Greg Maddux returned to the Cubs and it didn't seem that unnatural. Tom Glavine bolted for New York and no one flinched when he put on the orange-and-blue.

But John Smoltz wearing something other than an 'A' on his cap? For some reason, that wouldn't seem quite kosher. After all, he's been a Brave since most of us were knee-high to a cocker spaniel. 

Yet pitching in another city and another city remains a real possiblity, says The Bearded One.

In a great interview with my YSB colleague Jay Busbee on Right Down Peachtree, the 41-year-old Smoltz says he'll be fine dealing his pitches elsewhere if the Braves can't find room for him in their 2009 plans after he makes his return from shoulder surgery.

From Right Down Peachtree:

"I say this for the first time, without reservation, if I'm going to bust my butt and if I feel like I'm good enough and it doesn't work out here, I will be pitching somewhere else ... My dream scenario would be to pitch in the playoffs again, and that's coming from a guy who's been in 13 of them. (Smoltz missed the 2000 playoffs with Tommy John surgery.) To me, that's what I'm about. So if the door gets closed here, it'll have to be explored somewhere else."

...

"Make no mistake," he said a few minutes later. "I am absolutely, 100 percent committed to playing the rest of my career for the Atlanta Braves. But this can't be my only option ... I may not be in the [Braves'] plans. It's no given right, where I've spent 21 years here and [so] they owe me whatever I want."

I think Smoltz ends up staying with the Braves, no matter how much they want to proceed with the rebuilding plan. Something will get worked out, even if it'd be way interesting if he flew the coop for either New York team or, in the mother of all ironic twists, back to Detroit to exorcise the ghost of Doyle Alexander.

On a completely out-of-nowhere tangent, I know it's been a long season when I read those comments and then draw a completely irrelevant connection to that scene from Can't Hardly Wait.

You know, the one when where Mike Dexter asks Amanduh who's going to want her now and then Jennifer Love-Hewitt holds up that note from that wiener kid and says, "Somebody?"

(And, yes, I just dropped a CHW reference. Underrated flick. Now back to baseball.)