Tag: baseball

Unsurprisingly lame

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

BB&T and SunTrust banks choose their united name: Truist.

I mean, I can’t say I’m the least bit surprised that this ended up being something as lame as this.  Fewer things in the world are as square and soullessly uncool as the entire banking industry.  I mean, it’s an industry that’s basically built on storing the money of people that are not themselves, and finding every single possible way to take cuts and slices from them in order to profit.

I even yawned heartily while typing out that line, that’s how lame the whole concept of banking is.  I can’t believe I worked in the industry as long as I did, and in some degree of retrospect, I kind of have to thank them for being the tools they are and laying me, as well as my entire department off, because they kind of did me a favor of getting out of the banking industry.  I mean seriously, it paid the bills pretty well, and I would’ve have free parking for years during Dragon*Con, but I have to say that it wasn’t a whole lot of fun saying I worked for SunTrust; as large as it was in Georgia and the eastern seaboard, it was still a regional bank and it was the equivalent of saying that I worked for like, Habib’s Fuel & Automotive in the grander spectrum of the world.

But back to the point at hand, with the name of the unholy union being established, that means that without any further question, the home of the Atlanta Braves is soon to become Truist Park.  I had to wiki it to make sure that it was going to be the de facto lamest name in all of Major League Baseball, but since I’ve completed my quest to visit all 30, I’ve fallen a little to the wayside when it comes to ballpark names.  And as gargantuan-ly lame as Truist Park is, I think there is some stiff competition when it comes to comparing to Guaranteed Rate Field (Chicago White Sox, replacing “The Cell” US Cellular Field (the worst park in MLB)) and RingCentral Coliseum (Oakland A’s, who are always plagued with bad names).  Ultimately, it’s like comparing herpes to chlamydia and gonorrhea, because no matter which name you have, it sucks.

Given the propensity of the Atlanta Braves to always go in the direction of profit > style, it’s no surprise that they’re going to be perfectly at home playing at a place called something as boring, vanilla and lame as Truist Park.  But damn if they aren’t going to get rich cashing in on those naming rights, despite the fact that the product on the field isn’t going to benefit one iota from said proceeds.  A bunch of old white guys need to take their slice of the pie first, as well as their seconds, before the Braves have any chance at possibly getting a little bit of forward investment to maybe succeed. 

I hear winning is pretty lucrative, but the risk-averse Braves don’t really seem the type to risk possibly finding out.  But misery loves company, and I think it’s pretty safe to say that pretty much any team not the Houston Astros seems pretty content on sitting on cruise control and cashing in on revenue sharing, and if they happen to win, great, but if not, that’s perfectly okay as well.  Fuck that, and fuck Truist Bank.  Need to figure out a simplistic and punny name for the new park, because “ScumTrust” is running out of time.

I’d be all in if this actually happened

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

All.  In.  If the Braves were to rename the ballpark after Waffle House.  100%.  Maybe even get a season ticket package of some sort.  It would be the perfect catalyst for anyone to go balls deep into, or back into Atlanta Braves fandom, because the time couldn’t possibly be more appropriate given the talent movement going on with the club right now.  I just need a little push, or a little nudge.. or just that slight positive association of the greasy spoons where I’ve never had a bad meal in my life where I could feel comfort knowing that the restaurant I like to go to the most after drinking is partnered up with the sports franchise that makes me want to drink.

Although the possibility of something like Waffle House Field coming to fruition is like as likely as my job not sucking any time soon, the logic behind the really is a solid.  I didn’t think for a second that upon the collection of ScumTrust by BB&T, that the conglomerate would even consider for two seconds to give up the naming rights to ScumTrust Park.  I just, and still assume that whenever the transition is complete, it’s just going to remain something as soulless and corporately square like “BB&T Park” and continue existing as the vanilla mass of land in which baseball is occasionally played while they soak in accolades and praise from equally square and vanilla white people who think they know something about architecture with character.

But imagine a world in which the Scum&T blob decided that paying the Braves millions of dollars to slap their name on a stadium that exists outside of Charlotte, North Carolina.  Or the Braves actually growing a spine and deciding that it would be nice if their ballpark were named after an actual Georgia company, instead of a banking company that turned tail and ran towards the money.  What better business would there be to take the keys to the ballpark than Waffle House?  Sure, Coca-Cola comes to mind, as does Delta Airlines or The Home Depot.  And as Oprah-rich as those businesses are, they’re still businesses that some people still have to stop and think about to remember that they’re companies based out of Atlanta.  Waffle House is definitively, a symbol of the south, which is something that the Braves often try to declare themselves, regardless of the cultural clash between representing the south versus hoarding money like a true Wall Street grub.

Continue reading “I’d be all in if this actually happened” →

It’s hard to care about a team whose management doesn’t care about it either

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

At the time I started writing this, the Braves had just finished getting swept by the Phillies to open the 2019 season.  Prior to the start of the season, Braves fans were treated to an offseason where the Braves performed their standard song and dance of crying poor and pretending like they don’t have the necessary money in order to pursue logical free agents and improve their chances at winning baseball games, but then business reports emerged that showed that the Atlanta Braves organization as a whole, had raked in record profits throughout the 2018 calendar year. 

In typical Braves fashion, instead of just coming clean and admitting that the ownership has little interest in investing money into the team, they sent their stooges out blab a whole bunch of corporate-ese about the importance of financial responsibility, and extol their profits as if Bubba in Habersham, Cletus in La Grange and Ricky Bobby in Valdosta are going to give a flying fuck about the organization’s financial standing, when the team is losing games that they’d have a better chance at winning if they had some competent players.

And basically, personally, I’m at my wit’s end with it.  As much as I feel like I’m always on the cusp of swearing off the Braves and declaring a disdain for them, I never really fully pull the trigger, because I like having a local team to root for, and when the day is over, I do want to see the Braves win and find success, even in spite of the fact that the organization itself is flagrantly ambivalent and doesn’t appear to care whether they win or not, just so long as they’re making investors money.

But as for this year, all it took was three games for me to confirm that this team is dead in the water, and to not really hold too much hope that there’s going to be anything remotely better than a first-round playoff appearance, at the very, tippy top best possible scenario.  The Braves Way, an agonizingly cliché phrase the team uses to applaud the team’s tendency to favor and acquire over-the-hill veterans or post-injury reclamation projects at reasonable costs is the modus operandi of the team, and has pretty much been the case in almost the entire time that I’ve followed them, and they rarely drop any big money on anyone.

I understand that the last few times they’ve done so, they’ve ended up with stiffs like BJ Upton and Mike Hampton, but the unfortunate truth of professional sports is that every single team on the planet has dealt with free agent busts, and that it’s more of a surprise when a free agent deal doesn’t go sour, and that at least from a WAR standpoint, they don’t lose too much money in the life of a deal.

Continue reading “It’s hard to care about a team whose management doesn’t care about it either” →

The fallacy of judging player contracts before they’re finished

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

With the news of Bryce Harper signing the most historic mega-deal in baseball history comes a whole lot of interesting things:

  • All the bitching and moaning coming from MLB (union) players like Justin Verlander, Evan Longoria, Kris Bryant, and Adam Wainwright among others, about how free agency is busted, owners are crooked, and the system being broken have just had all of the wind taken out of their sails; the last week alone has seen Harper sign his historic 13-year/$330 million dollar contract, Manny Machado signing a 10-year/$300 million contract, as well as Nolan Arenado signing an 8-year/$260 million dollar extension. Free agency is not busted, it’s just the financial game within the game has changed, and it’s just taking longer.
  • A whole lot of discussion about Harper’s intentions, considering the fact that despite taking the aforementioned deal from the Phillies, in the process he turned down a ridiculous shorter-term contract from the Dodgers which would have had him making around $45 million a year for four years as well as a 10-year/$300 million offer from his former team, the Nationals, where they would have deferred the last $100 million of the deal, where he would have been getting paid, with interest, until like 2053, which probably would have equated to over $330 million, frankly.
  • Every Nationals fan who had been a Bryce Harper fan over the last seven years has now become massive Bryce Harper haters
  • Every Phillies fan who had hated on Bryce Harper because he played for the division rival Nationals is now the greatest Bryce Harper fans that have ever lived

Amidst all of these things, are and will be many more, articles that will be examining the finer details and the minutiae of Bryce Harper’s deal with the Phillies.  And in a previous time in my life, I probably would be one of them, and be ready to declare it “a bad deal” because of the hypothetical likelihood that by the time Harper is 38 years old and hobbling into the final year of his deal in 2032, he most certainly won’t be playing like a guy that will be getting paid like $28 million dollars, and how long-term free agent deals pretty much always fail, because players rarely contribute the statistics necessary to justify their salaries.

Such could very well become the case by the time 2032 rolls around but the bigger question really boils down to “but did the Phillies win a championship(s) in those 13 years?”

Continue reading “The fallacy of judging player contracts before they’re finished” →

Here’s a crazy idea for MLB

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Fans don’t care when millionaires squabble: Cardinals pitcher Adam Wainwright latest to opine about the current state of MLB where free agents go unsigned, thinks a strike is becoming inevitable

A part of me thinks, or at least wants to declare, that if baseball goes on strike again, I should just be done with MLB, because punishing fans because two sides of ridiculously wealthy parties can’t come agree on which side should be entitled to more money.  It’s a ridiculous squabble no matter what way it’s looked at, where it’s abundantly clear that neither has any concern of how it looks from the perspective of those not a part of it.  But the reality is that I like sports too much, and even if there were a strike, and then they come back at a different time, I’d probably still end up watching again, much to my dismay.

On one side of the fence, we have the players, where many players have been very outspoken this offseason, about how it’s becoming ridiculous and indefensible that some very prominent free agents, namely Bryce Harper, Manny Machado, Dallas Keuchel and Craig Kimbrel have not been signed yet, and Spring Training has literally just begun.  Ironically, nothing has been heard from the actual “victims” of this trend, and all remarks have been coming from mostly players who are currently locked into cushy, long-term, multi-million dollar contracts, because it’s easy to fling stones from pedestals.

On the other side of the fence, we have the ownership and front offices of all the Major League Baseball teams, whom throughout the last decade-plus, have all entered an era where statistical analysis has risen to prominence, and through such number crunching and analytical predicting, it’s taken a tremendous toll on how they view the financial worth of players, all across the spectrum. 

In layman’s terms, teams themselves have become risk-averse and less willing to haphazardly sign players to ridiculously long and high-dollar contracts, fearing the high possibility of “bad contracts” bogging down payrolls and inhibiting the team from succeeding on a long-term basis.

In short, the players are accusing the owners of being cheap and hoarding the revenue for themselves, calling them greedy.  They want more money to go in their pockets.

In short, the owners are telling the players that this is the way the game is evolving, and that they need to deal with it and get with the times.  They want more money to stay in their pockets.

Continue reading “Here’s a crazy idea for MLB” →

Love this fire from Craig Calcaterra

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Go on, get ‘em Craig: NBC Sports’ Hardball Talk writer Craig Calcaterra lights into the Atlanta Braves front office after their apparent ambivalence for the success of their baseball team

I don’t follow a tremendous amount of sports as much I once used to, but there are a couple of names that I’ve grown to really enjoy and respect throughout the years.  Joe Posnanski and Tom Verducci come to mind pretty quickly, but after reading this scathing editorial by Craig Calcaterra, I have to say that I think he’s ascended to that level of “this guy often piques my interest, no matter what he’s talking about.”

I’m not going to bother narrating the things that he wrote, because his piece in itself is pretty brilliant, mirrors a lot of the same thoughts that I have about the Atlanta Braves, Major League Baseball and professional sports itself, but I just really want to extol just how much I loved the fire coming from Calcaterra.

He’s totally right; the Braves are operating as if they think that their fans are idiots.  Unfortunately the arrogant front office, most notably represented by president Terry McGuirk and GM Alex Anthopolous, aren’t entirely wrong either; lots of the Braves’ fans are idiots.  Lots of baseball, and professional sports fans are idiots.  Most fans of anything in general are often idiots.  Not that there’s anything wrong with some blind faith in the things that people like, but when it comes to analytical thinking, that’s just stuff that some people don’t want to do, and it unfortunately puts them into the category of being idiots, as far as front offices are concerned.

Continue reading “Love this fire from Craig Calcaterra” →

Baseball’s Hall of Fame finally gets it right

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

In short: Mariano Rivera headlines the 2019 Hall of Fame class, being the first player ever inducted unanimously

Let me first start off by saying that I am ecstatic for Mariano Rivera, in being the first player ever inducted unanimously with 100% of submitted ballots all voting for him.  There is zero debate in history that he is the most clutch pitcher of all time, having something of like a ridiculous 0.70 ERA throughout over nearly 100 postseason games, becoming more and more unhittable as the Yankees advanced in the playoffs every time.

I still remember in 2009, which was the last time that the Yankees won the World Series; against the ridiculously explosive offense of the Phillies, the Yankees time and time again throughout the six-game series went to the bullpen and brought Rivera out for the save.  And in each of the Yankee wins en route to the championship, it was Rivera who slammed the door, allowing no runs and just three hits over 5.1 innings of clutch relief. 

It should be worth noting that this was when Rivera was 39-years old, and people had long already been proclaiming that age was catching up to him, and that he was going to be limping to the finish line.  Instead, he ate the Phillies’ lunch and carried the Yankees back to the top of the mountain, which was again, the last time that the Yankees have been World Series champions.

And it wasn’t even the saves and the innings that Rivera really brought, whenever he took the mound, it was more the fact that he inspired calm and confidence, among fans and his teammates.  And among the opposition, the legend of Rivera’s cut fastball literally rendered generations of hitters with a feeling of defeat and dread of getting to be one of the guys giving up critical outs at the end of a baseball game.  The saying of “he can tell you it’s coming, and there’s nothing you can do about it” rings entirely true with Rivera, because he basically threw nothing but the cutter his whole career, but the numbers speak for themselves; nobody could do anything about it.

I’m not even a Yankees fan, but even I had this feeling of calm and no real fear that the Phillies were going to make a comeback.  And even when the Yankees asked of him to pitch more than an inning at a time, he just continuously delivered, methodically putting Phillies hitters away again and again, until there were no more outs to get.

Continue reading “Baseball’s Hall of Fame finally gets it right” →