Tag: mlb

On the precipice of history: the 2024 Chicago White Sox

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Ordinarily, I would think I would be committing the ultimate jinx by writing this, and tempting the tides of fate into absolutely feeling the utmost need to punish me for my attempt at clairvoyance.  But I am doing so because I’m about to skip town for the next week, and when the historic inevitably occurs, I won’t really be in a position to be able to take the time to write about it, and I feel that this is one of those things best brogged about as close to its drop date, rather than being something having to be written in retrospect, like the unfortunate majority of the posts I write these days.

And let’s be real here, in order for the White Sox to avoid becoming the worst team in MLB history, they have to go 7-1 in their remaining games, and at the precise time I’m writing this, they’re down 4-1 to the Padres to which if the score holds, puts them at loss #119, tying the American League record for worst team in AL history, and one loss away from tying the 1962 Mets for the worst team in baseball history, before they’ll have several shots to futilely avoid becoming the de facto worst team in baseball history.

Yeah, it would take a legitimate act of god at this point for the White Sox to avoid making history at this point.  And if it were to actually happen, then I’d have received all the validation in the world that I needed to know that I am a supreme being that has actual influence on fates of the world.

But yes, this is a post to talk about and preemptively congratulate the 2024 Chicago White Sox, for becoming the worst team in Major League Baseball history.  Full stop, ever.  Not in this generation, this century, or some other made-up record,* we’re talking about: baseball is invented.  Period.  Worst team in history is the 2024 Chicago White Sox.  Period.

*oh and there’s a lot of this bullshit going around lately, like Elly de la Cruz becoming the youngest player to join the “25HR/65SB Club,” Bobby Witt Jr. being the newest member of the “30HR/30SB/10Triple Club” and any time Shohei Ohtani does anything, he’s the “only” member of the 51HR/51SB Club and you can hear the ancient Oriental gong ring when anyone talks about him

Seeing as how the Braves are slowly dying a truly slow and miserable bleed-out, and have fallen into a position of outside-looking-in as far as Wild Card positioning goes, the White Sox have actually been the thing that I’ve actually been tracking and paying attention to as an alternative.  And I have to say that it’s been really refreshing, from the standpoint of hoping for an outcome, and getting it with tremendous regularity; whereas the Braves inept offense keeps making them lose, much to my disappointment, I could always count on checking the scores and seeing the White Sox take L after L after L each night, as they keep on chugging to immortality.

It’s almost like being a kid again in 1996, watching the NBA box scores every morning and seeing the Chicago Bulls notch another W, en route to their historic 72-win season, and it seems fitting that it’s another Chicago sports franchise, also owned by Jerry Reinsdorf, that’s trouping their way towards a historic season, even if it’s not the side of history that a franchise would really want to be on. 

It’s still cool and incredible from a fan of history perspective, and even better that I have no real stake in it, other than the fact that White Sox fans really tore into me after I tore into their shitty ballpark in my sports brogging days, so I’ve always had a negative lean in my perception of the Chicago White Sox.

Bahaha, a little bit of live brogging here, I checked the Padres/Sox score just now to make sure that the Sox were still on their way to #119, and I was frightened to see that the Sox had gotten on the board and it was not only 4-2 Padres, but the White Sox had the bases loaded with just one out; a scenario where scoring a run(s) is a positive probability, and nothing short of two strikeouts or a double play is going to prevent that from happening . . . and then Dominic Fletcher promptly grounds into a double play and the Padres are now three outs away from the W, and the Sox are three outs away from tying the worst record in AL history.

But yeah, it’s still incredible to actually be able to witness like real history happening in sport, even if it’s as ironic as crowning a new worst team in history.  It’s not some fake record that the dorks at Elias come up with on a daily basis like most hits on a Thursday evening game with a humidity under 40% with Laz Diaz as home plate umpire after he ate Burger King for lunch, but a solid, concrete historical mark that actually was on a pedestal of being a record that might not be perceived to be possible to break.

I mean, it really is difficult to be this bad; there’s an adage in baseball that every team will win 60 games and lose 60 games every season, and it’s the other 42 games in which a team either becomes a championship caliber squad, or a team tanking on purpose to get optimal draft positioning.  The 2024 White Sox not only won’t get to 60 wins, it’s a very solid possibility that they might not even reach 40.

There was this one statistic I saw a little while ago about how the AL Central has four out of the five teams solidly above .500, but solely on account of the White Sox anchoring them down, the division as a whole is still under .500.  And the hits just keep on coming and coming as far as all the statistical anomalies that have bubbled up about just how bad the White Sox are, and as the kids say these day, I am here for them, all of them.

Like I said, ordinarily I wouldn’t dare tempt fate and write something like this before it happens, but math is a game of probabilities, and a .234 team miraculously going 7-1 down the stretch to avoid becoming the worst team in history isn’t a bet that I would take, and contrarily, in spite of my general phobia against sports betting, I would actually feel comfortable betting my house that the White Sox are going to fulfill their destiny in becoming the worst team in baseball history. 

It’s just a matter of when it’s going to happen, because they still have one more game against the playoff-hopeful Padres, three against the awful Angels who are still 29 wins better than the Sox while simultaneously being 31 games under .500, and then they close out their season with the Detroit Tigers who are very much in the thick of the Wild Card field and will more than likely still be fighting for their playoff lives next week.

But the odds are that it’s going to happen while I’m out of town and away from the keys, so as out of character it would be for me to commemorate before it happens, I just wanted to give a hearty congratulatory shoutout to the 2024 Chicago White Sox, for becoming the worst team in Major League Baseball history.  Y’all deserve it.

EDIT: Unsurprisingly, the Sox would make me sweat, winning 2/3 from the Angels and relying on the still then-unclinched Tigers to actually exert effort to get #121, before dropping the final two games to the Sox, allowing them to finish out the season with “just” 121 losses, one more than the 1962 Mets.  But like the wise Dom Toretto once paraphrased, it doesn’t matter if you lose by an inch or a mile, losing’s losing.

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.

MLB’s Japanese Player Fetish

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

This has been a topic that I’ve had on my list of things that I wanted to write about, that I just haven’t really been able to bring to fruition.  Either I burn myself out on writing about high school tryhards applying to every school under the sun, or I just don’t feel like I have sufficient time to write about it, but it’s definitely a topic that I feel like I could go off about, but for whatever reason, I just haven’t had the chance to do so until now.

But it’s been something that’s been brewing over the last few years, and this year it’s definitely come to a boiling point about just how cringey MLB has become when it comes to their obvious opinion and feelings when it comes to Japanese players.

Sure, Shohei Ohtani is an incredible specimen of a baseball player, and I do think there is legitimate argument that we might be able to call him the best player of all time (for this generation), and that he’s more impressive than Babe Ruth, Hank Aaron, Albert Pujols, combined.  Statistically he does bring a lot to the table, but one thing that he does not bring to the table that MLB insists that he does, is the fact that he is, Japanese.

His ethnicity has nothing to add to any argument over his place in baseball history, but MLB is so rapid quick when it comes to injecting it into the narrative, and it’s not like those who follow baseball aren’t already aware that Japan is the de facto #1 country in the world when it comes to baseball talent, seeing as how they’ve won the vast majority of Olympic golds and World Baseball Classics when it comes to international competition over the last 20 years.

But MLB does it anyway, because for whatever reason, over the last 20 years, they’ve become an organization that is definitely going through a serious weeaboo phase in their history where Japan = #1, and everything, including their own assets are inferior in comparison.  Ohtani is definitely a worthy blue pill to cause this phenomenon within the organization, but the ensuing trickle-down effect when it comes to the yearly migration of a handful of Japanese players and the hype and fanfare they get when they come to America is downright cringey.

Yoshinobu Yamamoto making more money than Roger Clemens and Nolan Ryan ever made in their careers, combined is an egregious overpay and fellating sign of kowtowing to their Japanese overlords. 

Everytime Shota Imanaga throws another scoreless inning, bean counters for Elias and MLB blow their loads at being able to throw out another tweet about how low his ERA is, seemingly completely ignorant to how the league will adjust on him harder than the stock market once the scouting report on him is complete. 

Seiya Suzuki is by-and-large a perfectly good, above average player, but the way MLB expounds his occasional positive contributions is like they’re talking about the second-coming of Ichiro.

The season is barely a quarter of the way through, and there’s already talks about the next Japanese overlord, some guy named Munetaka Murakami.  But few outside of the diehard fans of their respective teams are bothering to get excited over any prospects on their own farms.

The point of all this is that it’s extremely clear that MLB has a pretty raging boner fetish on Japanese players right now.  I can practically hear the gong and racist Asian theme in my head every time I see an MLB channel or MLB beat writer lose their shit over something a Japanese player does, as if their mythical powers from the magic Orient were why Yamamoto had a 5.2 inning outing where he gave up no runs, while Max Fried throws a complete game shutout in the middle of an era where complete games are becoming as scarce as no-hitters.

Much has been made of Ohtani’s 2024, and how because he doesn’t have to worry about doing any pitching at all, he can focus on being the demigod of hitting he’s believed to be.  Every single home run he hits, is answered by some god-awful MLB tweet fellating him for doing what he’s going be paid $700 million dollars to do; meanwhile, Marcell Ozuna of the Braves is leading the majors in home runs currently, when just a year ago, fans were clamoring for him to be cut from the team and eat the salary hit, and MLB barely takes notice when he maintains his home run lead.

It’s just funny how an entire organization like Major League Baseball becomes no different than myself and lots of my nerdier friends in my life have been at certain points of their lives, when it comes to going through a Japan #1 phase.  I look back at that time of my life with rolled eyes and a little bit of embarrassment, but the difference is that I’m not a publicly known, forward facing, billions of dollars organization, looking like a collective cringey weeb in front of the rest of the world, and I look forward to the day when MLB grows out of it, because it’s really fucking embarrassing watching them spooge all over themselves over Japanese players.

Landon Knack won the MLB Seoul Series

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

lol’d heartily: while in Seoul, Korea, Los Angeles Dodgers caught on camera marveling and drooling over Korean actress Jeon Jong-Seo throwing out the ceremonial first pitch during an exhibition game between the Dodgers and the KBO’s Kiwoom Heroes

Honestly, I didn’t think I’d get as much enjoyment out of the MLB Seoul Series as I did.  I’m so far removed from my general fandom of baseball these days, and I’m so cynical and jaded, that I figured this was all just some typical cash grab by MLB to try and dupe and hoover money out of the Korean market, and that it’s always kind of weird, rhythm-wise when MLB teams play regular season games in Asia during Spring Training, and then come back to wrap up Spring Training before re-embarking on the regular season for 160 more games.

But then seeing highlights of Freddie Freeman acquainting himself to the Korean fans with a blast of a home run, and seeing the Padres’ Kim Ha-Seong coming home and blasting two dingers of his own against the LG Twins were pleasant highlights.  And then there was the gleefully enjoyable wake-up call on the final day of the trip, waking up and checking the score to the Padres/Dodgers game to find out that the Dodgers’ $325M acquisition Yoshinobu Yamamoto, got absolutely blown up, lasted one inning, and took a monumental L to start his MLB career.

I mean seriously, there isn’t a better narrative than a Japanese pitcher getting absolutely shelled while pitching in Korea.  I’m sure he will settle down and have a very fine season and possibly career in America, but I’ll be damned if I didn’t smile like the Grinch upon seeing his woefully embarrassing line for the morning, and knowing he’ll be leaving the motherland with little else than a big-ass L.

However, the best story of the trip, was undoubtedly the hilarious spectacle of the entire Dodgers roster going gonzo once they laid their eyes on Korean actress Jeon Jong-Seo, taking the hill for the ceremonial first pitch. I mean, I can’t blame all these baseball bros, for most of them, they’ve probably never seen a proper Korean celebrity like Jeon, with her perfect face,* slim figure, legs that go to the moon, and for a Korean girl, she got a little bit of booty.*  

*most likely surgically enhanced

And then she proceeds to hit the target pretty impressively, considering she was kicking off on the wrong side of the rubber.  But it didn’t stop pretty much everyone in the Dodgers’ dugout, most visibly Ryan Brazier, Gavin Stone, Gavin Lux from letting their jaws hang to the ground.  And hilariously extra were Tyler Glasnow, Chris Taylor and surprisingly, the happily married Freddie Freeman from staring a little too hard at Jeon.

But to me, the best part about the whole thing is that if there was going to be a singular winner of the entire Seoul Series, it’s definitely #96 for the Dodgers, Landon Knack, who was the guy who caught the first pitch from Jeon, but also got to take his photograph with her afterward.  Without question, Knack is envy of the entire Dodgers locker room, getting to be the guy that got to get up close with the Korean bombshell, and even put a hand on her, during the photograph.

The thing with ceremonial first pitches is that with 162 games plus exhibitions and playoffs for some, there are a whole lot of ceremonial first pitches in a season.  Every now and then, it’s going to be a legitimate A-lister or powerful figure, but for the most part, it’s going to be like the local Wells Fargo regional office’s VP’s son type of guys throwing out the lion’s share of ceremonial first pitches throughout a year.

The rule of thumb typically is that the bigger the celebrity or figure it is throwing out the first pitch, the higher caliber of player will be behind home plate waiting to catch the ball.  When George W. Bush threw out the first pitch, Ivan Rodriguez caught him.  When Pedro Martinez returned to Boston after being inducted into the Hall of Fame, David Ortiz caught him.  The list goes on and on, where depending on the level of celebrity, the higher the caliber of player is waiting to catch it.

And it’s clear that the Dodgers weren’t made aware of who was throwing out the ceremonial first pitch in their exhibition with the Kiwoom Heroes, because they sent a guy with the number 96 out to go catch.  Because the rule of thumb is that the higher and wonkier the number is in Spring Training, they’re younger minor league guys who are actively in a tryout phase with the team.  I actually had to Google the Dodgers’ 40-man roster to even find out who #96 was, and I still have no idea who Landon Knack really is.  His minor league numbers look promising, and I’m sure he’ll have a new number at some point this year, but the truth is that he was the low-man on the totem pole, thrust out there to do grunt work.

Clearly the mainstays of the Dodgers couldn’t be bothered to go out and catch a ceremonial first pitch, so they sent Landon Knack to go do it, and gee golly I’m sure Knack couldn’t have been happier to do the duty when he saw Jeon Jong-Seo step onto the field and take the mound.  Without question, if any of the players knew who was throwing it, and what Jeon Jong-Seo looked like, we probably would’ve seen Tyler Glasnow or Chris Taylor fighting over who would get to catch.

Unsurprising, as soon as the Seoul Series was over, Knack was immediately cut and sent down to the minor leagues to start the year, because anyone wearing a number higher than 70 typically is, unless they’re one of the baseball edge lords that asks for a high number.  Regardless of if he gets called up or not, gets hurt or not, Landon Knack is definitely going to have a core memory from his brief trip to Korea.  And his teammates will always be green with envy when he inevitably makes his picture with Jeon Jong-Seo his phone’s lock screen, and gets to flash it around when he’s called back up to the majors.

Without question, Landon Knack definitely won the Seoul Series, and MLB players probably will remember this the next time they’re sent out to Korea for any exhibitions.

Finally, a sponsor patch I can get behind

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

See ya next time: Kansas City Royals announce a partnership with QT gas stations, including a sponsorship patch on all team jerseys

Sponsorship patches seemed inevitable in MLB, seeing as how sponsorships on jerseys have been pretty commonplace pretty much in every sport in every other country across the globe.  But America being ‘Murica, it was unsurprising that once they started coming to fruition, all the sponsors were all of these boring, homogenized, multi-million dollar entities that nobody has ever heard of, cared for or generated any sort of emotion other than ambivalence, indifference, or the need to make fun of them.

The New York Mets, of course, were one of the first ones to really mess things up by introducing a hilariously oversized patch that nobody is going to convince me probably didn’t mess up the performance of players, since they had this giant square of weighty fabric hanging off of their left sleeves, that they had to finally swallow their pride, admit my bad, and fix it.

Of course, the Atlanta Braves got into the action as well, seeing as how Braves Corporate™ loves money and will do absolutely literally anything if it meant pleasing shareholders or improving their portfolio.  And despite how amazing it would’ve been if it were something truly iconic to Atlanta like Coca-Cola, Delta, The Home Depot, or my personal favorite thing I would’ve marked out for, Waffle House, nope, had to be a boring-as-fuck bag of concrete Kwikrete instead.

But today, we have news of a partnership that truly makes me smile, from the satisfaction of it being a team I don’t dislike, a company I don’t dislike, and all of the positive associations I get from said company, and knowing two parties that I don’t dislike coming together to make business.  It’s like when you have two friends from separate circles meet, and they gel together well.

But the Kansas City Royals partnering up with QuikTrip is something that does bring me joy.  The Royals are one of those teams I can’t ever bring myself to dislike, and who could forget the 2014 and 2015 seasons when the Royals came close, and then succeeded on their redo.  They’ve always had players that I’ve generally liked* and they so rarely ever cross paths with the Braves, so there’s almost never any chance that I’d ever feel the need to root against them.

*except Melky Cabrera, that fat worthless fuck who went to the Royals after his putrid stint with the Braves, where he played the season at like 304 lbs. before losing a hundo when he joined the Royals and put up an MVP-type season

And then there’s QuikTrip, which actually has a lot of Georgia ties, with their food distribution centers, I have a lot of positive connotation when I think about them.  Often times with the cheap fuel, always open, decent food as far as gas station grub is concerned, and always with expedient and mostly friendly staff.  I often tend to favor a QT when given choices, and when I think of QT, I hold them in a positive regard.

So the Royals joining forces with QT, makes me pleased.  Especially, with them hilariously slapping a giant red and black QT logo onto the Royals jerseys which are a hard blue and white identity, which really begs the question on the importance of branding.   Like, if the name of the game is for the sponsor to really stand out, they couldn’t have picked a better team to partner up with than the Royals.  If they partnered with the Cardinals, Braves, or even the Diamondbacks, which are all markets that have QTs, their logo would blend in with all the other reds that those teams employ.

I don’t travel much anymore these days, and my baseball journeys are long past complete.  But I’d totally be down to go to Kansas City if they ever did a free Royals jersey giveaway night sponsored by QT, where they were giving away jerseys with the QT logo on them, because to my knowledge replica jerseys made by Nike/Fanatics don’t include sponsorships on them, and I sure as fuck wouldn’t want to buy any of the shitty replicas made by them these days anyway.

Either way, Royals + QT, and a bigass sponsorship patch on their blue-ass jerseys definitely piqued my interest, and I look forward to seeing Royals highlights throughout the upcoming season.  This is definitely my favorite sponsorship partnering there is in baseball, without any question.

This is why I don’t go to Braves games

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

The last time I went to a Braves game was in 2021.  The Yankees were visiting, and since mythical wife and her mother are both Yankee fans, an opportunity arose for the wifey and myself to go to a game.  I had tremendous apprehension being in such a gargantuan crowd in 2021, and the Yankees draw like gangbusters no matter where they go, but we still went, and unsurprisingly, the Braves lost.

Sure, they went on to win the World Series later in the season, but in the one and only game that I went to, the Braves would do what I’m conditioned to seeing them do whenever I see them in person: lose.

As part of trying to allow our au pair to try things out and experience the little things that makes ‘Murica America, I took her to a baseball game; regardless of if you’re a sports fan or not, the American pastime is something that should be experienced at least once.  Frankly, it wasn’t my idea since despite my distance from baseball fandom, I still want to see the Braves succeed and win baseball games, but mythical wife went ahead and bought tickets and insisted we go.

Considering the fact that the Braves were 90-game winners hosting the 60-win St. Louis Cardinals, it seemed like a good bet that the Braves might have some success on this game.  It was compounded by the fact that upon getting to the ballpark, seeing Spencer Strider starting the game, who is a legitimate candidate to win the NL Cy Young this year.  And of course, there’s Ronald Acuña, Jr. who is a very strong candidate to win the NL MVP this year, there was plenty of reason to be optimistic that maybe, just maybe, the Braves could deliver a win for my au pair to witness.

Naturally, in spite of the monumental favoring of the Braves, they would completely shit the bed and roll over and die, losing an abysmal contest 11-6, where the final score hardly tells the story of just how bad of a game it was for the Braves.

Spencer Strider would basically have his worst start of the season, pitching only 2.2 innings, while allowing six runs on six hits, with one of them being a titanic home run that happened before we even got to our seats, meaning it was 2-0 by the time we sat down.  He couldn’t find the strike zone, and for a guy whom Atlanta grew accustomed to seeing striking out 8-10 guys every start, it’s a miracle he even struck out five.

Ronald Acuña, Jr., despite being the likely MVP of the league was just as bad on this night, going hitless until the ninth inning where he finally connected on a meaningless single when the score was already 11-6.  He flew out, ground out, struck out and completing what I like to call the cycle of suck, ground into a double play with runners on base, effectively killing the one rally the team scraped together.  Him and Ozzie Albies were completely ineffective on the entire night, and it was quite surreal seeing the two of them basically being the rally killers, for whenever the team got going, they’d be the ones to snuff out any and all momentum built up by the others in the lineup.

Needless to say, when we bounced early in the seventh, it was quite humorous that no sooner did my feet touch the ground outside the gates is when Austin Riley connected on a home run, but by then, it was already too late.  I’d been to enough baseball games in my life to know the rhythm of a game like this was pointing towards an L.  It kind of sucks that the Braves would flop so badly in my au pair’s first ever experience at a baseball game, but it was still a pleasant time where she got to see the sights, eat ballpark trash food, and she did get to see a bunch of homeruns; even if the majority of them were hit by the opposing team.

All the same, this is why I don’t go to Braves games anymore, because now the Braves have lost three in a row, run the risk of getting swept by the strangely woeful Cardinals, and probably begin a September swoon which will lead to their inevitable yearly NLDS collapse, because baby luck is long past gone now, and regardless of how many regular season games and division championships they win, it’s about time for the Braves to stick to the status quo and remain being the Braves.