We have exorcised the demons

October 2, 2026 ~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

MLB: Atlanta Braves defeat Philadelphia Phillies 6-2 in the decisive game 3 of the Wild Card Series, to advance to the NL Division Series

Well how ‘bout them apples? With one win, the Braves exorcised numerous demons, from getting the Phillies monkey off their back, breaking the streak of Barves always get knocked out in the first round, as well another astute observations people have made leading up to the game, that the Barves always lose winner-take-all games.

Naturally, I had everything to do with this, seeing as how I haphazardly posted my requiem for the team in advance of the deciding game 3, with me genuinely, firmly believing that another elimination at the hands of the Phillies was all but inevitable. Fate has a way of thinking that they have a sense of humor, and when it comes down to it, when I take a firm stance on something, I have to be proven wrong, regardless of if I’m inwardly pleased with the end result. But my belief was clearly genuine and not artificially made up with the intention of tricking fate, because otherwise the Braves would have been the Barves last night, and lost.

That being said, I also realized that I needed to make a sacrifice in order to help the squad this year. Back in 2021, I stated that I would buy a Dugout Mug, which I deemed to be the most useless product available in the entire free market, but then I also stated that should the Braves actually win the World Series, I would plunk down my own money and purchase one of these stupid pieces of shit, because sacrifice is necessary in order to hope to get something that I want.

True to my word, when the Braves actually won the World Series, I plunked down $80 and got one. It’s been used, maybe twice, because it’s not an ideal receptacle to drink from since it’s not really dishwasher safe because it’s fucking wood, and I have to imagine mixing wood with liquid too frequently, much less alcohol probably doesn’t help its longevity and if I paid $80 for this piece of shit, I may as well try to make it last, and be a reminder of the sacrifice I made to do my part in helping bring the World Series to Atlanta in 2021.

I could go ahead and do another Dugout Mug, but they literally have added no new merchandise in over five years, so I’m curious if they’re actually still in business and not just running some skeleton ghost site that doesn’t actually work, but I’ve decided that in the same vein of purchasing something stupid, is a waste of money and that nobody really asked for, I’ll go the record and declare that if the Braves go all the way this year, I will purchase these idiotic drink coasters, adorned with the box score diagram of key plays from the Braves’ 2021 playoff run.

I do feel that this is an adequate sacrifice to offer up to Fate, because my house already has a ton of coasters, because mythical wife grabs them up from all the various bars and places we’ve been to and they actually kind of are cool little souvenirs in their own right, but in most cases, they cost us no money, and here I am offering up a sacrifice that would eat into both my wallet, as well as consume space in the home where I have to fight tooth and nail in order to liberate a single inch from the audition of Hoarders: Buried Alive my fellow residents inflict upon our home.

It’s a lofty ask, seeing as how the Braves’ next opponents are MLB’s favorite team in history, the Los Angeles Dodgers, and seeing as how the Braves are not regarded enough to constantly get the woeful 2:30pm starts throughout the Wild Card series, it’ll be interesting to see what it’s like when the least regarded team in the playoffs is matched up against the most regarded team.

For the record, the Braves have gone 5-1 against the Dodgers throughout the season, along with a glorious sweep when they came to Atlanta, but the playoffs are a completely different beast, the team still has an anemic offense, and the Dodgers are simply a team constructed for championship caliber play. Should the Braves manage to advance, they’d play either the Brewers or the Padres, and I would not get my hopes up too high against any team in the American League in spite of their generally unimpressive records, because the MLB playoffs are the ultimate crapshoot and it’s always a matter of what team gets hot and rides the momentum to the finish line.

That being said, my offer stands, if the Braves go all the way, I’ll plunk down $50 and get these dumb coasters, that I will resent existing in my home, but be fondly reminisced of how and why they made they way here.

Anyway, I’m not any more optimistic about their chances of going all the way, as I was going into a deciding game against the Phillies, but stranger things have happened in sports, and my offer of sacrifice is out there, and hopefully will be tempting enough for Fate to take me up on it.

A pre-requiem for the 2026 Atlanta Barves

October 1, 2026 ~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

After Dylan Lee gave up two straight homers almost immediately after the Braves had clawed and scratched their way to a 3-1 lead going into the 8^th inning, I immediately saw the writing on the wall. As Braves fans, we’ve all seen this script before, and from this point on, it was just clenching and hoping the brutal cycle of abuse that comes with being a Braves fan would come to an end, but not be willing to put any money on it that it would happen today.

Two innings later, the Phillies win game 2, and we’re headed to the winner-take-all game 3, later tonight. The only series out of the four wild card matchups to have to go the distance, as the White Sox, Yankees and Padres all took care of business and won two immediate games to advance to the divisional series.

Over the last 14 hours or so, I’ve had a lot of thoughts swirling in my brain, that I knew I wanted to write something about it, but wasn’t sure what angle to triangulate on and what tone to take when doing it. Do I try and tempt fate and write something scathing and completely doom-and-gloom about the Braves’ chances tonight with hopes that I will be proven wrong, and that they’ll hang a 12-2 clobbering just so I’ll be made to look stupid but still be happy that they won? Do I preemptively write out the post I had formulating in my head about how Philadelphia sports seem to solely exist to ruin the hopes and dreams of Atlanta sports, based on just how many times Philadelphia teams have eliminated Atlanta teams in postseason play throughout history? Do I make an itemized list of Barves postseason failures over history?

I don’t know. But I wanted to write something, before game 3, because, well, I don’t know why. It’s like just my way of processing things, and maybe a combination of all of the above. Writing something about the Braves becoming the Barves in October on an annual basis just is something that I’m compelled to do, and I hope for the best, but am prepared for the worst.

The fact that all three other matchups concluded means that for once, the Braves don’t have to play at 2 pm, and get a prime-time game that starts at around 8 or so, so more eyes can watch as the Braves will probably choke and lose to the Phillies in the playoffs, so that they will be 0-4 against them historically, with three eliminations over the span of the last five years.

It doesn’t matter how well the Braves have handled the Phillies in the regular seasons throughout all these seasons, the fact of the matter is that for whatever reason, they just can’t seem to overcome them in the playoffs. 2022 was particularly brutal, because the Braves had 101 wins and played most of the year as the de-facto best team in the league, but they took their foot off the gas going the playoffs, had a bye, and immediately got smoked by the 87-win Phillies. In fact, when the Braves drop to the Phillies tonight, they will have done so as the higher seed in three-straight eliminations, adding insult to injury, and at this point there’s really nothing more that can be said about the agony of constantly falling short to a common tormentor.

Dylan Lee, is a guy I hope I do not see again tonight, and if by some miraculous act of god they win and advance, is a guy I hope I don’t see again for the remainder of the playoffs, and frankly on this team ever again. It’s nothing personal, but after his game 2 performance, that should be the nail in the coffin as far as his favor with any Braves fan should be. Every now and then, we see the eventual winner of the World Series do some wonky things with the bullpen, and usually there are some guys who lose favor and are sparsely seen, no matter what their role was in the regular season and the journey to get to the playoffs. Craig Kimbrel, in spite of his success as a closer was this guy for Boston in one notable year, and the Dodgers completely replaced all their back-end relief with Roki Sasaki just last year. Dylan Lee, I hope, is the guy that Braves fans never see again, regardless of any positive contributions he may have had in the past.

In all likelihood, the Phillies will be starting Zack Wheeler, their ace, on short rest, which just adds to the feeling of dread for Braves fans. The Braves used their two best in games 1 and 2, and got away with a split, and the Phillies, out of necessity couldn’t use Wheeler until tonight, but as it stands, we have Wheeler versus whatever the Braves have left. Most likely Grant Holmes, who has been a fifth-starter type who has been inconsistent and does not inspire faith going into a deciding elimination game.

Needless to say, take everything all of the above, and I do not have a good feeling about tonight’s outcome. I want to be wrong more than anything, and this is an instance where being right would bring no joy, other than to be able to sigh and say, welp, at least I was right. The Braves’ offense is still anemic and has never been fixed at any point in the season, and has relied tremendously on the strength of their pitching, but you can’t win games if you don’t score runs.

Wheeler will either be lights out, or succumb to the rigors of working on short rest, but knowing the Braves’ bats, I’d wager on the former, and I think the chances are way higher that we have same shit, different year, with the Braves going out in the first round, regardless of the fact that MLB added an even first-er round to the playoff field with the Wild Card – if the Braves make the playoffs, they’re destined to get bounced in whatever round comes first to them, because I’m not, and I can’t have any more kids, so I can’t produce any more babies to bless them with any more baby luck.

This shouldn’t be eating at me this much, seeing as how lackadaisical of a baseball fan I’ve been over the last decade or so, but I guess that’s the nature of being a sports fan and a fan of a team. No matter how much you try to not let it affect you, it just does.

Prove me wrong, fate.

I can only fantasize about being Agent Kim

September 30, 2026October 2, 2026 ~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Normally, I tend to steer clear of lots of K-Dramas, mostly on account of the fact that Koreans are notoriously long-winded (like me) and it shows in their television programming, because most seasons of Korean television are usually like 26 episodes, 95 minutes each or something that signifies an intimidatingly long time commitment, and as I’ve gotten older, the more I find merit in shows that are shorter in episode count as well as run-time cumulatively.

And if you do watch a K-Drama, they are in fact the crème of the crop when it comes to Asian media, but in most cases with Korean television, the storylines do tend to get a little convoluted at times, usually there are some red herring storylines that either don’t go anywhere, or are poorly inserted to deliberately misdirect the viewer, or they drag on for the sole purpose of creating ambiguous endings, as if they’re always leaving the door open for future seasons when (usually) one is enough.

But thanks to some clever reels I saw over social media outlets, I found myself sucked into watching 김부장 or Agent Kim: Reactivated on Netflix. At the root of the fairly simple plot is the story of a dad who just wants to protect his daughter, and such a premise is all I really need to hear to be interested in it.

The kicker is, “Mr. Kim” is a former North Korean military agent with basically super soldier training and a ruthless killer instinct ingrained into him, and when his daughter goes missing, it isn’t really so much a police drama as much as it’s a triggered vigilante doing whatever it takes in order to pursue his child. Although the genre of such a story can be categorized as thriller or crime, to parents like me, this is definitely in the realm of fantasy, as in I fantasize about having such skills, and the tenacity and opportunity to flex them onto criminals who would dare endanger my children.

Needless to say, I found the show to be entertaining and satisfying, even if I know my mom would immediately label this as 엉터리 테레비 or trash television. It feels like Taken but in television form, and the star of the show 소지섭 looks like Korean Bob Saget, except he’s going around beating the ever living piss out of gangsters and anyone else who would dare stand in his way. No obstacle or situation seems insurmountable, and the rate in which he defeats people feels like a speedrun, except in Korean television speeds, meaning ten episodes at 70+ minutes.

And true to Korean television standards, just when I thought the show had ended, seeing as how the general core plot of the show seemed to wrap up in seven episodes, after returning to the Netflix menu after watching episode 7, I was mortified to see that there were still three more episodes left.

Naturally, they were wholly unnecessary and honestly served to eliminate a position where the show could have easily milked it into a season 2, but in a way, I’m glad that they wrapped it up in ten, instead of did seven, and then make me wait another year for a second season of 7 moar convoluted episodes before getting to a nicely gift-wrapped ending.

But again, the appeal of the show is simple in the fact that it’s basically just a story about the lengths a dad will go through in order to protect his children, and that’s definitely something that resonates deep in my psyche, and gives me something to live vicariously through, watching dad pwn the shit out of all sorts of opps who cause danger and harm to his family.

But how many colleges will he get accepted into??

September 24, 2026September 30, 2026 ~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Fox5Atlanta: 14-year old Fulton County teen scores perfect 1600 on the SAT as a freshman in high school

Just when you think #TRYHARDSZN is over, we have #TRYHARDs still #TRYHARDing over in Fulton County to prove otherwise. Because if you’re not #TRYHARDing all year round, would you even be a #TRYHARD at all?

Anyway, this is going to be an interesting subject come next #SZN, that is if his fate isn’t already sealed by now, because we have this 14-year old little Doogie prodigy already putting up credentials to dwarf and shame all #TRYHARDs come the 2027 #SZN, what with his perfect 1600 SAT score, and already farming up college-level courses at Harvard and Rice. I don’t know the approximate number of high school credits required for graduation, but he’s already completed 14.5 while still just a freshman at a fancy applicant-only innovation academy.

The difference is that this #TRYHARD goes to school and presumably lives in the bougie part of town, and not on the hood-ass south end anywhere remotely close to Westlake High, the undisputed champion of farming #TRYHARDs to apply to 117+ schools por gratis and to see how many times they can get their name in the news for having students getting into 89+ of them.

It’ll be an interesting scenario to see how an Indian kid from the nice part of town with at least one ace credential will stack up against underprivileged teens from the hood who leverage quantity over quality, to see which lands in the better collegiate scenario. It’ll probably be a tale of extremes duking it out, where on one side we have a whiz-kid prodigy who will not only have socio-economic factors working against him, but the obvious (South) Asian Curve to overcome, versus teenagers from the hood who have generations of systemic racism, an unspoken affirmative action and reparative intentions by colleges across the nation on their side.

It may be worth passively following to see where this Doogie ends up versus the top #TRYHARDs of the 2027 #SZN, or whenever he decides to start applying to colleges, because I think it’s going to be interesting on many different accounts. Primarily because I’d wager that Doogie isn’t going to have his college application fees waived across the board, and it’ll be interesting to see where he ends up deciding to go, versus the top #TRYHARDs of his graduating class.

Oh, Atlanta #614

September 23, 2026September 30, 2026 ~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

ANF: Atlanta-based Sumo Championship League (SCL) to begin debuting in October

So let’s see: Atlanta has an MLB team, NBA team, NFL team, and even an MLS team. Scattered throughout the rest of Georgia are all four levels of minor league baseball affiliates of the Braves. USA Soccer has chosen Fayetteville, Georgia as their headquarters. There’s an affiliated minor league hockey team in Duluth, which is as close as Georgia is going to get to the NHL after two previously failed NHL squads that have left for Canada. The University of Georgia and Georgia Tech athletics are both reputable athletic programs in most major sports, and even Georgia State, Kennesaw State and Georgia Southern are D-I programs.

Needless to say, there’s no shortage of athletic competition to imbibe in at any point of the year for anyone who wants to watch competitive sport. So perhaps it might not be a bad idea to start considering using dollars in the state of Georgia for maybe anything that isn’t related to athletics, no?

What’s that you say? What about sumo wrestling? Georgia doesn’t have sumo wrestling? I mean, why wouldn’t Georgia, United States have an association of a sport native to the country of Japan in it? But what’s that? It’s going to have sumo wrestling debuting in Georgia? In October? What say whaaatt??

And here we are. Some new Sumo Championship League is about to embark, and it was founded by a dude who used to be a bigwig at WCW Turner Broadcasting, so it has some sturdy Atlanta ties, and leads to believe that the SCL could be considered Atlanta-based.

Because there appears to be a belief that there is a thirst for some real life sumo wrestling in North America.

Don’t get me wrong, I respect the sport, and the athletes that make up of it. I don’t see a bunch of fat guys crashing into each other (like in futbol americano), I see athletes who just happen to have large mass, who play a human game of chess of trying to knock down their opponents or maneuver them out of a ring. It takes intelligence, adaptability and actual skill in order to achieve victory, and I have seen some live sumo wrestling in my life.

It’s just that it just seems like a complete, nobody-asked-for-this kind of endeavor, where the league is supposedly valued at $25M, which means it has received about as much of that in funding, and it begs me to ask the question on how many other things in this world could $25M have better gone towards other than starting up a sumo league?

I digress though. If the SCL starts running shows in Atlanta, preferably up where I could take my dad to some live events, it seems like something that would be interesting to check out, if the price is right. Now if they start charging $65+ up for a completely unproven commodity from the onset, they’ve got to be diluting themselves, but if they play a smart game and offer up cheap, affordable entertainment until some worth is established, maybe I’ll go check out some actual sumo wrestling. I’m always looking for interesting things to take my dad to go see, and perhaps we can both derive some entertainment out of welcoming some live sumo wrestling to the Metro, after all.

Comics and character assassinations

September 17, 2026 ~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

When I was growing up and was really getting into comic books, like many of my time, the X-Men were the cream of the crop. My favorite character was Gambit, and as a young romantic at heart that tried to hide behind a tough adolescent man exterior, I was all aboard the Remy x Rogue ship when reading comic books on my own.

I would say that the peak of that comic book fandom was probably about 3-4 solid years, between grades 5 through 9, where somewhere in the middle, anime came into the picture and that fandom ramped up, while American comics phased out. Amidst that period of time however, I enjoyed a lot of major storylines and arcs that really got me entrenched in X-fandom as well as Marvel by proximity. X-Cutioner’s Song and Fatal Attractions were probably my favorite arcs, but I was all about large-scale crossover events like Infinity War, as well as one of the last things I really remember following, Onslaught.

Throughout all this time, I had lots of solid opinions and my mind waffling around lots of feelings about particular characters, and when it comes to one my life’s beliefs that life is way more relatable to professional wrestling than normies want to admit to, comics and wrestling overlap tremendously more than what comic fans probably want to admit to as well.

However, there was one opinion that did not waver at all, once it came to fruition: Cyclops was a pussy.

It didn’t matter if it were when he was being Cyclops, leader of the X-Men, or when he was just plain Scott Summers, the (in my opinion) unworthy main character level tier white guy with red sunglasses who seemed to always be at the center of attention when it came to a lot of my favorite storylines.

He was a big white guy dork with lame powers who shot lasers from his eyes, Gambit and Wolverine were clearly presented as better fighters, and yet all the hunnies wanted him, having all sorts of complicated romance/lust relationships with sexy telepaths from Jean Grey, Psylocke to even Emma Frost. Mr. Sinister was obsessed with him, Apocalypse and Stryfe basically made him the center of attention in X-Cutioner’s Song, and for whatever reason, despite being the lamest X-Man of them all, Cyclops was always in the thick of things.

The cartoon didn’t do him any favors, giving him the whitest man’s voice, and presenting him as nothing but this tactical cheeser who just stood from afar using his optic blasts to fight with. And later on when Capcom got a hold of a partnership with Marvel and Cyclops started appearing in their fighting games, I always raised an eyebrow against Cyclops and took enjoyment in beating him up, regardless if it were a human or an AI opponent.

This was all before I learned and understood what character assassinating was, but once I did, it became apparent that it seemed like few in comic book lore had dealt with such severe character assassinating as much as Cyclops has.

Bring us to present day, and a litany of writers, creators and artists have done yeoman’s work over the last decade or so, repairing a generation’s worth of character assassinating on Scott Summers. He’s still kind of a square, but they’ve done a pretty impressive job of tightening up his general lore, clarified the specificity of his powers, shown him capable of actual combat beyond spamming optic blasts, and the kicker being that at the time I’m writing this, he’s broken kind of bad, very much coming into his own thoughts and belief systems, instead of just clinging to the dreams and ideologies of Professor X.

If there’s one consistent throughout storytelling, the most compelling antagonist-type characters, are the ones who believe what they’re doing is right, and live in a gray space, instead of just being flagrantly bad for the sake of doing supervillain shit. I feel that that’s where Cyclops has ended up in current character development, no longer restrained to always let everyone live and save everyone, and isn’t afraid to ramp up the aggression to get shit done.

And it’s pretty great. I don’t think the appreciation for where Cyclops is ending up today really could happen the way it is happening, if he hadn’t been dragged through the metaphorical mud for decades, and presented as the ultimate boy scout, before turning him heel.

He’s basically the Marvel Comics equivalent of Hulk Hogan turning to the dark side, and in a way, his current iteration of mutants under his charge carrying the X-Men name are kind of like the original nWo, in terms of pecking order.

However, with the rise from the ashes of one character, the scales have to be balanced somewhere, where someone has to be knocked down, and that brings us to Professor Charles Xavier, who seems to be having his character assassinated, both in actual canonical storylines, as well as general fan perception of him from the various mediums he’s portrayed in.

Like in the comics, sure, he basically destroyed the minds of a lot of his opponents, mainly Magneto, and he always does it in the name of saving the world to some capacity, but as time passes, his visions of the world inevitably fail to come to fruition because humankind is a hateful species and resent peace and unity until their dying breaths, people end up growing resentful, impatient and nihilistic when it comes to the hopes for peace by Professor X.

Characters like Cyclops begin to come to their own judgments that Xavier’s visions and hopes are pipe dreams, and after eons after eons of failures, retcons and a sheer lack of progress, eventually they evolve and move on in directions that might yield better proof than constantly being passive and playing defensively throughout life.

Also, the whole Professor X was in love with Jean Grey in spite of their controversial age difference storyline seems like a silver bullet to the heart as far as trying to assassinate his character goes, beyond any of the mind fucking and failure to progress previously mentioned.

The rebooted X-Men ’97 didn’t do him any favors, reminding everyone that he faked his own death to go live in the stars with the Shi’ar Empire, get jiggy with Lilandra and basically hand the keys to mutantkind to his greatest frenemy Magneto, and when he was busted and came back to earth to summon “my X-Men” before Bastion and his Sentinels fuck over the planet, but of course he goes and fucks Magneto in the head again, and on a long enough timeline, I can get why people begin to favor Magneto over Professor X.

The memes are pretty great, like fans pointing out how many times Xavier basically mentally makes Magneto re-live the Holocaust throughout the series, as his go-to move to neutralize Erik, and asking who really is the villain in this situation. Also pointing out how many other guys he does the same thing, in making them re-live their biggest traumas on the spot as his most effective way of putting an opponent down, and it does seem kind of fucked up as opposed to just beating them up in physical combat, in spite of his handicap.

And kind of unrelated, I was thinking in the car, of just how ironic it is that Professor X has been rendered incapable of walking throughout the entire history of comic books, despite the fact that the Marvel Universe has probably 5-6 actively viable solutions to solve his inability to walk, from like Tony Stark making some sort of robotic replacement legs, to Dr. Strange and the mythical, maybe using Dormammu magic to give him his legs back, to when he had remnants of the Legacy Virus in his system which somehow temporarily gave him the ability to walk.

I get that Professor X is also symbolic of representation in comics, of having an extremely powerful person with a handicap to inspire readers that handicap ≠ incapable, but I don’t know why I didn’t think about it until recently that choosing to not capitalize in a universe where solutions are numerous, just kind of makes him a whiney martyr, just adding to the whole Professor X is actually an asshole narrative.

What it all really boils down to is that in today’s Marvel Comics environment, Cyclops is somehow kind of cool now, and Professor X is basically the biggest villain in the entire universe. He released Onslaught after mind-fucking Magneto for the fifth time, nearly wiping out the Marvel Universe, and it’s taken several retcons and reboots for the jaded writers of today to run with the whole, maybe Professor X really isn’t that great of a guy narrative, and here we are today.

Funny how on a long enough timeline, the Harvey Dent line of ‘you either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain’ is so applicable to the evolution of many comics out there, with the X-Men being no exception.

Nothing says ‘I still got it’ than pub-stomping some high school girls

September 17, 2026 ~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

MLB: 52-year old Ichiro Suzuki twirls a 127-pitch complete game shutout against an all-star team of Japanese high school girls in an exhibition game, striking out 17. Also collected two hits as a batter, in a 7-0 win

When I saw this news start to pop up on my feeds, I thought that this was an instance of old news coming back to the surface, and was ready to get on the internet offensive and accuse some pleebs of old news, get with the times dork. But it turns out that this game of mostly old and retired Japanese pro players versus the best girls high school players in the country exhibition actually did happen again, and apparently this is a thing that occurs every two years, and has been the case for a while.

If it’s been going on prior to 2019, I don’t have the slightest clue nor do I care enough to check, but it’s news as of then, solely because of the fact that Ichiro has been participating in these matches since then. And for the fourth time out of five appearances, Ichiro has thrown a complete game shutout, and nothing is probably more validating to his aging masculinity than taking the pitcher’s mound and suffocating a bunch of teenage girls for a the better part of a decade.

In one hand, it can be said that Ichiro is showing these girls the utmost honor and respect by not pulling any punches and going out and tryharding as much as he and most Japanese workaholics often are capable of doing. But in the other hand, he may be retired and inactive in Major League Baseball, but Ichiro is still one of the greatest of all time, and probably the greatest of all time to come out of Japan (for the time being), and aging will do way less to his ability to play baseball than it would be like some fat undisciplined flash in the pan like say Prince Fielder, post-career, and even though he’s 52 as of 2026, he’s undoubtedly still better at the game than the best girl high school players in the nation.

Although I highly doubt the overly polite and respectful Japanese would possibly think Ichiro and all the other former MLB/NPB pros stomping high school girls is a dick move, my American brain tends to think that there’s a modicum of dickishness to a bunch of former professionals going out and dropping hammers onto a bunch of girls vastly their juniors.

Unsurprising, Ichiro dominated the living piss out of the high school girls, again, and the funniest-not-entirely-funniest thing about Ichiro’s participation in this game is that this is now is fifth game where he’s appeared in, all of them as the only pitcher, and he’s now pitched a total of 45 innings, 5 complete games, 4 shutouts, and has an ERA of just 0.06. He has at least 43 strikeouts, because I can’t find the strikeout totals from 2019 and 2023, but even if he had zero in those two games, his K/9 rate would be close to 10 as it is, which is considered elite.

In one regard, this is probably the honor of a lifetime for all the high school girls, getting to play ball with some of the greatest to ever play for the country, but at the same time, it’s meant to be an exhibition, not taken so seriously, and where they’re getting 9-17 runs hung on them. Like, if you’re trying to inspire confidence in the youth of tomorrow, clobbering them for 10+ runs in a meaningless game isn’t really going to help.

But in the end, I suppose if eating the lunch of a bunch of high school girls is what Ichiro needs to do in order to remain active in the game, then so be it. I still maintain that when the day comes when he’s no longer able to be involved in baseball, he’s going to go on a murderous rampage, so anything that keeps him in the stratosphere of the sport, means safety for humanity. I mean, look at his face from this year’s game when he came to the realization that one girl had collected three hits off of him; when the day comes where Ichiro can’t play anymore, and his murderous intent comes out, the name Rin Fukuda will probably be high on his list of targets, for embarrassing his honor by collecting three hits, and a steal.

Looking forward to the 2028 edition of this game, where a then-54 year old Ichiro will probably still be ready to pitch another complete game shutout, and I can only hope by then, there’ll be some cocky female slugger who’s salivating at the thought of facing Ichiro and is ready to clobber a dinger into the Tokyo Dome rafters, just so we can all see what Ichiro’s reaction is going to be.