Tag: sports

Should we get excited about the Braves?  Fuck no

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

SS;DY – Braves clinch the NL East, for the third consecutive year

Doesn’t have the same ring as winning 14 consecutive division titles, but it’s still pleasant to hear that the Braves are back on top of the NL East as if it were the 90’s again.

But ultimately, it doesn’t really matter, because the Braves are basically dead in the water already.  As I’ve posted about numerous times throughout the years, and as history has proven, the Braves making the playoffs means absolutely nothing except another first round bounce.  The Atlanta Braves are the new Buffalo Bills.  Atlanta is now the new Cleveland, if you’re the type to not acknowledge an MLS championship as an actual championship.  Atlanta is undoubtedly the most insufferable, prone-to-choking sports town there is in the country.

To make matters worse, the way the playoff picture is shaping up, there’s a very good chance that the team the Braves will be lined up against is the St. Louis Cardinals.  The same St. Louis fucking Cardinals who bounced them out of the playoffs last year, the same St. Louis fucking Cardinals that bounced them in the bullshit infield fly Wild Card game in 2012, and the same St. Louis fucking Cardinals that swept them in 2000.  Needless to say, the Braves are shit against the Cardinals in the playoffs, and if such matchup is locked in, the conclusion is already forgone.

If they don’t get the Cardinals, then they’ll probably end up getting the San Diego Padres, who in spite of their own historic ineptitude, have been playing like a season of destiny, and in spite of their wild card positioning, they actually have a better record than the Braves, but unfortunately share a division with another team of destiny, the Los Angeles Dodgers who are playing mad because they’ve lost two of the last three World Series to teams who were basically cheating, and are determined to make things right this year.  But the Padres would absolutely annihilate the Braves because if it’s not the Cardinals or the Dodgers knocking them out of the playoffs, it’s the lightning-in-a-bottle teams like the Padres that will 100% sweep them out of the playoffs.

Admittedly, I thought it would be funny if the Braves would find success in another shortened season, seeing as how they won the World Series in 1995, the last time there was a shortened year.  But that was still over 100 games, and not 60* games.  Plus, this was a great year to put baby luck to the test, since it was finally my turn to see if a team that I favored would win a championship in a year where a baby was born, but since mythical wife is a goddamn Yankees fan, she’s still in contention now and more likely to cash in than Braves will since they actually have some starting pitching.

*if a team was lucky to not get any games cancelled on account of coronavirus AND remain mathematically viable to playoff contention

The point is, just because the Braves clinched the division, there is absolutely no reason at all to be excited about the playoffs.  There is too much history, too many complexes, and most importantly the fact that the Braves have NO STARTING PITCHING, to believe that there’s any chance for success, and that a conclusion that isn’t a catastrophic failure isn’t a guaranteed result. 

Although it will be impossible for me to not pay attention to the Braves in the playoffs, or be annoyed when they inevitably get bounced in the first round, the one thing that I won’t be when all of this comes to fruition is, surprised.  And that, is nothing to get excited about.

Now that’s how to protest

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Seems unprecedented: in the midst of the NBA playoffs, the Milwaukee Bucks boycott their game 5 matchup against the Orlando Magic, in protest of the shooting of an unarmed black man by the police in Kenosha, Wisconsin, prompting the NBA to cancel all games for the day

To my friends, I first made the obvious, low-hanging fruit joke about how the Bucks did the Magic a favor and kept them alive for one more day, seeing as how they were up 3-1 in the best of seven and were probably going to close out the series tonight, but the reality is, I’m actually pretty cool with what the Bucks did.

Far too often, we see celebrities and professional athletes talk a big game about the reach they have and they say a lot of meaningful things on Twitter about how change is needed, black lives mattering, and all sorts of political statements.  But after they hit send, they put their phones down, and then go back to making movies, music, or putting on jerseys and playing sports, for millions and millions of dollars that they make for themselves, and billions and billions of dollars for the people they work for.  And when the day is over, nothing happens, and this perpetual cycle of humanity failing continues on until the next tragic events causes everything to start all over again.

As long as life goes on, there’s little reason for anyone to stop what they’re doing and try and make any changes, of any size or magnitude.  But when the machine is abruptly killed when it is expecting to be churning at its maximum capacity, people will undoubtedly have to stop and look and wonder what the fuck is going on; and that’s precisely what the Milwaukee Bucks did, when they actually did boycott a pivotal and meaningful nationally televised basketball game.  Make no mistake, the rest of the NBA’s games of the day were cancelled in response and attempt to show solidarity, but this doesn’t happen if one team doesn’t make the first move, and that’s undoubtedly the Bucks.

I also love that it was the Bucks that did it, and it’s obvious why the team from Wisconsin did it, but I just think back to when the Bucks were the bottom dwellers of the NBA and that’s all I can ever think of the Milwaukee Bucks, despite the fact that nowadays, they’ve got a ten-foot tall all-star and are basically the best team in the entire league.

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Things that have happened since the brog’s been down

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Shortly after my brog went down in April 2016, I started a document, bulleting things that want to potentially write about, in the event that the site would be back up within like a month or two.  Obviously that never happened, but it didn’t really stop me from adding to the list on a regular basis, even if it continued for nearly four years.

At first, it was a pretty nitty-gritty list, straight to the point and pretty succinct at what I wanted to remember.  But by the time 2018 rolled around, I noticed some patterns and categories in which things caught my attention and warranted notation, and so some categories started to take place.

I’m not entirely sure why I feel compelled to share all of this, but for whatever reason I’m following through with it, and basically this is going to be little more than a massive bulleted list of things that happened between mid-2016 through mid-2020, with probably not a lot of context, but likely some snark and veiled commentary peppered throughout.

2016

  • Pokemon Go came, lit the world on fire for 15 minutes, and then flamed out harder than the FOX Fantastic Four films
  • I became The Burrito King of Atlanta, winning Willy’s Road Trip promotion by visiting 27 Willy’s locations in four days
  • Kobe Bryant retired from professional basketball, but not before dropping 60 in his final game
  • The Golden State Warriors won 73 games and passed the ’96 Bulls’ unbreakable record, but then lost in the NBA finals like chumps
  • The Atlanta Braves retired Turner Field for whiter pastures, by sucking hardcore and losing 93 games
  • Hulk Hogan killed Gawker
  • Went on a European cruise vacation with mythical then-gf, visiting Italy, Turkey, Croatia and Greece
  • Went to Korea for the first time in my life, with my mom
  • The Chicago Cubs won the World Series, breaking a 108-year long drought and endless memes
  • An orange baked potato reality television personality inexplicably won the presidency of the United States of America
  • A fuckton of people died from senseless gun violence

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How things can change over the span of a decade

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Throughout my 82-day journey of re-posting literally ten years’ worth of brog posts, I naturally took the time to go down memory lane and re-read everything I’d written over that time.  I think as a whole, the collective brog does paint a decent picture of who I really am, but I’ll also be the first person to admit that hoo-boy, there’s some shit I’ve written in the past that most certainly isn’t the way I think these days.

Inherently, I don’t think people are capable of dramatic change in their lives, but I think it’s fair game to say that opinions most certainly can change throughout time.  Environment, influence, and/or just plain growing up, the way people think can harden or soften, or just plain go in different directions as time passes.

I don’t want to one of those people whom when they get become rich, famous and have the spotlight of the internet shone on them (because that’s totally going to happen to me one day), and have their internet history drug out of the past and screen shots slapped onto Twitter for the world to ridicule and judge, I went ahead and took the liberty to drag out some of the more notable changes that I’d witnessed about myself throughout the last ten years, and regardless of how wince-worthy and regrettable some of the things I’ve written may have been, the fact of the matter is that these are things that I’d thought, ways that my mind worked, and feelings that I felt at those specific instances, and I own the things I’ve said.

Because as much as some of the more regrettable things I’ve written might make me, much less anyone else, wince, cringe or face palm, I do think the revisionist history culture of 2020 is way worse.

Alternatively, this post probably should’ve just been titled “content that did not age well”

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Does anyone else feel the Washington Redskins are deflecting from bigger issues?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

The skinny: amidst pressure from large corporate sponsors who have likely been pressured themselves by myriads of influences, the Washington Redskins have acquiesced to “thoroughly reviewing” the name of the franchise AKA changing the name may actually be happening after multiple decades

Pretty much my entire life after realizing that I was someone who enjoyed sports, the Washington Redskins have been under fire for their name.  In all fairness, “Redskins” is probably the most offensive of names out in professional sports that borrow from Native American culture, because it’s basically the equivalent of if there were a team named after Africans called “Blackskins.”

But for all intents and purposes, the Redskins were the closest thing in my life I’d ever have to a home team, and when I was really started to develop interests in sports, the Washington Redskins were a powerhouse and were on the cusp of winning the 1992 Super Bowl.  Fewer things make it easy to become a fan than immediate success, and seeing the Redskins topple the Buffalo Bills for a championship made it really easy to become a Redskins fan.

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People can’t get over their disrespect for wrestling to realize there are many worse options

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

When this story came out about how the Baked Potato in Charge appointed Vince McMahon among other leaders of sports organizations to some think tank of how to revitalize the US economy, numerous Facebook friends shared it in the typical “ha ha look at what stupid shit the baked potato did now” kind of attitude that the landscape of social media among people my age tend to operate.

It felt like I was being baited to debate over it based on how many people were posting the link, with the flippant ridicule at the tips of their tongues.  Now as much as I want to heroically say that I never took it, I did, to the first friend who posted it; naturally, sticking up for anything that the Baked Potato in Charge does means I’m an asshole, and it didn’t take long for some person I didn’t know to snidely remark to me, but I got the last word in and decided to take this offline to where I can really explain my opinions without strangers flapping their e-gums at me.

Sure, I get it, the headline itself does sound ripe for criticism given the types of people that the Baked Potato in Charge and the chairman of the WWE are.  But what really got on my nerves was not just people shitting on professional wrestling because “it’s a fake sport,” but the fact that so many people have such blatant disrespect for professional wrestling that they aren’t capable of actually realizing that maybe Vince McMahon really isn’t that horrific of a choice, and that if anyone took two seconds to get over the whole wrestling thing, might actually realize that there’s an avalanche of far worse people to bring aboard as an advisor to stimulate an economy.

Vince McMahon is absolutely no saint, he’s perceived as an egomaniacal tyrant who is kind of racist, kind of sexist, kind of size-ist (if there’s such a thing as someone who discriminates against non-roided up freaks of nature).  But the reality is that most people can’t delineate between the on-screen persona of Vince the Asshole Boss, and the off-screen Vince McMahon, owner and chairman of World Wrestling Entertainment.

The latter is a shrewd businessman who has operated the WWF/E for four decades and has steered his ship through several generations of fans and the changes of the time that come and go with them.  He’s kept his business afloat through numerous scandals, allegations and criticisms when it came to drugs, steroids, concussions, among others.  And he not only revolutionized professional wrestling, he brought it into the mainstream, constantly evolved it, and continues to grow and expand.

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2020 Olympics postponed: what about the age cheaters??

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Among the numerous unprecedented occurrences that have happened on account of the global pandemic of coronavirus, if ever there was one thing that could be listed among the biggest of them, I think the postponement of the entire 2020 Olympics could definitely be a contender.  Regardless of how little or how much people think coronavirus really is a thing or not, the fact that a global event like the Olympics being shut down should speak volumes to just how serious it actually is. 

It’s absolutely the right call, considering nobody has any earthly idea just how long this is going to last, and the last thing anyone needs is to get hundreds of athletes from all across the globe, along with the thousands of fans who come from all over to watch, gathered in one location in tight quarters, and then for everyone to go back to their respective corners of the world and possibly unknowingly spread more coronavirus to places that might not have even been exposed to it in the first place.

It’s just amazing to think that something has occurred that actually had the magnitude to impact something as major as the Olympics.  Sure, the indefinite postponements of all sport leagues in America are one thing but the entire Olympics is pretty massive.

Anyway, upon hearing that the Olympics were postponed, the very first thing that popped into my head was what was going to happen to countries that routinely lie about the ages of their athletes; specifically China, who has notoriously attempted to pass off 12-year olds as 16-18 year old athletes, despite the fact that even factoring the naivety of non-Asians when it comes to Asians all looking the same to them, even they can tell when someone looks 12 versus when someone looks like they’re 16.

Regardless, China, among other countries that like to try and cheat athlete ages, are probably all pissed about the postponement of the Olympics.  If the world does get its shit together and is able to have an Olympics in 2021, that’s still one whole year for the preteen athletes of the world who were ready to say that they were 16, to hit puberty and suddenly age out of their illegitimate primes.  And considering Olympic hopefuls have four years typically to train for it, imagine the scramble of cheating countries trying to scrap together some new 12-year olds to take their places?

Either way, let’s take a second to send our thoughts and prayers to these particular countries that won’t be able to cheat as effectively as they had originally hoped to do.  All those poor preteens hoping to masquerade as actual teens, for the sake of the potential glory of their countries.