Bobby Cox's last playoff run is most unlike

Marketed nationally as “America’s Team” by TBS and then marketed regionally as “Braves Country,” many here grew up watching Bobby Cox manage the Atlanta Braves.

Cox’s tenure has included an unprecedented 14-straight division titles from 1991 to 2005 and five World Series appearances, winning the title in 1995.

This season, Bobby Cox’s final season as a major league manager and for the first time since 2005, the Braves return to the playoffs where they will face the National League West champion San Francisco Giants.

Other than, perhaps, the 1991 “Worst to First” Braves, this is the franchise’s unlikeliest run to the playoffs. For the first time in franchise history, the Braves made it to the playoffs as a wild card team and they didn’t clinch the postseason berth until the last day of the regular season.

The Braves used 109 different lineups, thanks in part to season-ending injuries to Chipper Jones and Martin Prado. By the last month of the season, after injuries to starting pitchers Kris Medlen and Jair Jurrjens, the rotation became rounded out by Mike Minor and Brandon Beachy, both of whom started the year with the Class AA Mississippi Braves.

In this playoff run, the Braves assume an unfamiliar underdog role and deservedly so. Cy Young award winners Tom Glavine, Greg Maddux and John Smoltz aren’t walking through that door. Nor is Chipper Jones, the lone holdover from that 1995 team.

Instead there’s a roster with a flair for the dramatic, which led the Braves to 25 last at-bat victories this season and exemplifies the expression “the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.”

There’s the ace starting pitcher, Tim Hudson, who’s barely two years removed from Tommy John surgery.

There’s the closer, Billy Wagner, who, like his manager, is expected to retire at the end of the season, but is having arguably the best season of his career.

There’s the star rookie, Jason Heyward, who may well win the National League Rookie of the Year award, but will soon experience the playoffs for the first time.

There’s the journeyman utility player, Omar Infante, who, finally given the chance to play every day, ranks third in the National League in batting average (.321).

There’s the career minor leaguer, Brooks Conrad, who has stepped into the starting lineup for the injured Jones and Prado.

And then there’s players with career paths everywhere in between.

This playoff appearance is also a credit to Cox, who guided the Braves through a nine-game losing streak in April and, despite dropping to second in the National League East to the Philadelphia Phillies in mid-August, managed to piece together a lineup and pitching staff to hold on to win the wildcard.

Cox is the fourth winningest manager in major league history, compiling a 2,504-2,001 record in his time with the Braves and Toronto Blue Jays. He also holds the all-time record for ejections with 158, which is a credit not to a fiery temper, but a willingness and desire to fight for and protect his players.

While the Braves may not be the best team in this year’s playoffs and, at least according to Las Vegas (for entertainment purposes only, of course), they are the longest shot to win the World Series. But the best teams don’t always win.

It’s sometimes that team that gets hot or comes through in the clutch. Or perhaps it’s something intangible like a manager in his last year, getting the very best and more from his players by his presence alone.