best players... or when you read preseason discussions about which of your guys could win the Heisman, league MVP, or Rookie of the Year.

We may have down years, but our teams - our players - are never out of the discussion. Matt Ryan was the NFL's Offensive Rookie of the Year, Michael Turner was the league MVP's runner-up, Jonathan Dwyer ACC Player of the Year, Matt Stafford could be the top pick in the draft, Chipper Jones won the NL batting title... times are good in the Dirty South boys and girls, even if we're not hoisting championship trophies like they are in the northeast, that doesn't mean we aren't proud of our players' accomplishments year in and year out. If you keep putting talent on the field, the titles will come.
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McCann Runs ... very slowly

The new Chop Talk Q&A is out over at atlantabraves.com. This weeks interview is Brian McCann. He is a pretty light tempered guy and it comes across in the interview. You can usually find him on the bench laughing it up with friends Kelly Johnson and Jeff Francouer. I even once got an opportunity to go down to field level for a warm up and meet McCann. He came up to me and said, "Hi. I'm Brian," and smiled something fierce, and you could tell instantly that he was a real nice fella. But, his running speed really leaves something to be desired.

This off season, coming off his second Silver Slugger in three years for catchers, McCann is determined to be healthy, so he can win many more in the future. He told Dave O'Brian about his recent loss of 20 pounds. Good job Mac, I have been battling to do the same myself. It ain't easy. One thing that did strike me was this comment:

McCann: I'm lifting weights like I did last year, with my brother Brad and Mark DeRosa. But I run three days a week on the treadmill. I usually run about 20 to 25 minutes, so it's probably about two miles. It gets my heart rate up and burns a lot of extra calories. I figure it can't hurt, since the more weight I take off, the less stress it puts on my knees. I'm only 24 years old, so I think I'm starting this early enough that it will impact my career.

Huh? He runs 20-25 minutes and goes about 2 miles. That would be 10+ minute miles. That is really, really slow. For example, not to brag, but I average 3 miles in about 25+ minutes, and I don't consider that very fast. Now, I know Mac's a catcher, as was I, and that we are blessed with 'catcher speed,' but come on, if a fat ass like me can run 8 minute miles, then he should be able to as well. Either Mac is not a much of a distance runner, or he isn't very good at math.
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