McGriff and Justice Return to Camp

Former Braves greats Fred McGriff and David Justice joined the Braves at spring training Monday. This is exciting for a number of reasons:

22 and 23 together? Don't hit it to right.

1. Justice and the Crime Dog will remain with the Bravos for the remainder of the week as special assistants to the coaching staff.
2. Young Braves like Freeman, Heyward, and Pastornicky have a lot to benefit from a little quality time with the big boys (looks like Heyward is wasting no time).
3. This is a great opportunity for Chipper to remember a time when he wasn’t the oldest Brave in the tribe.
4. Fred McGriff used to look like this.

Now, I was pretty young the last time Justice and McGriff actually suited up for a Braves game, but I can certainly appreciate their contributions. The pair mashed 290 long balls for Braves in 13(ish) combined years of service and were instrumental in bringing the World Series title home to Atlanta in 1995 (for those of you who need a little refresher, check this out). More importantly, the pair served as figureheads of the ’90′s Braves, and it’s good to see them taking on leadership roles long after they’ve hung up their spikes.

A few more things worth noting:

• Freeman’s focus is on defense and contact this spring, not power.
• Jurrjens knee feels good and he has been training as usual.
• Tommy Hanson, who concussed himself crashing his car on the way to spring training, is feeling better and is ready to get back to work.

Finally, this picture just made my day.

48 year old Fred McGriff outruns Eric Hinske. It's funny because Hinske is slow...like really, really slow.

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