{"id":50097,"date":"2024-08-02T14:54:23","date_gmt":"2024-08-02T19:54:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/totfc.net\/?p=50097"},"modified":"2024-08-02T14:54:23","modified_gmt":"2024-08-02T19:54:23","slug":"good-riddance-pearl","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/?p=50097","title":{"rendered":"Good riddance, Pearl"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

TIL<\/a>: the Atlanta Braves will be moving their Double-A minor league affiliate from Pearl, Mississippi to Columbus, Georgia.\u00a0 They will also be ditching the Braves moniker and will hopefully be something chintzy and marketable<\/span><\/p>\n

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

I mean, I knew that the Braves had relinquished control over all of their minor league squads<\/a> back in 2021 like selling their debts, and I didn\u2019t hate the news at all quite the contrary, because I felt that it opened the door for Braves affiliates to spread their wings and try to be something more in the spirit of minor league baseball, instead of the boring, stuffy and sterile branding of \u201cThe Braves.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Gwinnett (AAA) had already switched over to becoming the Strippers<\/span> Stripers, and Rome (A+) as of this years ditched being the Braves and became The Emperors, as in Roman emperor, and better yet, adopted emperor penguins to be their team\u2019s mascot.\u00a0 Not that I\u2019ve been paying any attention, but for whatever reason, the Mississippi Braves had remained as such over the last two-plus seasons, and despite their freedom to do so, they didn\u2019t appear to be in any rush to make any changes to the organization.<\/span><\/p>\n

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

At first blush, my thought was, oh great here we go again with a brand new fucking ballpark to build, but it turns out that there\u2019s apparently a historic ballpark in Columbus, Golden Park, that will actually be renovated and used to house the future Columbus Braves affiliate, instead of building something from scratch.\u00a0 Granted, a renovation isn\u2019t cheap either, and I\u2019m sure it will probably be something of a $65M tax burden for the people of Columbus to absorb, but that sure beats the $126M it took to build the Braves\u2019 Spring Training facility from scratch in Sarasota.<\/span><\/p>\n

Regardless of the financial burden of accommodations, this is actually a change that I don\u2019t immediately just want to shit on upon hearing about it.\u00a0 Having been to Pearl, Mississippi, solely to watch a M-Braves game, I have to say that getting the fuck out of that shithole in the middle of goddamn nowhere is nothing but good news for the Braves and frankly, all of Minor League Baseball in that nobody again will ever have to step foot in Pearl\/Jackson, Mississippi after the 2024 season.<\/span><\/p>\n

It’s the only place I\u2019ve ever been to where I genuinely felt like I was whisked back in time at the casual ignorant racism that got in just a singular afternoon in town, from the moment I left the airport, to getting to the ballpark, and while simply getting food.\u00a0 The cabbie who picked me up from the airport thought that I had to have been an actual player since I was headed to the ballpark, and upon arriving at the ballpark, I caught some kids staring at me and thinking I was Hideki Matsui<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

It’s clear that Asian people aren\u2019t a common occurrence in this chunk of the country, but god damn.\u00a0 During the game, I was puckish so I went up to a concession stand where there were unsurprisingly chicken tenders and fries, and when I handed over my debit card to pay, the lady at the register examined my card and put down her bifocals, and then said to me, \u201coh that\u2019s an easy one.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Obviously having no fucking clue to what she was talking about, I asked her what, and she responded that it was my name, that it was one of those<\/em> names that wasn\u2019t too hard to pronounce.\u00a0 Okay then<\/span><\/p>\n

So needless to say, it seems like a monumental win for any person or any business or in this case, any team, to get the fuck out of Pearl, Mississippi, and head closer to somewhere that\u2019s closer to their parent organization.\u00a0 Columbus isn\u2019t a tremendous step up from Pearl as far as not feeling like you\u2019re in the middle of nowhere, but at least it\u2019s a military town where people have had some etiquette and discipline beaten into them, and it\u2019s only like a 2-3 hour drive to the Metro Atlanta area if anyone wants to feel some actual civilization.<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019m excited to eventually find out what the team will lean towards as far as a new team name, branding and identity will be.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know much about Columbus other than it being a military town, so I can\u2019t take any snarky takes or come up with any sarcastic names to anoint them as, but hopefully the yokels out there will have the wherewithal to steer clear of the low-hanging fruit of Christopher, whom we all with brains have heard wasn\u2019t exactly the best guy in history.<\/span><\/p>\n

But hey, there\u2019s always the Columbus Barves, wouldn\u2019t that be some shit, to take the popularized typo-meme-unofficial sarcasm name for whenever the team fucks up, and make it official?\u00a0 A guy can dream.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

TIL: the Atlanta Braves will be moving their Double-A minor league affiliate from Pearl, Mississippi to Columbus, Georgia.\u00a0 They will also be ditching the Braves moniker and will hopefully be something chintzy and marketable Not that I pay attention to every iota of Braves coverage as I once did at a point in my life, … Continue reading Good riddance, Pearl<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[196,62,131,66,79,64,103,8,89,58,65,49],"class_list":["post-50097","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brog","tag-barves","tag-baseball","tag-branding","tag-braves","tag-cashmoney","tag-minor-leagues","tag-motherland","tag-ohgeorgia","tag-racism","tag-sports","tag-travel","tag-wtf"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50097","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=50097"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50097\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50099,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50097\/revisions\/50099"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=50097"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=50097"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=50097"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}