Tag: ballparks

It took over a year for the rest of the pleebs to figure this out?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Man, it seems like the Braves-related news just isn’t stopping these days.  I’m beginning to feel like my offline brog is getting a little saturated with a singular topic, but then again, I’m off-fucking-line, so there’s really no concerns that anyone but myself is ever going to recollect these words, because I would wager money that anyone who returns to my brog one day will glaze over any subjects like this one.

BUT, it took an actual news investigation to conclude that ScumTrust Park might not be anywhere near close to “paying for itself.”

I mean… no shit.  The sky is also blue, water is also wet, and I wish I had more disposable income.

I have to say the teaser video did kind of intrigue me, because it not only cites ScumTrust Park as an example of how the Braves fleeced local taxpayers into paying for their ballparks, but also two of the three minor league facilities that house Braves affiliates, the one in Jackson, Mississippi, and then the one right up the road in Lawrenceville, the respective homes to the AA-Braves and the AAA-BravesStripers.  Yeah, they’re struggling too, after the Braves duped those towns into building their crappy ballparks as well.

I can’t say that I’ve been compelled to watch the news, but I have to admit that I’m intrigued by this story, and might actually have to make an effort to check it out on television.  Or hope the actual video report up online for convenient viewing, because I kind of want to watch it.

But it’s not like it’s going to be anything remotely a revelation for me, I am however curious to see what the rest of the sheep think about the topic, considering it’s taken them over a year to realize that it perhaps wasn’t the best idea in the world to undertake a baseball stadium.

More time to raise costs, duh

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Less surprising than Grayson Allen tripping someone again despite saying he’s grown out of it, the Atlanta Braves’ spring training saga yet continues on, this time revealing that the team has signed an extension with the Disney Wide World of Sports for the 2019 season, with the writing between the lines meaning that the new facility in Sarasota, won’t be finished in time.

Who would’ve thunk it?  That in spite of the $100M+ budget and all the promises and plans in the world, the magical construction of an entire facility in a calendar year seems to be viewed as potentially unrealistic.

In all fairness, the Braves do deserve a little bit of credit at identifying the potential for failure this early, and moving forward with a logical contingency plan.  And as much as I bet Disney would have loved to have turned the screws to the Braves and told them that seat’s taken and that they would have to find somewhere else, the reality is that almost all of the teams in the Grapefruit League want to be in a coastal town, so Orlando is kind of screwed for Spring Training once the Braves depart.  So clearer heads prevailed, and the Braves get one last partial Spring Training at Disney, and Disney gets to cash in on that sweet MLB money for one more spring.

But it’s still a failure in the sense that the Braves made all these grandiose plans and basically gave Disney their walking papers, but when their shit started to seep through the cracks, they kind of had to crawl back to the hand that’s been feeding them for the last few decades for their safety net.

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SURPRISE, SURPRISE

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I don’t remember the exact numbers I estimated when I originally started going off on diatribes about the Braves’ new Spring Training facility that’s being built in Sarasota, Florida, but I do recall it being somewhere in the range of 40-50% more than what was estimated.  Because if there’s one reoccurring pattern in the development of stadiums is that there is a 150% chance that whatever is originally estimated, will be exceeded, and by no small amounts.

That being said, it’s about as shocking as finding out that the WWE’s Enzo Amore has been accused of sexual misconduct, that the Braves’ original estimation of somewhere around $80 million dollars for their new training grounds, has risen.

Somewhere in the revisionist history of the timeline of this unnecessary extravagance, I’m pretty sure the original price tag was set at $75 million dollars.  Apparently, prior to the start of the new year, it was revised to $100 million, and as of this morning, it’s been confirmed to have hit $110 million.  I want to say that in my earlier rants about this bullshit facility that I predicted that it would top out at around $125 million.

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I don’t visit losers

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I was having a one-sided conversation the other night with the mythical gf about how I believe that I have a magical touch when it comes to visiting baseball parks, where teams graced by my visits are destined to get into the playoffs.  She thought it was so absurd that she refused to really listen to any of my claims, so it got the gears turning and instead it ends up becoming fodder for the brog that still has no definitive timeline to when will be back up beyond April 2014, but I still keep on writing because that’s what I do.

At the time I’m writing this, the 2017 MLB regular season has officially come to a close, and there are no tie-breakers, no game 163s or any additional games that need to be played.  The playoff field is set, and the path to the World Series is entirely in place for all ten contenders.

Among these contenders are the Arizona Diamondbacks, whom prior to the start of the season were 100/1 odds to make it to the World Series.  Sure, they’re still nine games away from the World Series, but at 100/1, that’s pretty much saying that the playoffs weren’t necessarily a believable prediction back in April, either.

The Arizona Diamondbacks are also the only team I visited throughout the 2017 season, and said game was in fact, the only regular season MLB game I attended all season (I’m a terrible fan, yes).  Yet in spite of the odds, the Diamondbacks won 93 games, and if not for the Dodgers winning 104, are in the playoffs, on a collision course with the Colorado Rockies in the dreaded winner-take-all Wild Card game. 

They could very well end up losing and being one-and-done, but the fact of the matter is that let the history books show, that the Arizona Diamondbacks made the playoffs.

That has a tendency to happen whenever I come visit your ballparks.

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What a surprise

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Who could have seen that coming?  Final vote gives the official green light to the Atlanta Braves to break ground and begin construction on their future Spring Training facility in Sarasota, Florida; with an estimated cost 33% higher than originally expected

I can’t cross-reference on the fly like I used to because another shocker of the century, my site is still down, but I’m pretty sure that when the Braves originally claimed an estimated price tag of $75M for their new Spring Training digs, I immediately stated that the actual price tag should be somewhere in the neighborhood of like $120M, because that’s just how sporting venues work; they estimate low to make it not sound completely terrible, miss the mark entirely, but proceed anyway, and leave the egregious amounts of difference up to taxpayers to make up.

“The project now carries a price tag of $100.56 million, according to financing documents provided to North Port commissioners, up from the previous estimate of $75 million to $80 million.”

Yeah, that’s not a surprise at all.  I’ll be more surprised if these numbers don’t manage to crawl and creep up closer to the $120M that I had estimated, because lord knows if the Braves are good at one thing at all, it’s usurping funds out of unsuspecting taxpayers and wasting it on shit that benefits only them and gives nothing back to those it’s coming from.

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Another day, another Braves fleecing taxpayers story

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

In short: the Atlanta Braves won another $4.7 million in taxpayer money for their new Spring Training facility in Sarasota, Florida

I love the fact that the term “won” was used, because that’s kind of just it; the Braves didn’t really earn this money, or do anything in particular to have deserved the money, they just kind of gambled their time and effort to get the money and just so happened to win out, when city commissioners put the decision to vote, and it barely nudged 3-2 in favor of giving the leeches free money.

I actually love these kinds of stories about hypothetical numbers, because in just about every single case, the estimates are just that, and always get blown past whenever projects like new sporting venues are like 60% done. Supposedly, the city of North Port has agreed to pay $25 million in total, with the state of Florida being on the hook for another $20 mil, which means that there’s only an estimated $30 million left for the Braves to try and weasel out of paying.  This doesn’t account for the fact that, and I would wager money, that by late fall this year, something will go wrong, and the Braves will require somewhere around another $20 million in order for the project to continue.

In the end, I’d guess this whole project ends up around $115-120, with the Braves paying like $2 million, while the rest comes from direct or indirect taxes and tax credits meant to cater to them.

The saving grace is that with a new Spring Training facility, and with somewhat fresh ballparks for just about every ballpark in the Braves system, it might be a little while before any more crookedly greedy new ballparks need to be built in the team’s visage.

But then again, Turner Field was only given 17 years before it was deemed too old and required a move, so I guess Rome, Jackson and Lawrenceville should probably be keeping their eyes peeled for some fresh new real estate, because their shitty not-old parks are about to become old in about ten years or more, real quick.

Bums and ballparks are like peas and carrots

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Despite my general disdain for it, I have the unfortunate circumstance to have to drive by Racist ScumTrust Park every now and then.  It’s inevitable, because of where I used to live, highway access or the need to pass becomes somewhat of a necessity from time to time.

Over several of my last few times passing by the ballpark, I noticed something that I had never really noticed in Smyrna/Vinings before: homeless people.  Homeless people wandering the sidewalks near, but not directly on the premises of the hallowed BATtery ATLanta grounds, but doing the usual homeless things; digging through trash cans, camping on park benches, and overall creating the uncomfortable stigmas that their presence tends to do.

Again, this is something that I can’t really say I’ve seen before in the area prior to the arrival of the ballpark.  Sure, it would be likely ignorant to say that no place in America has any homeless people, but prior to the arrival of Racist Park, I honestly can’t say that I’ve ever seen any in this area before.

That being said, it’s hilarious to me to make the asinine assumption that the homeless people came with the ballpark, because if there’s one thing that I’ve noticed about ballparks throughout all of my ballpark travels is that there’s often times homeless people around them.  Sometimes it has to do with the fact that ballparks are often located in the hearts of cities, and homeless people dwell in the hearts of cities, and sometimes it’s because cities are named Detroit or Oakland or Miami, and the lines that separate bums from citizens is a really blurry one and it’s easy to make that mistake.

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