He had just turned 55 years old when general manager Frank Wren told him after the Braves lost the 2013 Division Series to the Dodgers that he was being reassigned to manager of Triple A Gwinnett. Back up as third base coach from 2007 to ’13, Snitker was demoted a third time after that run. Snitker was in the minors when the Braves played in the ’91, ’92, ’95, ’96 and ’99 World Series. He returned to the big leagues as coach in ’88, only to be demoted again in ’91. Snitker was promoted to the major league staff in 1985 as bullpen coach, only to be sent back down the minors to manage in ’86. He threw the ball to Freeman, who has been around so long he played for Bobby Cox and with Chipper Jones, and who also hit a home run in the clincher. On Tuesday night that Marietta-raised kid, shortstop Dansby Swanson, hit a home run and fielded the last out of the clinching game of his hometown team’s title. Euphoria seems brand new, even to the elders, and it is literally so in the case of someone who was born in Kennesaw, Ga., a year before the Braves last won a title and grew up rooting for the team that would go 0-for-16 in the postseasons of his remembered life. They see him always in control.”Ĭhampionships are never so sweet as to when they are a generation or more in the making. He’s just the calming presence of this team.
He shows up the same way every day, regardless of the circumstances. “Back in June or July it would have been absurd to say we would be the last team standing,” says bench coach Walt Weiss. The Braves never even had a winning record this year until Aug. This championship is a triumph of perseverance, if nothing else. “But you just have to keep taking your lumps and go through it.
“Oh, no, there’s nothing fair about it,” says Ronnie Snitker, Brian’s wife, about this great game of baseball. Snitker can still feel the rivets in the metal, unpadded armrests pushing mockingly into his skin, as beads of sweat gathered and dripped in ceaseless protest to the hot, thick Southern evening air found intolerable by all life forms but gnats and mosquitoes. The team trainer drove the bus, though sometimes a roving instructor such as Cito Gaston would get behind the big wheel to give the poor trainer a break. Snitker and the Savannah Braves traveled on a yellow school bus with no air conditioning.
Forty-five years sometimes seemed like a longer version of the 10-hour bus ride from Savannah to Memphis when Snitker was playing in the Southern League in the 1970s.
Such are the lessons of an earthy, humbled soul. My goodness, you are stepping on people in the dark to get to the bathroom in the back. “And on minor league bus rides guys are sleeping everywhere. “I learned, because then you have to go to the bathroom,” he says.
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