Tag: observations

How about y’all just get better at baseball instead?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I don’t pay a tremendous amount of attention to baseball anymore these days, but I came across this particular article in Sports Illustrated about how recently retired Jay Bruce basically retired because the shift killed his career, and how they opined that shifting should be made illegal in baseball.

Now as far as sports columnists go, I actually really like Tom Verducci.  He’s a well-versed guy who has good insight, adapts to the times, and has always had a fairly pleasant, readable tone in his writing throughout all the years that I’ve known of his existence, but I have to say that his opinion that the shift should be made illegal is one of the dumbest things that I’ve ever read.

In short, the shift is when baseball fielders position themselves heavily on one side of the field, because a batter might have a very predictable tendency to hit to that side of the field, thus optimizing their chances at being able to field a hit ball and get them out.  Good examples of the shift in action are this fictional instance known as the DeVanzo Shift from Artie Lange’s Beer League, and this hilariously similar but actually real instance known as the Joey Gallo Shift from the Houston Astros.

There is absolutely nothing illegal about teams shifting their fielders, and as a result over the last decade, the strategy has been adopted all over the league and employed on a countless number of mostly-left hand hitters, although there is no shortage of righties that hard shifts work on as well.  And as the number of teams employing shifts has gone up, the careers of many pull-happy hitters have gradually begun plunging down metaphorical toilets all over.

So instead of suggesting a not-illegal tactic be made illegal, here’s a wild and crazy suggestion for baseball players being victimized into retirement by the shift: get fucking better at baseball.

Learn to hit the other way.  Learn to drop a good bunt down the opposite field.  Pop your hips early and hit the ball where they ain’t; accept singles as not making outs instead of looking like a fucking idiot swinging for the fences, but then hitting a hard grounder to a shortstop playing in shallow right field 75 feet away from they’d normally be positioned.

Verducci suggesting MLB ban shifting is a sad pro-players suggestion that shields a league full of overrated assholes who get paid millions to play a kids game so that the league can make billions to exploit broadcast it.  Seriously, the league minimum last I checked was a hair under $500,000 a year, so even the shittiest 26th man on the roster is still making half a million dollars, but still can’t hit the ball to the opposite field, so the league should just change the rules?  Fuck that shit.

Players who can’t adapt to defensive strategies all deserve to have their stats and value plummet, because as often times as baseball can metaphorically be compared to life, it really is a story of adapt or die.  It’s ironic too, because so many baseball players get to the biggest league in the world, because at some point, they’re taught and demonstrated good hitting acumen, which usually involves being able to hit baseballs to various parts of the field except pull-side, but somewhere along the path of the majors, whether it’s poor coaching or aspiration of greed, guys end up these pull hitters who are eaten alive by shifts.

Guys like Pete Rose and Ichiro Suzuki are the greatest all-time hitters and played for eons respectively, because they were guys who could always hit to all parts of the field, even if they weren’t putting up gaudy home run numbers.  Meanwhile jobbers like Jay Bruce are calling it quits because they can’t produce because the shift is killing them, and all I can think of how sad and pathetic it is that there are guys that would rather quit, instead of perhaps going back to the cage and breaking the rust off of the ability to possibly hit the other way instead.

Like I said, I typically enjoy Verducci’s writing and opinions, but this one was a total stinker.  Instead of banning the shift, how about baseball players collectively just get better at playing baseball, and learning to hit baseballs to more parts of the field except their pull side?  That, right there, would be some real Moneyball shit, in the sense of it being an underutilized strategy to exploit.  

I’d love to see an MLB squad rebuild, with a mentality of building a team of good spray hitters, and then when the stars align, they go on a 98-win season, dinky-hitting all their opponents to death and march through the playoffs and bust open the World Series with all sorts of drag bunts, opposite field singles and triples down the line.  And after a few years of other teams copying that game-breaking strategy, maybe Verducci will write an article about how opposite-field hitting should be outlawed.

90 Day Fiancé season 8 thoughts

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

It’s been a while since I wrote about 90 Day Fiancé, but then again it’s also been a while since I’ve actually watched an entire season from start to finish.  It’s not that I haven’t watched almost every season that’s been produced, it’s just that so often times, I fall off the wagon at some point, be it my life being busy, or the episodes aren’t always available on Plex or the TLCgo app when I’m ready to watch, but I haven’t watched a season from start to finish in a while until now.

Including the uncomfortable and cringey Tell All episodes, to which I have decided to spent a little bit of time to write about season 8, because seeing as how I actually watched it all, might as well share some thoughts about yet another successful season of one of the true anchors of TLC.

I think one of the most miraculous things about season 8 is that all across the board, the show actually managed to make ALL of the Americans and their friends and family seem like the assholes among each couple, while the mail-order spouses all somehow seem like the people us viewers end up feeling sympathy for throughout the season.

Usually in seasons past, there’s always one or two mail-order spouses who are clearly in the game for a green card, and/or are insufferable demons who make viewers scream at their screens at why some pathetic American schlub is putting up with it, and that they need to flex their leverage at the fact that they control the citizenship routes.  Like Mohamed or Anfisa, people who come from other countries who are miserable and easy to dislike.

But season 8 actually manages to execute, where all the Americans look like assholes or are the worse of each couple, and I’m left hoping that some of these people actually throw their hands up and go back to their home countries.  I’ll try to break it down by each couple, and maybe power rank by trainwreck-ability or something.

Continue reading “90 Day Fiancé season 8 thoughts” →

Tirty-Nine

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Among the few things that I afford myself to indulge in on my birthdays is that I often feel like writing something, if for anything at all, the fact that it is my birthday.  Otherwise, I make little deal about it, I rarely talk about it, and almost nobody at work knows it’s my birthday, nor do I have any real intention to bring it up.

Usually, around this time of year, I have this ironic sense of dread of something bad somewhere in the world occurring, like a bombing, a fire, or some sort of massive loss of human life, that has so often times taken place around my birthday every single year.  But over the last few years, and especially this one, there seems to be a massive shooting that occurs somewhere in the United States on a weekly basis, to where all the shooting incidents that have happened within the past week alone seems to overshadow the notion that anything turrible happening is limited to just the radius of days surrounding my birthday.

Needless to say, expecting something turrible to happen around my birthday has kind of lost its meaning over the last few years, because turrible shit seems to happen all the time throughout this god-forsaken country.

Narrowing down the world to just my own little concentrated space, things are certainly brighter and more positive, in spite of the fact that I loathe my job, and feel a little bit trapped and held hostage by the fact that no matter how much I want out, they still hold the ultimate trump card solely because of the paternity time that I am entitled to, and plan on utilizing when my second child is born later in the summer.

But speaking of children, I can’t really complain.  My first daughter is still basically everything I could have ever wanted in my offspring, and it’s a daily joy to spend time with her and watch her grow, develop, learn and become increasingly mobile and intelligent on a regular basis.

Life as a father and a husband is about everything I could have imagined it to be, and sometimes I still bring myself to a point of disbelief when I’m spending time with mythical wife and my child to know that this is where I am in life, and as much as my sister gives me grief about it, having taken so long, I am here at least now, and I take a little bit of comfort in knowing that I’ll have both of my kids before the age of 40, and knowing that my life will be mostly complete in that regard, is a pleasant thought.

New Father Brogging, #038

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I realize it’s been a month since the last time I did any sort of new dad brogging.  A year past now, I guess it’s up for debate on whether or not I’m a new dad anymore, which begs the question on whether or not I should change the titles of these types of posts, which kind of derail my organization of posting, since the tag’s literally called “new dad,” but if I’m not a new dad anymore, then wtf should I do?

I digress though, and until I can come up with a more seamless transition, it’s new dad brogs until then.

So a month ago, my daughter has figured out full-fledged crawling, and was going all over the place, exploring the parts of the house she could now access with her own mobility.

A lot has changed in the span of the last month, most notably the very quick transition from crawling into basically walking.  With each day, she’s gaining confidence on her feet, and has demonstrated the ability to carefully walk distances as great as 10-12 feet on her own with minimal or no stumbling.  She’s clearly showing a preference to get upright and walk from point A to point B, and only resorts to crawling when she wants to get somewhere fast.

But for all intents and purposes, one of those life’s milestones of watching baby’s first steps has occurred, and it was no less exciting than I would have thought it was, seeing the courage and discovery in my child’s face as she realized that she was upright and was able to sustain it while in movement.

That’s the biggest thing that happened over the last month.  Otherwise, it’s been a lot more of the same, with my child eating everything in sight, needing to babyproof and start cordoning off parts of the home since she can move about so efficiently, and of course more teething and sleep woes, since those are the constantly ever-changing factors in raising babies.

Also, since the jig is up about baby #2, I’ve spent a lot of time doing some housework, preparing nursery #2, and saying goodbye to my office as solely an office, but as the de facto guest room.  But when I say preparing, it’s mostly my second-least favorite activity in the world, painting; which has been dropped to second in favor of my new worst favorite activity in the world, which is now, hanging murals/wallpaper.

Thankfully with a second kid, that means it’s the last time I’ll have to do this stuff, and frankly I’ve literally will painted every paintable wall and trim in the house, and if anyone wants any changes in the future, I better be putting the home up for sale, or my wife or my daughters are more than welcome to explore the possibilities of doing it their fucking selves.

But otherwise, raising children is in a fairly good place right now.  I’m trying not to get too complacent with #1’s development, good eating and sleeping and general good habits, because I know things are going to go tits up once #2 arrives, and then we’ll be juggling two kids under two years; but it has been somewhat nice to have a predictable routine, where I know I’ll have a little bit of downtime in the evenings.  And with my extracurricular class wrapped up, and baby projects getting chipped away at, I’ve actually not had any clue to do with my evenings as of late.

There’s a ton of television and movies that I’d like to catch up on, but at the same time, I’ve just not wanted to dive into any rabbit holes, and abstained.  In fact, mythical wife and I have been retiring early over the last few days, and just heading up to the bedroom to wind down earlier, because getting just a little bit more sleep has been way more appealing than any new Marvel property, YouTube binges or any other wastes of time.

Ironic how just a little while ago I was burning out because I had zero free time to do anything, but now that I’m occasionally getting some free time, I have no idea what to do with it, and resulting in doing mostly nothing, unless you count sleeping as doing something.

Professional crossroads

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I am somewhat at a professional crossroads currently, and I don’t particularly know how to approach it.  Actually, I do know how to approach it, it’s just unfortunately I’m realizing that so few out there seem to be able to understand much less comprehend the choices that I’m willing to make in order to change my career path, which leads me to wonder if I’m really that unorthodox in my approach, or if the world around me is too inside the box thinking.

Basically, I am a graphic designer with 20 years of experience in graphic design.  But I’ve grown unhappy with the direction of my general career, and am seeking to pivot my career, preferably into user experience.  However, in spite of the course that I have recently completed where I think I did a pretty good job based on feedback and reception, I have zero years of experience in UX.

In my mind, the most logical thing to do is to try to get in on the ground level of wherever would hire me as in a UX role, and prove my worth and work my way up, and re-build a career in a different discipline.  Frankly, this would be the normal course path of trying to switch to any job outside of what I’ve been doing over the last 20 years, regardless of if it were UX or going into construction or working at a restaurant.

However, there are large camps of people out there whom I speak with that basically make me feel like I’m crazy to be willing to walk away from a managerial position and going into an entry-level position, regardless of the difference in growth potential as well as just career potential in general.  And it’s these conversations that make me feel kind of sad but mostly frustrated and disappointed at the things that I hear, and gives me more reluctance than I should logically feel about the choices that I’m willing to make.

I tell people often that I’ve left a job that paid well and had a great commute, simply because I was miserable at it.  The company hierarchy sucked, and people were playing professional games, and job titles dictated on whether you were right or wrong.  I left the company and went to where I’m currently at, in spite of lower pay and a shitty commute, because I was pursuing sanity and happiness, and I have zero regrets on making that move.

I’m kind of in the same boat all over again, but the difference is that I’m currently in a managerial role, and I’ve been speaking with more people, on account of the delicate circumstances in which I’m working in, and as a result, running into more resistance and questions rather than support and empathy for the simple fact that I’m miserable with my current job, and am wanting to make a change.

When the day is over, I’m going to do whatever I want to do, but my concerns are that the roles and places I apply to in the future, the people that make the hiring decisions, will also be hung up on the narrative that I’m a manager wanting to walk away from management to go into something entry level and then assume some bullshit conclusion and pass on me.

Frankly, I have a hard time understanding what is so hard to comprehend about sometimes needing to go backward in order to move ahead in careers and life in general, and it’s because so many square pegs like this exist in the world that really makes me feel like traversing these professional crossroads is going to be way more difficult than it really should be.

Vaccines, bailouts and irony

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

The sun has just barely set, but I’m already in bed, waiting for the Tylenol PM to kick in, so I can hopefully conk myself out to sleep for at least 9-10 hours.  I have spent the entire day with a fever that has ranged anywhere from 99.8F to 101.4F, depending on the work of all the acetaminophen I’ve been taking throughout the day to try and bring it down, because as much as I would’ve loved to have stayed in bed and just ridden out this ailment, I’m also a dad now, and I thought about these commercials from the past and completely understand how dads don’t get sick days, and I still had to make sure my child was taken care of first and foremost.

So despite the nagging fever that’s been wreaking havoc through my body throughout the day and made me feel like I was hit by a bus when I got out of bed at 6:20 am, I still completed a fairly routine day of parenting, although I did call in sick to work, because there was no way on earth I was going to be able to do both on a day like today.  I didn’t do any sit-ups, I didn’t do any push-ups and I most certainly didn’t go for any runs or do anything physical that would have exacerbated the shit feeling I was feeling all throughout the day, although mythical wife and I still made the best of an impromptu day off by going to the exciting land of Costco for random things, but most importantly $1.50 hot dogs and $9 pizza.

The thing is, I’m not sick because I caught coronavirus or anything, quite the opposite.  I’m laid out because of the vaccine, since I just got Moderna.  Frankly, most everyone I know who had gotten Moderna seems to have been laid out just the same in some capacity, and my own mom described pretty much everything I went through, so I kind of had an inkling that I was in for some hurting myself.  And much like a self-fulfilling prophecy, I remember waking up around 5-6 times throughout the night, feeling off, and knowing pretty right away that I was probably going to feel it when I got out of bed, and when it came time to do so, it felt like concrete blocks on my feet when I stood up to start my day.

Regardless though, I am now vaccinated, and it’s kind of surreal to know we’ve finally made it to this point in history, where the long-awaited vaccine that seemed like a myth and fairy tale throughout 2020 is here, and people all across the globe are getting it, hoping to sooner rather than later, put an end to coronavirus.

Here’s the thing though; I’ve had this kind of love-hate feeling with the idea of a vaccine, because as I’ve stated before in the past, as terrible as a thing as coronavirus has been, killing millions throughout the world, there were a couple of critical inadvertent blessings that came out of it, mostly namely the fact that because of it and all the stay-at-home measures, I had a tremendous amount more time to spend with my newborn baby and getting to really be a dad throughout the year.

But with people getting vaccinated, and the pandemic gradually coming under control, that means my time at home will eventually come to an end when I’ll eventually be needed to go back into the office.  Aside from the forfeiture of time spent with my children, this also creates a whole new slew of challenges, like daycare and the financial and logistical matters that creates.  Frankly, I don’t ever want to go back into the office, and my job and team have proven how we can absolutely still get shit done while working from home.

As much as I want to be able to go to restaurants and dine out again, I’d rather forfeit eating out than having to go back into the office.

Another train of thought I’d been having a lot lately is how I’m relieved that the vaccines are here, and I’ve gotten it, but at the same time, I have this negative thought in my head that I don’t like the fact that there are a bunch of selfish assholes out there who are eligible all the same to get vaccinated and therefore reduce their risks of getting coronavirus.

I’m talking about the non-believers, the anti-maskers, and all people who went around throughout 2020 as if there was nothing wrong, and flaunted their defiance of logical standards citing their freedom and rights.  I dislike the fact that there are hundreds of thousands of these shitheads out there that are all eligible and probably will get vaccinated the same as those of the world that adhered to safety standards, followed the rules, and showed a modicum of giving a shit about their fellow human beings.

The vaccine is a reward and a blessing for those people, but for the selfish pricks that didn’t help the world straighten itself out, it’s a fucking bailout.  I know there’s no way to disambiguate, but I really wish it were possible to weed out the people who followed the rules and genuinely want the vaccine, to give it to all of them first, and then let the rest of the degenerates eat themselves over the later rounds of vaccinations.

In one fucked up way, it’s almost as if I wished the pandemic would continue so I would have more time to stay at home with my daughter and my future second, and there’s more time for the anti-maskers to be exposed and potentially get punished for their greedy defiance.  There are so many out there that don’t deserve a vaccine that are eligible for it, and the idea of the world getting back to a semblance of normalcy where all these shitheads can resume blending back in disturbs me.  At least in the middle of a pandemic, it’s become pretty easy to spot the shithead, when they’re out in public with no masks on.

Despite the fact that I’ve gotten vaccinated, I’ll still be wearing masks out, because frankly it’s not the end of the world, and save for the beating I took because of the vaccine, I like the idea that I haven’t gotten sick all throughout the last calendar year, and would like to keep it that way.

Frankly, I don’t think we’ll ever hit a point in the world where masks aren’t ever a good idea, but as long as there are selfish shitheads out there, it’ll never not be up for debate, because we won’t be in a position where unanimous compliance will ever come to fruition.

The new IWGP blet makes me go IWTF

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Despite my general admiration for New Japan Pro Wrestling, I don’t really follow them beyond the snippets of news that pass through my Apple News feed, or whenever a wrestling fan bigger than me brings it up on social media.  But if there is always one thing that is relevant to my interests, it’s whenever blets are brought up, regardless of what fed or promotion they might be for.

So one of the more prevalent storylines throughout NJPW over the last few months has been double champion Kota Ibushi striving to unify the IWGP World and IWGP Intercontinental championships.  I actually give NJPW some credit for taking this and making it into a storyline, instead of just merging them, as it created yet another solid matchup between Ibushi and Tetsuya Naito, with Naito trying to “rescue” the Intercontinental championship from unification, only to fall short in his efforts to strip it away from Ibushi.

With Naito vanquished, the path to unification was clear, and the above blet is the ensuing result.

I’ve definitely seen worse blet designs in my life, but my first impression when I saw the new, unified IWGP World Championship blet, was definitely, a WTF face.   The center plate basically looks like a Phoenix emblem from X-Men comics, and as a belt, it just looks really imbalanced.  I’d hate to feel what wearing that blet would be like, since the top part of the plate juts out at angles, and any sort of abdominal contracting would have them digging into your ribs.  But I guess if you’ve got the action figure-physique that someone like Kota Ibushi has, he can probably just no sell it all the same.

Aside from the design, I’ve heard that the decision to unify the blets has been mostly unpopular, due to the general history that the IWGP Intercontinental championship has carried throughout the years.  Even in the shorter time that I’ve followed NJPW, guys like Shinsuke Nakamura, El Sombra (Andrade), Tetsuya Naito and Chris Jericho were notable carriers of the belt, and much like the WWE’s IC blet, it’s one very much given to workhorse types.

But the reality is that at this current juncture in time, with coronavirus having rampaged the world much less rosters of all professional wrestling promotions, NJPW just has too many blets for as diminished of a roster that they have.  Aside from their unified title which encapsulates two blets now, they’ve still got the NEVER championship, the IWGP US championship, heavyweight and a jr. heavyweight sets of tag team championships, and a jr. heavyweight championship. 

Frankly, they practically have enough blets for most everyone on their entire roster to have one at this point, so shelving the intercontinental championship isn’t a bad idea, because most anyone with a brain should know that the blet will be back in the future when the pandemic is behind us, the rosters start expanding, and then they’ll have the perfect opportunity to do what NJPW does best, which is have some massive tournament, where a brand new IWGP Intercontinental champion will be crowned.

Back to the main point though, I’m not impressed with the new design of the IWGP championship.  Bootlegs as they may be, I’m glad that I have replicas of the former World and Intercontinental championships, and I most definitely wouldn’t plunk down $2,400 for a replica of this new blet.

Maybe in the future, when the IWGP Intercontinental championship comes back, it’ll have a design worth paying for a Pakistani bootleg, but until that day comes, RIP IWGP Intercontinental championship.

**EDIT: it figures Kota Ibushi loses the championship in his first substantial defense after getting the new blet.  Given the fact that it changed hands to gaijin Will Ospreay, I wouldn’t have put it past New Japan to have make it some microaggression, symbolically made sure the old, prestigious blet wouldn’t be held by someone not Japanese or some weeb lifer like Kenny Omega or Scott Norton.