Tag: braves

What a surprise

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Who could have seen that coming?  Final vote gives the official green light to the Atlanta Braves to break ground and begin construction on their future Spring Training facility in Sarasota, Florida; with an estimated cost 33% higher than originally expected

I can’t cross-reference on the fly like I used to because another shocker of the century, my site is still down, but I’m pretty sure that when the Braves originally claimed an estimated price tag of $75M for their new Spring Training digs, I immediately stated that the actual price tag should be somewhere in the neighborhood of like $120M, because that’s just how sporting venues work; they estimate low to make it not sound completely terrible, miss the mark entirely, but proceed anyway, and leave the egregious amounts of difference up to taxpayers to make up.

“The project now carries a price tag of $100.56 million, according to financing documents provided to North Port commissioners, up from the previous estimate of $75 million to $80 million.”

Yeah, that’s not a surprise at all.  I’ll be more surprised if these numbers don’t manage to crawl and creep up closer to the $120M that I had estimated, because lord knows if the Braves are good at one thing at all, it’s usurping funds out of unsuspecting taxpayers and wasting it on shit that benefits only them and gives nothing back to those it’s coming from.

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Another day, another Braves fleecing taxpayers story

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

In short: the Atlanta Braves won another $4.7 million in taxpayer money for their new Spring Training facility in Sarasota, Florida

I love the fact that the term “won” was used, because that’s kind of just it; the Braves didn’t really earn this money, or do anything in particular to have deserved the money, they just kind of gambled their time and effort to get the money and just so happened to win out, when city commissioners put the decision to vote, and it barely nudged 3-2 in favor of giving the leeches free money.

I actually love these kinds of stories about hypothetical numbers, because in just about every single case, the estimates are just that, and always get blown past whenever projects like new sporting venues are like 60% done. Supposedly, the city of North Port has agreed to pay $25 million in total, with the state of Florida being on the hook for another $20 mil, which means that there’s only an estimated $30 million left for the Braves to try and weasel out of paying.  This doesn’t account for the fact that, and I would wager money, that by late fall this year, something will go wrong, and the Braves will require somewhere around another $20 million in order for the project to continue.

In the end, I’d guess this whole project ends up around $115-120, with the Braves paying like $2 million, while the rest comes from direct or indirect taxes and tax credits meant to cater to them.

The saving grace is that with a new Spring Training facility, and with somewhat fresh ballparks for just about every ballpark in the Braves system, it might be a little while before any more crookedly greedy new ballparks need to be built in the team’s visage.

But then again, Turner Field was only given 17 years before it was deemed too old and required a move, so I guess Rome, Jackson and Lawrenceville should probably be keeping their eyes peeled for some fresh new real estate, because their shitty not-old parks are about to become old in about ten years or more, real quick.

Go G-Gobblers!

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Surprising nobody: the Gwinnett Braves announce finalists for the team renaming contest and they all suck:

  • Gwinnett Buttons
  • Gwinnett Big Mouths
  • Gwinnett Gobblers
  • Gwinnett Hush Puppies
  • Gwinnett Lambchops
  • Gwinnett Sweet Teas

I mean, it was a forgone conclusion that the new name was going to be a PC-friendly, vanilla, uncreative and probably determined regardless of votes, but c’mon, these are pretty particularly poor as far as options go.  Sure, passive-aggressive griefing options like Tax Burdens and classic no-brainers like the G-Spots weren’t going to get through, but surely some way better options must have fallen by the wayside in this shitty contest.

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What happens when people look for things to be offended about

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

A little bit of research goes a long way: girl looking for something to bitch about on Twitter is triggered by seeing the strikeout counter at a Braves game on television reading “KKK”, immediately voices her outrage in 140 characters or less and is ridiculed for not knowing a standard ballpark tradition

See, this is exactly what happens when people actively seek out things to pretend like they’re offended by, so they can sound like social justice avengers on the internet.  And what happens when you don’t double-check your words or do a little cursory research to see if maybe, somewhere on the internet, the answer to your outrage, might actually exist.

I love the text delivery of

Definitely NOT ok.

With the all-caps NOT and the stern looking period after ok.  I know it’s hard to interpret emotion out of text, but I can only imagine the artificial and determined offense taken by this twerp who had admit to being bored and basically decided to let herself get triggered to help pass the time.

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Braves want more taxpayer money and the sun also rises

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

TL;DR: The Atlanta Braves seek $20 million dollar grant from Florida to build their future Spring Training facility out in Sarasota

Whaaaat?  The Braves want someone else to shoulder the financial load for something that they want?  Never heard of such lunacy in my entire life.

A long time ago, I was in Las Vegas with a large group of friends.  Like most large groups of friends tend to do in Las Vegas, we ended up going to a strip club.  The Girls of Glitter Gulch, specifically. (RIP)  At the GGG, there was this one stripper that periodically showed up to our table, and with the vitriol that only a mad black woman can conjure up, looked at one person at the table each time and demanded, “WHERE U BEEN?  GIMME A DOLLAR!” and like five times out of five times she pulled the stunt, whomever she targeted would promptly fork over a dollar, and then she’d vanish before doing the whole thing again later.

That’s kind of what the Braves are, as it pertains to this situation in Sarasota.  Naturally, they whispered sweet nothings into Sarasota’s ear to get them all wet and excited about the prospect of housing a Spring Training facility, but when it came time to settle the check, the Braves went all Extreme Cheapskates on the city, and at first, agreed to pay for their share of the tab, but as the months went on, the willingness to contribute their share diminished, and the Braves began turning every single stone and rock over, looking for ways to minimize how much they had to contribute, and how much the city of Sarasota or the state of Florida would pay instead.

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I should go tryout for the Braves

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Don’t be deceived by the Braves’ second third place in the standings – they’re in the division that refuses to have anyone other than the Nationals at over .500 in record, and if the Braves were in almost any other division in the majors, they’d be the last place team they deserve to be.  Which speaks volumes to how much the Phillies and Marlins are sucking, when they’re somehow worse than the Braves and the Mets.

Needless to say, despite “not” being a “last place” team, the Braves are smart enough to continuously be putting feelers out in the world, and looking for diamonds in the rough.  Which is to say, the Braves are a notoriously cheap team that is always hoping to find diamonds in the rough that they can pay the absolute minimal amount of salary and hope to get the absolute maximum amount of output for.

With that being said, the Braves are one of the few teams in baseball left that still holds open tryouts, with 2017 being no exception.  Yes, that is exactly what it sounds like, where the Atlanta Braves conduct baseball tryouts, to the public, to see if there’s any diamonds in any rough, that are worth taking a flyer out on, and offer the slightest sliver of chance at earning the chance to get paid (peanuts) to play baseball, professionally.

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SSDPSTBUS

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Same Shit, Different Public Swindling Tax Burdening Unnecessary Stadium. 

Obvious, wasn’t it?

The irony is that it might sound like my exclusively sour grapes at my disagreement to the existence of ScumTrust Park, but such an egregiously overblown acronym can seamlessly be utilized by any one of the many sports venues constructed within the last 15 years that were constructed under similar shady circumstances.

But anyway, surprising nobody at all, the Braves are performing at the level they are expected to, regardless of the fact that they are somehow in second place in the absolutely dreadful NL East.  It’s not their fault that there are a litany of other teams that are somehow miraculously worse than the Braves, and it makes me feel like I have to do math and show my work to prove that there are enough teams with good of records as there are as many teams with abysmal, worse-than-the-Braves records out there.

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