Tag: braves

Photos: Minor League Baseball in Kodak, Tennessee

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I chose to visit Kodak kind of on a whim.  Initially, I was planning on making Asheville a day trip, where I’d go straight back to Atlanta in the wee hours of the night, but when I found out that the Mississippi Braves were playing against the Smokies, I decided to make my one day trip into a two day one, because Kodak is just 90 miles from Asheville, as opposed to driving the 290 miles back to Atlanta.

Despite the fact that Kodak is a small town seemingly in the middle of nowhere, I was still really excited by the idea of going there.  There’s something ironically amusing to me about small towns in the middle of nowhere that I look forward to.  I guess I like the experience of seeing what those deep out into the country are like, and if they can handle when an English-speaking Asian guy comes romping into their towns, trying to see what’s up.

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Photos: Minor League Baseball in Asheville, North Carolina

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

So, Asheville.  I was looking forward to visiting this place more than about any other place I had thought about visiting throughout the 2014 baseball season, because to my understanding Asheville was a town known for interesting dining, lots of local breweries, and it happened to be a place within reasonable driving distance that had a minor league ballpark I’ve never visited, AND they just so happened to be giving out a bobblehead, AND they were also playing against an Atlanta Braves affiliate.  Needless to say, it was the no-brainer of no-brainers that I would be looking forward to this particular trip.

Much to my expectations, Asheville was a lovely place that I enjoyed a great deal.  The drive to get there wasn’t the least bit difficult, and it frankly just felt good to get in my own car and drive somewhere I’d never really been to before.

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The weekend I’d been looking for

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Prior to the start of the baseball season, this past weekend was one particular weekend that I had mentally earmarked as one of weekends that I was looking forward to the most.  Sure, I have ambitions and plans of grandeur when the summer arrives, and in a perfect world, I make every flight, the weather is never an issue, and I’m able to tackle four new MLB and six new MiLB ballparks before the start of July.  However, things haven’t worked out so kindly throughout the span of the last few weeks, and be it poor weather, unlucky flight conditions or both, a lot of my trips have been derailed and ultimately cancelled, leaving me kind of distraught, and with more time to brood and go crazy.

But this past weekend was undoubtedly the one weekend I was looking forward to immensely, because it combined several things going for it that if they all worked out, would lead to a successful good time.

Fortunately for me, with the weekend now a time frame in the past, I can say that basically everything did work out, and it was a successful good time, and I’m quite pleased with it, to the extent that it’s worth writing about, because frankly, I think a lot of my posts throughout the last few weeks have kind of had an undertone of disappointment or an unhappy sentiment to some of them.

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I kind of hate that the Braves did it like this

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Impetus: Atlanta Braves executives organized, planned and brokered deal to move team from Atlanta to Marietta, completely in private.  Admits fear that if the public knew about it, it would have been shot down – which is very likely true.

A notable storyline transpiring in Atlanta these days is that the Atlanta Braves baseball club is planning on abandoning their current home, Turner Field, and moving north into Marietta, where a new ballpark will be constructed.  Long story short, there’s a small amount of people, and a whole fuckton of people that aren’t.

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I can’t stop watching this

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Source: Normally, I’m not that big on the “content” that comes from Deadspin, much less any other Gawker website, but I’ll be the very first to admit that they most certainly caught lightning in a bottle with this gem. The gif of the Phillies fans from a night ago is one thing, but the folks at Deadspin put together a truly epic video complete with accentuating slow-mo and music that is definitely worth giving them a click and a view to see.

Long story short, Monday’s Braves vs. Phillies game started off as more or less a snoozer, aside from the Braves’ Ervin Santana striking out eleven Phillies players. But in the 8th inning, someone turned the Game Genie on, and then the Braves and Phillies combined for four home runs, with the score going from 2-1 to 5-1, and then 6-5 after the Phillies got done with their turn at bat. Needless to say, it appeared to be turning into one of those disheartening losses for the Braves where they let the hapless Phillies off the hook.

Fortunately, because the Phillies are the Phillies, and they’re so good at fucking things up, they well, fucked things up. So with just three outs to get in the top of the 9th to secure the win, they naturally load the bases, and set things up for the Braves’ Dan Uggla.

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Real Men Don’t Wear Small update: Grapefruit League

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

For the second year in a row, Real Men Don’t Wear Small gets updates prior to the start of the regular season!

I made my first-ever trip to Spring Training, down to Florida to partake in some Grapefruit League action, as well as see some Spring Training complexes.  The first park visited was who else?  The Braves’ spring training facilities on the Disney complex in Orlando, and a game at Champion Stadium (They lost, of course).  And then I headed south for a day to visit Port St. Lucie, where a visit to Tradition Field, the spring home of the New York Mets awaited.

Spring Training baseball was surprisingly more crowded than I thought it would be, especially considering my choice time of visit was within the final weeks.  I naively expected it might not be as crowded, but contrarily it was packed for both games; at least until the starters began getting pulled.  It was fun nonetheless, and I’m certainly more open-minded in the future for future Spring Training trips.

Photos: Orlando, Florida – Champion Stadium

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

My first ever Spring Training baseball trip brought me down to Orlando, Florida, where I would visit who else but my Atlanta Braves first?  To be honest, Spring Training had never been really high on my priority list, but the idea of taking in some new places, hanging with some friends and most importantly, simply getting away from the routine grind of normalcy made this trip possible.

Although I did enjoy the experience of seeing the Braves’ spring facilities and have zero regrets about making the trip, I have to say that I wasn’t really too big on the place as a whole.  I kind of had a preconceived idea that I might not like it, because the Braves spring facility is located on Disney property, and where there’s Disney property, there’s bound to be massive crowds, a logjam of people, and kind of a hectic atmosphere, all of which turned out to be the case.

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