Tag: braves

Nails in coffins

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

As if the Braves couldn’t do anything else to make me want to dislike them more, they had to go and designate for assignment (cut) pretty much my favorite pitcher in the world, Jonny Venters.

Now, I understand crystal clear the logic behind this decision, and if it were like Antonio Bastardo getting cut by the Phillies or Sergio Romo getting cut by the Giants, I wouldn’t have given two shits, but it happening to Jonny Venters, and I’m now a little emotional about it.

Venters was hurt.  And then got hurt again.  In the worst kind of way, tearing a ligament in his elbow, while he was already rehabilitating from a torn ligament in his elbow.  Long story short, he had to undergo the dreaded, career-altering Tommy John surgery for the third time, after he hadn’t yet fully recovered from Tommy John #2.  Very few pitchers come back from Tommy John surgery twice, and even fewer return from a third.  From the business sense, it’s obvious and logical to why the Braves had to release Jonny Venters, and once again, I say that if it were anyone other than Jonny Venters, I probably wouldn’t have cared.

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I think I hate the Braves now

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Impetus: The Braves trade homegrown superstar outfielder Jason Heyward to the Cardinals for pitcher Shelby Miller.

Sports fans are fickle creatures.  Some let every single action determine every single mood they have.  Some let the outcome of every single game determine whether or not the remainder of the day or week is worth being chipper or sore about.  Then there are others, like me, that like to believe that they’re capable of viewing sports fandom in a more comprehensive and big picture kind of way, and do their best to maintain a façade of indifference and maintain a cool head to no matter what happens, because we silently have the teams that we support and cheer for, in the privacy of our own homes.

Over the span of the last eight years or so, I think I’ve been every possible sports fan, especially when it came to baseball.  There was a time when I watched every single pitch in every single game I could, and my mood would elevate and deflate with every called strike, force out, double play hit into, and of course, every run scored.  When the Braves won, I was relieved, and sometimes happy.  When they lost, I was miserable and crabby.

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It’s nice to feel wanted

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Despite the fact that I declare myself a terrible baseball fan, I still do keep somewhat of an ear to the ground when it comes to happenings in the game, and happenings with the Atlanta Braves.  And despite the fact that I’ve long separated myself from the site I used to write for, Talking Chop, I still visit every now and then, because in spite of the fact that their daily writing assignments have become somewhat robotic, as the guys running the site now are excellent analyzers of raw, cold facts, but don’t really have unique voices.  However, they have the ability to generate some opinions from their analysis of raw, cold facts that are still preferable over the talking heads of any other mainstream outlet.

Anyway, on a recent visit, I noticed that there was a topic of how the site was, yet again, changing hands in operational management.  Apparently, the day-to-day management of a website was difficult to juggle amidst daily analysis of numbers for the previous management, whom all apparently took steps back to go into purely writing roles, leaving the management side to a new girl, whom I actually find refreshing that she’s not a proverbial bean-counting stat-geek.

She inquired with the community on suggestions to what she could take into consideration for making the site better for the future.  Naturally, being the internet, there were sloughs of sarcastic rebuttals and everyone trying their hardest to be an e-comedian that I had to trudge through, but every now and then there were constructive suggestions and requests that people made that could and probably should be taken into consideration.

But then there was one remark in particular that caught my eye.

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The epitome of “not mad, just disappointed”

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Long story short: The Atlanta Braves break ground on their new ballpark, slated to open in 2017.  It’s new name?  SunTrust Park.

I love the Braves.  I hate SunTrust.

What I’m dealing with here is a perfect conflict of interests.  A catch-22, if you will.

A little backstory: I used to work for SunTrust corporate.  Making signage, assets, collateral materials; all sorts of marketing materials that the company used at their over 3,000 branches across the eastern seaboard.  It wasn’t a glamorous job, but it was for a reputable brand, paid decently, and I worked with some decent people.  After about three years, the company decided that in-house designers were unnecessary, and is so often the case, felt that they would rather pay external companies way more money for the same services, but minus the obligation to pay for benefits.  So they outsourced myself, eight other designers, two copywriters, an editor, among 1,100 other employees throughout the entire company in 2007.

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Salvation, thy name is exercise

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

When I get into a bad mood, my eyes tend to always focus higher than usual.  It’s like, if you were to be staring at me, you might think I’m looking you in the eyes, but in reality, my point of focus would be on your eyebrows.  But on a general scale, my point of focus tends to raise an inch or two, when I’m feeling upset.

I don’t necessarily know why that is, but lately it’s been occurring more than I’d probably be liking it to.  But I don’t know what’s really going on lately, but people can’t stop saying things that irk me, people I work with can’t stop being incompetent at their jobs, and when my mood goes sour, my general attention span and tolerance for the redundant reduce drastically, and I’m kind of just over, existence, to say the least.

I was running on the treadmill, building up a good sweat, and occasionally thoughts that serve as the stimulus for some of my brog posts come to mind.  During my general state of discontent with the world, it occurred to me that the gym, but more specifically the act of physical exercise seems to be a great outlet from the rest of my small little world.

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Ballparks: Danville, Virginia

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

It only took three years, but finally everything worked out as they should of, and I was able to make my long-awaited visit to sleepy Danville, Virginia, where I could get to see the Danville Braves rookie-level squad.

With Danville visited, I can now say that I’ve seen every single level of the Atlanta Braves minor league system, to which I am very pleased with.

Salty feelings

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Do any of you guys ever get the feeling like either too much of the world is into all the same things you’re interested in, or perhaps you yourself are too much like the rest of the world, and are more or less falling in line with a parade of similarly behavioral people?   I’ve been feeling like this recently.

When I was a broody moody teenager, I recall taking great lengths in deliberately going in directions that “everyone else” went.  Whether it was class selection, choice in artistic expressions, to simply things like routes I drove, and the things I decided to do.  I was trying to differentiate from the crowd, and it required effort.

Eventually, and it’s probably closest to my current state of being, I simply stopped trying, and kind of let life dictate itself as if it were water flowing, moving constantly, but at a default motion.  However, by doing such, lately I feel like in spite of my past efforts, when the day is over, I’m not quite the unique butterfly that I like to think everyone likes to think they are sometimes.

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