Author: dannyhong

Praise for NXT Halloween Havoc

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Over the last few year and change, there’s been a lot of hullabaloo surrounding the state of the WWE following the company’s sale and eventual restructuring into being an arm of their new parent company TKO.  Questionable decision making as far as staffing, personnel and eventual booking choices, but more primarily how they’re killing the WWE with their flagrant price gauging, cost increases across the board on tickets, merch, and various other microtransactions, masterfully finding each and every nickel and dime to bilk out of wrestling fans.

I often said to my friends that I didn’t really feel impacted by much of it, because I had little interest in going to any live events; I’d been to Wrestlemania twice now, and numerous other ppvs when they were still called ppvs, and at the prices of tickets these days, I would way rather just watch from the comfort of my own home.  Over the summer, I went to NXT’s Great American Bash, solely based on the fact that it was at my favorite venue (Center Stage), but after paying $130 for almost literally the last row of the venue, only to be seated next to 1.75x of humanity, I almost want to swear off going to WWE shows outright, fearing a similar fate the next time I plunk down grown up money just to be in attendance.

Additionally, I would say to my friends that as long as TKO doesn’t fuck around with my viewing experience, then I don’t really have many qualms with how they’re operating the company.  But over the last few months, WWE PLEs have all been shifted over to ESPN++ to some new tier that I can’t get access too without actually having to pay money for it, so I’ve missed the last two major events.  NXT remains on CW which I don’t have access to in a streaming capacity, and I haven’t seen an episode of Smackdown in years because I don’t have the means to watch whatever channel they’re on now.  RAW on Netflix is still available to me, but the production of the show is really wonky and weird, and it’s hard to stay engaged when they’re being so flagrant with performing at 60% so that they can save their ammo for the next PLE.

In other words, TKO has been fucking around with the viewing experience, and it definitely sucks as a fan.  Not knowing what shows are on what platform, if I can even watch them or not, and if and when I can, there being paywalls in order to see things as simply as storyline promo packages and performer entrances.  Obviously, I’m not going to swear off wrestling by any stretch of the imagination, but I am entitled to air out my grievances about the state of the WWE when I find their operational conduct to be annoying.

All that said, I wanted to chirp a little bit about how much of a breath of fresh air NXT’s Halloween Havoc felt like, because it definitely felt like a positive reprieve from the suffocating corporate cloud that the main roster WWE has been feeling like over the last year.

It was on Peacock, which had the occasional commercial break here and there, but the show as a whole had a banger of main song that they spammed throughout the evening, and the replay showed all the promo packages, which helped a viewer like me who can’t actually watch NXT to the minute, to catch up with what to expect in the show.  The show itself was at a smaller venue in a part of Arizona that I’d never even heard of, but it looked like the type of show that I’d have definitely been interested in going to, because it wasn’t a mega arena, and it wasn’t in a clusterfuck of a place like Atlanta, and looked like a fun place to watch wrestling.

And of course, the matches were all pretty entertaining.  Call me crazy, but sometimes some matches don’t really have to have a convoluted storyline behind them, and you can really just take a bunch of entertaining workers and throw them in a match together to great effect, and that’s how I felt with the opening match of Je’Von Evans and Leon Slater vs. La Parka* and Mr. Iguana.  No real story, just an NXT guy teamed with a TNA guy against two AAA guys, and they tore the house down to open the show.

*What’s funny is that on this exact date, there was a Lucha show in Atlanta that advertised La Parka on the card, so I’m amused by the fact that one of these shows got the actual current La Parka, while the other got an imposter, or they’re up to like La Parka IV or V at this point, like the Villanos, but whomever NXT had that night was wayyyy too talented of a La Parka than what fans of his from WCW might have remembered.  Motherfucker was doing picture perfect Asai moonsaults out of the ring and press slams into gutbusters, a far cry from the dumpy fat luchador in WCW that swung a chair and strutted his way to the bank.

Mariah May Blake Monroe got to flex a little bit of her actual wrestling skill in her win against Zaria for the women’s North American title, and I’m pleased that she’s allowed to do some of the work that elevated her so much in AEW, and I really enjoyed Ethan Page’s match against El Hijo de Dr. Wagner, and despite being the heel, Vic Joseph’s commentary about how much of a fighting champion Page has been, it’s hard to not respect the work the man puts into the business.  But the match had some really brutal spots, and it was enjoyable from start to finish.

The Hardy Boyz vs. Darkstate was an entertaining disaster, even if I don’t believe in all at the long-term viability of Darkstate.  They’re like a Temu-grade Shield, with less charisma, but given the fact that the Hardyz are still TNA guys, it seemed likely that they were going to have give those NXT blets back sooner rather than later.

Honestly, it’s not that the Ricky Saints vs. Trick Williams match was necessarily bad, it’s just that other matches on the card were more entertaining and compelling, that theirs just kind of didn’t stand out in comparison.  Both are talented workers, but in the context of the evening their fairly vanilla wrestling match just wasn’t as exciting as all of the matches that preceded it.  Plus, the finish seemed really wonky and almost rushed, and when it was over, I was just kind of like, that’s it?

But let’s really talk about Tatum Paxley’s ascension to the top of the mountain, beating Jacy Jayne for the NXT Women’s championship.  Firstly, I do want to give my flowers to Jayne for a respectable run with the top prize; I know her win was a surprise, considering she beat the aura-filled Stephanie Vaquer, but I didn’t hate it, because she was a solid hand that was easily the most talented worker of Toxic Attraction, and I always like seeing hard workers get rewarded with solid pushes.

However that being said, the same could very easily be said about Tatum Paxley, whom I get some Liv Morgan-like, love of the game vibes from, and like Jayne, her hard work has been noticeable and palpable over the course of the last 12+ months, and I’m pleased to see her get this honor of getting to be the women’s champion.  I think she’s more athletic than Liv ever has been and works pretty cleanly in spite of her general level of experience, but her character work and portrayal of the weird but talented goth girl seems to have captured the audience, and I’d be lying if I didn’t stop and let the look linger on her; she’s cute as hell.

But when she won the title, I definitely got those similar vibes to her championship that I felt when Liv won the women’s title for the first time, or when Iyo won the World championship the last time; it was a sense of satisfaction that a hard worker was getting their justly reward.

Overall, Halloween Havoc was a breath of fresh air of how good the WWE is capable of operating in a manner that I wish were the norm all throughout the company, and not just in NXT.  It kind of reminds me of that period between 2016-2017 where NXT was just firing on all cylinders so well that it was clear that they were the best brand in the company.  Look forward to the next NXT event, that is until they’re spontaneously sold off to start showing on like Tubi or Fubo or some other rando platform.

Dad Brog (#157): the shittiest morning possible

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Full disclosure, I don’t write this with any sort of anger or festering rage about the morning that I had, but more with astonishment that such a morning could have been had that I have no other option than to write about it, primarily to one day be able to recall this to embarrass the ever-living snot out of my child.

But long story short, one of my kids absolutely pooped all over themselves this morning while sleeping, and naturally it was me who discovered it, me who had to deal with it, and me who had to clean everything up.

For real though, I wasn’t mad about it at all, because something like this happening, the first question was, and should be, is everything okay?  The answer was quickly discovered to be yes, but it was rather a child who was too afraid of monsters in the dark to get out of bed to take care of their bowels, probably compounded on top of being in a state of deep sleep, and instead just soiled their bed and slept in it.

Regardless, given the fact that on any given morning, cleaning up a ton of poop isn’t typically a part of the routine, I had to pivot and quickly resign myself to the fact that the morning was going to be delayed, and that the recovery of my child was priority.  I took them into my walk-in shower to use the flexible showerhead to give them a nice warm cleansing, got them dressed and started with breakfast before I had to go back upstairs to really survey the damage and get to work.

White people, would be quick to declare the sheets and comforter a complete loss at this point, but me, not being white, and knowing that I can rescue these things on account of the fact that I’m not a pussy and afraid to get children’s poop on my hands, took the soiled sheets also into the walk-in shower and gave them some good scrubs, and pretty much salvaged them.  I still need to give them a through spin through the washing machine, but by the day’s end, they should be ready to be back on my kid’s bed as if there was no Armageddon in the first place.

I coached my child that they should never be afraid to call out for me on the monitor in the middle of the night if they have to go potty, and that under no circumstances will I ever be mad at them for waking me up in the middle of the night to take care of business.  Quite the contrary, I would be super stoked and happy, and I mimicked the groggy, but rejoiceful reaction I would give them should they ever take my up on the offer, and hopefully they will in the future to avoid such similar mornings.

But good lord almighty, what a nightmare scenario of a morning to encounter.  I still feel like I can smell it in my brain to this very moment.  Truly a literal, top-3 shittiest mornings of all-time in my parenting career; and honestly I’m hard pressed to even recall two other poop nightmare mornings to round out a top-3, which means this might really have been the shittiest morning of all time, by default.

I look forward to this post circling back eventually on my On This Day plug-in, so I can troll remind them of the bullshit they put me through when they were but literal babies when they’re older, so they can really appreciate the kind of dad that I’m trying to be.

I’m sure this is going to go over well not

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

SFGate: Southwest Airlines unveils new boarding policy, where passengers board in order of window seats first, middle seats, and aisle seats last

At this point, I really should start implementing a tag on my brog for Southwest, because they keep doing things that I keep finding brog-worthy and then I actually write about them, as if I’m chronicling their gradual downward spiral.  They just can’t keep doing questionable things, and I feel like that at the corporate level, there’s some obnoxious visionary who is trying way too hard to put their stamp on the company by making all these questionable choices for really no other reason than the sake of making them, and probably gets off on words like “disrupting” and “aviation space.”

But circling back to this new boarding process, where windows get on first, and aisles get on last, I just feel like this is something that seems destined to fail, on account of people just not adhering to the rule, and the amount of outcry it’s inevitably going to cause because it’s just not working the way SWA corporate envisioned it working.

It doesn’t matter what airline it is, in the hierarchy of passengers, middle seat is supposed to be the very bottom of the pecking order.  Even in old Southwest internal lexicon such a notion was commonplace, where flight attendants would even make tongue-in-cheek jokes about the old boarding process, where Group A stood for Anywhere, as in you can sit anywhere you want, Group B stood for Back of the plane, because that’s where all the remaining good seats are, and Group C stood for Center seat, because that’s all that’s going to be left for you bottom feeders.

Deliberately creating a policy where the positions are forcefully switched is not going to go over well at all, because not only are passengers who prefer aisles not going to handle being considered bottom-tier very well, imagine the people who hate window seats but like getting on the aircrafts as soon as possible having to deal with this new Sophie’s Choice; status vs. preference vs. potential cost differences.  And middle seats still lose, because although their tier might be considered elevated over aisle-seat losers, when the flight takes off, they’re still parked in the middle seat, most likely squished between two fat fucks because Americans are always going to be a bunch of fat fucks.

My favorite part about this whole announcement was this quote:

If queuing isn’t good, boarding isn’t good,” Lisa Hingson, managing director of innovation, told the Wall Street Journal. “So we spent a lot of time studying queuing.”

Studying queueing, lmao.  There’s nothing to study when it comes to queueing, because a study doesn’t account for the infinite variable that is there are a few billion asshole airline passengers in the world, and there’s no finite way to factor for some flights having none of them on any given flight, or some having many of them.

Sure, there are plenty of people that will be willing to adhere and give the system a chance, but then there are always, always going to be just a few of them that have zero intention of sticking to the plan, and nothing short of the gate agent enforcing the queue and stopping any and all violators from boarding too early, this is going to fail 100% of the time.  Those gate agents probably don’t get paid enough nor do they give enough fucks to even try to stop asshole passengers from jumping in whenever they want and ruining the process for the entire flight, and departure times and delays are inevitably going to get wrecked by this, and in the grand spectrum calculus of airline operations, it’s only a matter of time before this shitty idea is quietly scrapped and they return to more traditional, fall-in-line boarding process.

Somewhere else in this whole thing, I have to be curious on how this is going to impact the whole, large passenger policy that Southwest used to be applauded for in having, where large passengers had the possibility of getting a free adjacent seat if the flight had availability.  If there are going to be price tiers in accordance to boarding priority, surely there will be new ways for people to try and game the system in order to save a few bucks, and I have to wonder if SWA people thought this through enough to merge with existing policies in place, unless said policies were on the chopping block for restructure in order to not lose money on these new potential pricing tiers.

Either way, I can’t imagine that this is going to end well.  I like to imagine that when this shit rolls out, it won’t take more than the first flight, before passengers, by virtue of being selfish dicks or just plain ignorance, queues up out of order, isn’t stopped at the gate, and boards when they shouldn’t have.  They sit down in an aisle, take up overhead space with their carry-on, and later on in the boarding, someone who’s a middle seat passenger is denied overhead space, and/or is jilted over having to wait for the prior aisle-seat dick to get out of the way so they can board, and already the flight experience is stained.

Before we know it, a fight breaks out, and 12 people record it on their phones from differing angles, and Southwest is back in the news again for another passenger fight, and absolutely nothing has changed at all.

gg Southwest, look forward to the next bonehead disruptor idea y’all come up with next.

Dad Brog (#156): I am a better parent than you

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

…at the park, at least.

With the weather getting nicer (read: not balls sticking to your leg hot anymore), I’ve really wanted to capitalize and let my kids play outside more, before it starts getting to be too chilly for outdoor play.  That said, usually on weekends where there’s really nothing on the agenda, I’ll take my kids to one of the numerous parks in my area where they can run around and play on a playground, burn some energy, and interact with other kids.

It’s not at all surprising, but it’s still a little disappointing for me to see, but whenever we go to most any park, it’s almost always the same scene; kids running around and being kids, and their parents usually posted up on a park bench, aimlessly looking at their phones.

Obviously I get it, and sometimes there’s little else I’d rather be doing than doing the same thing and indulging in mindless content and memes and games as opposed to having to be on in dad-mode as if I’m not already in dad-mode for the other 90% of my life when I’m not working.  And I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t occasionally look at my phone myself when at the park with my kids, or if I’m lucky enough to be there with another trusted adult, indulging a little bit myself.

However the thing is that my phone is absolutely not the primary thing I’m paying attention to while at the park at my kids, because my kids are what I’m paying the most attention to while at the park.  Making sure they stay safe, making sure they’re getting along well with other kids or each other, and making sure nobody else’s little shits are bullying my kids.  And of course, I’ll play with my kids as well, whether they want me to chase them and play tag, push them on swings, or if they want my assistance at doing some of the things that they’re apprehensive about, like monkey bars, rope bridges, or climbing higher things.

Not that any of my fellow parents who have resigned themselves to phone zombie status would even notice, but it’s like I kind of make a point to be more active, more present and more focused on my children, because even at 5 and 4 years old, I already feel like time has zipped by, my kids are enormous, and the next time I blink, they’ll be teenagers too cool to be with their parents, and will outwardly resent and hate everything I do despite remembering they still love me.  I love watching their faces when they come down a slide, or hearing their laughter when they’re playing with each other or other kids, because I know this isn’t forever.

And I’ll even indulge other parents’ kids, if they’re playing with mine, and I’m typically happy to engage them in tag, or push them on swings or see-saws or merry-go-rounds.  Occasionally I’ll look up to see if other parents are cool with such, only to see them face-buried in their phones, completely checked out and handed off, which I find to be kind of sad.

Yeah, this does make me feel like I have a right to say that I’m a better parent than those who don’t do close to what I do, and are completely at peace with handing their kids off to the park so they can get some phone time in.  Your kids will be grown in the blink of an eye too, and if you don’t have any memories of casually playing outside with your own kids, then that’s your regret to hold and lament about, not mine. 

I typically save my phone time to when we’re at home, and I’m letting my kids get some screen time in; this is usually the time in which I indulge in my phone, while they’re watching Little Einsteins or Superkitties for the 250th time.  But when I’m outside with my kids, it’s important to me to be vigilant and be active and be participating in the things that they’re doing, and yes I do judge all the other parents who don’t and feel bad for the disingenuous memories that they’ll have for the future where they won’t be able to remember the sheer jubilation or excitement on their kids’ faces when they’re having fun, because they didn’t see them.

It’s never too late to become better.

I kind of have to respect Mercedes’ game

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I didn’t mention it because life has a tendency to get all up in the way, but a little before Labor Day, I made a small trip, and my first destination was Philadelphia, where I met up with some friends so we could watch AEW live, on account of a childhood friend we have who is on their payroll and could hook us up with some tickets.  However, it wasn’t just watching AEW live, it was watching AEW live at the, now 2300 Arena, formerly known as the notorious ECW Arena, known for being the home to, Extreme Championship Wrestling.

This was very much as case of being more interested in seeing my friends and the venue itself as opposed to the actual product being shown, but honestly, it wasn’t that bad of a show, since the narrative of the whole night was leaning hard into the fact that they were at the ECW Arena.

It also didn’t hurt that our seats were front row.

Anyway, there really was no point to mentioning all that other than to just mentioned that I went to see the ECW Arena for the first time which I really enjoyed, and the whole point of this post is to, once again, talk about Mercedes Moné, seeing as how she’s hoovered up a 12th blet, and has been proclaiming herself to be better than Ultimo Dragon, and apparently, I’m not sure what prompted it, but also better than Bret Hart.

Little does she probably realize that kayfabe or not, by bringing up Bret Hart’s name in such a manner will embark her on a personal beef with the Excellence of Execution for the better part of the next three decades, but that’s neither here nor there.

Loosely tying back into my experience at the ECW Arena, I did get to see Mercedes live, in an in-ring promo where she was glorifying some new backyard promotion’s title win.  Despite being in the front row, nobody could really hear anything, because whether it’s AEW’s equipment being shitty, or the acoustics of the ratty old ECW Arena, nobody was getting any audio, but it didn’t really matter because in spite of the backhanded praise I have planned for this post, it doesn’t change the fact that she still gives really shitty promos, and on the trading card talent scale, her promos are probably at like a 2 out of 7, primarily on account of the fact that she’s not afraid to speak, it’s just she sucks at it.

But that was back on Labor Day, and as of now, Mercedes now holds 12 different blets, and finally lots of the internet are finally beginning to acknowledge that in spite of the number of blets, only nine of them are actually titles, considering the number of asterisks surrounding several of them, like the Owen Hart Tournament blet being a trophy and not an actual title, the Queen of Southside blet being technically retired and not an active blet, and I’m guessing the recently won Ring of Honor Women’s Television blet has an asterisk on account of it being an interim title, despite the fact that Red Velvet wouldn’t have a chance against Mercedes in a clean bout.

I’ve said it before, on account of some of them being not actual titles, and many of them being titles for a bunch of backyard promotions nobody had ever heard of, this whole blet collector arc for her is mostly meaningless, and if that makes me a hater to say such things, so be it, but it’s my version of the truth as far as I can see it.

I could argue with troglodytes on the internet about this topic, but I really do not want to, which is why it ends up being a brog post on a brog that nobody reads, but I have to say that I think I’m beginning to see what her large scale scope game is in doing all of what she’s doing, and if such really is the case, I think I do feel that I should respect her in this regard, because when the day is over in the wrestling business, it’s better to be hated and analyzed and criticized over being respected, heroic, but otherwise invisible.

And Mercedes is doing a masterclass job of doing what she’s doing, and getting people noticing and getting people talking.  Shit, as much criticism I have for what her character is doing, this is like my fourth or fifth post about specifically her, so whatever she’s doing is working, and in that regard, she has my respect.

And what she’s doing specifically, I would say is ragefarming, because between being the cockiest heel since prime Ric Flair, Mercedes is also taking her arrogance to the internet, dropping quotes and sound bytes, saying shit that is deliberately and tactfully setting wrestling fans off and getting them talking and interacting and engaging with her, with websites and groups and other outlets that are all scrambling to monetize the exposure.

Speaking of Flair, he used to explain that the point of being a good heel is to be so disliked and hated, that people start getting antsy and itching to see you lose, and one of the true arts of the business is being such to where they will be willing to pay money to see it happen, and I think Mercedes is doing an outstanding job of fulfilling that first part, but me personally I don’t like paying to watch wrestling other than live, but I am going to be excited if and when she starts having to drop all these blets back to their respective promotions.

In the grand spectrum of her career, it will be easier for her to parlay being a legendary heel back into a respectable face, as opposed someone who has to build up their fame and resume, and when the day comes, which I predict might be around next Thanksgiving, when Mercedes goes back to the WWE and becomes Sasha Banks again, she’s going to get a real needle-moving reaction, one way or the other, so the Four Horsewomen can have a massive blowup program with Asuka’s Team Japan with Iyo Sky, Kairi Sane and Giulia in a passing of the torch.

However, I still think the most defining period of Mercedes’s journey right now will be when it comes time for her to start returning the favor to all these companies whose blets she has right now.  My general scrutiny is that she may have stretched herself too thin to it almost being a no-win situation; if she bleeds her titles back piece meal, nobody will notice, but if she goes on a big tour of dropping titles in a sequence, a long string of L’s is going to make her look weak, and history has shown that Mercedes is not a fan of taking too many L’s in general.

If she pulls the losing her smile card, and starts relinquishing titles without having to take any defeats, it effectively kills whomever she does it to, and that’s just not good business at the end of the day, but I wouldn’t put it past Mercedes to keep this in mind if the thought of taking some losses starts to make her lose sleep.

Frankly, the only viable solutions are that a lot of companies will have to have some horsey, multi-women matches where Mercedes can drop blets without always having to take any pins or submissions, or she needs to start a feud with someone in AEW that reaches the level of hate that AJ Styles has reached in feuds with Dominic Mysterio or LA Knight, where they will be willing to cross seas and oceans in order to interfere in their matches and cost them in title defenses, thus keeping her somewhat strong in requiring interference in order to lose.

But anyways, because I’ve clearly got Mercedes unfortunately living rent-free in my head, and I’ve made yet another lengthy post overanalyzing what she’s doing, I’m wrap this up.  I think I’ve said everything that I’ve wanted to say this time, and normally I’d say I hope to not touch on this subject again, but there’s too much wrestling fandom and likely mileage in the Moné-train to not.

However, credit to where it’s due, Mercedes the Ragefarmer is holding a masterclass at ensuring people are noticing and people are talking, and in the wrestling industry such does require talent, and knowledge to parlay such reactions into positive, profitable careers.

The James Gunn Superman: Not bad, DCU

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Perhaps it was the sporadic clips of the film I’d catch occasionally on theFacebook algorithm, but I finally broke down and decided to actually watch the James Gunn variant of Superman.  And I have to say that the general takeaway from the experience was that it wasn’t a DC comics flim that left me wondering why DC even bothers trying to compete in the comic book film space in the first place.

Considering how low the bar is for DCU films, I do have to admit that JG Superman was pretty decent.  For starters, they jump right into the film without any sort of lore-building for Superman, because at this point in existence, it’s a safe bet that anyone who is taking the time to watch this film more than likely already knows the general nuts and bolts about the character without needing to expend 30 minutes of build-up.

That being said, that’s one of the endearing things about the film, is the fact that they don’t really treat the viewer like they’re idiots.  That, and occasionally injecting some moments of levity and humor, like the MCU had been doing over the last few decades was a good touch to help give brief reprieves and passive reminders that this was still a comic movie and comics are supposed to be entertaining and sometimes humorous.

Mr. Terrific was probably my favorite character in the film, and I’ll be honest I have no idea who he was prior to this, but after watching the film, I’m more inclined to Google him and learn more about him, and potentially be excited to see him again if he ever pops up in a future DCU production in the future.

But I think what made the film better than most other Superman films in the past, is the fact that this was a very vulnerable and generally nerfed edition of Superman.  As the comics have demonstrated throughout history, when Superman is too overpowered, he gets old, really, really quickly.  Like it’s no fun at all if every adversary is a finger flick away from defeat, and there are all sorts of plot holes that can emerge from an over-reliance on Kryptonite in order to create any modicum of adversity to ‘ol Kal-el.

However, JG Superman starts off the flick by getting his ass beat, and throughout the duration of the film, without giving too much away, Supes definitely gets his ass beat up quite a few times, and actually faces hardship and difficulty throughout the film, and although we the viewers all know he’ll prevail in the end, at least we might actually feel like he’s earning it, instead of just spamming his god-like power minutely and winning decisively.

That’s really all this post is about, the JG Superman was a DCU film that didn’t suck.  I don’t feel compelled to blurt out hater-iffic bullshit like, stick to animation, why does DCU even try, and things that thousands of other nerds on the internet have probably already said before.  Sure, it is mostly on account of it following a lot of MCU tropes, but if something works and you’re not utilizing it, that’s on you.

It will be interesting to see if the DCU can actually parlay this variant of Superman into an actually decent overarching DCU universe, much like Marvel did, and if they can built up a streak of positive equity, or if it will crash and burn like a lot of their previous attempts to world-build.

The Dodgers are inevitable

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Here’s the thing about writing about baseball playoffs: if you don’t write for a living and are financially obligated to have the time necessary to write about baseball at a moment’s notice, you’re probably not going to do so until you have available time to do so.  Which then makes you me, where I never have any time to write about things on a moment’s notice no matter how much I might think I have something that will read remotely readable, so you get to it when you can get to it.

However, the baseball playoffs go at such a rapid pace, if it takes me about 5-7 days to get to something, literally two rounds of the playoffs could have ended by then, which is sort of what did happen to me in this case.

At first, I wanted to write about Balakey Snell, and add onto how he clearly saves all of his effort for second half of the year, after he absolutely shut down the Reds in the Wild Card round.  The man has made a career of dodging work in the first halves of the seasons, with the two exceptions being the two years where he played with his balls on fire in order to win Cy Young Awards, which coincidentally aligned up with upcoming arbitration and free agent payday, to which once he got a contract, he’d loaf the first half of every year, faking injuries and suppressing his talent, and then going gangbusters the second halves of every year like clockwork.

But then the Dodgers won two games immediately to advance out of the Wild Card round, and onto the Phillies, where I wanted to write about the joys of watching two teams I dislike having to duke it out amongst each other, and when push came to shove, I’d have to support the Phillies over the Dodgers because frankly I don’t give a shit who wins the World Series – as long as it’s not the Dodgers.

Unfortunately, the Dodgers breezed through the first two games of the series, and put the Phillies on the brink of elimination, and mythical wife put game 4 on television as background noise, leading me to passively watch as I witnessed players on both teams flailing away pitifully as if it were me playing a video game, racking up strikeout after strikeout, and I actually found the game to be almost unwatchable, at how place discipline has clearly eroded tremendously over the last decade in which I’d gradually reduced how much baseball I watched.

I got triggered over how the TBS broadcasters, one of which turned out to be former Brave Jeff Francoeur, whom I’d had a contentious opinion of over the years, but the two of them just could not stop fellating themselves over Japanese rookie, Roki Sasaki, whom the Dodgers had decided to stash away entirely, unleashing him as their tentative playoff closer, which was working to great effect.

To Roki’s credit, he did pitch masterfully, pitching three perfect innings in relief, but at the same time the Phillies would have swung at kickballs being rolled on the ground by virtue of their complete lack of plate discipline, but it was obnoxious as fuck listening to the commentary of two dorks with the same gigantic weeb fetishes that MLB really loves  to push.

But then the Phillies were eliminated and it was onto the NLCS, in the blink of an eye.  In the first game, Balakey Snell pitched another gem, going eight, near-perfect innings, adding to the ridiculous talent suppression narrative, but before I could write about that, game 2 happened the following night where Yoshinobu Yamamoto pitches a complete game, the Dodgers win, and the sports world is jizzing all over the place at A Glorious Nippon baseball player demonstrating such brilliant mastery in the playoffs, much to my annoyance.

Meanwhile, golden boy Shohei Ohtani has been completely invisible for the second October in row, going 1-for his last like 20 or so at-bats, but nobody wants to dare hear ill about their demi-god.

I had a great analogy for a writing topic about how MLB feels like the League of Legends LCS scene where every team in every region came to the collective conclusion that they need to import as many Korean players onto their teams as they could, leading to a few years of hilarity where teams all over North America, Europe, China and even teams in Brazil, all had two Korean players on their rosters. 

And how MLB feels like it’s headed in that direction where teams are going to be scrambling to gobble up Japanese players because they’ll all buy into the notion that they need them in order to compete, and that the Dodgers are just one of the earliest teams to really exploit the system, much like teams like Fnatic, LMQ and G2 were early adopters of hoarding Koreans in LCS, before all teams eventually picked up on it and began poaching Koreans left and right.

But that brings us to the present, where the Dodgers won game 3 of the NLCS, where they now have a near-lock to make the World Series because no team except 2004 Boston Red Sox had ever come back from an 0-3 series deficit to win four in a row, and everything I wanted to make dedicated posts about are already in the past and not worth dedicating entire posts about anymore.

And all I really have to say at this point is the subject of this post – the Dodgers are inevitable.  They didn’t just buy themselves a loaded roster, they bought themselves a loaded roster, intelligently.  That’s the one major separator from them and every other team in baseball history that has thrown cash around like they were at a strip club, but resulted in no positive results.  Sure, some of them were victimized by the hot team, but this era of Dodgers has appeared to be hot team-proof.  No hot team or higher seed really makes a difference when they get loaded up into a short series with a team that has this much pitching depth, amassed effective relievers from other teams, and has this many available bats on their roster, all of which seem to be drunk enough on the Kool-Aid to not be letting any toxic egos into the equation.

I doubt I’m the only one who came into the playoffs with this sense of dread at seeing the Dodgers in, because most anyone who follows the game knows that they’re the team to beat, no matter where they were seeded going into it.  And sure enough, the Dodgers did what they were built to do, which is that they decimated the Reds and the Phillies, and have decimated the Brewers and by the time this day is over, could very well be en route to the World Series, yet again.

Like I said, I really don’t care who ultimately wins the World Series, but I really hope it’s not the Dodgers.  The fact that I would have preferred the Phillies over the Dodgers speaks volumes for those who know me.  If I had a preference, it’s the Seattle Mariners I’d rather see become champions for the first time in their franchise history, but I have no beef with the Blue Jays either.

But regardless of who comes out of the AL, I don’t like either of their chances against the amount of ammunition the Dodgers have, and they’re currently playing in a dominant manner that’s giving me some serious 2005 White Sox vibe, where their starters are just on another planet right now, delivering dominating performance one right after the other after another.  Even if they got completely bodied by the Angels all year.

This is most definitely one of those cases where I’d love to be wrong, and being right about an inevitable fucking Dodgers victory, will bring no joy whatsoever.