The Esasky thing just reminds me how “before my time” even somewhat recent things seem to be.

He loomed pretty large for Braves fans back in the day, Mark.  It was irrational, but lots of us viewed him as some kind of savior entering the 1990 season. We had suffered through Gerald Perry for years, and then we somehow landed a big free agent fish who had just hit 30 some odd homers for the Red Sox the year before, and back then 30 homers was a big deal (we didn’t realize at the time that it was kind of empty power, but still).

When he went down, it just kind of fell into place with Len Barker and all of the other missteps that had happened in the previous few years.