Day: May 15, 2024

MLB’s Japanese Player Fetish

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

This has been a topic that I’ve had on my list of things that I wanted to write about, that I just haven’t really been able to bring to fruition.  Either I burn myself out on writing about high school tryhards applying to every school under the sun, or I just don’t feel like I have sufficient time to write about it, but it’s definitely a topic that I feel like I could go off about, but for whatever reason, I just haven’t had the chance to do so until now.

But it’s been something that’s been brewing over the last few years, and this year it’s definitely come to a boiling point about just how cringey MLB has become when it comes to their obvious opinion and feelings when it comes to Japanese players.

Sure, Shohei Ohtani is an incredible specimen of a baseball player, and I do think there is legitimate argument that we might be able to call him the best player of all time (for this generation), and that he’s more impressive than Babe Ruth, Hank Aaron, Albert Pujols, combined.  Statistically he does bring a lot to the table, but one thing that he does not bring to the table that MLB insists that he does, is the fact that he is, Japanese.

His ethnicity has nothing to add to any argument over his place in baseball history, but MLB is so rapid quick when it comes to injecting it into the narrative, and it’s not like those who follow baseball aren’t already aware that Japan is the de facto #1 country in the world when it comes to baseball talent, seeing as how they’ve won the vast majority of Olympic golds and World Baseball Classics when it comes to international competition over the last 20 years.

But MLB does it anyway, because for whatever reason, over the last 20 years, they’ve become an organization that is definitely going through a serious weeaboo phase in their history where Japan = #1, and everything, including their own assets are inferior in comparison.  Ohtani is definitely a worthy blue pill to cause this phenomenon within the organization, but the ensuing trickle-down effect when it comes to the yearly migration of a handful of Japanese players and the hype and fanfare they get when they come to America is downright cringey.

Yoshinobu Yamamoto making more money than Roger Clemens and Nolan Ryan ever made in their careers, combined is an egregious overpay and fellating sign of kowtowing to their Japanese overlords. 

Everytime Shota Imanaga throws another scoreless inning, bean counters for Elias and MLB blow their loads at being able to throw out another tweet about how low his ERA is, seemingly completely ignorant to how the league will adjust on him harder than the stock market once the scouting report on him is complete. 

Seiya Suzuki is by-and-large a perfectly good, above average player, but the way MLB expounds his occasional positive contributions is like they’re talking about the second-coming of Ichiro.

The season is barely a quarter of the way through, and there’s already talks about the next Japanese overlord, some guy named Munetaka Murakami.  But few outside of the diehard fans of their respective teams are bothering to get excited over any prospects on their own farms.

The point of all this is that it’s extremely clear that MLB has a pretty raging boner fetish on Japanese players right now.  I can practically hear the gong and racist Asian theme in my head every time I see an MLB channel or MLB beat writer lose their shit over something a Japanese player does, as if their mythical powers from the magic Orient were why Yamamoto had a 5.2 inning outing where he gave up no runs, while Max Fried throws a complete game shutout in the middle of an era where complete games are becoming as scarce as no-hitters.

Much has been made of Ohtani’s 2024, and how because he doesn’t have to worry about doing any pitching at all, he can focus on being the demigod of hitting he’s believed to be.  Every single home run he hits, is answered by some god-awful MLB tweet fellating him for doing what he’s going be paid $700 million dollars to do; meanwhile, Marcell Ozuna of the Braves is leading the majors in home runs currently, when just a year ago, fans were clamoring for him to be cut from the team and eat the salary hit, and MLB barely takes notice when he maintains his home run lead.

It’s just funny how an entire organization like Major League Baseball becomes no different than myself and lots of my nerdier friends in my life have been at certain points of their lives, when it comes to going through a Japan #1 phase.  I look back at that time of my life with rolled eyes and a little bit of embarrassment, but the difference is that I’m not a publicly known, forward facing, billions of dollars organization, looking like a collective cringey weeb in front of the rest of the world, and I look forward to the day when MLB grows out of it, because it’s really fucking embarrassing watching them spooge all over themselves over Japanese players.

#TRYHARDSZN2024: The Arrogance is real and appropriate for Duke

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

TL;DR: teenager from Scotland not the country, North Carolina, accepted into more than 30 schools, selects Duke University

Firstly, if any of my zero readers were to click the link to de-anonymize this #TRYHARD, I have to ask if all of the photographs of her are actual photographs or if they’re paintings?  They’re processed so crudely that they look like paintings, and I know I’m already calling her arrogant, but I don’t think to the degree where she’d have paintings of herself in graduation.  But I guess out in Scotlandnotthecountry, North Carolina, they don’t have any reliable graphic designers anywhere to not make photographs look like shitty watercolor paintings.

But anyway, here we have another #TRYHARD who is just arrogant enough to pique my interest, because when the day is over, she’s really not that hot shit because she basically applied to every college in the state of North Carolina and because the article points out that she raked in nearly $1M in scholarships, not to mention will be getting aide from the Gates Scholarship which basically is a free ride to anywhere, any and all credentials and accolades have to be mentioned to really sell this #TRYHARD in a sea where there are fish who have cleared 60, 120, and 200+ college acceptances themselves.

To cut to the chase, she ultimately picked Duke, which is definitely a good reputable school in academics, but it’s also among the most insufferable institutions on the planet if you want people to hate your guts for any reason at all.  But it seems to be a match made in heaven already, because when describing her journey of when she started getting acceptance letters, she’s clearly got the arrogant part of being a blue blooded Dookie already down:

When she began opening her accepting letters, she thought it was too good to be true.

I was like, I need some rejection. I need to be humbled,” Revels joked.

Oh please, someone reject me just so I know that I haven’t applied to every single UNC-Wherever satellite school for agriculture among a few others that will still give me the time of day simply because of my demographic credentials.

But then it gets better and in this case I mean worse, as in her arrogant humble-bragging just continues to grow, in thinking that perhaps she sold herself short by not applying to bigger and better schools, like perhaps any Ivy Leagues (that we know of):

Despite being accepted into so many schools, Revels admitted she regrets she didn’t reach higher.

Don’t sell yourself short. I felt like Duke was my highest reach. Why not go higher and go to Harvard, Yale, Princeton? You never know what could happen,” Revels said.

Man, despite getting into a school like Duke, she doesn’t hesitate to take a dump on them and loudly ponder on if she could have done even better.  That’s quite some arrogance.

Welp, it’s because you did have doubts and did sell yourself short, and didn’t bother try to get into any of the Ivy Leagues.  Frankly, Harvard has accepted just about everyone under the sun this year that wasn’t white, so it stands to believe that this one probably would’ve made it through as well, but she didn’t try, and therefore she won’t know, and despite her high degree of arrogance, she most definitely falls short in the rankings of #TRYHARDs this #SZN.

Didn’t try hard?  Then you can die hard.  Owned