Enlarge image
Brian Snitker with the trophy for the World Series winner
Photo:
KEN MURRAY / EPA
After the championship decisions of Major League Baseball, it is customary for the league chief to present the trophy to the champion.
To do this, he usually looks for someone from the top management of the club.
It was the same on Wednesday night in Houston, after the Atlanta Braves' 7-0 win at the Houston Astros, which was the club's first title since 1995.
MLB boss Rob Manfred wanted to hand Terry McGuirk the trophy, but Atlanta's CEO declined.
McGuirk knew that someone else deserved the trophy better.
Someone whose life is more closely connected to the club than any other.
Its path to this triumph began in the 1970s and led through places like Myrtle Beach and Durham.
And who himself had not believed for a long time that he would one day reach the top.
"You hold the thing," Atlanta's boss shouted to his trainer.
And Brian Snitker smiled.
“I'm stunned.
This is the biggest, biggest thing in the world, ”said Snitker.
Then the 66-year-old spotted his wife Ronnie in the crowd.
"Honey, we did it," he yelled.
For both of them, winning the title is the culmination of almost 45 years of nomadic life.
A lifetime for the Atlanta Braves.
It all started in 1977. Snitker played for clubs like Kingsport Braves, Greenwood Braves, Richmond Braves, Savannah Braves.
All part of the complex farming system of the Atlanta Braves.
But it was never enough for him to get to the top.
Snitker ended his active career at the age of 24.
Baseball legend Hank Aaron saw him as a coach and gave him the job with the Anderson Braves in South Carolina.
There are coaches who climb the career ladder steeply.
There are some who take smaller steps.
And then there is Brian Snitker, whose career has been a long march through the provinces, a constant shift between above and below.
He was a junior and functional trainer in various forms, sometimes with the farm teams, sometimes with the professionals.
Permanent moving was associated with it.
Anderson, Durham, Sumter, again Durham, Atlanta, Macon, Danville, again Macon, Myrtle Beach, Greenville, Mississippi, Richmond, Atlanta, Gwinnett, Atlanta.
Snitker went along with everything.
Always with his wife Ronnie.
And soon the children Erin and Troy too.
One season here, the next there.
He was part of the coaching staff of the Braves major league team three times.
He was demoted three times.
He always accepted disappointments: "It was okay with me," Snitker once said.
"Every time they sent me back down, I knew I'd done a good job."
The real mortar of baseball
The US magazine "Sports Illustrated" dedicated a portrait to Snitker a few days ago.
It says that baseball lives not only from its stars, but also from people like him.
“They ride buses and break their backs in the process, and not just because they love baseball.
They also take an invisible joy in offering even the smallest of help to further the dreams of thousands of young men of becoming the best baseball player they can become. "
For a long time, Snitker did not stand for the biggest stage in sport, but always for the stony, sometimes unsuccessful road to get there.
But people like him are "the real mortar of baseball," it says in the portrait.
The ones that hold everything together.
In 2016, Snitker was a trainer on the youth team in Gwinnett when the Atlanta Braves promoted him to interim coach.
He was 60 and already a grandpa.
But he really wanted to take the unexpected chance.
In 2017 he became permanent head coach, four years later he has now led his club to its first championship title in 26 years.
And that also against your own son.
Troy Snitker works as a hitting coach for the final opponent Houston Astros.
The World Series was therefore also referred to as the »Snitker Series«.
It was "very emotional days for the family," Brian said at the joint press conference with his son before the final series.
What is Brian Snitker's secret?
"He lets us be who we are," said Dansby Swanson, one of his players who made a home run in the last game against Houston.
“It's so often about numbers these days, this and that. But he trusts that we will go out there and do what we do.
And that's why we win every day and that's why we are who we are. "
Snitker had to wait a long time for this moment of triumph.
It was unlikely that he would ever come.
Even this season.
With just 88 wins in regular time, Atlanta was the worst of all ten playoff teams.
On the way to the World Series, Jorge Soler, an important player, fell out longer due to corona disease.
In the first game of the series of finals, the best bowler Charlie Morton also broke his leg.
"We've taken every pothole and bump that you can take with us this year," said Freddie Freeman, who has played for the Braves for 14 years and caught the last ball in the game against Houston.
"But somehow the car made it to the finish line anyway."
There are two sentences that also go well with Brian Snitker's life.
