Month: August 2026

Dad Brog (#175): Oh I see where I stand

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Early in my parenting journey, among the numerous cliches and unsolicited advice I would receive because dads for some reason are seen as the lovable oafs of families incapable of even the most basic shit, were always a bunch of Ninas parroting stating caution for, The Terrible Twos™ where presumably toddlers at the age of two become some sort of nightmare children, where parenting takes a rampant difficulty spike and makes us want to blow our brains out.

Sure, I’m sure if I go back into my brog’s archives there are all sorts of dad brog posts between 2022 and 2023 where I probably hated what my life was being at that time, but in the grand spectrum of things, year two for both my kids weren’t any harder or worse than life’s ordinary challenges at those times.

The terrible twos can be for terrible parents, because they weren’t really a big deal in my household.

However, nobody once heeded me any sort of warning for the Terrible Sixes, because throughout the duration of year six for my elder child, holy poop has she become an insufferable little shit at time, full of melodrama, exaggeration, but mostly an endless amount of complaining about damn near everything.

Mostly boredom, which I’ve always believed to be the primary obstacle in harmonious living for children.  But it doesn’t matter that we have multiple regions of my entire home that look like a Toys R’ Us was resurrected and then imploded, plus all the crap they have in their bedrooms, my kids have the audacity to claim that they’re bored at almost any time in which they are not being actively played with.

I love playing with my kids, but I’m a sensible person who occasionally likes to have moments where I can pretend like I’m not a dad and can sit and stare at nothing, or look at one of the numerous memes and texts sent to me by a friend or my brother, like any other adult of our times.

But recently, in one of her self-agonizing bouts of boredom, #1 was going on and on about what she wanted that would undoubtedly succeeding at defeating her boredom, and I simply asked her, what about what I want?  Her response?

it doesn’t matter what you want, dad…

Okay.  I just got The Rock’d by my own kid.  Needless to say, nobody found it more entertaining than I did, and I laughed heartily for nearly three straight minutes, at my kid saying such a dick thing to me, all because of the way it was said.

Needless to say, she didn’t get what she wanted, and I didn’t cave, but nor did I really get to chill out, and probably looked at my watch and wondered what the fuck I could do as a parent to try and find some sort of push/win-win scenario where we can pass the time without too much trouble.

Either way, the point remains that year six has proven to be what I imagine what other shittier parents think they have when dealing with the Terrible Twos.  The difference is that six-year olds are more developed, cognizant and aware, know more vocabulary and can speak their tantrums into existence, which mine is, frequently, versus a tiny two who’s still learning the endless depth to what the world has to offer.

This is why I always scoff, roll my eyes, and laugh at anyone out there without kids who thinks at all that their lives are difficult.  Y’all MFers just won’t get it; and it doesn’t matter what you think.

Braves Job Alert: mid-tier Latino pitchers pls

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

A few weeks ago, I saw a news article about how a former Atlanta Braves pitcher, Carlos Carrasco, had signed with the LG Twins of the Korea Baseball Organization.  This tingled my spider-senses because it was about baseball, it was about a guy who had been on the Braves, it was about Korea, it was about the KBO, where I had just seen a game for the first time, and it also just so happened to have featured the LG Twins; who lost to the Doosan Bears in spite of being the team with the better record when they play, but hey that’s why the play the games.

Anyway, in spite of my general ambivalence and distance from the Braves and just sports in general, I am familiar with Carlos Carrasco, because he was a guy on the team that it seemed to be notorious that he was cut from the major league roster pretty much every other week, before being re-signed by the Braves, pitch in a game or two, before being designated for assignment again, and the cycle would repeat itself, seemingly over and over again.

That’s not the kind of distinction any player should want, but for a bad sports fan like me who is more often times fascinated by the weird and interesting happenstances of sports, it’s how I remembered who he was.

It was in the 2025 season that I first noticed the pattern of Carrasco being jerked around, because it seemed to happen a lot, way more than I’d noticed it happening to any player before.  I mean, Uncle Jesse Chavez got a similar treatment in prior years, especially by the Braves, but not to the frequency in which it was happening to Carrasco.

According to Gemini, Carrasco’s 2025 season actually was, the most extreme case of revolving door roster ping-ponging for any player in history, as the poor guy was released and brought back an unprecedented seven times throughout the season. 

My knee-jerk reaction was that this had to have been related to the cheap-ass Braves wanting to save money and that the small gaps in between his cuts and re-signings, they’d be absolved of having to pay prorated daily wages, but I’m pretty sure that’s not how contracts work and that he was still due his contracted amount, and that his roster spot was more valuable and the chief reason for constantly shuffling him around. 

But at the same time, I don’t think the cheap-ass Braves’ payroll department was complaining about the lack of logistics and per-diem envelopes they were saving by the occasional absence of his physical being, so fuck those cheap bean counters all the same.

But the thing is, and I touched on it a second ago, with Jesse Chavez getting a similar treatment before Carrasco, is that I’ve come to the scientifically proven conclusion* that the Atlanta Braves seem to require the need to have a Latino pitcher of the mediocre, swingman variety, that they will jerk around back and forth on the roster and give them absolutely no chance to breathe, settle in, or genuinely feel like a part of the team.

*As much as I don’t want to have to explain that this is tongue-in-cheek, and that I have zero readers, I’ve been dealing with a lot of astonishingly stupid people on the internet and that’s my bad for engaging communities in the first place

So, it started, or rather I actually noticed this, in 2024, with the aforementioned Jesse Chavez; the man was already beloved in Atlanta, and prior to 2024, already had four prior stints with the Braves, including being a member of the 2021 World Series squad.  But after his championship contributions, the team didn’t get caught up in recency bias, let him walk, and he signed with the Cubs in 2022, where he did not start well, and in April, was traded back to the Braves, where he suddenly turned back into good Uncle Jesse, and pitched so well that the team was able to sell high on him and traded him to the Angels that August.  Apparently, changing out of his Braves uni made him suck again, and not even a full month later, the Angels cut him, and take a guess who was waiting to pick him back up?  The Braves.  Naturally, he pitched well for Atlanta again, and there was a funny narrative that was born about how he sucked for everyone except the Braves.

Uncle Jesse would sign and stay with the Braves for the entire 2023 season, and because he was on the Braves, he pitched well, enough to where he parlayed it into signing with the White Sox for more money the following season.  He bombed out in Spring Training and the Sox were forced to cut him, and naturally the Braves would pick him back up, and with someone else picking up half of his salary, would deliver again.  And then he’d sign with the Texas Rangers, suck, and of course the Braves would snatch him up again.

Which brings us to the 2025 season, where at 41, the magic was wearing off, and even in the magical Braves uni that gave him so much strength in the past, Chavez had become the next victim to the undefeated Father Time, his ERA ballooned up to 9.00, and the revolving door roller coaster began.  Two times he was cut and picked back up, with the second one of those he wasn’t even used, but it was at his third cut on July 17, 2025 that Chavez would declare his retirement from the game outright.

And on July 31, 2025, Carlos Carrasco was called up from the minor leagues.  I don’t know if he realized it, but he was basically going to be filling the void that Jesse Chavez had left behind, and he would remain on the squad for two weeks before getting his first cut, and then be brought back to finish out the season, literally one day later.

November 6, 2025, Carrasco would be cut by the Braves which is funny because the season was already over, but this would effectively be start of the 2026 season, where he would be about to make history:

11.06.25: cut by Braves (1)
11.08.25: signed by Braves
04.30.26: cut by Braves (2)
05.01.26: signed by Braves
05.07.26: cut by Braves (3)
05.08.26: signed by Braves
05.31.26: cut by Braves (4)
06.02.26: signed by Braves
06.12.26: cut by Braves (5)
06.15.26: signed by Braves
06.26.26: cut by Braves (6)
07.05.26: signed by Braves
07.09.26: cut by Braves (7)
07.22.26: signed by LG Twins

The scary thing is that this was just half of the season.  Imagine how many more times Carrasco would have ping-ponged in the months of July and August alone, before September call-ups would have probably done him in.

My knee-jerk reaction was naturally of amusement, and how Carrasco was probably thrilled to be getting a steady paycheck and probably have a consistent locker to use for the remainder of the 2026 season, even if he had to pack all his shit and go to Korea.  But the results speak for themselves, in his first start, Carrasco pitched seven perfect innings against the Doosan Bears, setting himself up to look like a demigod in Korea after being a training dummy in MLB.

Which brings us to the third guy in the picture above, Elieser Hernandez.  He’s no spring chicken at 31 years of age, and his MLB experience is nothing to sign about, having around 300 innings over six years of MLB experience, pitching in a variety of roles.  His career ERA was 5.10 prior to coming to the Braves. 

However, with the departure of Carrasco, Hernandez was called up on July 19, 2026, and he made his presence felt for Braves fans when he came out of the bullpen in a slugfest with the Baltimore Orioles on July 24, 2026, and pitched three innings of one-hit ball, getting the win.

He was promptly rewarded for his heroics by getting cut by the Braves on July 27, 2026, but he would re-sign with the team one day later.  Three days after that, he’d pitch three innings in a win against the Washington Nationals, notching an old-school three inning save, and I’m sure there’s some obscure stat where Elieser Hernandez is the first guy in MLB history to have his first two appearances with a team getting a Win and a Save, with a DFA in between.

Guess what happened two days ago?
August 3, 2026: Elieser Hernandez released by the Braves.

But then guess what happened one day ago?
August 4, 2026: Elieser Hernandez signed by the Braves.

Obviously the game is different now than it was five, ten, and twenty years ago.  Roster management is more important than it’s ever been, especially for poor teams and crying-poor teams who need to maximize their processes and efficiencies as optimally as possible to hope to have a prayer at competing against the Dodgers and their billion-dollar payroll of superstars that don’t have to be micromanaged.

And I’d be naïve if I didn’t assume that this is the kind of behavior that every team does to a degree, and that it’s not just the cheap-ass Braves doing it.  But it funny to conclude with the narrative that the Atlanta Braves have this mandatory requirement to have a Latino pitcher to be repeatedly spinning through the ringer, cutting and re-signing over and over again, and frankly it’s probably this kind of front office bullshit that will surely be a bullet point of contention this off-season when the owners and MLB players union embark on their collision course for next season’s inevitable strike.

Dad Brog (#174): A brave new world

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

The house is empty and quiet and for the next 60-80 minutes, I can kind of do whatever I want.  It’s a jarring and weird feeling, and this is going to be the case, probably indefinitely, during the durations of the school year(s, to come).

Today is the first day of school where I live, and it’s the first day of school where both of my kids are on the same morning schedule, and now go to work with mythical wife who teaches at said school.  Prior to this day, both kids went to a preschool that was on a different schedule than mythical wife, or last year, where one was still in Pre-K, while the other began her elementary school journey and I basically had two morning routines, prepping and sending off one kid at time, on different schedules.

But now, they are both going to the same school, on the same morning schedule, and I just have to do one morning routine, and then they’re out the door and it’s like slamming into a wall where it goes from fast-paced, eat, dress, brush, pack, shoes, go, go, go, to suddenly nothing.  Calm.  Quiet.  Still.

And I’m still trying to process what I’m going to do, and how I’m going to try and capitalize on this gift of time that I’m going to get every single school morning, presumably for a very long time.

The thing is, I knew this was coming, and I have been giving it thought to what I was going to do, but it’s one of those things where no matter of thinking, planning or theorizing was going to really compare to how things were going to go once the time finally came, and I’m sitting here on day 1 of forever, doing one of the things I imagined I’d do, which is to try to carve out some time to write, about the myriad of things and topics that I think about writing about, starting with, writing about this brave new world of actually having a little bit of peace and quiet in the mornings now.

It’s a little different from the summer mornings, where I kept my school year alarms all intact, waking up at 5:45 daily regardless of the fact that the kids didn’t have any school to go to.  I did it because I didn’t want to fall out of routine and have to deal with the bodily regression of trying to adjust to the school year, but mostly because I liked having the peace and quiet in the early morning while everyone else was still asleep, and could more leisurely have a cup of coffee, knock out a daily Duolingo session, and do some writing before one or both of the kids would eventually awake and tear hell coming downstairs.

And frankly, such a routine is what I was thinking of doing now, except that the kids come first, and then I have that gap between when they go to school and I go to work, where I can do it.  I pondered doing some exercise in that time, or even potentially going to the office early where I could hit the gym before I started my work day, but for the time being I’m opting against such.  Working out during lunch has been a great way to break up the monotony of work days and frankly I don’t feel that 60-80 minutes is sufficient time for me to get in an adequate workout plus time to shower and refresh.

I also don’t want to even put myself into a position where I could be remotely close to doing any modicum of work outside of work hours and that seems to be the point of writing this all out, so I can write out how I often contemplate the differences between work ethics of the generations of the workforce, but if there’s one thing that the kids of today are better at, is understanding that in so many instances, giving more than what’s necessary rarely pays off, and me rolling into the office 15 minutes earlier isn’t going to make much of a difference in my day-to-day, except that I’m taking 15 minutes away from myself where I could be doing something I want to do instead.

All that being said, coffee, Duolingo and brogging seems to be the obvious and inevitable daily agenda, as I embark on the brave new world of having some morning calm of the kids going to school, together, at least for the next four years.

SummerSlam, blets and moments

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I didn’t watch SummerSlam, nor did I actually care to even exert a modicum of effort in order to watch it.  I know that my general fandom of the WWE product has been tested and waning over the last year or so and the grand consensus of all the changes and corporatization of the company is resulting in me gaining more and more distance from the product like it were 1990 all over again and my parents cancelling cable television, preventing me from keeping up with the biz.

Every show is behind a different pay wall, Fanatics has standardized and priced merchandise to inaccessibility, and frankly the product blows chunks now.  Storylines are convoluted and limited to the smallest of pools, and RAW on Netflix is so overwhelmingly buried in ads, I sometimes feel like I’m watching a pirated stream instead of a program that I’m paying a subscription to watch.

That being said, when one of my bros asked our group chat if anyone were watching SummerSlam, it took me 0.2 seconds to respond ‘no.’  I left out the part that I thought it was probably going to be mid as fuck, and the whole two-night show thing that TKO is trying to force like it’s a second Wrestlemania seems like bullshit and when the day is over, there were only two matches on the entire event that I remotely cared about.

Additionally, I knew that there was little point to watching the show, given the fact that with maybe an 18-minute delay, the results of every single match would be spoiled and revealed on various social media outlets, and I could get the Cliff’s notes on the entire show without having to sit through all the ads, rest holds, and botches from the gradual blunting of talent over the last years.

The good news for me was that the two matches I did care about, ended in the ways that I was happy with.  One was predictable, which was the culmination of Chad Gable’s redemption story, with him defeating Penta for the Intercontinental championship.  In the past, I would’ve said for certain that Gable was going to lose, because in the Vince McMahon era of the company, it was almost an unwritten rule that superstars did not win in their hometowns, but in the TKO era, they’re so obsessed with creating moments but more importantly farming footage for future UnTolds, that stuff like this flips, and it’s become pretty predictable, even moreso than it used to be, even for a wrestling oracle like myself.

But still, I’m happy to see Chad Gable get a signature W at the event, because the man has been one of the hardest working and mold-breaking performers over the last few years and it always brings me great joy to see hard workers get their just desserts.

The other match I was intrigued in, ended in really the only winner I had hoped for, but assumed was not going to be the case, which was Chelsea Green climbing to the top of the ladder and winning the Women’s championship, made vacant by the very legitimate Rhea Ripley injury.

As much as I love Chelsea and the internet loves Chelsea, there’s no denying that the E has treated her like this expendable comedy act, and given the fact that she was in the match with former champions like Charlotte, Jade Cargill and Tiffany Stratton, it seemed more likely the E would give it to one of the safe choices, and that Chelsea was there to provide some highlights and outstanding character work.

But the E loves to give surprises, and like I had mentioned, I’m convinced now that they’re so fixated on creating compelling content for UnTold documentaries, they allowed for the impossible to happen, and regardless of their motivations, I was stoked to discover that Chelsea Green had outlasted all the competition, and walked away as the new women’s champion.

Naturally, both these matches occurred on Night 2 of SummerSlam, and if the E really wants to ensure that two-day events have any modicum of succeeding in the long run, they have got to stop backloading their events so blatantly, because history has not been kind to the small number of two-day events they’ve held thusfar, with Night 1 shows being mid as fuck compared to their Night 2 counterparts.

Among the ocean of mediocrity that was the rest of SummerSlam, what stood out to me the most was the introduction of, what’s being called the ESPN Moment of the Night championship blet, inconsequentially being handed out, pretty informally on social media, to the worker of the show that, much to the low-hanging fruit name of the title goes, perceived to have made the best moment of the night.

Night 1 of SummerSlam, the “title” went to Oba Femi, presumably because of his emotional and landmark victory over Brock Lesnar, supposedly ending the career of one of the most impactful performers in the history of the business.  I mean, considering what else was on the card that night, it was pretty low-hanging fruit, and much like the importance of what the title represents, it’s pretty useless, and for a jaded smark like me, actually more of a detriment, because I kind of see it as ESPN giving a middle finger to all the oldhead fans like myself who don’t like all these paywalls, all these separate services, and all the infectious corporatization of the product we once loved so much.

That being said, as happy as I was to see Chelsea Green win the Women’s championship, it was like someone peeing into the pool of celebration when I later saw that ESPN had “awarded” her with the ESPN moment of the night blet, and seeing it on her shoulder in conjunction with an infinitely more meaningful prize on her other.  Fewer things spoil a good time than the arrival of the asshole that everyone doesn’t like but feels obligated to be civil towards because they have a lot of money and influence.

Either way, I’m stoked that performers I like got their flowers and moments at SummerSlam, but at same time I feel satisfied with my choice to not bother watching or pursuing the show because aside from those two matches I don’t really feel like I missed anything, and even if there were, it’s not like I wouldn’t be able to find it on YouTube or any other temporary hosting of the important things.

But that fucking ESPN blet, it is astonishing, that TKO has managed to create a championship blet that is somehow more meaningless and has less importance than any of the 25 straps circulating in the AEW/ROH wrestling space, as well as any of the 14 straps that Mercedes Mone was concurrently holding a little while back.