He left. He should have stayed with the Braves forever. Instead, he put his splendid 26 years with the organization in his rear-view mirror after the 2005 season by heading to a dysfunctional Baltimore franchise. He joined the coaching staff of then-Orioles manager Sam Perlozzo, his best friend. He also was enticed to leave by the big bucks and the proximity of the team to his hometown in Maryland.

Now, for the first time, Cy Mazzone admits to what I just typed.

He blew it, all right.

"If I had to do it all over again, I would have never done it," said Leo Mazzone, mostly a national television analyst on Baseball these days, reflecting from his home in Roswell. He inherited a bunch of soft pitchers in Baltimore who couldn't adjust to his hard but effective style. He was booted after two seasons.

To hear Mazzone tell it, his firing was a relief. "Once I got there and saw how they operated compared to the Braves, I knew I made a mistake the first week of spring training," he said, before chuckling and adding, "I said to myself, 'You know what? I done messed up.'

"The lack of organization. The lack of discipline. The lack of overall professionalism. I was shocked, and I couldn't believe it.

Just like the choppers and the chanters couldn't believe this: The free-agent exits of their Cys. John Smoltz ended his 21 years with the Braves last week to join the Boston Red Sox. Tom Glavine left after the 2002 season for the hated New York Mets. Greg Maddux bolted after the 2003 season for a return to the Chicago Cubs. Mazzone was gone two seasons later.

Still, this was more unbelievable than all of that: Those Cys staying together for 11 years. That's an eternity in professional sports. Those Cys contributed to the Braves winning their division every season during that stretch and grabbing three pennants and a world championship.

"Ain't nothing ever topping that in the history of Baseball," Mazzone said. "You've got three guys going to the Hall of Fame with a Hall of Fame manager [Bobby Cox] and a Hall of Fame general manager [John Schuerholz] that stayed together for that amount of years. And when you look back on that, no matter what happens in the rest of the history of the Atlanta Braves , that's going to be its greatest history --- besides Hank Aaron's home runs."

Which brings us to the Braves' present and future. They have a revamped starting pitching rotation in search of ending the franchise's slide during the past three years (two third-place finishes before dropping to fourth last season). They just acquired historically durable veterans Derek Lowe and Javier Vazquez. They signed Kenshin Kawakami, who once won the Japanese version of the Cy Young Award. They'll also have rising star Jair Jurrjens and maybe Glavine, who is recovering from elbow surgery.

"They've done a great job of rebuilding innings pitched from starting pitchers, and that's something that has been lacking," Mazzone said. "It doesn't overexpose your bullpen. Some of the guys they had starting last year wouldn't be starting on some of the staffs we had in the past."

Some? Try none, beyond Tim Hudson and what remained of Cy Smoltz and Cy Glavine.

tlmoore@ajc.com