Tag: sports

Good riddance, Pearl

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

TIL: the Atlanta Braves will be moving their Double-A minor league affiliate from Pearl, Mississippi to Columbus, Georgia.  They will also be ditching the Braves moniker and will hopefully be something chintzy and marketable

Not that I pay attention to every iota of Braves coverage as I once did at a point in my life, but as a fan of minor league baseball, and for lack of a better term, a fan of the Atlanta Braves, news like this piques my interest, even if this were reported way the fuck back in January of this year.

I mean, I knew that the Braves had relinquished control over all of their minor league squads back in 2021 like selling their debts, and I didn’t hate the news at all quite the contrary, because I felt that it opened the door for Braves affiliates to spread their wings and try to be something more in the spirit of minor league baseball, instead of the boring, stuffy and sterile branding of “The Braves.”

Gwinnett (AAA) had already switched over to becoming the Strippers Stripers, and Rome (A+) as of this years ditched being the Braves and became The Emperors, as in Roman emperor, and better yet, adopted emperor penguins to be their team’s mascot.  Not that I’ve been paying any attention, but for whatever reason, the Mississippi Braves had remained as such over the last two-plus seasons, and despite their freedom to do so, they didn’t appear to be in any rush to make any changes to the organization.

Until this season apparently, as it was announced that the club will be moving out of Pearl, Mississippi and moving to Columbus, Georgia, as well as ditching the Braves moniker and will be adopting a new name for the start of the 2025 minor league season.

At first blush, my thought was, oh great here we go again with a brand new fucking ballpark to build, but it turns out that there’s apparently a historic ballpark in Columbus, Golden Park, that will actually be renovated and used to house the future Columbus Braves affiliate, instead of building something from scratch.  Granted, a renovation isn’t cheap either, and I’m sure it will probably be something of a $65M tax burden for the people of Columbus to absorb, but that sure beats the $126M it took to build the Braves’ Spring Training facility from scratch in Sarasota.

Regardless of the financial burden of accommodations, this is actually a change that I don’t immediately just want to shit on upon hearing about it.  Having been to Pearl, Mississippi, solely to watch a M-Braves game, I have to say that getting the fuck out of that shithole in the middle of goddamn nowhere is nothing but good news for the Braves and frankly, all of Minor League Baseball in that nobody again will ever have to step foot in Pearl/Jackson, Mississippi after the 2024 season.

It’s the only place I’ve ever been to where I genuinely felt like I was whisked back in time at the casual ignorant racism that got in just a singular afternoon in town, from the moment I left the airport, to getting to the ballpark, and while simply getting food.  The cabbie who picked me up from the airport thought that I had to have been an actual player since I was headed to the ballpark, and upon arriving at the ballpark, I caught some kids staring at me and thinking I was Hideki Matsui.

It’s clear that Asian people aren’t a common occurrence in this chunk of the country, but god damn.  During the game, I was puckish so I went up to a concession stand where there were unsurprisingly chicken tenders and fries, and when I handed over my debit card to pay, the lady at the register examined my card and put down her bifocals, and then said to me, “oh that’s an easy one.”

Obviously having no fucking clue to what she was talking about, I asked her what, and she responded that it was my name, that it was one of those names that wasn’t too hard to pronounce.  Okay then

So needless to say, it seems like a monumental win for any person or any business or in this case, any team, to get the fuck out of Pearl, Mississippi, and head closer to somewhere that’s closer to their parent organization.  Columbus isn’t a tremendous step up from Pearl as far as not feeling like you’re in the middle of nowhere, but at least it’s a military town where people have had some etiquette and discipline beaten into them, and it’s only like a 2-3 hour drive to the Metro Atlanta area if anyone wants to feel some actual civilization.

I’m excited to eventually find out what the team will lean towards as far as a new team name, branding and identity will be.  I don’t know much about Columbus other than it being a military town, so I can’t take any snarky takes or come up with any sarcastic names to anoint them as, but hopefully the yokels out there will have the wherewithal to steer clear of the low-hanging fruit of Christopher, whom we all with brains have heard wasn’t exactly the best guy in history.

But hey, there’s always the Columbus Barves, wouldn’t that be some shit, to take the popularized typo-meme-unofficial sarcasm name for whenever the team fucks up, and make it official?  A guy can dream.

Predictable, to those with knowledge

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Twas the night of the trade deadline, and the Braves were in the middle of the pack.  The Phillies have the division, and Atlanta’s grip on Wild Card #1 has been slippery as of late.  Max Fried is on the DL, joining Ozzie Albies and Michael Harris II, while Ronald Acuña, Jr. and Spencer Strider are done for the year.  Reynaldo Lopez has tightness in his forearm. 

Those not injured, are not performing, save for Marcell Ozuna and a resurgent Jarred Kelenic, but Matt Olson, Austin Riley, Adam Duvall and Orlando Arcia definitely are about as reliable as a Dodge Caliber this season.  Aside from Chris Sale, the pitching staff is in shambles due to the loss of Strider and Fried, as Father Time has clearly caught up to Charlie Morton, and the revolving door of Bryce Elder, Spencer Schwellenbach and whomever was scheduled to pitch in Double-A or Triple-A has been less than effective.

Weeks leading up to the trade deadline, there was all sorts of buzz about what the Atlanta Braves should do, to patch their weaknesses, reinforce their offense and build for the playoffs that they are no guarantee to even make.  Braves fans in Facebook communities, blogs and websites all throwing out ideas, mostly putrid, but occasional logical ones, about the things the teams should do in order to accomplish all of the above mentioned.

And whenever this time of the baseball season comes up, there are always these types of fans:

  • Trade everything for [Mike Trout] and [Shohei Ohtani] – fans who don’t really know much about baseball economics and think that in real sport, you can make trades like an EA game and trade Derek Harper for Penny Hardaway straight up
  • Trade absolutely nothing at all because there’s no chance the return on investment will be worth the cost of assets being given up – internet bean-counters who know way too much about baseball economics and have this intrinsic belief that absolutely every baseball transaction possible much be “a win,” that every trade partner must “lose” the trade, and if such conditions don’t seem likely, don’t make it, regardless of how many moving parts there are and the unpredictability of player performance
  • And then there are people like me, crabby old fucks who have been following sports for a very long time, have recognized patterns and tendencies for the teams they follow, are mostly cynical and nihilistic about the likely realities about to befall their preferred teams, and the degrees and willingness to opine their opinions may vary

I used to not engage with rando-communities, but probably a combination of boredom, and that The Algorithm is spoon-feeding me content that pops enough synapses in my brain to drop random comments on various accounts, most of them being Braves communities where I occasionally wish to voice my displeasure with AJ Minter, Bryce Elder, and how the team would be best suited to sign the still-available Trevor Bauer, if he didn’t have this freakishly obviously collusion to blacklist him from the entire league over his head.

I don’t pay much concern over the reactions my words get, and I definitely don’t interact with other users beyond a laughing emoji at the response that are actually decent, but it’s really nothing different from any online community anywhere on the internet: people making wild trade scenarios, trade everything fans bickering with trade nothing fans, and so forth.

More recently, I decided to chime in to a few Braves communities, and I opined that the Braves aren’t doing to make any moves at all beyond a fourth outfielder-type and a relief pitcher; I figured the remark were just enough snarky without me having to blather on about how The Braves Way™ is that of crippling risk-aversion and hand-cuffing cheapness, which it totally is by the way.

And when the trade deadline lapsed, and the evening crossed midnight, where transactions that begun before the deadline needed to be finalized by, and all the smoke of the day’s activities had cleared up, the Atlanta Braves had made only one transaction-trading injured relief pitcher Tyler Matzek and minor league infielder Sabin Ceballos for:

Jorge Soler, outfielder
Luke Jackson, relief pitcher

At this point, all I could really do is shrug like Michael Jordan in the 1992 NBA Finals, after he drowned the Portland Trailblazers in a barrage of three-pointers as if to say, that was easy.  I’ve been following the Braves for a pretty long time now, and I’ve seen this song and dance before.  Save for a few exceptions throughout the years, the majority of the years, the Braves always seem convinced that the only things they ever need at the trade deadline is another outfielder and another relief pitcher, and that all other needs can be filled internally (cheaply) – That’s The Braves Way™!

In this season’s case, they’re not wrong that they needed some help on both accounts, but the fact of the matter is that the starting rotation has two gaping holes in it, and the team has been incapable of scoring runs the vast majority of the season. 

All around the league were decent talents from teams who were out of playoff contention and thrown in the towel, trying to improve their futures at the price of said decent talents available for trade.  And as the days ticked down to the trade deadline, they would come off the board, one by one, with the Phillies picking up Carlos Estevez from the Angels, the Yankees getting Jazz Chisholm, Jr. from the Marlins, the Dodgers getting Jack Flaherty from the Tigers, to name a few examples of front-running contenders actively trying to get even better for the stretch run.

And once again, the Braves sit on their hands all trade season long, and do nothing but pick up a fourth outfielder and a relief pitcher.  I’ve seen this rerun, many, many times in my life now.

For those keeping score, in spite of all the Braves’ many needs, the only outside acquisitions they’ve really made this season, was picking up Soler and Jackson, as well as a few weeks ago, picking up Eddie Rosario from the Washington Nationals’ literal trash after they had designated him for assignment.  Obviously, all of these guys were notable contributors to the 2021 World Series winnings squad, and it’s evident that the Braves’ front office is trying to challenge the intelligence of fans and supporters of the team by bringing back these nostalgia acts, as if they’re miraculously going to turn the team’s fortune around, three years later, older and used.

It goes without saying that the Braves have thrown in the towel on the year themselves, by their sheer lack of willingness to invest and improve.  Of course they will never admit it, but it seems pretty evident that they’re phoning in the roster on account of all the injuries that have decimated the roster, and probably thinking, we’ll just try again next season;  regardless of the fact that Max Fried is probably gone, as probably is Marcell Ozuna who is playing his ass off in a walk year, two of the most competent players on the current roster.

They’ll assume Chris Sale will reward their investment into his bounceback, Spencer Strider will recover to 110%.  That this season was not a fluke for Reynaldo Lopez, and that between Elder, Schwellenbach and Hurston Waldrep,* they can go back to the glory days of Maddux, Glavine and Smoltz.

*could these names get any whiter?

They’ll also assume Acuña and Harris will recover fully, Albies will get back to his All-Star form and Olson and Riley will bounce back.  Arcia might be the only guy on the hot seat, but I’m under the impression that Braves Corporate is already envisioning a fresh start in 2025 with all of their current assets in place, and that 2024 is already a lost cause, and any success to come from it would be considered a bonus.

At this point, it’s actually a bad thing for the Braves front office if the team does well enough to have a little playoff run, and then get bounced in the NLDS again.  Because then there will be all sorts of hindsight fire, criticism and accusations that the organization didn’t do enough to improve the team to where they might have pushed across the finish line for more success, instead of sputtering to another early playoff exit.

But if and when it happens, it’s not like it’s something that most older Braves fans haven’t seen before.  Such is, the curse of having knowledge sometimes.

KOREA VERSUS EVERYBODY

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

BBC: South Korea wrongly introduced as North Korea at the Paris Summer Olympics

If anyone has ever been curious to why I have a chip on my shoulder when it comes to the treatment of Koreans, this is a perfect example of why.  The bottom line is that my general opinion is that Korea; Korean culture, Korean contributions to the world, and Korean things in general; gets no respect from the rest of the fucking world.

Everything Japan does is admired and revered by the rest of the planet, and all UN countries are so scared of China’s population numbers and economic potential, that they all kowtow to them, as if they were the grasshoppers from A Bug’s Life, after the ants had uprisen against them.

Meanwhile, Korea has historically been an exemplary ally to the UN, the United States and many other countries.  They haven’t enslaved or bombed anyone, they’re not always lurking in the shadows installing sleepers all around the globe to spy and disrupt.  Korean economy is stable, prosperous, and other than the fact that everyone is black haired and narrow eyed, Korean society really is a lot like American culture.

Yet, people can’t even put down Asian people without disregarding Koreans, like when racists mock Asian people, asking them if they’re Chinese or Japanese.  Saying any other country much less Korea usually results in the person asking having to grind gears in their brains to process the existence of any other Asian race, but the fact that Korea is lumped into that denigrating B-tier of Asian countries fills me up with piss and vinegar.

Just in general, Korea is overlooked and not shown the respect that I think that the entire fucking culture is worthy of.  It doesn’t matter how many global industries Koreans dominate, how competent and good at athletics or competitive events they become, because we’re not Chinese or Japanese, the rest of the world tends to gloss over us, and it leaves me feeling disgusted with the entire world whenever shit like this occurs.

I mean seriously, the fucking Olympics?  The announcers had one goddamn job to do, which was to just name countries, and they can’t even get the Koreas correct?  You know they have rehearsals and practices for putting on monumentally things like this, and yet on global television, they still manage to bungle it the fuck up and mistake the Koreas.

The thing is in America, there have been numerous announcers, news anchors and commentators who have been shitcanned getting caught on a hot mic saying things that were either flagrantly racist or perceived to be racist, primarily to black people.  I would, seriously and as objective as I could try to be, put this up there with that kind of mistake, and if I were the superiors to the both English and French announcers, consider dismissal for both of these ignorant fucks for one, not knowing their world geography for the fucking Olympics, and two, being a colossal embarrassment to the entire International Olympic Committee.

But seeing as the only party being denigrated by their mistake was “just” Koreans, I don’t really see much retribution occurring.  Twitter apologies are not sufficient, and on behalf of Koreans worldwide, I do not accept it.  It’s insulting and embarrassing, and Koreans deserve better than this.

I hope this slight lights a fire under the asses of the 159 Korean Olympians, North and South, and they squeeze out a few extra medal wins here and there out of vindictive spite alone.  Not that it would really matter or be noticed, since the only countries that ever really get any spotlight at every Olympics is the US, China, Japan, Russia and whatever host country.

But whatever, fuck it.  It’s just another day at the office for Korea versus Everybody.

I always forget there are four NBA teams in California

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

While scrolling through some sports headlines, I saw one that stated that the Sacramento Kings had landed DeMar DeRozan, for three years and $74M dollars.  My first thought was simply, oh yeah, the Sacramento Kings are an NBA team.

I simply had forgotten that they existed.

It occurred to me then, that pretty much at no point in my entire sports fan life, have I ever really been able to immediately recall that there are four NBA teams in the state of California.  The Lakers are easy to remember, the Clippers are easy to remember as the team that isn’t the Lakers, but at varying points in my life, I always forget about one of the teams between the Warriors and the Kings.

Usually it correlates with which one of them sucks because sucky teams are easy to lose track of, but one of my friends recently reminded me that it was the Kings that actually eliminated the Warriors from this past year’s playoffs, but it didn’t really matter because they had been living in the shadow of the Warriors for so long now, that they’re still basically an invisible market.

Back to the original point though, I like DeRozan as a player, but the fact that he’s going to the Kings, it’s a good thing that he’s getting paid a fat contract, because he’s definitely going to be an invisible player for the next three seasons, barring any opt-out clauses or drama-filled trade sagas that could occur along the way.  Because the Warriors still have a few years left in the tank before they really start to suck, and until Steph Curry hangs up his shoes, the Warriors are always going to be relevant, and there simply isn’t going to be any room for any awareness for the Kings short of a breakout star and/or deep playoff run.

It’s funny though, because as long as I’d been paying attention to basketball, I can definitely recall the years where the Kings were the kings, and the Warriors were invisible, and when the Warriors were pretending to be Ultimate and the Kings ceased to exist.

When I first really got into basketball, the Warriors were the good team because they had the Run TMC backcourt of Tim Hardaway, Mitch Richmond and Chris Mullin which was fun, fast and exciting to watch.  Although the Warriors were still a fringe team, they were exciting, while I didn’t even know where in the country Sacramento was at that age.

Eventually, as is inevitable in the world of sports, the Warriors would eventually become the laughing stock of the NBA, winning 19-28 games a season, years after Run TMC and trading Mitch Richmond and Chris Webber away.  And it would be Chris Webber who would transform the Kings into contenders, and teamed up with guys like Mike Bibby, Peja Stojakovic and Vlade Divac, the team would really challenge the league, and if not for existing at the same time as a prime Kobe/Shaq Lakers squad that had Robert Horry on it, they probably could’ve won a championship and really put Sacramento on the map for good.

But that window of contention would eventually close, and the Warriors would draft Steph Curry, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green, pick up Andre Iguodala, hire Steve Kerr as head coach, and the rest is history.  The Warriors would go on to become one of the greatest squads in history, making the Finals an absurd amount of times, winning multiple ships, and putting their stamp on the record books, both team and individual.  It’s safe to say that the Splash Bros changed the entire game, and the influence is palpable with ballers all over the world flinging three-pointers like it’s the only option on the court.

Meanwhile, the Kings have taken the backseat once again, and whenever the topic of the NBA comes up, I always have to stutter and stall whenever the obscure trivia comes up of, name all four NBA franchises in California, because I simply forgot they fucking existed.  Sure, they’re on the rise again, but we’re reading a pivotal point in the timeline of the modern NBA, where it could really go either way, whether the Warriors make all the right moves and climb back up the standings of contenders, or they slowly begin their ride into the sunset as Steph winds his career down, while the Kings capitalize on draft picks and acquisitions like DeRozan.

And five years from now, who will be the contender, and who will be the forgotten fourth team in California?  I don’t know, but what I do know is that whomever is the shitty team then, is the team that I’ll definitely forget exists.

This is what we statistic enthusiasts like to call, a small sample size

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

The Athletic conducted an anonymous MLB player poll, and among the topics was a query of where would you like to play if . . .

if money, rosters were not a factor

That’s a pretty big fucking if, if you ask me, because when the day is over, the only thing that matters to baseball players, much less 98% of professional athletes, is money.

But anyway, a whopping overwhelming majority of responders to the survey, said that they would want to join the Atlanta Braves, in a hypothetical world where money and rosters were not a factor.  Obviously, I say such with dripping sarcasm in case it’s hard to pick it out in soulless text, because only 86 total players responded to the survey and just 12.7% of players said that they would want to play for the Braves, which in doing the math, is just but 10.922 players who said that they would want to play for the Braves in a magical hypothetical world where money (and rosters) were not a factor.

All the same, that 12.7% was higher than all other teams in the league, so obviously the Braves who aren’t getting many wins on the field these days, is taking any W’s they can get anywhere else in the stratosphere, including a meaningless survey talking about fantasy realities.  Even if it is basically the mother of small sample sizes, which is a phrase that is often thrown around in the sports analytical community, like when a pitcher goes 5-0 to start the season and people start anointing them the Cy Young Award winner for the season.

That being said, I don’t buy it for two seconds that if the entire league were to be mandatorily surveyed, that the Braves would come out on top.  There’s a reason in reality why the lion’s share of marquee talents have gone to the Dodgers, Phillies, Yankees, Mets and anyone else who’s been shown to have a willingness to back up a Brinks truck to coveted free agents over the last few years, because when the day is over, money is a factor, often times the only factor, that determines where players in any sport, usually go.

The Braves are a notoriously cheap organization that is allergic to free agents, and the only ones who typically get the big bucks are homegrown talents that are often times seduced into signing early-big money deals that are often times well below the market value if they were to hang tight until free agency, preying on their youth, inexperience and promises of be rich now, instead of be fuck-you-rich later.

They’re an organization that has been historically funny with the money since Ted Turner ceded ownership to Liberty Media which reorganized to their very own Atlanta Braves corporation which clearly makes it way easier to hide their finances from prying eyes, and since this has been the case, the entire organization has prioritized fiscal goals over sport ones, ignoring the fact that nothing rakes in the big bucks than winning championships.

It’s a team that’s so drunk on their own Kool-Aid of tradition, lineage and history, that they’re handcuffed by their own doing to making any sort of change, or steps towards forward progress and trying new things.  It’s what makes them the mother of risk-averse, and they’re always convinced that the answer lies somewhere within the organization, as opposed to the idea that there just might be, some really talented players out there who exist in other organizations.

In the rare instances where players do consider variables like location, the City of Atlanta isn’t really the most appealing place to make a home of, unless you’re already born and bred country, and/or are guys at a stage of their lives where they want to actually think about things important to raising families, then maybe Atlanta, more importantly the bevy of suburbs north of the city like Alpharetta, Johns Creek and Milton where rich athletes tend to scurry up to, would be a positive.

But if I’m a younger cat like Trea Turner, Juan Soto, Mike Clevenger or Adley Rutschman, wanting a little bit of life in the city, I don’t think Atlanta would be really that appealing.

And the reality is that the Braves are a team that are so caught up in money and roster, that there’s no way any upper-tier talents that are on the edge of possibly making a move, would realistically consider the Braves, over organizations that are committed to winning and willing to open wallets, doors and opportunities, because lord knows we’ve seen in reality, just how many players have squeezed their way onto the Dodgers and Phillies over the last few years, like an Indian or Japanese subway car, and teams like that, always make things work, versus throwing in the towel at the 7th hour and saying we can’t compete.

Either way, this was a cute little sample size scenario that clearly triggered me into vomiting out a bunch of words of the disdain that can only come from a fan of the team, about how the Braves realistically couldn’t be the organization that randomly anonymous players in the aether would actually want to play for, on a grander scale.

Not a fuckin’ chance.

There are poor teams, teams that spend, and The Braves Way™

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I was thinking one morning before I started making breakfast for the kids, about how the Braves had lost yet another game to the lowly Nationals, while the Phillies had won another game, adding one more game in the standings over Atlanta.  There’s no shortage of shady remarks I could spout, that only come from the type of fan who loves a team to where they have absolutely nothing but snarky vitriol for them, but instead, I actually had what I thought was a great visual representation of how I felt the Braves operated in the MLB landscape.

There’s a scene in the Game of Thrones television show, where Littlefinger smugly tries to educate Cersei Lannister that knowledge is power, only for her to immediately command her guards to grab him and slit his throat, before calling them off, and retorting that power is power.  Littlefinger is an arrogant smarmy fuck throughout the series, and it’s always a treat to see someone put him in his place, because it unfortunately does not happen that often.

The Braves are Littlefinger.  They operate in this insulated bubble where they think they’re smarter than all the other teams in Major League Baseball, and are quick to congratulate themselves on irrelevant accolades such as profit, revenue and all things that pertain to how much money they make from all the schmucks who throw money at them.  The unspoken part is concurrently how little they re-invest back into the team itself, that ultimately is the product that is meant to generate all that currency in some shape or form.

They are always convinced that the organization has all the parts they need in order to contend for a World Series, despite the fact that they only have the one from 2021 that was the mother of hot streak luck but then again what World Series winning squad isn’t the same?

The Braves are tremendously risk-averse to the point where they basically take no risks at all, mainly in the arena of paying a free agent or trading some prospects for a sure-thing good player, and year after year, their biggest weakness is exposed, and they get bounced from the playoffs in the NLDS.

Meanwhile, all the other contenders in baseball are Cersei and her guards, who represent teams that have their own intelligence in their own rights, but are either less risk averse, or are willing to open up their copiously overflowing wallets because baseball is a massively fucking profitable business venture, or worse off for the Braves, both.

Non-fans of teams like the Dodgers, Yankees and Phillies are quick to criticize how much money that these teams are spending on free agents and contract extensions, but the proof is in the pudding; all of them are at the top of the standings currently, and are leaps and bounds in the best positions to reach the World Series.

Sometimes you have to just stop trying to outsmart everyone, because when everyone is playing chess at the same time, you just have to brute force and fuck everyone else with some money and demonstrate that power is power.

As much as I criticize the Braves, the truth of the matter is that they are a great organization.  General manager Alex Anthopolous is a sharp guy who has lucked into some really fruitful moves that didn’t really sound impressive on paper, but paid out in dividends when they worked out, but it’s obvious that even he’s working with his hands partially tied behind his back, from the stingy purse strings closing the wallet that he’s denied access to.

With the knowledge that the team does have, they’re competent at fielding a team that’s routinely good enough to make the playoffs, especially now that there are two wild cards, but they constantly run out of gas and/or have their weaknesses exposed, and crash out at their routinely low ceiling.

But imagine just how great the Braves could routinely become if they just stopped being so fucking Braves-ey and sobered up from the bullshit The Braves Way™ Koolaid they remain so drunk on.  As soon as Spencer Strider went down for the year, pick up Trevor Bauer for the peanuts he’s asking for just for a chance to pitch in MLB.  As soon as Ronald Acuña went down for the year, pick up the fucking phone and start making some calls, and not assume that an outfield of Jarred Kelenic and Adam Duvall at the corners could cut it.  If the team had Bauer, then Schwellenbach or Waldrep could become a valuable trade chip to get someone useful now.

Fire someone; on any other team in any other sport, a slump like the one the Braves are going through usually results in someone getting fired, regardless of the obvious fact that it’s out of their control that the players aren’t playing well.  If the team doesn’t want to axe Brian Snitker, then fire Kevin Seltzer, the hitting coach.  Strong arm Chipper Jones to be the interim hitting coach that fans have wanted to see the hitting savant become since the second he retired from the game.

Stop being so afraid of fucking rentals.  Stop being so fucking cheap.  Stop believing The Braves Way™ is the only way, because rest assured, it is not.  No matter how much I’d prefer power to be power over knowledge, at the very end of the day, baseball, much less any sport, is a crapshoot, once playoffs begin.  But if I’m a betting man, the teams that employ more power, tend to be the ones primed to be standing once the postseason begins, and with the way things are now, the Braves and all their Littlefinger knowledge sure as fuck don’t seem primed for anything other than an even earlier postseason exit, in the wild card series; if they even make it at all.

It’s fun watching all the non-sport fan normies get up in arms over Caitlin Clark

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

It’s safe to say that I’ve been watching sports for a pretty long time.  My fandoms ebb and flow, and at various times it’s safe to say that it fluctuates on what sport I am favoriting the most, but when it comes down to it, I have spent an inordinate amount of time in my life watching sports.  Baseball, basketball, football and even a little bit of soccer and hockey, I’ve watched enough sports in my life to generally know what I’m talking about, as well as to have seen some things, that only other sports fans of an extended duration really know what I’m talking about.

If there’s one thing that’s been pretty consistent throughout the history of sports, is that whenever a hotshot player arrives at a new level of competition, there’s usually a degree of testing that they go through and endure, be it from their opponents, peers, rivals and even their own teammates, since peers, rivals and teammates aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive.

When Michael Jordan, Peyton Manning and Derek Jeter were drafted and reported to duty in their early years, all of them went through a period of time where they were physically and mentally tested by everyone.  In practices, scrimmages or spring trainings, their presence was a threat to veterans on their own teams, and ain’t nobody want to lose their job to any young guns whose ears are still wet from the showers.

Against opponents, they were bullied, fouled, tackled, cheap shot and went to verbal warfare from their opponents, who wanted to see if they could exert some power of intimidation or get inside their heads and throw them off their games.

And they would go through these types of rituals and experiences numerous times throughout their early years, until they earned the general respect of those around them, to which the behaviors would taper off mostly, unless they were weak-willed and demonstrated that they could be rattled.

In other words, everything that Caitlin Clark has been going through since the start of the WNBA season, with the hard fouls, the shit talking, the snipes from opponents in the media; this is not racism, this is not jealousy, this is not any form of discrimination.  This is normal, this is ordinary, this is nothing that professional athletes in any sport of any gender have not had to endure themselves at early parts of their careers.

But let’s not tell that to the legions of media and overnight women’s basketball fans who have never been sports fans in their lives until Caitlin Clark had ignited their imaginations, and are up in arms over the supposed rough treatment that she’s getting in the WNBA.  It’s partially their fault that they’re so blind to it, because it really hasn’t been since Caitlin Clark that this many people have been interested in the WNBA at all, and for everyone who is now claiming to be fans of women’s hoops, where they fuck were they when Lisa Leslie and Rebecca Lobo were launching the entire league, and when Britney Griner and Sabrina Ionescu were leading the quiet charge of the current generation?

Caitlin Clark is undoubtedly the most important player the league has come across in a long time, and this generalization is not lost on all the other girls in the league who have had to deal with the ridicule and general disrespect people have had for the WNBA in all the years prior to the arrival of Clark.  It’s natural for them to want to welcome the rookie with some tough love, and size up the nuclear hot shot who’s being unofficially hailed as the flagbearer for the entire gender’s sport, because if she demonstrates any weaknesses, then perhaps she’s not the right person for the job.

The hard fouls and the criticism have nothing to do with racism, and nothing to do with any general discrimination.  There may be some jealousy involved, but I can’t blame anyone for being jealous at least a little bit, considering the league has been around for over 20 years, and it wasn’t until Caitlin Clark that people have been taking notice.

And if Caitlin Clark endures the season with a modicum of grace, respect, and an attitude of shut up and play ball, she’s going to be just fine, and the rest of the league will take their foot off the gas at trying to break her for the sake of breaking her, and entrust her with the hope that she can help bring growth and positive change to the league and sport as a whole.

And as for all the normies, welcome to sports.  This is nothing out of the ordinary.