I don't post much and I know none of you will miss me but this board is getting ridiculous and I think I'll take a break until next year. What used to be the best site to get Braves news and discussion has turned into a bitchfest, and I don't see it changing anytime soon. I'm sure Heyward will be continue to be discussed daily for years to come. Maybe it's time to move on.
I agree that the concentration upon the Heyward trade is at an almost unbearable fever-pitch, but we're not even one month removed from the day the transaction was completed. What do you expect, really? Most of us, I think, have come to grips with his departure itself, but are still parsing apart the various explanations as to why it had to happen when and how it did.
This expectation of silence, this 'he gone' sentiment is almost insulting, though. Heyward was my favorite player; I bought his jersey before I moved abroad for the first time, continually drafted him in the first round on my fantasy teams (more often than not to my detriment), and deliriously defended him to my friends and family -- because Jason was a class act that embodied virtually everything I have ever admired in a baseball player.
Fans bitch, fans fight, fans come to mutual understandings.
This is why I love baseball, because you can take virtually EVERY decision made and put it under a microscope for eternal dissection.
I hate to see you go. I hate to see anybody go. But I challenge you to find a better place to engage in thoughtful and passionate Braves discourse on the Internet. Forums are a dying breed, and this one has some of the few remaining intellectual OGs around.
I apologize for rambling. I actually am posting this from a smoke deck at the local watering hole. Because I'm a geek ... and bitching about baseball is so much more enjoyable than buying drinks for ungrateful women.