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.

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Would you rather . . . [basketball edition]

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I saw this clip of Steph Curry slipping and falling on his ass during a fast break where he otherwise had a completely uncontested dunk, and the first thought that popped in my mind was can Steph Curry even dunk at all?

A cursory Google search quickly reveals that Steph can indeed dunk, but if you look at this “top-5 dunks” of Steph Curry, it’s evident that as good of a shooter he is, he’s still physically limited in his dunking capabilities, and it’s more like the same four dunks, and one slightly more impressive but still fairly ordinary dunk.

But the question that emerged from all this was, would you rather be the greatest shooter of an entire generation, or be able to occasionally be able to posterize someone with an emasculating and iconic dunk?

Make no mistake, Steph Curry is arguably the greatest shooter of an entire generation.  Frankly, I would absolutely put his name up on the Rushmore of shooters, along with Larry Bird, Ray Allen and Reggie Miller.  It’s debatable on whether or not he’s even better than all of them too, because none of them really revolutionized the three-pointer like Curry did, to where he’s kind of changed the entire game of basketball to where teams revolve their offenses around threes.  Not just in the NBA, but it’s trickling down to the college ranks, and all throughout high schools and gyms across America, the three is at an all-time high now, and now just the one solitary skill set that the token white player on the team spots up with in the corners.

But the reality is that Steph Curry can’t really dunk.  I mean, he can dunk a basketball sure, but he’s not posterizing anyone any time soon.  Even if Patrick Ewing were still in the NBA, at no point would Steph Curry be able to dunk on him, which says something, because pretty much everyone in the 90s managed to dunk on Patrick Ewing.  And dunking is the one skill that defines basketball more than anything else; it’s the thing that markets the game, it’s the thing that sells jerseys, posters and other merchandise, and it’s the thing that all kids want to emulate the most in their driveways.

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Happy Moloch Day 2019

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Anyone who’s been reading my brog with any regularity knows what this is all about.  Frankly, I’m not particularly feeling like going through the whole spiel again about how and why MLK is pronounced “Moloch” in Aramaic, and how Moloch, the ancient demon god most certainly came before Martin Luther King, Jr. and therefore had the grandfather clause rights to use MLK over Martin Luther King, Jr.

Really though, the whole point of this post is the fact that I’m currently locked in a training session at work for a software that is basically the equivalent of using bamboo chopsticks to try to put a car together.  Those people who are unfortunate enough to be around my person have heard diatribes and long-ass rants about my feelings about this, so I’ll try to be less verbose about it in a brog post, but the bottom line is that due to the Benny Hill-cueing music-needed training session that I’m in that’s in a laughable state of disarray, with the leadership that’s mandating all this happening, I have the time to write this.

Teammates are dumbfounded and bewildered at the disorganization of this, and I’ve been keeping notes of just how pathetically bad things are, with how the IT monkeys are running around without leadership, trying to keep on an agenda that doesn’t exist.  The third-party representative of this software is twiddling his thumbs doing jack shit on his phone while people on other teams are trying to figure out what comes next. 

But hey, this has helped chew up some of the time until the end of the training session, to which because of just how unorganized things have been, my boss decided to throw in the towel on the rest of the session, and now I’ve written a lot less than I had anticipated.

Whatever though.  Happy Moloch Day!

I love that free agents are getting owned

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QQ moar: Chicago Cubs’ Kris Bryant publicly whines about how free agents are not getting signed as Spring Training gets closer and closer

First off, shut the fuck up, Kris Bryant.  You’re not even a free agent yet.  I understand why he’s complaining now, because he’s going to be a free agent in a year or two, I don’t care enough to check to see how many years of arbitration he has left, and he wants to make sure that when he hits the market, things won’t be like they are today, where free agents are absolutely getting taken to the toolshed for the second year in a row, and are not getting the absurd and ridiculous multi-million dollar contracts that nerds on the internet once said that they were all entitled to getting for their past performances.

But the thing is, Bryant is airing out his grievances under the guise of pretending like he cares about his fellow baseball players, namely the notable free agents whom are pretty much all still unsigned and have no definitive future currently, despite the fact that they’re absolutely going to get signed by someone, because their talents are inevitably going to be coveted by someone out there.  They might not get the $400 million people think some of them are worth in a contract, but I’m fairly confident nobody is going to shed any tears for them when they’re still going to sign for like $250 million.

Dollars.  Hundreds of millions of dollars.  That’s what some of these baseball players are going to sign for, all for being really good at playing a children’s game.  You’ll have to excuse me, and anyone else with a brain for not feeling sorry for baseball players who aren’t going to get $300 million, but are still going to make $175 million dollars for being good at swinging a bat or throwing a baseball.

As I always say, I love baseball, more than any other sport, but it doesn’t take a genius to understand that the salaries in baseball, as well as any other professional sport, are pretty out of hand these days, and I refuse to feel sorry or have any empathy for any professional athlete for not getting many-many millions of dollars, but are still getting many millions of dollars.

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Of course Stiffen Pippen thinks this

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Impetus: former NBA great, Scottie Pippen, believes Duke’s Zion Williamson ‘has done enough’ to be the #1 pick in the NBA draft and should shut himself down now and not risk getting injured

To those who don’t know the context, Scottie Pippen is considered one of the cheapest men on the face of the planet.  Perhaps not quite as artificially manufactured enough to end up on an episode of Extreme Cheapskates, but he’s still notoriously cheap to where there are articles all over the internet about his cheapness, from his peers, and more notably, pretty much the entire restaurant industry.

Needless to say, when it comes to the topic of money, it shouldn’t be any surprise when Scottie Pippen’s stance is on whatever side banks the most amount of money with the smallest risk of losing it.

Like his opinion of Duke’s freshman superstar, Zion Williamson; he of the 6’7, 275 lb. man child who is still growing, and is currently tearing up NCAA basketball with his monster dunks and Mutombo-like rejections.  He’s played 16 games of college basketball, and has been putting up some prodigious numbers, but again, it’s just 16 games, in his first year of college ball.

But that’s more than enough for Stiffen Pippen, who’s completely convinced that he’s proven that he’s already worthy to be the consensus #1 draft pick in the next NBA Draft, and he’d be better off shutting it all down now, and preparing for the draft.  I have a hard time thinking of a more selfish and self-serving suggestion, and sure, there’s always the argument of what college does for a ringer student-athlete like Williamson, but still if you’re remotely close to my line of thinking, accomplish one fucking thing before screwing everyone around you.

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Hi praise for Hi Score Girl

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I really wanted to say that it was surreal to be binging on an anime again, as if it were the year 2000, but that wouldn’t be that accurate.  Within the last year alone, I watched stuff like the last two seasons of Initial D, and I watched through Kakegurui on Netflix, so I have in fact watched some anime beyond 2000.  Regardless, over the last week, I binged through an anime series, and as if I were 16 years old again, I’m looking forward to when Netflix gets the reigns to the rest of it.

I’m going to assume it’s either Castlevania (which I guess would have classified as anime) or all the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers episodes I’d been watching over the last few months that prompted Hi Score Girl to populate in my recommendations on Netflix, but I guess I have to admit that Netflix does kind of know me, because the preview got my attention enough to where I’d fast track and actually watch it, as opposed to putting it into my list and then never actually watching it until like a year later.

And I absolutely loved it.  Without question, Hi Score Girl is a love letter to old school video games and video game culture, and all too often, I felt rushed back to my own childhood watching the daily gaming mania and obsession with video games of Haruo Yaguchi.  I was super into Street Fighter II, and I poured hours upon hours into the game, and at differing points of my life, thought I was the best player in the world, until I went to the arcade and occasionally got my ass handed to me by players better than I was.  I can’t say I was as maniacal about improvement and wanting to be the best, but I’m still attuned enough to gaming culture to completely understand and relate to some degree.

Intertwined through all the gaming nostalgia is a sweet and fairly innocent love story between children growing up, and the trials and tribulations that come with different classes in school and society, the expectations of a family name, and the innate need and want to simply live our own lives.

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I don’t even like Clemson, but they deserve better than this

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

However, there’s kind of an appropriate metaphor in the imagery: College Football National Championship winning Clemson Tigers football team goes to the White House, Donald Trump serves them a gargantuan spread… of fast food

I don’t think it’s any new news that I don’t like Clemson.  For nearly the last decade, I don’t remember the last time that Tech has beaten Clemson in football, whether it’s been Tajh Boyd, Deshaun Watson or Kelly Bryant at quarterback.  I’d even root for Duke over them in basketball, and I’ve become way bigger of a supporter of SEC schools simply out of the necessity that someone’s got to be willing and able to stand up to them in their ascent of the college football ranks.

But that being said, champions are still champions, and should be rewarded for their excellence as such.  Now I’ve got plenty of words and opinions to offer about the whole government shutdown, but little good can actually come out of putting any of them in writing, but the fact that as a result of it, the White House basically has no cooks or chefs on site, relegating the champion Clemson football team to have a train cart of McDonalds, Wendy’s, Burger King, Pizza Hut and other fast food options, that’s kind of sad.

Even Clemson deserves better than this kind of spread, in the fucking White House.  But then again, given the current state of the political world, somehow it all seems kind of ironically appropriate, and the imagery that has come from this whole shit show within a shit show, have been nothing short of classic and iconic.

Still though, any team that even accepts an invitation to the White House in the first place, should probably expect some sort of luxury or opulence when visiting the home to basically who’s supposed to be the most powerful person in the world.  Even the Clemson squad that won the National Championship in 2017 had some sort of gourmet barbecue spread, and it occurs to me that Clemson championships have all occurred in years in which a particular guy has been in office, and that they’re both orange as fuck.

Despite the fact that many players and perspectives see this as funny, charming, or are able to roll with the punches, I’m definitely in the camp of people, players and perspectives that doesn’t really find it as humorous, except in an ironic metaphorical sense.  I get that elite athletes probably don’t have the opportunity to eat like retards as much as they want, unless they’re linemen, but for those athletic players that actually would like to have a future professionally, a buffet of fast food really isn’t the best idea, even in celebration.

When the day is over, this too, like many other absurd and ludicrous stories that come out of Washington D.C., isn’t really that big of a surprise.  There’s little reason to believe that Clemson won’t get (another) re-do in coming years, and maybe them or Alabama, will be treated to a nicer spread, a little more appropriate for future champions.

I guess all that’s left is, I wonder what the Boston Red Sox’s meal is going to be?  A truck full of Dunkin Donuts maybe?