Party Like It's 1995 with I.J. Rosenberg

It was almost an hour and a half after the Braves’ biggest win in more than a quarter of a century, and after Freddie Freeman had caught the throw for the final out in a 7-0 win against the Houston Astros in Game 6.

This time I celebrated with my wife, all alone in a quiet house on a quiet street on a river flowing quietly in Roswell. It was perfect.

Some 26 years after the last successful baseball world championship, which I chronicled for the city as beat writer for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, a very different group of Braves took out a very good Houston Astros team in six games to win the World Series on Nov. 2.

I had hoped it would happen on Sunday night, when I took my 83-year-old father out to Game 5 at Truist Park, but it just wasn’t meant to be.

Instead, the Braves took the trophy on the road, the same way the last eight World Series titles have ended, with the Braves as a visiting team celebrating on the home team’s diamond.

In 1995, when the Braves beat Cleveland in Game 6, it took eight scoreless innings from Tom Glavine, a home run from David Justice and a one-two-three ninth from Mark Wohlers to win 1-0. This time it was over early, beginning with a three-run moon shot by Jorge Soler in the third inning.

Three more runs would come in the fifth and another one in the seventh, but for me it all started in the first, when starter Max Fried gave up a hit to Jose Altuve and then could not get to the first-base bag fast enough to catch a relay throw from Freddie Freeman on a grounder by Michael Brantley. On the play, Brantley stepped on Fried’s ankle, but the skinny left-hander shook it off and gave the performance of his career.

By the time Fried left after six innings, the game was for the most part over. After struggling in a Game 2 loss, the club’s ace and one of baseball’s best young pitchers had his front-page scrapbook story, adding a nice Jewish flavor to the game some of us still call our national pastime.

In the late innings, my wife went on Facebook Live with our three kids and two sons-in-law, and I really realized that this is their championship. This is also for my father’s parents, who took my brother and I to the game when Hank Aaron hit his 715th home run. This is for all the transplants who came to Atlanta as fans of other clubs but suddenly call the Braves their team. This is for Hank Aaron and Phil Niekro and Bobby Cox. This is for Glavine, Justice and Wohlers and an usher named Walter Banks.

I.J. Rosenberg, 58, spent 13 years at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and six of them (1991-96) covering the Atlanta Braves, including the world title club in 1996. Today, he is the president of sports marketing company Score Atlanta.

This is for all of you. A melting pot of players with a loyal skipper and a general manager who refused to sell after losing perhaps baseball’s best young player to injury, has delivered us all a world title.

Take a breath and enjoy it. Buy yourself a championship t-shirt. Smile and dance and act goofy … and party like it’s 1995.