Author: dannyhong

Dad Brog (#133): Separation anxiety

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

When I was unloading my car after our trip, I noticed that my Baby On Board placard had fallen off.  Presumably in part due to the nuclear heat wave Georgia is going through because global warming is fake news, but there it was, no longer stuck to the windshield, letting other motorists to get off my tits because my kids are more important than your bullshit aggressive driving.

During the trip, the thought actually crossed my mind that I still had it on the window, and how that 4 and 2, my kids aren’t really babies anymore, regardless of the fact that I’m always going to see them as my little babies no matter what their age is in life. 

For two years, during the rise of #2, we didn’t encounter a whole lot of the impending separation anxiety with #1’s belongings, because we knew that just about everything we ever bought for #1 would get a second life with a younger sibling that was for all intents and purposes pretty close in age.  So instead of getting sad, mopey and melancholy that a material object was nearing the end of the line, just about everything got to be used again, and really get its money’s worth.

But now though, is a different story, as #2 continues to outgrow and retire clothes, shoes and other things here and there, comes the reality of having to say goodbye to things, which I’m normally pretty good about tossing things, or donating or getting them out of our home by whatever means, but when it comes to the things that belonged to my children, that’s a different story.

Which is why we still have tubs full of infant clothing, a disassembled crib that we have no use for, car seats, strollers and boxes of shoes, toys and other crap we want gone, but are still struggling to actually remove from the premises.  Like, I want the space back in my dining room, garage and sunroom something fierce, but at the same time, it’s sad to say goodbye to all these random crap and clothing that basically had notable contributions in raising my children.

As for the window placard, I thought about keeping it off the window because my kids aren’t technically babies anymore, but then I was like fuck that, and slapped it back up on the window.  Even if my kids aren’t crawling around in diapers, I would still appreciate if shitty aggressive drivers would have a little bit of understanding maybe at why I might not drive like an asshole when I don’t have to.

This is what we statistic enthusiasts like to call, a small sample size

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

The Athletic conducted an anonymous MLB player poll, and among the topics was a query of where would you like to play if . . .

if money, rosters were not a factor

That’s a pretty big fucking if, if you ask me, because when the day is over, the only thing that matters to baseball players, much less 98% of professional athletes, is money.

But anyway, a whopping overwhelming majority of responders to the survey, said that they would want to join the Atlanta Braves, in a hypothetical world where money and rosters were not a factor.  Obviously, I say such with dripping sarcasm in case it’s hard to pick it out in soulless text, because only 86 total players responded to the survey and just 12.7% of players said that they would want to play for the Braves, which in doing the math, is just but 10.922 players who said that they would want to play for the Braves in a magical hypothetical world where money (and rosters) were not a factor.

All the same, that 12.7% was higher than all other teams in the league, so obviously the Braves who aren’t getting many wins on the field these days, is taking any W’s they can get anywhere else in the stratosphere, including a meaningless survey talking about fantasy realities.  Even if it is basically the mother of small sample sizes, which is a phrase that is often thrown around in the sports analytical community, like when a pitcher goes 5-0 to start the season and people start anointing them the Cy Young Award winner for the season.

That being said, I don’t buy it for two seconds that if the entire league were to be mandatorily surveyed, that the Braves would come out on top.  There’s a reason in reality why the lion’s share of marquee talents have gone to the Dodgers, Phillies, Yankees, Mets and anyone else who’s been shown to have a willingness to back up a Brinks truck to coveted free agents over the last few years, because when the day is over, money is a factor, often times the only factor, that determines where players in any sport, usually go.

The Braves are a notoriously cheap organization that is allergic to free agents, and the only ones who typically get the big bucks are homegrown talents that are often times seduced into signing early-big money deals that are often times well below the market value if they were to hang tight until free agency, preying on their youth, inexperience and promises of be rich now, instead of be fuck-you-rich later.

They’re an organization that has been historically funny with the money since Ted Turner ceded ownership to Liberty Media which reorganized to their very own Atlanta Braves corporation which clearly makes it way easier to hide their finances from prying eyes, and since this has been the case, the entire organization has prioritized fiscal goals over sport ones, ignoring the fact that nothing rakes in the big bucks than winning championships.

It’s a team that’s so drunk on their own Kool-Aid of tradition, lineage and history, that they’re handcuffed by their own doing to making any sort of change, or steps towards forward progress and trying new things.  It’s what makes them the mother of risk-averse, and they’re always convinced that the answer lies somewhere within the organization, as opposed to the idea that there just might be, some really talented players out there who exist in other organizations.

In the rare instances where players do consider variables like location, the City of Atlanta isn’t really the most appealing place to make a home of, unless you’re already born and bred country, and/or are guys at a stage of their lives where they want to actually think about things important to raising families, then maybe Atlanta, more importantly the bevy of suburbs north of the city like Alpharetta, Johns Creek and Milton where rich athletes tend to scurry up to, would be a positive.

But if I’m a younger cat like Trea Turner, Juan Soto, Mike Clevenger or Adley Rutschman, wanting a little bit of life in the city, I don’t think Atlanta would be really that appealing.

And the reality is that the Braves are a team that are so caught up in money and roster, that there’s no way any upper-tier talents that are on the edge of possibly making a move, would realistically consider the Braves, over organizations that are committed to winning and willing to open wallets, doors and opportunities, because lord knows we’ve seen in reality, just how many players have squeezed their way onto the Dodgers and Phillies over the last few years, like an Indian or Japanese subway car, and teams like that, always make things work, versus throwing in the towel at the 7th hour and saying we can’t compete.

Either way, this was a cute little sample size scenario that clearly triggered me into vomiting out a bunch of words of the disdain that can only come from a fan of the team, about how the Braves realistically couldn’t be the organization that randomly anonymous players in the aether would actually want to play for, on a grander scale.

Not a fuckin’ chance.

Those who are quick to judge the shopping cart mom probably aren’t parents

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I came across this story about this California mom who apparently enraged The Internet because she proclaimed to rarely return shopping carts when she went shopping. 

My knee-jerk reaction was like, what a lazy Karen-ey bitch, but when I actually read a little bit about the context to the whole story, my stance softened, and I began to empathize a little bit of where she was coming from, because it’s come from the place of her being a parent, and if there’s one thing I’m observing in the world this day and age, is that at a glance, it feels like fewer people are having kids these days, therefore there are fewer parents as the generations move on, and therefore there are fewer people who can relate and understand to where this California mom is coming from.

Basically, her defense of her decisions to not always return carts to a designated area stems from the fact that when she’s out and about with her kids on her own, she doesn’t want to leave her kids unattended, even for 20-30 seconds, while she takes the cart back to a designated spot.  And as a parent, who definitely understands the abject horror of the reality that the world is full of a bunch of sick fucks out there whom you never know are ready to strike at any given point, I wholeheartedly understand where this mom is coming from.

Even with modern cars that auto-lock when the RFID chips in the keys or phone signals stray, there’s still a few second delay, and in this day and age all it takes is a few seconds for some twisted psycho to try to kidnap a kid, inflict harm or just be a plain sick fuck, and it’s my duty as a parent to protect my children from that kind of stuff, no matter how unlikely or one-in-a-million chances it might be.

Now personally, I’ve done both things, where I have not returned a cart to a designated spot, as well as returned my cart, while my kid(s) were in the car unattended.  When I didn’t return it, it’s not like I left it in the middle of the parking lot or have it cockblocking an entire parking space, I’ve typically moved it onto a curb or onto an island, out of the way as best as possible, and perhaps I’ve had been having a bad day or the weather is ass for why I didn’t return it, on top of the fact that my kids were secured in their seats and I didn’t want to leave them unattended.

And when I did return my cart while the kids were unattended, I would always be looking back ever two seconds keeping my eyes peeled for any prowling psychos, and I would only take my cart back as far as to where I could then heave it forward and make it into the galley before walking briskly back to my car to be with my kids again.

But the reality is that whether I’m at Costco, Publix, Target, or anywhere where I might need a shopping cart, I deliberately park away from other people, as well as often times, as close to a cart return as possible, so that I can return my cart conveniently close to my vehicle to where I don’t have to deal with the fear of leaving my kids unattended while I do something honorable.

Back to the point though, I have this feeling that all the white knights of the internet who are in defense of retailers and attacking this mom for her choice to not always return her cart, probably aren’t parents, specifically to kids of very young ages, like car seats and diapers or younger.

I can’t imagine that it’s not just Korea and Japan that are having falling birthrates, when I look at my own circles of people, and seeing people getting older, passing traditionally prime child-bearing ages, and making the choice to live on the rest of their lives without experiencing the journey of raising another generation of human beings.  I don’t fault anyone for making that choice, and I would appreciate the same courtesy for my own choice to have children.

But let’s face it, it’s people who don’t have kids who probably have more time than people who do have kids, to be on the internet and judging a mom who admits to committing the worst offense of history 1B, not returning shopping carts, because she’s afraid of the psycho world we live in, and doesn’t want to be the rare exception statistic where her kids get snatched because she’s trying to make some store employee’s life a little bit easier.

Her life could become a little bit easier by deciding to be more like me, and doing what I do, but sometimes that’s not always going to be the case.  Especially in a high-density region like California, and depending on when she goes to cart-utilizing stores, such parking options might not always be available.  But I for one am never going to judge a parent for doing something that might offend others, but stems from a place of being protective parent.

Now if she were to continue this behavior on excursions where she’s alone, then she’s being a lazy Karen-ey bitch, but as long as her mom hat is on, I’m not going to blow her up for it; I’d suggest she be more like me, but wanting to protect her kids isn’t something I will get up in arms over.

There are poor teams, teams that spend, and The Braves Way™

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I was thinking one morning before I started making breakfast for the kids, about how the Braves had lost yet another game to the lowly Nationals, while the Phillies had won another game, adding one more game in the standings over Atlanta.  There’s no shortage of shady remarks I could spout, that only come from the type of fan who loves a team to where they have absolutely nothing but snarky vitriol for them, but instead, I actually had what I thought was a great visual representation of how I felt the Braves operated in the MLB landscape.

There’s a scene in the Game of Thrones television show, where Littlefinger smugly tries to educate Cersei Lannister that knowledge is power, only for her to immediately command her guards to grab him and slit his throat, before calling them off, and retorting that power is power.  Littlefinger is an arrogant smarmy fuck throughout the series, and it’s always a treat to see someone put him in his place, because it unfortunately does not happen that often.

The Braves are Littlefinger.  They operate in this insulated bubble where they think they’re smarter than all the other teams in Major League Baseball, and are quick to congratulate themselves on irrelevant accolades such as profit, revenue and all things that pertain to how much money they make from all the schmucks who throw money at them.  The unspoken part is concurrently how little they re-invest back into the team itself, that ultimately is the product that is meant to generate all that currency in some shape or form.

They are always convinced that the organization has all the parts they need in order to contend for a World Series, despite the fact that they only have the one from 2021 that was the mother of hot streak luck but then again what World Series winning squad isn’t the same?

The Braves are tremendously risk-averse to the point where they basically take no risks at all, mainly in the arena of paying a free agent or trading some prospects for a sure-thing good player, and year after year, their biggest weakness is exposed, and they get bounced from the playoffs in the NLDS.

Meanwhile, all the other contenders in baseball are Cersei and her guards, who represent teams that have their own intelligence in their own rights, but are either less risk averse, or are willing to open up their copiously overflowing wallets because baseball is a massively fucking profitable business venture, or worse off for the Braves, both.

Non-fans of teams like the Dodgers, Yankees and Phillies are quick to criticize how much money that these teams are spending on free agents and contract extensions, but the proof is in the pudding; all of them are at the top of the standings currently, and are leaps and bounds in the best positions to reach the World Series.

Sometimes you have to just stop trying to outsmart everyone, because when everyone is playing chess at the same time, you just have to brute force and fuck everyone else with some money and demonstrate that power is power.

As much as I criticize the Braves, the truth of the matter is that they are a great organization.  General manager Alex Anthopolous is a sharp guy who has lucked into some really fruitful moves that didn’t really sound impressive on paper, but paid out in dividends when they worked out, but it’s obvious that even he’s working with his hands partially tied behind his back, from the stingy purse strings closing the wallet that he’s denied access to.

With the knowledge that the team does have, they’re competent at fielding a team that’s routinely good enough to make the playoffs, especially now that there are two wild cards, but they constantly run out of gas and/or have their weaknesses exposed, and crash out at their routinely low ceiling.

But imagine just how great the Braves could routinely become if they just stopped being so fucking Braves-ey and sobered up from the bullshit The Braves Way™ Koolaid they remain so drunk on.  As soon as Spencer Strider went down for the year, pick up Trevor Bauer for the peanuts he’s asking for just for a chance to pitch in MLB.  As soon as Ronald Acuña went down for the year, pick up the fucking phone and start making some calls, and not assume that an outfield of Jarred Kelenic and Adam Duvall at the corners could cut it.  If the team had Bauer, then Schwellenbach or Waldrep could become a valuable trade chip to get someone useful now.

Fire someone; on any other team in any other sport, a slump like the one the Braves are going through usually results in someone getting fired, regardless of the obvious fact that it’s out of their control that the players aren’t playing well.  If the team doesn’t want to axe Brian Snitker, then fire Kevin Seltzer, the hitting coach.  Strong arm Chipper Jones to be the interim hitting coach that fans have wanted to see the hitting savant become since the second he retired from the game.

Stop being so afraid of fucking rentals.  Stop being so fucking cheap.  Stop believing The Braves Way™ is the only way, because rest assured, it is not.  No matter how much I’d prefer power to be power over knowledge, at the very end of the day, baseball, much less any sport, is a crapshoot, once playoffs begin.  But if I’m a betting man, the teams that employ more power, tend to be the ones primed to be standing once the postseason begins, and with the way things are now, the Braves and all their Littlefinger knowledge sure as fuck don’t seem primed for anything other than an even earlier postseason exit, in the wild card series; if they even make it at all.

It’s fun watching all the non-sport fan normies get up in arms over Caitlin Clark

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

It’s safe to say that I’ve been watching sports for a pretty long time.  My fandoms ebb and flow, and at various times it’s safe to say that it fluctuates on what sport I am favoriting the most, but when it comes down to it, I have spent an inordinate amount of time in my life watching sports.  Baseball, basketball, football and even a little bit of soccer and hockey, I’ve watched enough sports in my life to generally know what I’m talking about, as well as to have seen some things, that only other sports fans of an extended duration really know what I’m talking about.

If there’s one thing that’s been pretty consistent throughout the history of sports, is that whenever a hotshot player arrives at a new level of competition, there’s usually a degree of testing that they go through and endure, be it from their opponents, peers, rivals and even their own teammates, since peers, rivals and teammates aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive.

When Michael Jordan, Peyton Manning and Derek Jeter were drafted and reported to duty in their early years, all of them went through a period of time where they were physically and mentally tested by everyone.  In practices, scrimmages or spring trainings, their presence was a threat to veterans on their own teams, and ain’t nobody want to lose their job to any young guns whose ears are still wet from the showers.

Against opponents, they were bullied, fouled, tackled, cheap shot and went to verbal warfare from their opponents, who wanted to see if they could exert some power of intimidation or get inside their heads and throw them off their games.

And they would go through these types of rituals and experiences numerous times throughout their early years, until they earned the general respect of those around them, to which the behaviors would taper off mostly, unless they were weak-willed and demonstrated that they could be rattled.

In other words, everything that Caitlin Clark has been going through since the start of the WNBA season, with the hard fouls, the shit talking, the snipes from opponents in the media; this is not racism, this is not jealousy, this is not any form of discrimination.  This is normal, this is ordinary, this is nothing that professional athletes in any sport of any gender have not had to endure themselves at early parts of their careers.

But let’s not tell that to the legions of media and overnight women’s basketball fans who have never been sports fans in their lives until Caitlin Clark had ignited their imaginations, and are up in arms over the supposed rough treatment that she’s getting in the WNBA.  It’s partially their fault that they’re so blind to it, because it really hasn’t been since Caitlin Clark that this many people have been interested in the WNBA at all, and for everyone who is now claiming to be fans of women’s hoops, where they fuck were they when Lisa Leslie and Rebecca Lobo were launching the entire league, and when Britney Griner and Sabrina Ionescu were leading the quiet charge of the current generation?

Caitlin Clark is undoubtedly the most important player the league has come across in a long time, and this generalization is not lost on all the other girls in the league who have had to deal with the ridicule and general disrespect people have had for the WNBA in all the years prior to the arrival of Clark.  It’s natural for them to want to welcome the rookie with some tough love, and size up the nuclear hot shot who’s being unofficially hailed as the flagbearer for the entire gender’s sport, because if she demonstrates any weaknesses, then perhaps she’s not the right person for the job.

The hard fouls and the criticism have nothing to do with racism, and nothing to do with any general discrimination.  There may be some jealousy involved, but I can’t blame anyone for being jealous at least a little bit, considering the league has been around for over 20 years, and it wasn’t until Caitlin Clark that people have been taking notice.

And if Caitlin Clark endures the season with a modicum of grace, respect, and an attitude of shut up and play ball, she’s going to be just fine, and the rest of the league will take their foot off the gas at trying to break her for the sake of breaking her, and entrust her with the hope that she can help bring growth and positive change to the league and sport as a whole.

And as for all the normies, welcome to sports.  This is nothing out of the ordinary.

The world no longer has the greatest living center alive

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

RIP: Bill Walton passes away at the age of 71

I don’t even remember who preceded Bill Walton on the NBA on NBC broadcasts throughout the 90s, but when I had really gotten into basketball, my memories of watching hoops always had the voice of Marv Albert and someone else in it.  Maybe it was Paul Westphal or Doug Collins, I don’t remember, but what I do remember is when Bill Walton joined Marv Albert behind the desk, and the two of them commentated on some of the greatest games of basketball I’ve ever watched.

I didn’t know really anything about Bill Walton when he took over the broadcasting duties, except for the fact that he was a former NBA player from yesteryear.  I didn’t know that he was some beatnik hippie player who played for the Portland Trailblazers and the Boston Celtics, and I frankly didn’t know anything about his career, playstyle or any remote idea of his general numbers.  The internet didn’t really exist then, much less have an online database where I can satiate any curiosity of any player of any time in history these days.

Honestly, at first, I found Walton to be kind of obnoxious, from his nasal-ey voice, tendency to go off on tangents about things that weren’t basketball, and inject a little too much opinion and editorial into his commentating style.  I didn’t need to hear about the famines in Sri Lanka, while I’m sitting at the edge of my seat watching Patrick Ewing trying to come out victorious over the Indiana Pacers.  I didn’t need to hear about how he was happier being the greatest sixth man ever for the Celtics instead of being the star in Portland when I was amped up watching Anfernee Hardaway prepare for some last second heroics against the Hakeem Olajuwon and the Houston Rockets.

But as the years passed, the sound of Bill Walton grew into a familiar comfort, and as I grew older and my general brain began to expand, the things he would drone on and on about during the span of a basketball game became entertaining.  Especially when while he was doing it, Marv Albert was being the studious straight man calling the action to the book, along with his iconic YESSSS calls whenever Michael Jordan drilled a fadeaway in John Starks’ face.

One of my favorite Bill Walton cliches, before the phrase meme even came into existence, were all the times throughout the decade where Walton would make remarks or insinuations that he was a better center than Shaquille O’Neal.  Which was laughable, considering Walton was a lanky white guy who excelled at set play team basketball while Shaq was probably the single greatest dominating physical force in the history of the game, but it never stopped old Bill Walton from trying to hint that he was always a better player than him, mostly because of his superior free throw percentage and ability to pass the ball.

My friends and I would often do bad impressions of Bill Walton whenever we talked hoops, and it always boiled down to a caricature quote of him saying:

I know a better center than Shaq.  Me.

Oh and how we ended up loving Bill Walton in the end.  Eventually, NBC would foolishly lose the license to the NBA, and it would be quite some time before Bill Walton would be back in the booth with any regularity, and by then, I had already long phased out of my love for hoops, the NBA and having time in general to watch basketball.

But I have memories as recent as just a few years ago, of where Bill Walton was doing some guest commentary during a college basketball game, and in true classic Bill Walton, the man would just not shut the fuck up about topics that had to do with anything other than basketball, like some of the turmoil going on in Syria or some other third world country.  The guy doing the play-by-play was probably getting annoyed, but I definitely was enjoying it the whole time, because despite the fact that time had aged and eroded Bill Walton physically, he was still the same beatnik underneath it all, and his past basketball accolades always got him in the door to be on television to talk about absolutely anything but basketball; during basketball games.

At 71 years of age, the man had lived a fairly full life, close to general life expectancy.  Probably a lot of the psychedelic drugs he did as a devout Dead Head probably shaved a few years off, but it’s probably hard to argue that he didn’t live his life to the fullest.  It does make me sad to learn that the greatest living center is no longer among us, and he clearly impacted my life to the point where his passing warrants a post in the brog.

Happy trails, Bill Walton – you certainly were a better center than Shaq was, at quite a few things.

I hereby propose Angel Hernandez Day

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

A rare day where every team in Major League Baseball got a win: oft-maligned, criticized and widely accepted as the worst umpire in MLB, Angel Hernandez declares retirement effective immediately

When it comes to baseball umpiring, if people know your name, it’s really not a good thing.  There’s a reason why baseball fans all seem to know the names of guys like Tim McClelland, Joe West, CB Bucknor, Laz Diaz, Eric Gregg and of course, Angel Hernandez; because these are guys who have at some point made such a colossal bad call or many bad calls, that they become infamous in baseball circles.

But Angel Hernandez, that guy was truly on a different planet when it came to bad umpiring.  As a (terrible) baseball fan myself who’s seen his share of live baseball games, once I realized who Angel Hernandez was, his name alone, when hearing that he was behind the plate, or even umping anywhere on the field, elicited a feeling of dread and concern that he was most definitely, going to fuck something up.  The real question was which team he was going to fuck it up for, and I could only hope that it wasn’t going to be the Braves or whatever team I might’ve been pulling for in a particular matchup.

Without fail, when he was on the bases, he would completely blow a check swing check, and call a strike on a batter who did not get the bat head past home plate, regardless of how much instant replay could refute it.  He’d call balks on pitchers who were as still as statues, and at least one line drive would land foul but he’d call fair.

But it was behind the plate in which Angel did the most damage, calling way more pitches than most of his peers, inaccurately balls or strikes.  Just searching for “Angel Hernandez” on YouTube would result in a parade of montage videos of him blowing calls, indiscriminately, and as the years have passed and vigilante watchers have been doing everything in their power to hold umpires more accountable, actual factual evidence of how bad Angel Hernandez was at his job has been materializing and painting the Picasso of just how terrible he was at umpiring baseball.

He has widely been regarded as the worst umpire there is not just by fans of baseball, but by the players themselves, whom there have been multiple years where Sports Illustrated takes anonymous surveys of umpire reviews, and it seemed like every time they did it, Angel Hernandez would be rated the worst.

Regardless of the ire, it’s widely believed that Angel himself loves the attention, and that he seems to be a proponent of the ideology that there’s no such thing as bad press, because the man has remained impervious throughout the decades of just how much he has been reviled by fans and players alike.

So needless to say, the recent development that Angel Hernandez is calling it quits and will cease to take anymore baseball fields immediately, has been widely regarded as the biggest win for MLB since like, returning from the 1994 strike.  You’ll never see a day in which fans of rival teams will collectively come together in sheer solidarity at their general happiness that Angel Hernandez is gone.  In locker rooms throughout the country are hitters who are overjoyed in knowing that Angel Hernandez won’t ever be behind the dish ready to call a pitch in the dirt, or a slider 8 inches off the plate a called third strike and ding their batting average.  Pitchers are exhaling with relief knowing that they won’t have one out of every pitches right down the middle called a ball because Angel was thinking about money instead of focusing on the pitch on hand.

So with all this being said, I would like to propose that every May 27th in Major League Baseball season moving forward, should be acknowledged as Angel Hernandez Day, in which everyone in baseball celebrates the departure of the worst umpire in history.  Like they do on Jackie Robinson Day where everyone wears #42, on Angel Hernandez Day, everyone could wear #55, or whatever his primary umpire number was.  Or shit, even just retire the #55 for umpires in honor and good riddance of Angel Hernandez.

Obviously, this would never happen, because MLB is too high-horsey to allow themselves to get a little petty, but if there were ever a guy they’d like to dis-honor, it would be Angel Hernandez, who has attempted to sue his employer numerous times, claiming racial discrimination.  Obviously, the man never brought any real evidence to prove it, and the suits have always been thrown out, but considering as part of his retirement, there’s a cash settlement, I think realistically speaking, Angel has been continuing to work over the last decade, solely to stay in the game of trying to sue MLB, and with all of his suits losing, and with the increasing scrutiny of umpires and umpire performance monitoring, Angel saw fit to take the settlement and take his leave, before he ultimately gets the axe in a mass layoff in the future.

Ironically, in doing so, Angel has manage to steal the spotlight one more time, and ultimately he wouldn’t really have it any other way.  Dis-honoring him with his own day would probably be something he’d actually enjoy, which nobody wants to know, but if baseball really wants to become fun again, I’m sure there could be a tongue-in-cheek compromise to where everyone could be made happy and remember the joyous feeling of the day that Angel Hernandez left Major League Baseball, once and for all.