Tag: baseball

Initial thoughts on ScumTrust Park

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Originally, I had no intentions of visiting ScumTrust Park with any urgency.  I’ve made no secret about how much I abhorred the unethical means in which the Braves operated in order to get their brand new park, as well as the poorly veiled financial and racial intentions behind their decision to move.  And then the cherry on top, selling the naming rights to the unethically developed ballpark to one of the companies that I morally detest, giving them right to be the entity to call themselves the home to the Braves that are for lack of a better term, my home team.

It would’ve been easy to say that I would never go to ScumTrust Park, but I’d have been lying if curiosity wasn’t eventually going to get to me, not to mention when inevitably some bobbleheads would entice me to want to go.  But I figured I’d have waited until the hoopla, spectacle and honeymoon of newness passed, and when the Braves were in third or fourth place by June, then I’d keep my eyes peeled for some seats on StubHub at well below face value, and then make my way to ScumTrust Park to see how things were. 

But I got some tickets from mythical gf’s family over the holidays, and suddenly those plans were dashed.  However, the tickets were for an exhibition game intended primarily for season ticket holders, meaning a reduced attendance, because I loathe insane crowds, and ultimately, I didn’t pay for them.  And if anything at all, it would give me the opportunity to knock the park off my eventual list, but with slightly more reasonable conditions.

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Well, that didn’t take long

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Color me surprised: The Atlanta Braves have decided to renege on their draconian policy to disallow outside food from hallowed ScumTrust Great White Flight Park

I actually am surprised by this.  Usually when a baseball team does something that can easily be perceived as unpopular by the fans, they usually inevitably double-down on their decision and address the media with an as-of-matter-of-fact tone that declares that the unpopular decision is what’s best for the long-term, and that ultimately baseball is a business and choices like these are made that are best for business.

I would’ve expected that the Braves would have listened to the initial outcry of unhappy fans, weathered the storm, and then had a stuffy press release that dictated that they understand that people are unhappy with the decision to ban outside food, but that proceeds from concessions and the take from all adjacent The Battery businesses would inevitably be the coffers in which the team could use on free agents, despite the fact that the Braves are amongst the cheapest teams in the world and rarely ever are willing to overpay for a free agent unless it’s something completely haphazard like Dan Uggla or B.J. Upton.

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Surprise of the century

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Shocker: ScumTrust Park, the new home of the Atlanta Braves of Cobb County, has abolished on of Turner Field’s most popular policies – the ability to bring in outside food

This is about as surprising as finding out water is wet and fire is hot.  Anyone who thought for a second that one of Turner Field’s most popular policies would carry over into the new ballpark was delusional.

Of course ScumTrust Park isn’t going to allow people to bring in their own food; with the park smack dab in the middle of The Battery, the lame name used to describe the epicenter of shops, restaurants and other tourist crap that will surround Great White Flight Park, naturally they’re going to do everything to dissuade people from bringing their own food and instead spending money on overpriced homogenized pretentious crap around the park in order to eat instead.

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WBC: It’s about damn time

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

It’s only taken four tries in the last 12 years, but the United States of America has finally won the World Baseball Classic, the tournament that they invented in the sport that they invented, when they shut down Puerto Rico in the championship game.

And it’s about god damn time, is all I can really say about the long overdue international accolade.  Seriously, when the WBC was debuted back in 2006, it seemed like that on paper, the United States should cruise to a victory in a tournament that they debuted, with maybe some resistance against an also stacked Dominican Republic team.  Instead, teams like Japan, South Korea and Cuba showed up to play and have fared well in the tournament’s short history, with Japan winning the first two WBCs before the Dominican Republic finally played to their potential and won the third; all while the USA repeatedly failed and fell flat on their faces, fielding squads of primarily B-talent, because the A-listers refused participation, fearing risk of injury and subsequently to their earning potential.

Honestly, going into this year’s WBC, I thought that the United States were sending yet another mish-mashed rag-tag slop pile of a roster to the wolves, with a pitching staff full of 2-3 starters, and a bunch of set-up men with no truly dominant closer.  The players that were committed to the cause weren’t bad players necessarily, but there’s a notably long list of superstars that could’ve played for the United States, that opted to not.

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This is why MiLB > MLB

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

God I dislike the Phillies.  But damn if their Triple-A affiliates, the Lehigh Valley Iron Pigs, don’t have the most creative and socially active creative team in professional sports.  I not only have respect for their constantly moving and constantly producing creative, but I admittedly am a fan, even if they are a Phillies affiliate.  I have two Iron Pigs baseball caps; excluding promotional gate giveaways that I mostly collect and don’t wear, I can’t even say the same about the Atlanta Braves, for whom I only have a single baseball cap, that’s almost literally been worn to death and doesn’t quite fit right anymore either.

But anyway, I got an email from the Iron Pigs because I’m apparently on their mailing list because of the cap I purchased from them over the internet.  Usually I delete these emails instantaneously, and chide myself for not opening them, so I can go straight to the bottom and look for the unsubscribe button and then remind myself to unsubscribe the next time one comes in, to which the cycle repeats itself all over again.  However, the subject line was something that caught my attention and instantly piqued my interest: BACON VS. TACOS.

I like bacon.  I like tacos.  Never did I think that I’d ever have to pick a side between the two; after all, you can even combine them and get some good tacos with bacon out of them.  But apparently an ingenious promotion was birthed also involving the Fresno Grizzlies who have apparently re-branded themselves as the Fresno Tacos for some reason, but I am okay with that, because naming one’s self after food is always an entertaining idea in my opinion.

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This is the best thing I’ve seen in a while

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Greg Maddux isn’t one of my all-time favorites because he was on the Braves and helped them win their only World Series.  He’s not one of my all-time favorites because he’s arguably one of the greatest pitchers in the history of the game.  I’ve always been a fan of the guy, because he’s always been a guy that that outsmarted rather than overpowered and I always favor intelligence over sheer brawn all day long.  But aside of his qualities as a baseball player, I’ve always loved the guy because he’s always seemed like one of those people that just simply, got life.

This video that broke recently, where Greg Maddux pranks reigning NL MVP Kris Bryant, by pretending to be a sound guy for a fake commercial Bryant is believed to be filming, that fills in at throwing batting practice, before hurling a litany of unhittable breaking balls and perfectly located pitches, nearly had me in tears laughing.  Maddux is classic Maddux in the video being all passive-aggressive and deadpan while pretending to be the critical sound guy, judging the swing of a guy that just came off a season where he hit 39 home runs. But it’s when the ruse is on where this video really takes off.

Kris Bryant’s disrespect for ordinary men, when fake sound guy-Greg claims he can fill in for the coach that had to leave is kind of the perfect setup for an ownage session from the 4-time Cy Young Award winning Hall of Famer.  And then Maddux gets behind the screen and suddenly starts hurling curveballs, with Bryant flabbergasted and trying to laugh away his rising shame, is simply the funniest thing I’ve seen in a while.  And for god-knows how long, Maddux continued an onslaught of perfect pitches designed to catch guys looking, or get guys to tap the ball harmlessly into outs, while Bryant is futilely swinging himself into looking like a little leaguer.

There’s no doubt when Red Bull approached Maddux with this idea, the Professor probably dialed up some old MLB contacts or something and got a scouting video on Kris Bryant and studied his swing and tendencies for a few hours.  And that when he showed up to the ballfield in Vegas, he had more than an adequate game plan and pitch sequences specifically designed to undress Kris Bryant.

Nearly eight years post-retirement, Greg Maddux still manages to make one of the best hitters in today’s game swing like Mario Mendoza. 

Sure, there is the suspicion that this video could have been staged a little bit, but I don’t really care.  I’ve been in a dour mood a lot lately, and this was something refreshing and welcome to watch and get a little bit of enjoyment out of.  With Spring Training just around the corner, seeing something like this actually gets me a little bit excited about watching some baseball again this season, hopefully with a lot of current baggage behind me by then.

I hope Sarasota looks forward to paying $140M for the Braves

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Because nobody seems to know any better: Sarasota County agrees to continue negotiations with the Atlanta Braves in regards to building a brand spanking new exclusive Spring Training facility estimated at $75-80 million dollars

Naturally the Braves are hoping to contribute nothing but $Free.99 towards this grandiose and unnecessary expenditure, while the (mostly) innocent public picks up the rest of the tab.  And as 100% of sporting venues have proven, the initial estimate is always incorrect, and the safe rule of thumb is to double the estimate, and that’s closer to the end result than originally intended.  It’s a whole lot less disappointing when they actually fail to exceed an estimate, albeit revised and deliberately inflated one.

Best part is?  If this stupid and pointless project actually takes off and the Braves get their new Spring Training complex, with public funds doing most (all) of the lifting, the Braves might not even have to make the financial records public.  This is often being called something along the lines of the “Pitbull clause,” since apparently rapper Pitbull found some loophole that allowed for him to privatize the financial records to a some tourism event or whatever, but the bottom line is that because Pitbull did it, it leans to believe that the Atlanta Braves might be able to do it as well.  And what’s more trustworthy than taking measures to eliminate transparency and hiding records that should be public, if being paid by the public?

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