Tag: sports

Can’t even think of a good post title to express how satisfying it is that the Dodgers got swept out of the playoffs

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

ESPN: Milwaukee Brewers sweep Dodgers in the NLCS, advance to the World Series

First things first, congratulations to the Milwaukee Brewers for breaking through the glass ceiling and advancing to the World Series.  I would be totally fine with a Brewers championship, and at this point I don’t even care who wins the World Series between them, the Rays and the Indians Guardians who are still duking it out in the ALCS.  Because when the day is over, if I couldn’t have the Braves, then it really didn’t matter who won—as long as it wasn’t the Dodgers.

And no disrespect to the Brewers or the Rays or the Guardians, but this post really isn’t about them, it’s about the Dodgers, and the sheer power of satisfaction that is derived from hate, namely like most people who don’t reside in Southern California, the general dislike for the Dodgers; and the gargantuan horde of their fairweather soft-ass worst in baseball, fans with air quotes.

I’ve thought about it a lot over the last few weeks of playoff baseball, and yeah I don’t really care much for the Dodgers, and I don’t want to see them win and succeed and secure the vaunted three-peat that has eluded even the most dominant teams in baseball history.  But the thing is, I don’t really dislike a lot of their players, like should be the case whenever anyone says they don’t like a particular team.  Obviously it starts with Freddie Freeman, a guy I’m incapable of disliking, and then there’s Mookie Betts, who always comes off as charming, chill and an all-around cool guy.

Despite the fact that hater culture is supposed to dislike guys making insane amounts of money, I don’t harbor any genuine ill-will to Shohei Ohtani; yes he has changed the deferred money game with his $700 million deal, and he might have a poorly-hidden gambling problem, but he does play the game with an air of integrity and brings Japanese courtesy into the spotlight, that he remains a pretty likeable guy.  Even Yoshinobu Yamamoto, whom I was very skeptical of for receiving a ridiculous $300M deal before even throwing an MLB pitch has turned into one of the most talented pitchers in the game, and a complete Iceman once the playoffs come around.  In hindsight, he’s not only been absolutely worth every penny he’s been paid, he’s erring on the side of underpaid, considering just how good, how reliable and how many results he’s delivered.

I do have not nice feelings about guys like Blake Balakey Snell because I think he’s a money-grubbing spinster who only wants to play when it’s most critical, and I get this really negative vibe from Tarik Skubal and I hope he bounces in free agency although the Dodgers are always in play due to their penchant for creative contract structures.  And Max Muncy, I can’t stand, because as decent of a player he objectively is, on a team like the Dodgers, he’s still a fourth-tier contributor, but runs his mouth and acts bigger than he actually is and I like to see him fail, almost as satisfying as it was to see Snell take the L in the critical game 3 that was their true do-or-die night.

But the absolute most satisfying thing about the Dodgers not just losing to the Brewers, but getting swept, eliminated and sent packing to Cancun, is the sheer fact that all of their insufferable, shitty, fairweather fans, no longer have any reason to be happy anymore, and much like the team they act like they follow, their season is over.

Seriously, I’ve encountered fanbases in all variety of sports, and none of them are as bad as Dodgers fans.  I’m talking about Philadelphia sports fans, Yankee fans, Red Sox fans, Alabama fans, Miami Heat fans, San Francisco sports fans.  Awful, insufferable and terrible in their own ways, but none of them are bad as Dodgers fans. 

First, since most of them haven’t even been fans long enough to even remember who Clayton Kershaw is, much less Sandy Koufax or Fernando Valenzuela, they don’t actually know what it’s like to suffer the bad times of sports fandom and have no modicum of grit or toughness that comes from the passage of time of playing annual games of emotional attachment to our respective teams.  That said, they’re all soft, and have absolutely no ability to tolerate being in the crosshairs of all other sports fans, and resort to uncreative and weak retorts, often just going straight to personal attacking, which in the arena of talking shit on the internet is basically tantamount to waving a white flag.

They’re sore losers, and even more sore winners, and have a tendency to gloat and circle jerk at any of their successes, as if exploiting payroll policies as if they were playing baseball team management with a Game Genie attached to it.  They can’t handle any sort of criticism from fans of other bases, but their only real strength are their numbers that have the capability to overwhelm and flood out any shit talk that they can’t handle.

And much like the general vibe of Southern California living, they’re mostly comprised of flakey, douchey, attention-seeking, vapid, and under-sports-educated douche flakes.  The Algorithm feeding me clips of Dodgers fans reels and content felt like AI trolling, and I found myself getting so inundated by so much of their bullshit that I had to eventually start manually thumbs downing them so I could hopefully not see them any further.

Needless to say, this whole diatribe reinforces the notion that the vast majority of my general dislikes for certain sports teams, almost always stems from their fans, and the unfortunate fact that in this connected world with social media outlets, it’s nigh impossible to not be exposed to them in some fashion.  And over the last few years, with the rise of the Dodgers, their fans have absolutely launched themselves to the top of the mountain as being the absolute shittiest fans out there.

And seeing them all suffer, and knowing that their season with all their hopes and aspirations for the three-peat have all come to a brutal halt, is among the chief reasons why it’s so satisfying that the Dodgers lost.

I love that it came at a sweep, because few things in sport are more humiliating than getting swept.  Losing game 1 probably made all their shitty fans cry luck, fluke, we can still even things up tomorrow.  Losing game 2 brought more anxiety and concern, but there have been many examples in history where a team dropped 0-2 and still come back to win a best of seven.  But game 3 was the best, because it was started by Balakey Snell, he who played hardball with the league and got a fat 5/$182M deal with the Dodgers with their usual deferred payment plan bullshit, rode the train to a World Series last year, and pulled his usual loaf-in-first-half, start-trying-in-second-half this season, and still got knocked around in both of his starts in this year’s playoffs, when he was presumably in try-mode.

But as most baseball/sports fans know, falling 0-3 is basically the kiss of death, seeing as how outside of hockey, only one team in sports history has ever overcome 0-3, being the 2004 Boston Red Sox that Dodgers manager Dave Roberts also happened to play a pivotal role in.  Although probably nothing in sports history would be worse than the Dodgers overcoming an 0-3 deficit, math was most definitely not on their side.

I predicted that either the Brewers would win in a blowout, or the Dodgers would win game 4 by a slim margin, because they had to have been in full blown panic mode, all hands would be on deck, and survival was all that mattered, and in cases like that, either their gambles pay off, or they blow up in their faces, with no middle ground.

When Ohtani finally broke out of his annual playoff slump, with a grandiose three-run home run, I thought to myself, oh boy, here’s the catalyst for the improbably and inevitably insufferable comeback for the ages, but the Milwaukee Brewers of all teams in history, this 2026 edition, seemed to shrug it off, and began chipping away at the deficit, and by the time the 9th inning rolled around, had hung six unanswered runs, and were on the precipice of advancing to the World Series, but more importantly, sweeping the disliked Dodgers out of the playoffs and effectively saving the game of baseball, at least before it will more than likely go on strike after this season.

And the best part about the whole thing, is that this all happened at Dodger Stadium, and all their shitty fairweather fans who were mostly there because it’s just the cool thing to do in LA and don’t actually know shit about baseball, got to see this epic meltdown of expensive proportions, and got to take part in being on the wrong side of the decision that every sports fans that isn’t impressed by the Dodgers, was rooting for to happen.

Honestly, I think I can comfortably say that the Dodgers losing and getting bounced from the playoffs brings me more joy than if the Braves had won the NLCS and gone to the World Series.  That’s the power of sports hate.

At this point, I don’t even care who wins the World Series.  I think it would be a gasser, if the Brewers who swept and have to wait, lose all their momentum and go ice cold, while the ALCS maybe goes all seven games, and the 85-win Guardians emerge, and riding momentum, topples the Brew Crew, and we have another season of a shitty weak squad getting hot at the right moment, Cleveland’s sports curse is snapped, and then baseball goes on strike.  But as long as it’s not going to be the Dodgers hoisting the Commissioner’s trophy at the end, it’s all going to be good.

Cool Runnings – the Korean Remix

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

The Korea Herald: South Korea posts third-best time in the Men’s 4×100 meter relay race at the Asian Games, but are ruled disqualified for no clear reason; upon official appeal is Korea correctly awarded the bronze medals

Man, when I came across this story, and I saw the photograph of the Korean relay team in question, I had to throw my head back and laugh heartily at the obviousness of this entire piss-poor optics scenario.  As much as western people love to extol how great certain Asian cultures are, the sad fact of the matter is that a whole lot of Asia is still racist as fuck, especially towards black people.

Perhaps not to the hostile cruelty that of white people and generations of enslavement and torture, but even to this day, there’s a tremendous amount of general ignorance and xenophobia when it comes to those of black skin tones being in Asian countries, regardless of how legally allowed or birthright they might have.

The fact that the organizers of the Asian Games had no clear explanation of why South Korea was disqualified from the 4×100 meter is very obvious and doesn’t need one, because most people with brains can probably figure out the whole story, just by looking at the photograph of the relay team Korea had fielded for the event.

So let’s just get it out of the way, and drop the facts:

Biwesa Daniel Gassama (far left) is born of parents from the Democratic Republic of Congo who came to South Korea as refugees.  He was born in Korea, but that didn’t make him automatically a Korean citizen, he acquired his citizenship when his mother became officially naturalized in 2018.  He went to elementary, middle and high school in Korea and intends on serving out his mandatory two-year stint in the military as all Korean citizens do.

Joel Jin Nwamadi (far right) is Korean by birthright as since he has a Korean mother; dad is Nigerian.  His story is less complicated as one of his parents is Korean, and despite his obvious bi-racial appearance, Asian Games officials only need to see a names like “Nwamadi” and “Biwesa” and it makes them blush.

Obviously, by the rules, Korea had done nothing illegal, or brought in any ringers or expedited expats like France does in the World Cup, but that didn’t stop Asian Games organizers from freaking out at seeing two dudes with dark skin, and just preemptively ringing the bell for a DQ.

Naturally, there’s nothing about this whole scenario that isn’t sad, bothersome and doesn’t cheapen Korea’s success, but at the same time it doesn’t really seem that surprising, given the general propensity of Asian cultures to act embarrassingly when it comes to their inherent xenophobia.  I’m not saying it was in the least bit right or defending their actions, but as an Asian person who is pretty familiar with lots of Asian cultures, I just can’t say that I found this to be at all that surprising.

But hey, at least Korea was actually successful with their appeal and getting the decision corrected, because it would be a real travesty if these sprinters all went home empty handed, in spite of the concrete evidence of their third-place finishing time.  Always proud to hear of Koreans achieving success in anything, especially athletics.

This is basically like a lite-Korean version of Cool Runnings, when the Jamaican bobsled team qualified for advancement into the medal round, but were mysteriously disqualified, with some ambiguous excuse of not having enough competitive experience.  And when John Candy’s character Irv Blitzer confronted the IOC and called them out on their racism, they were reinstated with no real explanation or apology.  This really wasn’t that different of a situation, but it was two black guys instead of four, and instead of bobsleds, they were still track sprinters. 

And in the age of where what’s old can become new again, this would make for a pretty interesting re-make of Cool Runnings.  However, the reality still remains that for whatever reason, Disney doesn’t seem to acknowledge the existence of Korea or its culture, based on how out of the way they remain at avoiding creating anything at all inspired by Korean culture, so there’s probably a fat chance that this happens.  Probably better suited for one of Korea’s film bigwigs like CJ Entertainment to pickup instead, and it would probably end up a better production in their hands anyway.

We have exorcised the demons

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

MLB: Atlanta Braves defeat Philadelphia Phillies 6-2 in the decisive game 3 of the Wild Card Series, to advance to the NL Division Series

Well how ‘bout them apples?  With one win, the Braves exorcised numerous demons, from getting the Phillies monkey off their back, breaking the streak of Barves always get knocked out in the first round, as well another astute observations people have made leading up to the game, that the Barves always lose winner-take-all games.

Naturally, I had everything to do with this, seeing as how I haphazardly posted my requiem for the team in advance of the deciding game 3, with me genuinely, firmly believing that another elimination at the hands of the Phillies was all but inevitable.  Fate has a way of thinking that they have a sense of humor, and when it comes down to it, when I take a firm stance on something, I have to be proven wrong, regardless of if I’m inwardly pleased with the end result.  But my belief was clearly genuine and not artificially made up with the intention of tricking fate, because otherwise the Braves would have been the Barves last night, and lost.

That being said, I also realized that I needed to make a sacrifice in order to help the squad this year.  Back in 2021, I stated that I would buy a Dugout Mug, which I deemed to be the most useless product available in the entire free market, but then I also stated that should the Braves actually win the World Series, I would plunk down my own money and purchase one of these stupid pieces of shit, because sacrifice is necessary in order to hope to get something that I want. 

True to my word, when the Braves actually won the World Series, I plunked down $80 and got one.  It’s been used, maybe twice, because it’s not an ideal receptacle to drink from since it’s not really dishwasher safe because it’s fucking wood, and I have to imagine mixing wood with liquid too frequently, much less alcohol probably doesn’t help its longevity and if I paid $80 for this piece of shit, I may as well try to make it last, and be a reminder of the sacrifice I made to do my part in helping bring the World Series to Atlanta in 2021.

I could go ahead and do another Dugout Mug, but they literally have added no new merchandise in over five years, so I’m curious if they’re actually still in business and not just running some skeleton ghost site that doesn’t actually work, but I’ve decided that in the same vein of purchasing something stupid, is a waste of money and that nobody really asked for, I’ll go the record and declare that if the Braves go all the way this year, I will purchase these idiotic drink coasters, adorned with the box score diagram of key plays from the Braves’ 2021 playoff run.

I do feel that this is an adequate sacrifice to offer up to Fate, because my house already has a ton of coasters, because mythical wife grabs them up from all the various bars and places we’ve been to and they actually kind of are cool little souvenirs in their own right, but in most cases, they cost us no money, and here I am offering up a sacrifice that would eat into both my wallet, as well as consume space in the home where I have to fight tooth and nail in order to liberate a single inch from the audition of Hoarders: Buried Alive my fellow residents inflict upon our home.

It’s a lofty ask, seeing as how the Braves’ next opponents are MLB’s favorite team in history, the Los Angeles Dodgers, and seeing as how the Braves are not regarded enough to constantly get the woeful 2:30pm starts throughout the Wild Card series, it’ll be interesting to see what it’s like when the least regarded team in the playoffs is matched up against the most regarded team.

For the record, the Braves have gone 5-1 against the Dodgers throughout the season, along with a glorious sweep when they came to Atlanta, but the playoffs are a completely different beast, the team still has an anemic offense, and the Dodgers are simply a team constructed for championship caliber play.  Should the Braves manage to advance, they’d play either the Brewers or the Padres, and I would not get my hopes up too high against any team in the American League in spite of their generally unimpressive records, because the MLB playoffs are the ultimate crapshoot and it’s always a matter of what team gets hot and rides the momentum to the finish line.

That being said, my offer stands, if the Braves go all the way, I’ll plunk down $50 and get these dumb coasters, that I will resent existing in my home, but be fondly reminisced of how and why they made they way here.

Anyway, I’m not any more optimistic about their chances of going all the way, as I was going into a deciding game against the Phillies, but stranger things have happened in sports, and my offer of sacrifice is out there, and hopefully will be tempting enough for Fate to take me up on it.

A pre-requiem for the 2026 Atlanta Barves

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

After Dylan Lee gave up two straight homers almost immediately after the Braves had clawed and scratched their way to a 3-1 lead going into the 8th inning, I immediately saw the writing on the wall.  As Braves fans, we’ve all seen this script before, and from this point on, it was just clenching and hoping the brutal cycle of abuse that comes with being a Braves fan would come to an end, but not be willing to put any money on it that it would happen today. 

Two innings later, the Phillies win game 2, and we’re headed to the winner-take-all game 3, later tonight.  The only series out of the four wild card matchups to have to go the distance, as the White Sox, Yankees and Padres all took care of business and won two immediate games to advance to the divisional series.

Over the last 14 hours or so, I’ve had a lot of thoughts swirling in my brain, that I knew I wanted to write something about it, but wasn’t sure what angle to triangulate on and what tone to take when doing it.  Do I try and tempt fate and write something scathing and completely doom-and-gloom about the Braves’ chances tonight with hopes that I will be proven wrong, and that they’ll hang a 12-2 clobbering just so I’ll be made to look stupid but still be happy that they won?  Do I preemptively write out the post I had formulating in my head about how Philadelphia sports seem to solely exist to ruin the hopes and dreams of Atlanta sports, based on just how many times Philadelphia teams have eliminated Atlanta teams in postseason play throughout history?  Do I make an itemized list of Barves postseason failures over history?

I don’t know.  But I wanted to write something, before game 3, because, well, I don’t know why.  It’s like just my way of processing things, and maybe a combination of all of the above.  Writing something about the Braves becoming the Barves in October on an annual basis just is something that I’m compelled to do, and I hope for the best, but am prepared for the worst.

The fact that all three other matchups concluded means that for once, the Braves don’t have to play at 2 pm, and get a prime-time game that starts at around 8 or so, so more eyes can watch as the Braves will probably choke and lose to the Phillies in the playoffs, so that they will be 0-4 against them historically, with three eliminations over the span of the last five years.

It doesn’t matter how well the Braves have handled the Phillies in the regular seasons throughout all these seasons, the fact of the matter is that for whatever reason, they just can’t seem to overcome them in the playoffs.  2022 was particularly brutal, because the Braves had 101 wins and played most of the year as the de-facto best team in the league, but they took their foot off the gas going the playoffs, had a bye, and immediately got smoked by the 87-win Phillies.  In fact, when the Braves drop to the Phillies tonight, they will have done so as the higher seed in three-straight eliminations, adding insult to injury, and at this point there’s really nothing more that can be said about the agony of constantly falling short to a common tormentor.

Dylan Lee, is a guy I hope I do not see again tonight, and if by some miraculous act of god they win and advance, is a guy I hope I don’t see again for the remainder of the playoffs, and frankly on this team ever again.  It’s nothing personal, but after his game 2 performance, that should be the nail in the coffin as far as his favor with any Braves fan should be.  Every now and then, we see the eventual winner of the World Series do some wonky things with the bullpen, and usually there are some guys who lose favor and are sparsely seen, no matter what their role was in the regular season and the journey to get to the playoffs.  Craig Kimbrel, in spite of his success as a closer was this guy for Boston in one notable year, and the Dodgers completely replaced all their back-end relief with Roki Sasaki just last year.  Dylan Lee, I hope, is the guy that Braves fans never see again, regardless of any positive contributions he may have had in the past.

In all likelihood, the Phillies will be starting Zack Wheeler, their ace, on short rest, which just adds to the feeling of dread for Braves fans.  The Braves used their two best in games 1 and 2, and got away with a split, and the Phillies, out of necessity couldn’t use Wheeler until tonight, but as it stands, we have Wheeler versus whatever the Braves have left.  Most likely Grant Holmes, who has been a fifth-starter type who has been inconsistent and does not inspire faith going into a deciding elimination game.

Needless to say, take everything all of the above, and I do not have a good feeling about tonight’s outcome.  I want to be wrong more than anything, and this is an instance where being right would bring no joy, other than to be able to sigh and say, welp, at least I was right.  The Braves’ offense is still anemic and has never been fixed at any point in the season, and has relied tremendously on the strength of their pitching, but you can’t win games if you don’t score runs. 

Wheeler will either be lights out, or succumb to the rigors of working on short rest, but knowing the Braves’ bats, I’d wager on the former, and I think the chances are way higher that we have same shit, different year, with the Braves going out in the first round, regardless of the fact that MLB added an even first-er round to the playoff field with the Wild Card – if the Braves make the playoffs, they’re destined to get bounced in whatever round comes first to them, because I’m not, and I can’t have any more kids, so I can’t produce any more babies to bless them with any more baby luck.

This shouldn’t be eating at me this much, seeing as how lackadaisical of a baseball fan I’ve been over the last decade or so, but I guess that’s the nature of being a sports fan and a fan of a team.  No matter how much you try to not let it affect you, it just does.

Prove me wrong, fate.

Baseball is the best

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Despite the fact that I’m a pretty casual fan these days that isn’t nearly in the trenches of the minutiae of the game like I once was, this turned out to be a pretty interesting final day of the MLB regular season, that I took more notice of a lot of concurrent storylines than I probably had at any other point in the season, probably over the last few too.

So, starting with the Braves, seeing as how they had clinched the NL East last week, this final week of the season was full of games where the outcomes were basically inconsequential, but in fitting Barves fashion, Atlanta had to go 2-4 and end the season with a loss, backing into the playoffs.  Inconsequential as these last games might have been, I’m a firm believer of momentum and routine, and seeing as how the team won 92 games by playing in a certain fashion, I never like the idea of changing the way they play the game and letting off the gas, when, especially in baseball, the team that gets hot in the playoffs usually is the one that wins it all, completely regardless of records, seeding and bracket positioning.

Frankly, I don’t like the Braves’ chances in the playoffs, seeing as how for most of the second half of the season, the offense has been pretty anemic, where the wins have been mostly on the arm of Chris Sale, blowout wins were sparse, and every victory felt like they were coming from behind, instead of putting opponents away early and cruising to any low-stress wins.

There were a handful of games today that I had hopes for the outcome, and almost systematically, nearly every single one of them went contrary to what I was hoping for:

  • Wanted Phillies to lose to Rays (Phillies won)
  • Wanted Diamondbacks to beat Padres (Dbacks lost)
  • Wanted Angels to lose to Mariners (they did)
  • Wanted Astros to lose to Athletics (Astros won)
  • Wanted Rangers to lose to Twins (they did)

Getting all five would’ve been a tall order, but two out of five still kind of stinks, and there were particular reasons where I was hoping for each of these outcomes.

With the Phillies and Diamondbacks outcomes the way they happened, means that the sixth and final playoff spot in the National League belongs to the Phillies, who will play the Braves in the Wild Card round, three games in Atlanta.

I don’t think there’s any team in baseball that I have a complex about more than the Phillies, because they’ve probably been the biggest thorn in the side to the Braves for as long as I’ve been a fan.  Philadelphia sports in general, it’s my belief that all Atlanta sports fans should have a similar complex about, seeing as how the Phillies and Eagles have tormented the Braves and Falcons for decades at this point, and it always seems like they’re the ones who send Atlanta home in the playoffs.

Historically, the Phillies are 3-0 against the Braves in the playoff series, having knocked them out in 1993, 2022 and 2023; and its worth mentioning the Phillies were the lower seed in the last two, and it really doesn’t matter how well the Braves have handled them in the regular seasons, there’s just something about the playoffs where the Phillies rise up harder against the Braves than anyone else, before dropping like flies immediately after dispatching of the Braves.

Needless to say, I’m disappointed that the Phillies have snuck into the playoffs, and even more disappointed that they matched up against the Braves.  I genuinely would have rather have seen the Cubs or Padres over the Phillies, and I don’t have a good feeling about this year either.

The Angels’ loss today meant that for the first time in franchise history, the Angels have lost 100 games, and is generally meaningless it is to me, I always like to see ironic historical marks, and seeing as how the Braves have never dropped 100 in my tenure as fan, I’m amused to see it happened to someone else.

Now the Astros and Rangers, the only reason why I cared about their games, was the fact that speaking of ironic history, 2026 would mark the first time in history where a division winner would be have a no better than .500 record, and few things seem as amusing as the idea of a baseball team marching into the playoffs with barely 80 wins, when the Brewers and Dodgers both have 100+.

If both the Astros and the Rangers lost today, they would have ended with identical 80-82 records, with the Astros winning the division based on a tiebreaker, and we’d be witness to the first-ever sub-.500 division winner.

Unfortunately, the Astros pulled out a W against the also woeful Oakland Athletics, and finish 81-81, a cool .500, breaking the previous mark of futility of the 2005 Padres and their 82-80 record.  I’m disappointed, because .500 is still .500 and isn’t as ironically entertaining as .494 and firmly under .500.

That being said, after the Braves get bounced by the Phillies, I think I’m going to have to root for the Astros to go all the way, because few things would be great in baseball than an 81-win team going all the way, before the whole league goes on strike, and the last World Series champion of this era being a shitty 81-win Houston Astros, whom everyone already hates their franchise because of the cheating scandal of 2017.

So with the Astros in, the American League playoff bracket is something that of a slow-adult dreamed up, where an 81-win Astros get the #3 seed by virtue of winning a pitiful AL West going up against an 83-win #6 seed White Sox, where the winner of series gets go play against an 85-win Guardians squad that actually won the AL Central.

Meanwhile, on the other branch of the bracket, a 93-win Yankees squad goes up against an 87-win Red Sox squad, where the winner gets to play a 97-win Rays squad, where if you’re paying attention, all of them are in the same division, and because there’s no re-seeding after the Wild Card round, the #1 seed in the AL has to play a stronger squad in the divisional round, and it’s guaranteed that at least one sub-90 win squad is going to be in the ALCS, and keep hopes for a World Series alive.

But let’s end this post about baseball on a high note, which was the emotional Detroit Tigers game, which was the final game of future Hall of Famer, Justin Verlander, the pride of Goochland (Virginia).  I always love when professional athletes go out on their own terms, and I’m happy for Verlander doing the same, instead of milking it longer in order to pursue 300 wins (retiring with 266).  It’s not like he has anything left to prove at this point otherwise, seeing as how he’s already got two World Series rings, three Cy Young Awards, an MVP, 3,500+ strikeouts, three no-hitters, and countless all-star selections.

He goes out in a beautiful game where he’s joined by his kids with his supermodel wife Kate Upton, and I think the best part about the game was in his final inning, where legendary-bad umpire, and also-in his final game ever, Laz Diaz completely capitalizes on the Pirates’ running out of ABS challenges, and makes some hilariously bad calls in order for Verlander to end his final outing with a strikeout.

It’s been a fun regular season, but as we all know, the playoffs are a completely different animal, so let’s close out the regular season with reminders of just how awesome baseball is still capable of being.

Oh, Atlanta #614

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

ANF: Atlanta-based Sumo Championship League (SCL) to begin debuting in October

So let’s see: Atlanta has an MLB team, NBA team, NFL team, and even an MLS team.  Scattered throughout the rest of Georgia are all four levels of minor league baseball affiliates of the Braves.  USA Soccer has chosen Fayetteville, Georgia as their headquarters.  There’s an affiliated minor league hockey team in Duluth, which is as close as Georgia is going to get to the NHL after two previously failed NHL squads that have left for Canada.  The University of Georgia and Georgia Tech athletics are both reputable athletic programs in most major sports, and even Georgia State, Kennesaw State and Georgia Southern are D-I programs.

Needless to say, there’s no shortage of athletic competition to imbibe in at any point of the year for anyone who wants to watch competitive sport.  So perhaps it might not be a bad idea to start considering using dollars in the state of Georgia for maybe anything that isn’t related to athletics, no?

What’s that you say?  What about sumo wrestling?  Georgia doesn’t have sumo wrestling?  I mean, why wouldn’t Georgia, United States have an association of a sport native to the country of Japan in it?  But what’s that?  It’s going to have sumo wrestling debuting in Georgia?  In October?  What say whaaatt??

And here we are.  Some new Sumo Championship League is about to embark, and it was founded by a dude who used to be a bigwig at WCW Turner Broadcasting, so it has some sturdy Atlanta ties, and leads to believe that the SCL could be considered Atlanta-based.

Because there appears to be a belief that there is a thirst for some real life sumo wrestling in North America.

Don’t get me wrong, I respect the sport, and the athletes that make up of it.  I don’t see a bunch of fat guys crashing into each other (like in futbol americano), I see athletes who just happen to have large mass, who play a human game of chess of trying to knock down their opponents or maneuver them out of a ring.  It takes intelligence, adaptability and actual skill in order to achieve victory, and I have seen some live sumo wrestling in my life.

It’s just that it just seems like a complete, nobody-asked-for-this kind of endeavor, where the league is supposedly valued at $25M, which means it has received about as much of that in funding, and it begs me to ask the question on how many other things in this world could $25M have better gone towards other than starting up a sumo league?

I digress though.  If the SCL starts running shows in Atlanta, preferably up where I could take my dad to some live events, it seems like something that would be interesting to check out, if the price is right.  Now if they start charging $65+ up for a completely unproven commodity from the onset, they’ve got to be diluting themselves, but if they play a smart game and offer up cheap, affordable entertainment until some worth is established, maybe I’ll go check out some actual sumo wrestling.  I’m always looking for interesting things to take my dad to go see, and perhaps we can both derive some entertainment out of welcoming some live sumo wrestling to the Metro, after all.

Nothing says ‘I still got it’ than pub-stomping some high school girls

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

MLB: 52-year old Ichiro Suzuki twirls a 127-pitch complete game shutout against an all-star team of Japanese high school girls in an exhibition game, striking out 17.  Also collected two hits as a batter, in a 7-0 win

When I saw this news start to pop up on my feeds, I thought that this was an instance of old news coming back to the surface, and was ready to get on the internet offensive and accuse some pleebs of old news, get with the times dork.  But it turns out that this game of mostly old and retired Japanese pro players versus the best girls high school players in the country exhibition actually did happen again, and apparently this is a thing that occurs every two years, and has been the case for a while.

If it’s been going on prior to 2019, I don’t have the slightest clue nor do I care enough to check, but it’s news as of then, solely because of the fact that Ichiro has been participating in these matches since then.  And for the fourth time out of five appearances, Ichiro has thrown a complete game shutout, and nothing is probably more validating to his aging masculinity than taking the pitcher’s mound and suffocating a bunch of teenage girls for a the better part of a decade.

In one hand, it can be said that Ichiro is showing these girls the utmost honor and respect by not pulling any punches and going out and tryharding as much as he and most Japanese workaholics often are capable of doing.  But in the other hand, he may be retired and inactive in Major League Baseball, but Ichiro is still one of the greatest of all time, and probably the greatest of all time to come out of Japan (for the time being), and aging will do way less to his ability to play baseball than it would be like some fat undisciplined flash in the pan like say Prince Fielder, post-career, and even though he’s 52 as of 2026, he’s undoubtedly still better at the game than the best girl high school players in the nation.

Although I highly doubt the overly polite and respectful Japanese would possibly think Ichiro and all the other former MLB/NPB pros stomping high school girls is a dick move, my American brain tends to think that there’s a modicum of dickishness to a bunch of former professionals going out and dropping hammers onto a bunch of girls vastly their juniors.

Unsurprising, Ichiro dominated the living piss out of the high school girls, again, and the funniest-not-entirely-funniest thing about Ichiro’s participation in this game is that this is now is fifth game where he’s appeared in, all of them as the only pitcher, and he’s now pitched a total of 45 innings, 5 complete games, 4 shutouts, and has an ERA of just 0.06.  He has at least 43 strikeouts, because I can’t find the strikeout totals from 2019 and 2023, but even if he had zero in those two games, his K/9 rate would be close to 10 as it is, which is considered elite.

In one regard, this is probably the honor of a lifetime for all the high school girls, getting to play ball with some of the greatest to ever play for the country, but at the same time, it’s meant to be an exhibition, not taken so seriously, and where they’re getting 9-17 runs hung on them.  Like, if you’re trying to inspire confidence in the youth of tomorrow, clobbering them for 10+ runs in a meaningless game isn’t really going to help.

But in the end, I suppose if eating the lunch of a bunch of high school girls is what Ichiro needs to do in order to remain active in the game, then so be it.  I still maintain that when the day comes when he’s no longer able to be involved in baseball, he’s going to go on a murderous rampage, so anything that keeps him in the stratosphere of the sport, means safety for humanity.  I mean, look at his face from this year’s game when he came to the realization that one girl had collected three hits off of him; when the day comes where Ichiro can’t play anymore, and his murderous intent comes out, the name Rin Fukuda will probably be high on his list of targets, for embarrassing his honor by collecting three hits, and a steal.

Looking forward to the 2028 edition of this game, where a then-54 year old Ichiro will probably still be ready to pitch another complete game shutout, and I can only hope by then, there’ll be some cocky female slugger who’s salivating at the thought of facing Ichiro and is ready to clobber a dinger into the Tokyo Dome rafters, just so we can all see what Ichiro’s reaction is going to be.