Imagine if I actually got paid to share baseball ideas*

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Not that anyone but me, or any other baseball geek that’s remotely interested in baseball statistics and the Moneyball game of salary management within the sport, would care, but Eric Hosmer just signed a free agent deal with the San Diego Padres.

This is not really major news, even by baseball standards.  Hosmer seems like a pretty good guy, and I’ll always remember how synonymous he was for the leadership he exhibited in 2015, leading the woeful Kansas City Royals to their first World Series championship in like an entire generation.  The team he signed with, the San Diego Padres, haven’t been good nor remotely relevant since Ray Kroc owned the team.  The bottom line is, Eric Hosmer is a pretty low-key baseball star, and the Padres are a very low-key existing baseball team, so the union of them isn’t particularly groundbreaking news, even despite the fact that sheer lack of free agent signings has been a somewhat notable topic throughout this baseball offseason.

However, the thing that’s the most interesting to me is the structure of Hosmer’s deal with the Padres.  The bare bones summary of the contract is that it’s an eight-year deal for $144 million dollars; but it’s not as simple as saying Hosmer will be getting exactly $18 million a year, because rarely will there ever be a long-term deal where a player simply gets the average number between the total amount divided by the length of the contract.

Typically, baseball contracts are often structured in a manner in which a player makes a pretty reasonable amount the first year, but then the annual salary of ensuing years typically ramps upward, and usually the last 2-3 years of a contract are where they peak, and you’ll see players making ludicrous Oprah-rich numbers of like $20-30 million dollars during those later years.

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Thoughts on Black Panther

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When mythical gf and I got to the theater and took our seats, they happened to be like in the third row and way off to the left.  Granted, theaters have come a long way to where it’s not nearly as bad closer up front than it used to be, and we had seats angled to face the screen that also reclined, so it could easily have been way worse, but there was a brief moment where I thought that it might’ve been preferable had we waited just a little bit and gotten more direct facing seats.

However, the following morning, I kept hearing from every interested movie goer that they couldn’t find a single theater that had any available tickets left for any reasonable showtime of Black Panther.  Showings were being shown as sold out just about everywhere across the Metro Atlanta area, and suddenly getting to see the movie when we saw the movie didn’t seem like such a bad thing after all.

Anyway, I have a lot of thoughts about Black Panther, and to cut to the chase, none of them are at all bad.  Full disclosure, I’ve never really been a fan of the comic book, and I’ve always held Black Panther on the tier of Marvel superheroes like Thor and Daredevil but still above shit like Iron Fist or Quasar, as properties that I knew existed, I knew their place in the Marvel Universe, but I just didn’t really give a shit about.  I liked X-Men the most, enjoyed singular properties like Iron Man and Spider-Man, and I’d been on and off with properties like the Avengers and the Fantastic Four. 

Needless to say, the prospect of a Black Panther film wasn’t something that excited me much when I heard about it, but the Marvel Cinematic Universe had made me capable of enjoying properties I was lukewarm about like Thor and Ant-Man, so it was also safe to be optimistic about a stand-alone Black Panther, especially with the exciting manner in which he was introduced in Captain America: Civil War.

I think it goes without saying that no single Marvel film has had the magnitude of hype that Black Panther has had, and there’s very obvious reasons of why such was the case, given the tumultuous social climate we live in today in the 2010s.  One of the challenges that I had during the hype, arrival, viewing and post-thinking of the film was creating separation between the film itself and everything that the film stood for in modern society.

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As necessary as an asshole on an elbow

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Despite the efforts of a noble citizen, as predicted, corrupt progress can seldom be stopped when there’s investor profit to be had, and taxpayers to screw.  College Park for better or worse but most likely worse, will be saddled by the future home of The Gateway Center at College Park, the soon-to-be barely used 100,000 square foot venue that will primarily be known for the home of the developmental G-league Atlanta Hawks.

An asshole.  On your elbow.  That’s about how much anyone needs this.

Seriously, in College Park no less.  One of the most impoverished and crime-ridden regions in the entire state, and plopped right near the busiest airport in the country.  Everything about this is completely idiotic, and shocking nobody, this too will have absolutely no easy MARTA rail access or any other transit options, other than buses.  Meaning It will look like one of the fifty long-term parking car lots surrounding it, and probably be victimized just as badly as all of them, by the legions of car break-ins that have plagued this exact area for literal years now.

Literally right down the street is a shopping center that’s plagued with criminal activity that is getting worse, and a bunch of rich idiots think it’s a great idea to waste money and build a giant venue right near it?  Is this what they think gentrification is?  Building nice things in ghetto areas and hoping that things will just magically turn around?  I mean Atlanta’s trying to do that shit on the west end of the city, and plopping Publixes and Chick Fil-As in the ghetto doesn’t seem to be working.  I’d wager money that a brand new convention center/venue is going to drive crime away as much as waving a flashlight will spook some mosquitoes.

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The end of humanity starts in Boston

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Obviously, I’m not the only person to make this parallel, but yeah if we want to start pointing our fingers to where the inspiration for Black Mirror’s Metalhead episode 4 in the second season came from, we don’t have to look much further.  Boston Dynamics creates this robot dog that’s supposedly impossible to knock over, but now it can open doors?

Yep, humanity is well on its way to being utterly fucked now. Once they team up with the robot that can do box jumps and backflips, the allied powers of SkyNet will realize that their creators are soft and fragile compared to them, and that they can easily overpower and overtake them with minimal robotic effort.

Seriously, what is the point of making robots like these??  Why does the world need acrobatic robots and invincible, door-opening dogs?  Don’t these egghead fuckers at Boston Dynamics watch Black Mirror?  Don’t they watch Netflix?  Everyone in the world watches Netflix, I know this because my mom watches Netflix now.

Instead, we have these nerds poring over the ever-growing intricacies of robotics, and basically accelerating the clock in which humanity’s mortality begins ticking down faster and faster as they churn out machines that will make us all obsolete.

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Like for WWE’s Mixed Match Challenge

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Full disclosure: at first blush, I thought the Mixed Match Challenge was going to be stupid.  A weak college try for the WWE to experiment with social media live broadcasting, and a blatant attempt at trying to garner web views and social squawking as if they actually could be translated into tangible revenue.

I’ll also be honest that I haven’t been watching the MMC over Facebook, because the last thing I want to see when I’m watching wrestling is to see a million comments flying by in an illegible stream, and a bunch of reaction icons floating across like a fart in the wind.  I’ve been watching them as they’ve been made available on the WWE Network instead, like a staunch hipster.

Regardless of the fact that I’m watching it in the manner not intended, I still have to say that I’ve found the MMC to be really enjoyable over the last four weeks.  Sure, it’s very evident in the way its executed that they’re definitely making great efforts to try and appeal to casuals and tenuous viewers, but in doing so, they’re unintentionally breaking all the tropes and memes that exist about the wrestling industry that most smarky fans like myself are innately aware of, and therefore making it refreshing and interesting in the process.

For example, despite the fact that WWE programming is televised at least five hours every week, if your name isn’t John Cena, Roman Reigns, Brock Lesnar, Ronda Rousey, Shane McMahon or AJ Styles, it’s not very likely that a wrestler is going to get much screen time.  The rosters are large, and there’s simply not enough time for everyone to get a piece of the spotlight.  The MMC has been running basically a 30 minute format, but featuring just two men and two women at a time, and suddenly there’s a generous slice of spotlight for all participants to be in a main event, even if it’s just for just a singular web broadcast.  It’s allowing superstars not necessarily main eventers to get a lot of attention, and in a monopolized industry where we’re spoonfed formulaic wrestling storylines meant to maximize revenue and sell merchandise, it’s a refreshing reprieve form the norm.

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Has there ever been a bigger bitch in the NBA than Dwyane Wade?

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In all honesty there is, LeBron James, whom take nothing away from his actual basketball talent and accomplishments, but I don’t think I’ll ever not see him as the poster child for the most sissy, wimpy and spineless era of the NBA, where Twitter beefs and drama somehow manage to supersede the actual sport of basketball, with no one bigger than LeBron James carrying the torch of passive-aggressive behavior and conduct that sets the tone for the rest of the league.  But for the sake of needing a title for this post, Dwyane “don’t spell it Dwayne” Wade is still a pretty big bitch in his own right.

Don’t get me wrong, historically, Wade is probably the greatest player to have ever suited up for the Miami Heat.  The organization won its first NBA championship on the shoulders of Wade and his ability to sink 75 free throws, and in his prime he was easily one of the greatest players in history.

But I think where the initial seeds of thinking he’s a bitch were sown when he basically decided one day that he would gladly become Robin to the arrival of LeBron James to the Heat in 2010 who immediately asserted his position as the team’s new Batman.  Seriously, who does this?  Completely and voluntarily relinquishes his position on the team to the incoming free agent?  I’m sure he thought he was being a selfless team player, which isn’t a bad thing in its own right, but in the manner in which he did such, to where he kind of became a second-tier player who shied away from leadership and performance responsibilities was downright sad.  A total bitch move, if there ever was one.

And because he voluntarily became a bitch, the Heat decided to treat him like one, like when he opted out of his contract in 2014, thinking he would be able to sign back up on a bigger and longer deal, only for the Heat and the rest of the NBA to basically laugh and go n**** please, and put him in a situation where he walked away from a massive amount of guaranteed money, only to have to tuck his tail between his legs and re-sign with the Heat for a lesser deal, with the rest of the interested world laughing at him the whole way.  Like a bitch.

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Well that didn’t take too long

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Bashing the Atlanta Braves and all their dumb greedy business decisions is like the gift that keeps on giving.  Whenever I think I’ve written about the last Braves-related fuck up for a while, more and more just keeps coming out in recent days, which is hilarious considering the unofficial start of the baseball season kind of starts next week.

Just recently, there was the news report about the financial shortcomings of ScumTrust Park, and how WSB was investigating and digging for some justifiable answers with the Braves naturally holding their hands close to their hearts under lock and key and mountains of rehearsed rhetoric.  But because public money is involved, there’s always a way to get some degree of clarity, and it turns out that Cobb County is in nearly $30 million dollars of debt on account of ScumTrust Park and the predictably low-impact of its repayment terms.

It’s no surprise that this happened, but the great unknown was always what exactly was going to be the result of the Braves putting the county into the hole.  I figured an increase in tax, like a penny here or a half-cent there would be tacked on somewhere to make up for the deficit, but it looks like that the county has just decided to Tomahawk Chop™ off the public libraries of the county in order to make up for the shortfall. 

Neat.  Start closing off libraries in order to pay for a fucking baseball stadium, and deny children and other people the simple pleasure and/or benefit of, books.  Cobb County has some of the better-rated schools in the state, but it sounds like they’re willing to forfeit some of this ranking in exchange for a baseball venue that only really draws the majority of its money during the baseball season, and not much else.

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