Tag: sports

Anthony Bass DFA’d LOL

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Often times in the world of sport, there are personalities that are less than savory, but no matter how much of an asshole these guys can be, they always have a job because they’re exceptionally good at playing children’s games in front of large crowds without crumbling to the pressure of performing.

Roger Clemens had an affair with a minor.  Kobe Bryant allegedly raped a woman.  Ray Lewis stabbed a guy to death.  And all went on to have hall of fame careers, with nary a punishment in sight.  Far too often, professional athletes can be shitheads but still have jobs because of the fact that they’re good at sports.

Anthony Bass is no stranger to the brog, in fact showing up just a few weeks ago when I had an opinion on his last escapade with United Airlines, involving his wife and kids on a flight, and her being asked to clean up after her kids in spite of being pregnant.  But no matter how divisive and viral their story went, when the day was over, Anthony Bass was continuing to pitch for the Toronto Blue Jays and making a lot of money.

I apparently missed it because I hardly pay much attention to anything beyond my kids these days, but apparently Bass is not a fan of the team he plays for’s support of the LGBTQ+ community and the team’s participation in hosting a Pride Night.  No surprise there, the players themselves are not beholden to the beliefs and supports (genuine or corporately forced) of the organizations they play for.  And a large portion of professional athletes are often times a bunch of rednecks whom shouldn’t be any surprise to not be a fan of woke culture and anything remotely leaning left.

But most players are typically smart enough to keep their opinions to themselves, because anyone with a brain knows that the activities and matters that pertain to the people in the stands has no bearing of what happens on the field.  Just because it’s a Pride Night at the Rogers Centre or Dodger Stadium or Wrigley Field doesn’t mean that the gays are allowed to get on the field and try to tackle base runners as they’re rounding third, but that doesn’t stop less-intelligent players from mouthing off and jeopardizing their livelihoods in the process.

So it’s no surprise that a guy like Anthony Bass isn’t a fan of the gays, in spite of the extremely likely jock behavior he’s probably done in a locker room that would easily constitute gay shit, and considering his bright idea to spout off on social media about his wife’s United Airlines escapades, he didn’t miss the opportunity to be quoted for speaking against the team’s intention of hosting a Pride Night.

At first, he was kind of expected to apologize and retract, and the team decided to try and have him be the catcher of the ceremonial first pitch, which undoubtedly would have been thrown by someone from the LGBTQ+ community, to which Bass flat out refused to participate in.  I imagine a bozo like him refused not because of the defiance of being told what to do, but probably because he didn’t want to be the literal and metaphorical catcher with a gay person.

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Someone is clearly a Shinsuke Nakamura fan

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Credit goes to mythical wife for turning me onto this story, but out of the blue she asks me if I’d seen these baseball uniforms.  Obviously the answer is no, because I’m so buried in either work or parenting that I see practically nothing that isn’t spoon fed to me through social media, and I’m disappointed in the algorithms that didn’t feed me this one, because it’s basically tailor made for my general interests.

But the Nippon Ham Fighters of NPB debuted some brand-new alternate uniforms, and naturally my first reaction is wtf, but very closely followed with the very obvious parallel that these look basically like one of Shinsuke Nakamura’s signature ring attires.  I mean come on, the two-tone red and black everything, the plunging V neckline with the weird collars on it, it’s straight up Shinsuke Nakamura all over it.

It turns out that these uniforms were “designed” by manager Tsuyoshi Shinjo, who’s a pretty flamboyant guy in his own right, but I think it’s safe to assume that he’s probably a Shinsuke Nakamura fan, because there’s absolutely no reason at all for a design like this to ever manifest from a baseball brand whose colors are primarily blues and golds.

Either way, upon seeing these horrible uniforms, it was inevitable that I couldn’t avoid brogging about it, as well as photoshopping Shinsuke Nakamura onto pictures of the team in these hideous kits.  But apparently, new uniform luck still applies to these as well; from what I understand, the starting pitcher for the debut game ended up throwing a complete game shutout.  Perhaps the Lotte Giants hitters were confused about stepping into a batters box against a professional wrestler, and by the time they realized they were up against a pitcher, they were already behind in the count.

Maybe Shinjo can go ahead and get started with designing the kits for the 2027 World Baseball Classic, because nothing would be a bigger power move than seeing Japan’s best players winning another WBC, all while cosplaying as Shinsuke Nakamura.  Imagine Mike Trout and Bryce Harper striking out to Shohei Ohtani wearing this get up. 

Legend status.

I don’t think Tony Kemp’s wife understand how all this works

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I don’t know why it was fed to me, but from the standpoint of it triggering enough reaction to where I felt like writing about it, I guess our AI overlords sure know how to get to each and every one of us.  But I read this story about how baseball player Tony Kemp’s wife gave him an ultimatum after he was drafted, to make it to the big leagues in three years, and I’m just really annoyed by it.

Personally, I don’t like the idea of ultimatums in the first place, and feel that ultimatums in general are usually employed in lost cause situations, and I’m of the personality to where I most certainly don’t like the heavy pressures that usually are associated with ultimatums, to where they’re automatically detrimental to whatever cause for ultimatum there was in the first place.

So I feel for Tony Kemp despite not really knowing much about him at all, seeing as how I’m basically a casual baseball fan these days and I don’t know every 25-man roster of every team like I used to, because having to play under such an unreasonable and incredibly selfish clock to begin with probably wasn’t the most ideal of conditions to be starting a professional career with.

When a player is drafted, there’s still a gargantuan amount of luck and moving parts that all need to shift and move and fall into place perfectly for them to actually make it to the major leagues, and there are countless examples of baseball players throughout history who have performed well, and never made it to the big leagues.  Even this year, was a story about a guy on the Pirates who had toiled in the minor leagues for 13 years before getting his first-ever opportunity to play in the major leagues.  And even still, he only made it up on account of an injury, and was jettisoned back to the minor leagues as soon as the player returned.

The typical timeline for a player, and that’s if they play well, have the front office behind them, and have already been invested in, is usually like five years.  They might get a September call-up before then, or a cup of coffee if someone is injured, but if everything goes well, players that are part of a team’s plan, usually still make it up in five for good.  And that’s only if the parent ballclub isn’t trying to manipulate service time and playing chess with a player’s career in order to exploit loopholes in roster construction.

So for Tony Kemp’s wife to basically demand that Tony Kemp make it to the big leagues in three years, to me, comes off as extremely reckless, unreasonable, and because the underlying message was, because her career would have to go on hold, pretty selfish.  Good on her for having her own career hopes and ambitions, but maybe don’t marry a ballplayer, much less slap a ridiculous ultimatum on him, because the pressure of such alone, could very well have blown up in their faces.

The only reason why this is a non-issue today is the fact that Tony Kemp miraculously did succeed at making it to the bigs in three years.  And thankfully there wasn’t any intricate stipulations in his ultimatum with the wife about needing to actually stick in the major leagues, because after he came up in 2016, the Astros ping-ponged him back and forth to the minors multiple times over the next few years, but if I had to guess, since he was a part (at least on the 40-man roster) of the 2017 cheating champions squad, wifey probably got swept up in just how big of a deal it can be, even for a shuttle-bus player like Kemp was then.

Here’s what irks me though; Kemp’s wife was in broadcasting in some capacity up in Toronto, and her career was supposedly trending in a direction she wanted.  Even if she stayed in broadcasting, what kind of ceiling would she capable of reaching?  Probably not to the heights that even a baseball player of marginal talent could achieve, just by being the last guy on a 25-man roster.  Money is not everything in life, but seeing as how the MLB minimum when Kemp was a rookie was still $475K, I’m willing to bet that ol’ Tony was going to be the primary breadwinner.

But the thing is that wifey basically gambled with his career, all because she was concerned about putting her career on hold.  Like, there are ways to go about chasing dreams independently, without having to put unreasonable pressure on your partner, but that’s basically what happened with the Kemps, and that’s kind of why I got fired up over this topic in the first place.

Like I’m sure Kemp’s wife isn’t so torn up about giving up her career, seeing as how hubby has made over $8 million throughout his career, which is kind of surprising considering how mediocre of a talent he kind of is.  He had one okay season in 2021, but he’s still a career .239 hitter with an OPS of .679, and has a career bWAR of 3.6 which is heavily weighted by his performance in 2021.  And the way he’s playing in 2023, his major league career probably isn’t going to last much longer, but like I said, he’s made $8M in his career, and smart people have parlayed less into retirement and the good life.

If I’m a betting man though, a partner who rains on the parade of him getting drafted in the first place with ultimatums, is probably a partner that’s going to be crawling up his asshole once his major league career starts to fizzle, and he’s stashed in the minors of whomever is willing to keep him employed.  Sucks because there are now kids involved, but that’s life in America, and everyone needs to take care of themselves so they can take care of the others that matter; with or without the unnecessary pressures of ultimatums.

Welp, that didn’t last long

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Color me a little surprised: after tremendous amounts of criticism and ridicule, the New York Mets revise the sponsorship patch on their jerseys for New York Presbyterian hospital

I’m surprised because in most cases, companies have a tendency to dig their heels in and quadruple down on their decisions, because nobody much less a gazillion dollar sport franchise ever likes admitting they were wrong.  But let’s be real here, it’s probably not (just) the criticism, clowning and ridicule they’ve been getting since debuting the former, arm-sized patch.

As I stated in my own stab at poking fun at the Mets for this, the patch was so big, it probably had the potential to affect player performance, and it probably was.  Baseball players are so neurotic and sensitive to the littlest stimuli, that a big fat patch on their arms probably made them feel a little off, and let the numbers speak for themselves:

  • The Mets as a team’s batting average is .238, which is 18th in MLB
  • Their pitching as a team has a fWAR of 0.4, which is 28th in MLB – out of 30

Keep in mind that the Mets also have a payroll of $364 million dollars which is the highest single season payroll in the history of Major League Baseball, so the expectation is that they should be the absolute best in every category in the game for as much money as they’ve invested in free agent star players.

But if you don’t think that the previous patch might not have had something to do with it, the Mets probably wouldn’t have pulled the trigger so quickly on revising this, if they didn’t believe that there was the remote possibility that it might have been affecting performance.

Either way, a good old-fashioned LOL Mets for doing the kind of silly bullshit that only the Mets seem capable of doing.  No matter how much money they dump into getting top tier pitchers and hitters, they just can’t fight the ownage that often times comes from simply being the Mets.

Someone get the Minnesota Timberwolves a trophy

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

They avoided getting swept!  They may as well be NBA champions for demonstrating such guile and determination and defeating the mighty and championship pedigree of the Denver Nuggets to stave off elimination.

This, is the very definition of lowered expectations, and precisely the instance why I actually have a tag in my brog entitled “lowered expectations.”

Sometimes, the NBA is just so hilarious at how soft and silly it’s become over the decades.  There’s so much noise surrounding the entire league, that the actual act of playing hoops seems so almost tertiary.  It is entirely possible to get sucked up in the drama and storylines of an entire NBA season and not actually watch a single game.

But back to this hilarious screen grab, it’s perfect on so many levels:

  • First, it’s not even remotely accurate that the Timberwolves avoided getting swept for the first time in franchise history; back when the playoffs were still best-of-five, the Wolves were swept in both 1997 and 2002, but the NBA for some reason likes to disregard the BO5 era unless it’s in support of whatever narrative they’re phishing for.
  • They act like the Wolves getting swept would be some sort of monumental history or something; Minnesota isn’t an OG NBA franchise, having come into the league in the 1990 expansion, but in 30+ years, they’ve only made the playoffs 11 times. That’s literally 33% of the franchise’s existence they’ve gotten into the playoffs, and of those 11 times, only once have they gotten out of the first round, and that was Kevin Garnett’s MVP season.  Otherwise, the Minnesota Timberwolves are definition of a middling pretender that may never actually win an NBA championship ever.
  • Rudy Gobert being in the frame is like the cherry on top, because I can’t say that I follow the NBA much, but whenever I do hear about the NBA, Rudy Gobert’s name has come up a surprising amount, and it’s almost never in a good context. This is the guy that was the league’s Patient Zero when COVID started, but not only did he deny coronavirus, the guy dared the world to give it to him, and he made a spectacle of rubbing microphones and tried his best to get it, and by golly did he succeed.  As soon as he tested positive, the NBA shut down shortly thereafter.  Oh, and just a few weeks ago, the Wolves ended their season with Gobert getting into a fight… with a teammate.  Real smart guy, that Rudy Gobert is

Whatever though, let’s hear it for the Minnesota Timberwolves for winning the NBA Championship after 33 long years of operation staving off getting swept because they’re totally going to be the first franchise in NBA history to ever come back from an 0-3 series deficit, and that statistic, is very much factual with no asterisks or caveats.  Maybe the Wolves can build on this grandiose achievement, and perhaps in 22 more years, get knocked out of the first round in game six instead.  Progress!

So the A’s are finally moving, it seems

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

😔 : The Oakland Athletics reach a land deal in Las Vegas; all signs pointing towards officially moving the franchise after years of failing to secure any sort of stadium deal to remain in Oakland

It’s funny, the speculation that the Oakland A’s were moving has been going on for so long, it got to a point where people just stopped believing it was going to happen.  But much like the Washington Redskins finally changing their name after eons of dodging it, it appears that the Oakland A’s are officially going to be departing Oakland, and heading into the desert.

The sports fan in me reacts because it’s change and a lot of sports fans don’t like change.  But it also elicits a little bit of sadness for me as a baseball fan, because I’m a low-key fan of the A’s, in the sense that I love Moneyball, underdogs, and teams that operate like they’re small-market and have to rely on brains and guile to survive in a league where the Mets are literally spending $300 million more than they are.

Plus, in spite of all the flack and criticism the Oakland Coliseum or whatever corporate-sponsor-of-the-month-Stadium gets for being on the wrong side of the tracks, adorned with barbed wire, and dated like an original mid-century modern home, I actually really liked my experience visiting the place, and have fond memories of the ballpark as a whole.

So I’m sad to hear that the A’s are finally getting the nails lined up on their coffin, with the hammering supposedly to be finished by the start of the 2027 season.  There’s still time for those out in Oakland to soak up a few more years of Athletics baseball, but it’ll be with the underlining sadness that there are still a finite number of games left before the team packs their shit and heads to Las Vegas.

It’s actually rich that of all the parties to come out and express sadness and condolences for the eventual demise of baseball in Oakland, the fucking San Francisco Giants emerged to make their comments.  Because on at least one instance, it was the Giants themselves that pitched a fit and effectively blocked the A’s from getting a new ballpark in San Jose, because they felt it encroached on their geographic territory, despite the fact that the city is kind of equidistant from both cities.  I’ve said it once, and I’ll say again, fuck the Giants.

Speaking of rich, of all the dirty laundry to start hitting the waves in light of the news of the team’s eventual departure, one thing I was unaware of is the fact that the owner of the Athletics is basically the richest singular owner in all of MLB, which is extra sad since the A’s have basically been bottom-3 payrolls in the league since pretty much, the existence of time.  MLB as a whole declared jihad on the Marlins’ former owner Jeffrey Loria until he sold the franchise, and even in “being forced out,” he still made a gargantuan profit in the process.  It makes me wonder if anything of the sort has been remotely considered for John Fisher?

All the same, I just wanted to write some words to express my general disappointment over the impending death of baseball in Oakland.  Not because it’s a layup of a topic for me to write about, on the contrary, I drug my feet because I didn’t want to phone in something phony, but because I really did care about the Oakland A’s.  Even though my fandom has wavered throughout the years, I always took enjoyment of seeing whenever the A’s defeated any of the rich blue bloods of baseball, and remained a low-key fan of a team that embodied success almost as an act of defiance.

I’m sure baseball in Las Vegas will be enjoyable, but inevitably when I visit whatever stadium will be there, it’ll be a hard time not comparing it to the dated charm and the place that made the most out of the nothing they had, of the Oakland Mausoleum.

A billion-dollar arena in Forsyth County LOL

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

The skinny: Forsyth County, Tennessee Georgia plans to build a mixed-use commercial zone anchored by an arena with low-key hopes of potentially luring an NHL squad back to Georgia in the event of a future expansion

It’s bad enough that Atlanta went through this crazy, stadium-happy building spree throughout the last decade that saw the Braves and Falcons both get new homes, Atlanta United getting a new training facility, and the Hawks’ developmental team getting a new arena, it looks like the bug managed to bite someone with influence way the fuck up north of the city up in Forsyth County, who now wants to build their version of The Battery, up in probably Cumming.

In all fairness, as much as I loathed the way the Braves swindled the state into getting The Battery, I do admit that The Battery is really a fine place.  It’s the polar opposite of what Turner Field and surrounding area was, with a bustling mini-town right outside the ballpark, full of bars, restaurants, shopping, hotels, social venues and a movie theater.  I’ve still never paid a dime of my own money to park there or go to a Braves game yet, but the Braves do make up a notable chunk of the taxes I pay on the regular.

The Battery works, because beyond all of its positive attributes, the location is primo, being easily accessible from all cardinal directions on the highways via I-75 or I-285.  Obviously pending traffic conditions, but the point is, The Battery is accessible.

Such cannot be said about a potential Battery clone up in Forsyth County, because Forsyth County is practically Tennessee, and is about as relatable to the Metro Atlanta area as people in Fredericksburg claiming to be in Northern Virginia, or people who live in New Jersey claiming to live in New York.  Even if this Battery clone were actually the Battery, plucked up out of the ground and plopped into Cumming like it were Sim City, it would still fail colossally, because Forsyth County just isn’t accessible.

Forsyth County is almost literally solely accessible from one direction – from the south.  Drivers, because fuck if there’s going to be any sort of rail access, literally have to drive on GA-400 until it officially ends, and is just US-19, and ride up some country-ass roads until they get to Cumming.  Which is kind of smack dab in between I-575 and I-985, and not really easily accessible from either from lateral directions.

The idea that a Battery in Forsyth would actually succeed on its own, much less actually attract a professional sports franchise is absolutely hilarious.  The county is as red as the planet Mars, and the Klan still operates all throughout the hills and mountains shortly in north of the county.  Yeah, I’m sure hockey fans, much less more sane people from Alpharetta, Gainesville, Flowery Branch or Canton are going to trek into Forsyth County to spend their money when there are way more logical and closer options available to them.

But hey, if Forsyth County wants to bilk a billion dollars from their taxpayers, more power to them.  For once, it would be nice to know that some other county will be seen as the schmucks to get taken advantage for a really, really bad idea for a change.  I’d say I’d feel bad if and when there’s an NHL expansion in the future, and Forsyth County is turned down, because Georgia’s already had their shot at the NHL, and those of us who lived here when the Thrashers were here, saw just how well that debacle turned out.