The reunion of the Upton brothers was supposed to be a smash hit, not a story of swings and misses
The most expensive free agent acquisition in Atlanta Braves history slouches on a folding chair inside the visitors’ clubhouse at Rogers Centre, looking nothing like a guy whose team just won a 10-inning thriller. For B.J. Upton, scratched for the second straight day, the Braves’ two-game series in Toronto hasn’t amounted to much more than extra batting practice. To his left, younger brother Justin, also given the day off, strips down and disappears into the showers. As B.J. leans back to stretch out that long, lean frame, his eyes latch onto the TV mounted on the far wall, where MLB Now Live panellists are conducting a poll: “Should the Atlanta Braves regret signing B.J. Upton?” When the audience results are revealed—80 percent yes, 20 percent no—a wry smile flickers briefly across B.J.’s face. He sighs and turns back to his locker, speaking quietly to himself: “That’s funny.”
It’s a half-hearted attempt to play down the nadir of a springtime during which just about everything has gone wrong for the 28-year-old. When the Braves made the Upton brothers the new faces of the franchise this past off-season, it was supposed to be the perfect combo: best friends reunited to play for the team they grew up watching with their grandfather in Chesapeake, Va. Two stars with tantalizing natural ability getting much-needed fresh starts, teaming up with Jason Heyward to form the most dynamic outfield in baseball. So far, it hasn’t followed the script. After a scorching start—a .298 average with 12 home runs and the National League player of the month award for April—Justin has cooled off quickly. B.J., meanwhile, has been a disaster: Two months in, his .145 average was the worst among major-leaguers. The coaching staff, patient until now thanks to the team’s early success, have tried leaving B.J. on the bench, while boos have been building from the normally forgiving Turner Field faithful.
The visitors’ clubhouse bustles with activity as the NL East leaders hurry to catch the bus to Pearson airport. Laughter echoes from the showers, but B.J. moves slowly, relieved that catcher Brian McCann’s 10th-inning homer and Evan Gattis’s continued hot streak have the cameras pointed elsewhere for a change. Across the room, veteran hurler Tim Hudson calls B.J. a great addition to the ball club, while hitting coach Greg Walker plays down the slump as “an adjustment period.” But B.J.’s body language tells a different story—he’s saying all the right things, but is clearly perplexed by a swing that’s become such a mess that he’s losing at-bats to Gattis, a rookie making the league minimum. “It can be tough,” he says. But a few moments later, he gives up looking for an explanation.
“Man… that’s just the game.”
Nothing in sports is as puzzling and exasperating as the hitting slump. It’s an affliction that doesn’t discriminate. It keeps even the most confident hitters up at night, fearing they’ve lost their touch forever. Caught in its throes, plagued with self-doubt, every at-bat becomes a wrestling match. You squeeze too hard, hoping one big swing can fix everything. But a dose of intensity is not a cure—it just makes it worse. As the pressure persists, so too does the reminder that baseball is a difficult game.
The Upton brothers, as streaky as they are talented, are no strangers to the illness. At their peaks, they’re breathtaking talents—five-tool studs who make the game look easy. But their valleys can be long, rocky and incredibly frustrating for fans all too aware of their potential—at various times before joining Atlanta, both players had gone through month-long stretches of sub-.200 batting. So when the Braves signed B.J. to a monster five-year, $72.25-million contract and then acquired Justin in a seven-player deal with the Arizona Diamondbacks that saw fan favourite Martin Prado shipped off to the desert, they knew what they were getting—and they were all-in on the high-risk, high-reward duo.
The upside for Atlanta was the chance to market the ultimate feel-good baseball story, making good on a dream played out countless times during the wiffle ball games outside the Chesapeake home where Manny and Yvonne Upton raised their two boys. High school sweethearts, Manny and Yvonne both played sports at Norfolk State University before returning to their hometown to start a family. B.J., their first-born, inherited his father’s even keel, while Justin, three years younger, took on his mom’s intensity—possibly as a result of spending his youth fighting to keep up with his older brother. During those backyard games, Justin would always bat first, and then break for the house once he got out. “He knew that if he had to go in the field and pitch then he wasn’t coming in for a while,” Manny says. But B.J. would always chase his younger brother back out there, a dynamic that carried over to the summer they played together for a travel squad that also included future big-leaguers David Wright and Ryan Zimmerman. Justin, always desperate to be included, was the tag-along pinch-runner, and all season long, B.J. rode him harder than anyone else.
Although their age gap mostly kept them apart on the diamond, the brothers’ pro careers have followed remarkably similar trajectories. After B.J. went second overall to Tampa Bay in 2002, the Diamondbacks picked Justin first overall three years later, making them the highest-drafted brothers in MLB history. Both made their big-league debuts on Aug. 2, at age 19: B.J. in 2004, Justin in 2007. B.J. began flexing his big-game muscles in 2008, when his seven post-season home runs powered the Rays to a World Series appearance, while Justin’s best season came three years later, when his 31 home runs earned him fourth place in NL MVP voting. Then, on Aug. 3, 2012, each brother hit his 100th career home run, the sixth set of siblings to reach that number and the first to do it on the same day.
But the fast lane came with speed bumps. In Tampa Bay, the knock against B.J. was a perceived lack of effort. The guy who hit .300 and joined the 20/20 club in his first full season of pro ball was the same guy Rays manager Joe Maddon benched multiple times for loafing. In 2010, B.J.’s half-assed effort chasing down a ball in the outfield led to a heated dugout shouting match with teammate Evan Longoria. And he was inconsistent at the plate: For every season B.J. was a bona fide home-run threat, there was another in which he’d show almost no power at all—so even though he meshed well with most teammates, he was often a target for frustrated fans.
Justin’s problems had more to do with an excess of passion. By 2009, he was a 21-year-old superstar in the making, hitting 26 homers, stealing 20 bases and batting .300 while making his first All-Star game. But he was also deemed immature, ornery after losses and withdrawing into himself during slumps to obsess over his problems. When he followed up his impressive 2011 campaign with a disappointing 2012 (partly thanks to an injured thumb), the Diamondbacks’ managing general partner Ken Kendrick called Justin an “enigma” on a local radio show. Although highly respected in the clubhouse, persistent trade rumours made Justin feel increasingly unwanted. Even though Arizona had just signed him to a six-year, $51.25-million extension in 2010, it was clear they were contemplating life without their right-fielder.
So the brothers’ reunion in Atlanta was a welcome change of scenery. GM Frank Wren ignored critics and instead listened to what just about every teammate has said about the Uptons: That B.J.’s laid-back personality and Justin’s quiet, burning intensity were largely misunderstood. It was perfect: The duo who would chew up the phone line between Tampa and Phoenix to obsessively dissect each other’s play would now sit side-by-side in the Turner Field clubhouse—their disparate personalities combining to keep them both more balanced. Their father was also certain it would be a plus. With the brothers using each other as sounding boards, he thought those famous cold streaks would surely be cut shorter.
But by the first day of June, the exact opposite had occurred. Justin may have been the league’s best player in April, but he wasn’t immune to B.J.’s woes—for every question Justin fielded about his hot streak, he’d cast a sideways glance to the stall next to him, a silent inquiry as to why the guy he grew up trying to emulate was now striking out 35 percent of the time. “The first month and a half, they were in the cage together every day, neither one of them missed each other’s swings,” says Walker. “I think they were living and dying with each other a little too much.”
Rather than B.J. finding his rhythm, Justin slowly lost his, batting .211 with just two home runs in May. Despite a couple storybook Upton moments—game-tying and game-winning ninth-inning homers against the Cubs in early April, or homers in back-to-back at-bats a few weeks later in Colorado—the brothers’ reunion season has served, so far, to magnify the inconsistency in their games. “We’re still learning what makes them tick, on and off the field,” Walker says. “It’s gotten to be kind of the norm for guys who change organizations for the first time, coming in with high expectations. They’re talented guys who play big games, striking out a lot and hitting for power. Sometimes, for those guys, it’s a little tougher to get going.”
Although Walker claims B.J. has handled his slump “better than any other guy I’ve ever been around,” hints of frustration have understandably surfaced. That morning in Toronto, a few minutes after the lineup had been posted and a few hours before the first pitch, the brothers sat in front of their lockers, heads together, chatting quietly. When their teammates ambled out onto the field for batting practice, the Uptons disappeared into the stadium bowels to find peace in the batting cages. For B.J., it was another day of working with
a patient coaching staff to eliminate some movement from a swing that had become increasingly less efficient.
Of course, there’s no how-to for escaping the hitting slump. For all the hours spent tinkering with your swings, the best antidote sometimes comes through an unlikely injection of confidence. Four nights after he sat despondent in the clubhouse at Rogers Centre as those poll results rolled in, B.J. stepped into the batter’s box in the bottom of the 10th at Turner Field against the Nationals, with the winning run on third base. He took a breaking ball inside, then clipped a broken-bat single into right field—enough to send Jordan Schafer home. As the ball hit the grass, the Braves streamed out of the dugout and piled onto their embattled teammate in a pennant-worthy celebration.
Most times, it might seem odd for the most expensive free agent in franchise history to be mobbed for a bloop single in June. After all, one hit doesn’t change anything. But on that night, under these circumstances, it meant the world to a beaming B.J. Upton. Man… that’s just the game.
This story originally appeared in Sportsnet magazine. Subscribe here.
