Tag: talking chop

Remembering Tommy Hanson

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

In short: former Major League Baseball pitcher Thomas J. “Tommy” Hanson passes away at the age of 29, due to “catastrophic organ failure.”

Talk about something that came out of nowhere; it’s not often that I expect to hear about spontaneous deaths from people much younger than I am. And in spite of my faltering indifference to the game over the last few years, I’d like to write some words about Tommy Hanson, because if anything at all, he represents a player that was pretty prevalent during my peak of baseball fandom, and I’m genuinely sad to hear about his unfortunate and way too early departure.

Forget about the win-loss record, the ERA, and the list of teams that he had played for in his career, that one might expect to see within the final paragraphs of a professional athlete’s online eulogy and/or obituary. This isn’t to say that they weren’t pretty, quite the contrary, his overall numbers were positive and respectable, despite the obvious observation that he was declining quickly, mostly on account of shoulder troubles that plagued the tail end of his baseball career.

To me, Tommy Hanson represents the link, the gateway, into my eventual love and appreciation for minor league baseball.

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It’s nice to feel wanted

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Despite the fact that I declare myself a terrible baseball fan, I still do keep somewhat of an ear to the ground when it comes to happenings in the game, and happenings with the Atlanta Braves.  And despite the fact that I’ve long separated myself from the site I used to write for, Talking Chop, I still visit every now and then, because in spite of the fact that their daily writing assignments have become somewhat robotic, as the guys running the site now are excellent analyzers of raw, cold facts, but don’t really have unique voices.  However, they have the ability to generate some opinions from their analysis of raw, cold facts that are still preferable over the talking heads of any other mainstream outlet.

Anyway, on a recent visit, I noticed that there was a topic of how the site was, yet again, changing hands in operational management.  Apparently, the day-to-day management of a website was difficult to juggle amidst daily analysis of numbers for the previous management, whom all apparently took steps back to go into purely writing roles, leaving the management side to a new girl, whom I actually find refreshing that she’s not a proverbial bean-counting stat-geek.

She inquired with the community on suggestions to what she could take into consideration for making the site better for the future.  Naturally, being the internet, there were sloughs of sarcastic rebuttals and everyone trying their hardest to be an e-comedian that I had to trudge through, but every now and then there were constructive suggestions and requests that people made that could and probably should be taken into consideration.

But then there was one remark in particular that caught my eye.

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I love goodbyes

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Now despite the fact that I like a good weekend every now and then where I literally do nothing but stay at home and play League, watch college football, sleep in until the dog starts barking his need to go pee and living off of whatever’s left over in the refrigerator and pantry, there’s no doubt that it can sometimes be pretty lonely doing such. Not necessarily in the “oh noes, Danny is making another ‘I wish I had a girlfriend’ post” kind of way, but really just being around other people in a fun social engagement in general kind of way, because when the day is over, I’d rather be in good company, chilling out in a relaxed setting.

Such does not occur as often as I’d admittedly like it to occur, but most of that falls on me. I live out in the sticks that are often as surprised as I am to be considered part of the Metro Atlanta area, and it’s a pain to get to anywhere without having to think about niggling details like traffic, time, and fuel consumption in the back of your head sometimes. Also, it’s not that I’m a raging alcoholic by any means necessary, but I do like to drink in social settings, and I’m always paranoid that there’ll be another sobriety checkpoint near my house again, but it’ll fall on a date where I’ve had one or two beers and no designated driver; my dad got a DUI a few years ago, and he’s living proof that no number of decades of safe, immaculate driving record is impervious to the damages a DUI can do, which scares the shit out of me sometimes.

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Marriott rooms and the importance of failure

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

A long time ago, I wrote this manifesto on Talking Chop about the importance of defeat.  Braves fans were getting a little too complacent with the idea that the Braves were a competent potential contender that season, and the populous got a little too out of control insufferable when the Braves lost a series against a non-contender, and me being one of the Nazi mods of the site at the time, took it upon myself to instead admonish and ban people, to educate them about the importance of losing.

The main point was basically that victory has no importance if there was never any risk of losing.  Victory cannot be sweet if defeat is not bitter.  Without the fear of failure, there is no gratification when there is success.

Not only does this apply to just sports, it applies to just about any endeavor, where there is either success or failure.  The greater chance for failure versus the difficulty of success makes victory that much sweeter if it’s achieved.

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Yeah, no regrets

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

My last post over at Talking Chop went up yesterday, and I thought that I would feel a little bit emotional over it, since it was my primary sports writing-related outlet I had over the last four years, but I really didn’t.  To be perfectly honest, I didn’t really remember to check it until late last night, so in some respects that kind of was indicative of how much I had already kind of checked out when it came to the whole site entirely.  I probably felt more emotions while in the process of writing my farewell statement, which I started on Tuesday and re-read and edited throughout the course of the week.

I’ve got no regrets in doing it, now that it’s done.  It’ll really sink in on Wednesday or Thursday afternoon, when I’ll be sitting at my desk thinking “oh shit, I have to write my column,” but then realize that I actually don’t, and then I’ll feel a sense of relief wash over my like an awesome wave.

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A melancholy feeling of change

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Typically, I tend to leave most sports talk out of my brog, because frankly I know that the majority of the 12 people that actually read my swill aren’t necessarily sports fans, or even care to read about sports related things.  Typically, I also never really felt the necessity to use my brog as an outlet for sports talk, because I’ve always had an outlet for talking about sports; and by sports, I mean baseball, because other athletic contests are second fiddle anyway.

Over the span of the last four years, I wrote for a Braves blog, Talking Chop.  I went under a pseudonym over these years because I’m skeptical like that and wished to keep my identity somewhat separated from the rest of my life, but it’s not like anyone paying attention didn’t discover my real name at some point.  Writing for TC was an enjoyable experience as I was able to interact with baseball fans all over the place, and share thoughts and ideas, as well as expand my horizons as it came to baseball statistics, analysis and the minor leagues.

I’m leaving Talking Chop.  This coming Saturday is my last scheduled post, and I’m leaving on my own fruition.  I know most of my brog readers probably couldn’t give two shits about this, but to me, having done this consistently over the span of the last four years, leaves me with this melancholy feeling of change; separation from a long and consistent routine.  I’m glad to be freed up from the occasional feelings of obligation to write about baseball, but at the same time, I now really have no true outlet to ramble on about baseball if I ever felt like it.

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Writer’s funk ain’t no fun

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I’m still in the midst of this writer’s funk, where I feel like I want to write something, but I simply don’t know what I want to write about lately.  It’s hard to explain how I’m feeling these days; I can’t say that I’m in one of my bouts of depression or being all ronery-emo, because I don’t really think I am.  Work is boring and stagnant, but it’s not like I didn’t know this was going to be the status quo when I took this job.  I’m working out and exercising along the same clip, and I feel physically fine, and mentally too, for the most part.

Yet, I can’t really find or think of anything remotely interesting to write about these days, to which that puzzles me a bit.  Usually, I lean onto local news, or try to find something remotely interesting on the internet to spark some train of thought worthy to put into words.  But Atlanta news is pretty stagnant and predictably boring, and nothing makes me want to write about racist agendas and the obvious racial bias that “my fair city” exhibits on such a regular basis.  Not to mention the fact that all the local Atlanta news outlets are money-grubbing rags that recycle the same news anyway.

The Atlanta Braves blog I occasionally write for, I’ve been informed that there are going to be some changes with.  Although it’s nothing really that serious, it does make me wonder if I want to continue to obligate myself with writing about baseball on a weekly basis.  Obviously, my fandom with baseball has grown a little disenchanted over the last three seasons, but I kind of wonder if this was an opportunity to dive head-first into trying to re-invigorate it, or if I just want to stop outright.  Sometimes I think that my position of floating in the middle isn’t necessarily the best idea.

Speaking of baseball, it’s not that I don’t love the game any less than I used to, but here’s an interesting fact: I’ve been to one Braves game all season.  I’ve been to more baseball games at Coors Field in Denver, than I have at home in Atlanta.  I’ve seen as many games in Detroit and Miami as I have at home in Atlanta.  It’s not that I don’t enjoy going to the ballpark, it’s just that the idea of going alone isn’t what it used to be.  I tell you, one of these days I’m just going to have to buckle down and get on board with an 81-game plan, and make my damndest effort to do an entire 81-game season.

Maybe this is the kind of slump that happens when I don’t really do anything in my spare time.  I’ve been spending a lot of time reading lately, and I have to admit that since I started using my iPad as a Kindle, I’ve been reading a ton of books, and I’m finding it more of a bear than anything else when I force myself to read a physical book again, but my declaring particular authors as “physical book only,” it’s something that I’m not going to abandon any time soon.

But my list of options of things to do when I’m at home is a little stale, and makes me think that it’s contributing to my overall mental stagnancy lately.  All I do when I’m at home as of late is either read, play LoL, or watch DVR’d shows.  I could be a little bit more productive and try to do some cleaning, but when 95% of the clutter in the house isn’t mine, it’s somewhat unappealing and unrewarding to even fathom, let alone do, especially when it feels like it’s just going to have to happen again in a week.

Perhaps I need more activities to do in my spare time, to stimulate my brain into wanting to write about something.  That’s usually what normally happens, when I really find inspiration to write, while I’m doing something else, creating the false conundrum that I need to address and write about something while the iron is hot, but oh noes, I suddenly don’t seem to have the time to do such.  Perhaps I should actually address these projects for Dragon*Con while there’s still plenty of time in advance, as opposed to trying to get everything done in the month of August like I ended up doing last year.

But until then, this writer’s funk blows.  I like having something a little more focused to write about.