Tag: ballparks

Didn’t see this coming

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Not one bit.  Completely blindsided.  Never thought it possible.

Racist Park Great White Flight Field SunTrust Park, the future home of the Atlanta Braves, promised that it would not cost Cobb County residents anything (publicly) out of their pockets.  However, Cobb County has blown through its public parks budget, solely on the construction of SunTrust Park; and if Cobb residents actually want actual, useable, public parkland, a tax increase will be needed.

Yup, never would have imagined that SunTrust Park would actually fail to deliver on the promise that their construction wasn’t going to cost Cobb residents anything.  Who would’ve guessed this?

I mean, anyone who believed that SunTrust Park wasn’t going to cost residents anything also probably believe in the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny.  Sure, it’s easy to say that the funding is going to come solely from hotel taxes and other means, but wherever there is a general lack of transparency, the public is going to suffer, whether they realize it or not.  Be it through some sort of tax break that inhibits the cash flow in some sort of public function, or this hilarious publicly revealed snafu of the county blowing through its parks budget and now needing to raise taxes to fulfill its financial obligation, stadium construction is pretty much one of the worst rackets ever.

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Shocker

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In short: Atlanta Braves draw lowest attendance since 1990, at barely over 2,000,000 “paying” fans.  This is 13th in the National League, and 24th overall in Major League Baseball.

Who would have thunk that publicly giving up on the team, giving up on the city, and giving up on the ballpark would have such adverse effects on attendance?  Man, there’s no way anyone could have seen this coming.  Totally blindsiding.

Being Atlanta Business Chronicle, this article itself will inevitably end up behind the paywall, but there’s really not much that needs summarizing.  The Braves sucked in 2015, and it’s abundantly reflected in the overall attendance at Turner Field.  Granted, the Braves in general are always typically middle-of-the-pack when it comes to attendance, placing 8-9 in the National League on average throughout the last decade or so, but to drop to nearly last is still saying something about alienating even the most fickle of bandwagon Atlanta sports fans.

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Shocker of the century

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No, this is not a case of “lazy Danny duplicating a post and forgetting to change the title of the post,” it’s just that really, it’s just funny to me that I had the opportunity to introduce a post like this, because of two days worth of completely obvious and ‘yeah, no shit,” news that tickled my fancy.

Granted, this link is a portal link to a story that’s behind a paywall, but really, the headline is all anyone needs to see, and I can take it from there as it comes to providing context.

But today’s shocker of the century: The Atlanta Braves post 2nd largest drop in both attendance and television ratings.

Imagine that, who would’ve thunk that liquidating the entire team right before the season started, would have any repercussions to fan approval and fan desire to support the team?

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Photos: Citi Field, New York

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

#27 of Major League Baseball ballparks, I made my way through Flushing, New York to Meet the Mets.

Unfortunately, my ballparks site is down for the indefinite future, but honestly, I’ve been giving a lot of thought to perhaps switching it up to a blog format, because when it comes down to it, I probably could talk about ballparks enough to warrant making it such.

Anyway, Citi Field is a pretty nice ballpark in itself, very much attune to the New York state of mind, with its exorbitant luxury sponsors, exclusive clubs all over the place, and walking through areas that stop and make you wonder if you’re headed to a casino, or the bleachers.

I would write more about the place, but it’s something that I’ll eventually get to when my ballparks site is up and running again, hopefully someday.

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Ballparks: Yankee Stadium

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It’s only taken seven years to make it to one of New York’s ballparks, but my 2014 travels concluded in the Bronx, where I got to make my first-ever visit to Yankee Stadium.

It wasn’t the best park I’ve been to, but it was also far from being the worst park I’ve been to.  Only one way to find out what the hell I’m talking about.

Thoughts on New York

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Over the weekend, I went up to New York. The reason for the trip was to visit Yankee Stadium, and take it off of my list of MLB ballparks, which I can happily say that such was mission accomplished. Otherwise, the rest of the trip was more or less a whirlwind of cabs, trains, booze, chicken fingers and cash flying out of windows.

I guess it could be said that I had a pretty New York experience, and I have no regrets about anything. I look back at the weekend fondly, and naturally I’m writing about it now, which says something too.

As for Yankee Stadium, I’ll get more in depth of what I thought about the place as a whole when I write about it for my ballparks page, but when my friend and I had planned the dates out for this trip, we didn’t even think for a second about the fact that this was the start of Derek Jeter’s final homestand. Not that either of us are remotely close to being Yankee fans, I have to admit that is something cool about having been there for a little bit of what people are perceiving as somewhat historic. Needless to say, tickets were pricey and the crowds were massive, for what essentially were games between two non-contenders, and I thought the vaunted Yankee Stadium was pretty okay, overall.

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Photos: Yankee Stadium, the Bronx, New York

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[2020 note]: the following is lost content that I never uploaded even back in 2014 when the brog was still up and running; that’s how much of a whirlwind things were between Dragon*Con and juggling between the ballpark site and other content.

Anyway, this is the photo dump of Yankee Stadium, that I realized never got uploaded whilst I was going through all old content, and looking back at these pictures takes me back to a time where I still really loved baseball, and this was one of those weekends of fate in which I got to score some bonus time with the girl that would eventually become mythical gf, wife and then babymama.

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