The Atlanta Braves have long been an organization that has prided itself on superb starting pitching. The Big Three of future Hall of Famers, Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, and John Smoltz once made the Braves perennial contenders, and helped bring home a World Series trophy in 1995. Until last year, at least one of those three starting pitchers have anchored the Atlanta starting rotation as the club ace since 1991.

Oh, how things have changed!

Father time inevitably catches up with even the most talented of athletes, and unfortunately the sentimental reunion of John Smoltz and Tom Glavine on the Atlanta starting rotation last year was short-lived, as both starters soon found themselves placed on the DL for the season.

Smoltz abruptly left town for Boston after playing his entire career as an Atlanta Brave, and Glavine has been struggling to return while at the same time pondering retirement.

Recognizing the situation was dire, the Braves first attempted to land San Diego Padres ace, Jake Peavy, via trade, but to no avail.

Back up plans were soon realized by trading for Chicago White Sox starting pitcher Javier Vazquez and signing free agent pitcher Derek Lowe (two key components to Atlanta's starting rotation), who join last year's surprise ace, Jair Jurrjens.

However, perhaps the brightest glimmer of hope for the franchise is retained in rookie phenom fire hurler, Tommy Hanson.

Rated as the 4th best prospect in all of Major League Baseball by Baseball America, Hanson has demonstrated sheer dominance at every level dating back to the Arizona Fall League in 2008.

He was lights out in spring training this year, leading some to think he would make the starting rotation right out of the gates, and has been absolutely filthy at Triple-A Gwinett where he has averaged 13.2 strikeouts per 9 innings and posted a 1.65 ERA through 6 starts!

Yet, the Braves have yet to call him up.

There is an obvious need for him in the starting rotation, as fifth starter Jo-Jo Reyes is winless in his last 16 starts and was quickly tapped for 8 runs in the first five innings against divisional rival and defending World Champion Philadelphia Phillies.

Hanson is undoubtedly ready to pitch at the Major League level by what he has demonstrated at every level since last Fall and the only thing that could be holding the Braves organization back at this point from calling him up is a miserly philosophy of wanting to save a year of arbitration eligibility.

The Braves need to ask themselves whether they want to rob fans of a potential playoff season by waiting another month to keep Hanson in the minors for no other reason than pure financial shrewdness?

The time is clearly now for Hanson to make his Major League Debut!

In exchange for a 2010 second round pick, the Atlanta Falcons acquired perenial Pro-Bowl and future Hall of Fame tight end, Tony Gonzalez, from the Kansas City Chiefs on Thursday.

The move automatically upgrades the Falcons from being one of the more potent offenses in the NFC a year ago, to arguably it's best. It also takes Atlanta from being just another playoff contender in the NFC to legitimate Super Bowl threat for the 2009 season.

Tony Gonzalez in and of himself doesn't not make just any team a potential Super Bowl hopeful (just look at Kansas City), but in this case he is the cherry on top to complete the sweet Atlanta offense, a development that should help propel the team deep into the playoffs this season.

With a young budding superstar at quarter back in Matt Ryan, a flashy big play wide receiver in Roddy White, and the unstoppable force that is Michael "the Burner" Turner at running back, by also adding the league's best tight end to the equation, the Atlanta Falcons have themselves a sure-fire top 5 NFL offense this year.

Already a team that could have perhaps played in the Super Bowl last year had they not had to travel to Arizona to give a team with a far less impressive record a chance to play in front of their home crowd (not to mention a huge mental mistake late in the game by Keith Brooking when he bit on play action on 4th and long), the Falcons have more than proven they have a volatile attack prior to adding a decent tight end to their arsenal.

It will be next to impossible for any opposing defense to stack the box against Michael Turner or indiscriminately try and blitz Matt Ryan with a highly experienced, reliable, and talented dump off option at the ready, otherwise the Falcons will move the sticks all day by connecting with Gonzalez.

Not that taking a different approach will result in a different outcome for either side. The Falcons now have elite options at every key offensive position and defenses will only be able to pick their poison.

Now that secondaries have another superstar to keep track of, Roddy White will also  have an easier go of it. That should be enough to make any defensive coordinator manic considering the statistics White has managed to accumulate over the last two seasons as the Falcons top receiving option despite the lack of another proven receiving talent to share the field with him.

The arrival of Gonzalez not only affects the Falcons playoff asperations and game plan, but their whole approach at this weekend's NFL Draft. With the offense completely taken care of, the Falcons can focus soley on defensive upgrades; where as before they would likely have needed to focus their sights on Brandon Pettigrew of Oklahoma State, the most talented TE in this year's Draft by far, but still an unproven commodity.

The team needs to improve defensively, but with the Draft addressing some of those needs, and the other top teams in the NFC struggling to find key components to fill voids on their respective offenses (New York, Dallas, Philadelphia, Washington, just to name a few), the Atlanta Falcons have a good of chance as any of making a Super Bowl XLIV appearance.

In fact with the addition of Gonzalez, you have to like their chances more than any other team in the NFC at this point.

A .333 batting average with 1 home run and 4 RBI through seven games played hardly screams MVP to even the most biased of fans, let alone to the majority of objective baseball enthusiasts.

Yet, those are the individual statistics for Atlanta Braves third baseman, Chipper Jones, who it just so happens to be quite hard to try and argue against as being the most valuable player in the league to his team at this point.

Statistics alone are rarely enough to merit overwhelming consideration from across the baseball world when deciding just who is the most valuable player in the league. One's impact to their team is the driving force behind what the award is supposed to be about. If your team can not win without a particular player, but is a contender with that player as a part of it, it is certainly hard to try and refute that the particular individual you are analyzing isn't one of the most valuable players in the league.

The Atlanta Braves got off to a scorching 5-1 start with Chipper as a regular fixture in the lineup, a mark only matched by the Florida Marlins for the best record in the National League.  However, things then rapidly soured for the quick-starting Braves after the team lost their best hitter and club house leader for four straight games.

The Florida Marlins came into town and swept the Braves in their own stadium. Things didn't improve any as the team traveled to lowly Pittsburgh hoping for a rebound and instead lost their first two games of the series against the Pirates.

The Braves abruptly fell from 5-1 and tied for first in their division, to 5-6 and looking to avoid falling into fourth place. However, record alone does not speak to contributions Chipper's presence brings to the Braves by further examining the statistics.

Heading into Sunday's series concluding game against the Pirates, the Braves had scored 5.3 runs a game and batted .275 with Chipper in the line-up and 3.4 runs a game and batted .228 without him. Not an overwhelming difference, but noticeable enough.

However, those numbers are a little deceving, as Chipper had the day off in the series concluding game against the Phillies when the Braves bullpen squandered away a 10-3 lead in the later innings of the game. If one eliminates that game from the equation, the Braves only managed a paltry 1.5 runs a game and batted .203 without Chipper.

On Sunday, the Braves got their start veteran back in the line-up and promptly responded by going 15 for 36 (.416) and beating the Pirates by a score of 11-2 while improving their record when Chipper plays to 6-1 and raising their team average with Chipper in the lineup to an impressive .296.

The season is still very young, and there will be plenty of other talented players who will rise and be well worth consideration as the most valuable player in the league. For the timebeing however, there is no one more deserving as being recognized in such standing than Chipper Jones.

It is not his personal statistics alone that make up the difference, but is also his presence and the mindset that it helps create on his own team and perhaps even those of opposing pitchers.

The Braves are a legit contender for the NL East crown with him, and nothing more than an average team hovering around fourth place in their own division without him.

Everything appeared to be in order for the Philadelphia Phillies as the 2009 Major League Baseball season got started Sunday night in Philadelphia. Led by their loveable mascot, the Phillie Phanatic, the Phillies players trotted through the crowds of adoring fans and down onto the field as their 2008 World Series Championship banner was hoisted prior to Sunday night's first pitch.

Unfortunately for them, the only thing that was missing from tonight's festivities was their high powered offense. The team they were facing however, the Atlanta Braves, had absolutely no problems discovering their own as Phillies starting pitcher Brett Myers was tatooed for three home runs in the first two innings (a fourth was determined to be a double) and the Braves never looked back.

Meanwhile, Derek Lowe, one of Atlanta's main off-season acquisitions, looked every bit the part of the ace he was signed to be.

Hurling 8 shutout innings, Lowe stifled Phillies hitters with a dominant sinker and crippling slider that no one ever seemed close to figuring out. Allowing only two hits and walking none, Lowe easily justified his lucrative off-season deal with the Braves; who signed him to serve as the anchor for their starting rotation.

In fact, everything seemed to go perfectly for Atlanta tonight. Their young All-Star catcher, Brian McCann, capitalized off a misplaced Myers change-up with a two-run blast in the first. Jeff Francouer, who struggled mightily last season and even had a stint down in the minors, demonstrated that his problems are behind him by roping a shot into the left field stands in his first plate appearance of the season. Even their young rookie center-fielder, Jordan Schafer, hit a home run in his first major league at bat, becoming only the 99th player in MLB history to accomplish the feat.

So the question that comes to mind, was Brett Myers really that bad for the Phillies tonight, or is there more to this Atlanta Braves team than most pundits are giving them credit for? Perhaps a little bit of both.

The club's downfall a year ago was due to a complete lack of starting pitching as the team opted for veteran pitching to carry them through the season; very old veteran pitching. The result was not surprising as three of their starters went onto the DL, and their most reliable pitcher turned out to be the rookie pitcher obtained from the Detroit Tigers in the Edgar Renteria deal, Jair Jurrjens.

Braves general manager, Frank Wren, addressed the team's glaring need by signing the reliable Derek Lowe as a free agent, and trading for the equally durable Javier Vazquez from the Chicago White Sox this past off-season, both of whom regularly toss over 200 innings a season. Wren also brought in some international flavor by signing Japanese pitcher Kenshin Kawakami. These three, together with Jurrjens and the future Hall of Fame pitcher, Tom Glavine, combine to provide the Braves with a much more formidable starting rotation.

Having the fire hurling pitching phemon, Tommy Hanson (who's rated as one of the top 5 prospects in the game by Baseball America), at the ready in Triple-A Gwinnett can't hurt either.

The key to Atlanta's success or failure this year however will most likely rest on the shoulders of the N.L.'s reigning batting champion, Chipper Jones, and whether or not he can remain healthy. Jones has not played over 140 games in a season since 2003 and has only played an average of 120 over the past four seasons. The Braves will need him to stay healthy this year if they are going to contend in arguably the N.L's most competitive division, if not the most competitive division in all of baseball.

With the defending World Champs and the New York Mets, a team that many believe will win or at least play for the N.L. Pennant playing in the same division, winning the N.L. East will be no small order.

It stands to reason though that if things keep going Atlanta's way this season and they remain healthy, the team could very well shock the baseball world and knock off the Phillies from the perch as Division Champions or at least give them or the Mets a run for the N.L. Wild Card.

Only time will tell.

So rained down the  chants in unison from the Trojan faithful without abandon upon the battered and beaten Ohio State Buckeyes, as the number 1 ranked USC Trojans made a complete mockery of any notion that Ohio State could redeem itself and its highly criticized conference on a national stage against an elite football program.

In recent years, Ohio State has relied upon riding the coat tails of the automatic BCS bid by winning the weak Big Ten Conference while bullying lesser divisional opponents and avoiding true tests against proven football powers all season long.

After two consecutive embarrassing BCS Championship Game losses, Ohio State was supposedly out to show the world they were indeed a legit football team capable of winning the National Title.

Instead, all the Buckeyes managed to accomplish this Saturday evening was to assure the football public that they would be spared the agony of having to watch yet another throttling of the undeserving Big Ten school in the BCS Championship Game for a third straight year as the USC Trojans dominated the Buckeyes on both sides of the football throughout the entire game and skated their way to a convincing 35-3 shellacking.

If anything was proven tonight, it was that perhaps USC is under-rated, as hard as that may be to believe.

There is already talk that this is the best USC team ever assembled under head coach, Pete Carroll. With all-time greats like Reggie Bush, Matt Leinart, and Carson Palmer to just name a few, that is a pretty astounding statement.

From what the world just saw tonight, even against a team that has struggled repeatedly against the perennial football powers in recent years, those claims appear to be accurate.

What is certain is that USC has tremendous speed, intensity, and talent on both sides of the football and the Pac 10 team is yet to meet an opposing defense or offensive that it can not contain or expose.

With the Buckeyes out of the way, there are no obvious pitfalls awaiting the Trojans as they march towards Miami to appear in yet another BCS Championship.

Even then, what team can possibly claim they can match up with USC?

One of the SEC powers, whether it be Georgia, Florida, Auburn, or Alabama will undoubtedly face the mighty Trojans in that game, but I seriously doubt its a matchup that any one of those programs will relish.

After what we saw tonight, can you blame them?