Chipper's Career, Braves Season End in Controversy

It’s been two days since the Atlanta Braves season and Chipper Jones’ career came to an end during a controversial loss to the St. Louis Cardinals in the first ever Major League Baseball Wild Card playoff game.

The game included a controversial infield fly rule by third base umpire Sam Holbrook on a ball hit a good way into left field 225 feet from home plate. The bad call maybe killed a Braves late rally and might have or might not have cost the Braves a comeback win. We will never know and that’s a damn shame.

The bigger controversy, in my opinion, from the game is that the bad call proved that the new wild card playoff game is bogus. It’s not fair that a bad call could completely ruin an entire season for a team that finished the season a whopping six games ahead of the second wild card. If Major League Baseball is going to continue to insist on two wild card teams in each league than it needs to modify the system to be a best of three series. Not that this would do any good for the Braves or Chipper Jones’ run at a final World Series ring now, but it could help out a team from being screwed in the future like the Braves were this season.

Unfortunately Chipper Jones didn’t look so hot in his final career game going 1 for 5, with his only hit at least coming in his final career at-bat, even if it was a weak infield single that received the benefit of the throw pulling Cardinals first baseman Allen Craig off of the base. Jones also committed a big error that played a huge role in the Redbirds beating the Braves.

Friday night’s game is absolutely no way for a baseball legend to end his career, but those are the breaks sometimes in sports. When we look back at Chipper Jones’ career we won’t remember this game. Nope, we’ll remember all of the good times and great play from the future hall of famer.

So, this farewell season for Chipper Jones is over and so is his career, but this isn’t exactly how I wanted to wrap up my Chipper Jones tribute blog, so this won’t be my last post. I can’t tell you exactly how many more posts there will be, but there are still some things that I want to do before I completely wrap it up. Stay tuned for more.