Weiss joins in on the fun with POTG putt after Braves' Opening Day win

ATLANTA -- Walt Weiss’ first Opening Day as the Braves’ manager was nearly perfect, right up until the point he attempted to putt for dough.

Huh?

“Well, the players have got this thing for the player of the game,” Weiss said. “I wasn’t the player of the game. That was Chris Sale. But they let me take the putt. I guess it’s a 30 or 40 footer. There’s a lot of hooting and hollering, and a lot of stuff on the line.”

Adding a little excitement to their postgame celebrations last year, the Braves began having the player of the game take a 30-40-foot putt along the clubhouse surface, both at home and on the road. The lights are dimmed and all eyes are on the putter as he attempts to drain the putt and win the prize money.

How much money is in the pot?

“It’s enough to make you sweat,” Braves first baseman Matt Olson said.

If the player doesn’t make the putt, he must put an unidentified amount into the pot. At least one player fronts the money to build the pot at the start of the season and on those rare occasions when a putt is made.

While records haven’t been kept, most players agree that no more than three players made the putt last year. If so, the success rate was just 3.9 percent during the 76-win season.

Austin Riley and Olson accounted for two of those putts placed in the hole placed on the portable piece of turf that goes everywhere the Braves go.

Another successful putt was drained last year by Marcell Ozuna. It turns out the Big Bear putts like the Golden Bear.

“It’s kind of hard to read these greens,” said Michael Harris II.

As for Weiss, he watched three players homer and Sale deliver six scoreless innings in a 6-0 win over the Royals on Friday night. To celebrate winning his first game as Atlanta’s skipper, the players asked him to take the putt.

So, how did he do?

“I missed the putt, but you weren’t supposed to ask that,” Weiss said.