Month: February 2023

I miss Dan Uggla

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I heard about this story about how the Braves ended a spring training game in a tie, because a player got the game-ending third strike on account of not being in the batter’s box in time, because 2023 marks the start of the pitch clock era, where every single pitch now has a timer attached to it in an effort to speed up the pace of games because society’s ever-growing ADD has declared that baseball games are too long and nobody likes them anymore as a result.

No sport gets fucked with structurally as much as baseball does.  Aside from some rule changes to discourage defense because offense is sexy, basketball is by and large the same game as it now as it was back in the 1950’s.  Football’s primarily changed in order to try and reduce concussions and protect quarterbacks, but pretty much everything else goes as it did in back in 1920. 

But baseball?  Any strategy that seems too effective is neutered or outright banned (the shift), pitching mounds are raised, lowered, the physical baseballs themselves are altered, bats are regulated and banned, and there are rule changes practically every year.  One of the lasting anecdotes about baseball was that it was the game with no clock, and as a result, every single pitcher-batter matchup was potentially important, and that there was no strategic milking of the clock, and that every out had to be recorded in order for a team to be declared a victor.

Now, there is an actual clock, which effectively puts the romanticism of baseball having no clock and that every out must be earned to rest, because now baseball has embarked on a path where games really can have a finite time limit now.  With rules in place that prevent managers from spamming pitching changes in order to play matchups, and rules in place that prohibit excessive checking base runners by pitchers, MLB has basically closed the walls around old school baseball strategy and effectively put a hard time limit on every game, flexible solely by the need for extra innings or managers milking pitching changes to the most of their limited new abilities.

The Pedro Astacios who took practically an entire minute in between every pitch, and the Bruce Chens who once trolled an entire stadium by checking a runner at first like 14 times will all be phased out and rendered extinct, regardless of how capable they are throwing a baseball, and future Moneyball will probably be cultivating pitching staffs with wildly different pitch preparation speeds, with the intention of throwing off batter timing throughout games.

With all these changes to the game, I just think about the times in the past where I think about having loved baseball the most and lately, the name that pops up the most as someone I really miss, is Dan Uggla.

He was kind of like the anti-stat geek player that the rise of the stat geeks baseball culture absolutely abhorred, but teams themselves still coveted because of his sheer ability to hit home runs when he actually made contact with the ball.  His defense was below-average, he wasn’t a threat to steal bases, and being a second baseman it’s not like he had much of an arm.  But again, the guy hit home runs, and that’s a talent that every team wants, whether they wanted him as a starter, or a designated pinch-hitter, or an actual designated hitter.

There was once a season where he hit .179 on the year which is abysmal, but he still clobbered 22 home runs, which is still noteworthy.  My friend and I made the joke that all he hit were home runs, and with just 80 total hits on the year, he really did hit home runs over 25% of the time.

I take it back about not having much of an arm though, the guy had more physical arms than just about anyone else in the history of Major League Baseball, because pound-for-pound, Dan Uggla had to have been the most jacked player in history.  The guy was 5’11 which isn’t that tall as far as professional athletes go, but the guy had massive, massive arms, with most people making the comparison that his arms looked like Popeye.

Additionally, Dan Uggla also wore the tightest, most form-fitting uniforms as he could, throughout his whole career.  I’m not sure if it were deliberate, or if across the board there were some sizing issues for a man of his stature combined with his musculature, but my friends and I declared that his uniform size was “smedium” and made the comparison for any time anyone was seen wearing a tight-fitting shirt in order to attempt to make their musculature look impressive deliberately.

All in all, Dan Uggla was kind of the perfect poster boy for ironic baseball player fandom.  He was hated by nerds, but still loved by teams, and basically always had a job as long as he kept hitting home runs, all while wearing his ridiculous smedium uniforms and looking like he had professional wrestling as a post-career option.  But more importantly, he was kind of like this totem of simpler times, where there weren’t so many oppressive rules, fans bitching about game duration weren’t heard, and players had to deal with the shift.  No matter his numbers, relievers and closers in his time, still had to face Dan Uggla with the game on the line and although the numbers may have favored them most of the time any mistake they let loose was probably going to end up in the seats.

Man, I miss Dan Uggla.  Even more now, with the game itself undergoing so many dramatic changes.  It’s going to be weird when I eventually actually watch a baseball game again, and seeing shit like pitching clocks on the HUD, and I imagine they’ll feel noticeably faster in speed, which in some cases might feel pretty convenient, but at the same time, very much not like the baseball that was what I grew to love and enjoy.

When being a Yes Man has its drawbacks

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

When Jim Carrey’s Yes Man was released back in 2008, I remember liking the film a lot.  Beyond just myself, I think it really kind of helped paint the picture of just how many people and much of the world were just a whole lot of cynical shut-ins, quick to say no to everything that comes in their direction.  Aside from the big crush I had on Zooey Deschanel back then, I really enjoyed the film, and it low-key inspired me to want to be more open minded and willing to say yes to things, even if I knew they might put me out of my comfort zone.

At first, things went about as well as things did in the film, with getting into swing dancing, and I found it somewhat liberating to try something new and experience growing and developing a new skill.  But just in general, I told myself to be more open minded, and say yes to things, and have faith and trust that other people might steer me in the right direction.

However, all these years later, sometimes I think that I’m too much of a yes man in my life, and that being open too much is putting me in a position in my life where I’m not particularly thrilled to be in, namely in a financial sense.  Sure, there’s an allegory about kids and the cost of raising children, but I’ve always been pretty financially conservative, wanting to save, liking cushions and becoming anxious when certain thresholds are below lines I don’t like being under, but these days I feel like I’m drowning, and that no matter what I do, or what cuts I try to implement, I just can’t make any headway or gain any sort of progress in the direction I want to be headed.

Yes I know that there are millions of people in the world who have it worse than I do, seeing as how I have gainful employment, as does mythical wife, but I feel like our lifestyle occasionally exceeds our means at times, and it’s in these periods in which I wish that I could be more of a NO man and just say no to everything that encroaches on my personal state of being, because being agreeable and wanting to please and remain flexible doesn’t seem to be fucking anyone over but me, and I think it’s an unhealthy dynamic I’m in when my mood goes sour and my world grows dark.

I feel like I’m living almost entirely in other peoples’ worlds and almost never in my own.  Not just in a financial sense, but also with time.  I give so much myself to my family and kids and my job, and there’s so little time for myself, and when I do have any I’m fretting about finances and dreading tomorrow’s responsibilities.  Relaxation truly is a skill that I do not possess.

The bottom line is that as much as I wish it wouldn’t dictate my well-being, I’m not feeling very financially secure currently, and it makes me feel embarrassed and ashamed to admit.  I’m 40 years old and I look around at the rest of my family and it feels like they all had their shit together better than I do at a similar age and I hate feeling so bothered by money, and had some actionable and tangible plans to gain some improvement.  Maybe saying no to more things might help me feel like I’m gaining a measure of control in my own life’s path again, but we’ll see what happens when a query is lobbed in my direction and I don’t want to feel like the bad guy.

It’s all going to be Cody’s fault

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

In professional sports, occasionally there are scenarios where a first-place team somehow manages to pull off a trade or pick up a free agent of a very talented player.  In most of these cases, the overarching management of these teams hardly ever take into consideration stuff like team chemistry, because most organizations believe in acquiring talent when it’s available, and let the chips fall where they may afterward.

Typically, it’s kind of a jump ball of happens afterward; sometimes the new player adds value immediately, and a good team becomes even better, but in some cases, the new player disrupts the team chemistry that made the team a first-place team, and then there is some stumbling and new struggles, as the squad tries to adjust to find its new groove.  Sometimes, they get their shit together and make magic happen, but at least in my personal viewing experiences, they still fall short.

This is what I’m feeling is kind of happening with the WWE and the fact that they’ve handcuffed themselves to the acquisition of Cody Rhodes.

For about a year, if there was anything at all that was going not just smoothly, but on a legendary pace, it was definitely the Bloodline storyline.  Roman Reigns was clearly ascending to the top of the mountain that he was always expected to reach, and he was firing on all cylinders; in the ring, cutting promos, and elevating everyone that entered his gravity.  Roman and the Bloodline were proving the power of a well-planned, executed storyline that was more importantly given all the time in the world to breathe and organically proceed.

But then Cody Rhodes’ contract with AEW expired, and suddenly the internet rumor mill basically exploded as it became apparent that he was not only not going to re-sign with the company he helped found, he was on his way back to the WWE; he was basically the surprisingly available talent that the WWE picked up solely because they could, but not necessarily because they needed him.

And much like how it happens in professional sport, every organization in the country always falls for the sunk cost fallacy, and because they paid a mint for new acquisition, they become determined to use them in a capacity relative to their salary, and not necessarily their talent or ability to fit into the puzzle.

Because Cody Rhodes cost the WWE a significant amount, he was immediately thrust into the upper echelon of the card, (re)debuting at Wrestlemania and fast tracked to a path to the World championship; regardless of the fact that there were all sorts of internal talents that were getting shafted by his return.  If not for the fact that he tore his pectoral and had to be put on the bench for almost an entire year, I probably wouldn’t have gotten to make this post because he probably would have already entangled with Roman Reigns at Summer Slam or Survivor Series and possibly have ended his legendary run and taken a championship off him.

And while he was down with injury, the Bloodline resumed their masterful storytelling, and amidst this, became planted the seed of Sami Zayn that grew into the phenomenon that’s captured the attention of wrestling fans all over with how it has played out so far.  Seriously, I didn’t think much of the whole idea of Sami Zayn wanting to be a part of the Bloodline, but it’s literally been the best storyline since the rise of Daniel Bryan or Kofi-Mania, and in fact better than those in terms of storytelling and how many people have risen their stock from just being a part of it.

But then Cody Rhodes had to go on and recover, and when it was announced that he was coming back at the Royal Rumble, it was basically a forgone conclusion that he was going to win the whole fucking thing, and obviously be fast tracked to Wrestlemania where he would fulfill his destiny (or his rumored contractual obligation to get a World championship run) and finally face Roman Reigns.

This is where I have this feeling like Cody Rhodes is going to ruin a beautiful storyline that’s been in the making over the last three years, solely because the WWE is insisting on utilizing him as World championship material based on the size of the contract he was given.

I’m not saying that Cody Rhodes won’t and can’t have a good match with Roman Reigns and possibly put up an instant classic, but it’s going to feel more forced than it is going to feel organic.  Which is a shame, because the beauty of the Bloodline saga has always been just how organic everything has felt because everything has been given time to sow seeds let things grow naturally over the last three years.

I feel like the smart play would be to have Cody lose to Roman Reigns, so that he could kind of start over and organically rise to his contention to the World championship(s), but if I’m a betting man, I don’t think that’s going to happen.  In reality, Roman and the Usos probably need some time off after carrying the company for the last three years, and even if the fans might not be sick of the Bloodline, the guys comprising of the Bloodline might be sick of the workload they’ve had and probably wouldn’t mind a little time off television to recharge.

All the same, I like to imagine a world where a lot of the WWE guys have a group text or something, where they bitch and complain about how Cody Rhodes’ return is fucking things up.  Obviously, such is likely not the case as Rhodes is often regarded as being well respected and liked by everyone in the business, but it doesn’t change the fact that his return to the WWE is causing some hierarchical restructuring to where someone is getting pushed down a rung.

It’s just kind of sad to me, because the Bloodline has easily been the best thing in professional wrestling in a long time, but Cody Rhodes of all people is the one who’s kind of fucking things up, solely because he had to become available and baited the WWE into picking him up and clearly had a lot of demands in the process.

If he were really as selfless as he likes to claim he is, he’d have let all existing storylines play themselves out and basically kind of stand aside and call next, and by next Wrestlemania in 2024, be ready to ascend to the top of the mountain then, and maybe all the fans will be on board the story he is destined to complete.

I’ve never been more unafraid of an armed individual in my life

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Over the weekend, we sent the kids to grandma’s house so that we could get some major organization done at home.  Frankly even with the help of our au pair, there would’ve been a lot of going in and out of the girls’ rooms well into the evenings that made it optimal to just have them not be present in order to maximize productivity.  That being said, it also afforded all of us in the house, to be adults for two days, and on the second evening, we collectively decided to get out of the house.

At one point, we went into a 2nd and Charles to kill a little bit of time; at one point in my life, this place would’ve been my heaven, since I like comic books, video games, books and all sorts of the nerdy crap that they sell and buy there, but at this point in my life, I just want to look and don’t want to actually bring any more shit into my house that I feel is already full of a lot of unneeded crap.

While we were there though, I was looking through comic trade hardcovers, and not far to my left, I could hear some guy doing some serious mansplaining about the differences between the Infinity War in comics versus the MCU.  A smirk emerged on my face at hearing him blather on, because he was perpetuating all sorts of stereotypes of comic book geeks inside the bookstore.

As I passed by him, I couldn’t help but notice that beneath his vest that I have to imagine was put on completely non-ironically, was a holster equipped with what I’m pretty sure was a Glock of minimal size, I’m no expert on the granular details, especially when I could only see the handle.  The point is, the guy was carrying openly, which is completely legal in the state of Georgia.

But as the title of this post states, I don’t think I’ve ever been more unafraid of an armed individual in my life until I saw this guy.  Think about it, the guy is carrying a firearm, presumably loaded, completely in public, at a place of business that probably had upwards of 80-100 people inside of it at the time I saw him.  We live in the age where mass shootings happen at almost a weekly basis in similar conditions, and not only did I feel zero concern for my life, all I could feel were jokes formulating in my brain instead.

Like, this guy got dressed with the express intention of leaving the house, and going to 2nd and Charles of all the places in the Metro Atlanta area, and as he’s mentally inventorying all the things he needs prior to walking out the door, and oh yeah my gun is one of the things on his checklist.

“Honey, we have to get to 2nd and Charles before they close at 8, have you seen my gun?”
“Yeah baby, it’s right next to my Loungefly”

On action television and in film, there are occasionally montages of heroes getting ready to go into battle, and they’re equipping themselves with a gun before they go into the fights of their lives.  And then we have Firearm Fred over here consciously strapping on his holster to go into the nerd store, as if he might have to flex it on someone trying to get the last pack of Yu-Gi-Oh booster packs ahead of him.

Seriously, I was giggling to myself for the rest of the night at the thought of Sidepiece Samuel actually feeling like he had to be carrying a firearm inside of a fucking 2nd and Charles.  I’ve never felt so opposite of concerned or intimidated by another human being’s presence in my entire life.  I felt like even if he were a mass shooter ready to pounce, I could probably take him without there being any loss of life; I know it’s not really a laughing matter, but that’s how seriously felt looking at this guy.

Regardless, my au pair got a kick out of seeing such a sight with her own eyes.  And after we took her to a Hooters for dinner, I told her that she basically had the most American night of her life, having seen an armed individual out in public, followed by the aforementioned Hooters for dinner.  Welcome to America!

It’s all about perspective

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I had a thought today, that I realized that since 2023 has started, my job has kind of sucked.  This isn’t to say that I need to update my LinkedIn profile and start fervently looking for an exit strategy, but that coincidentally since the start of the new year, everyone coming back to work after the holidays and lots of people who feel they need an arbitrary date of a calendar before they start tryharding, it’s been a bit of a lengthy rough patch.

I still work with good people, and I like a lot of the people I work with, but it’s just been frequently busy, the nature of the work I’m doing often feels somewhat pointless, and not particularly gratifying.  I feel that due to employee turnover on the project management side, there’s some communicative chasms that are forming that’s creating a lot of job tickets that are full of incomplete/inadequate information, and I’m spending more time on the clock playing detective and trying to track down information versus doing my actual job, and when I am doing my actual job, there’s a backlog of job tickets, because of insufficient project management.

Seldom do I have as much downtime as I used to have, and I’m often going from ticket to ticket, and in this frustrating game of stop-and-go with trying to work versus knowing what I’m supposed to work on, and all the conversations with my superiors and skip-level meetings haven’t really gotten any traction at improving any of the frustrations of the job.

Here’s the thing though: no matter how unsatisfying and occasionally frustrating my job has been over the last six weeks, I still realize that I had to think and analyze and come to the conclusion that things aren’t particularly great on the job front right now.  And compared to where I was at prior to 2022 and changing jobs, it’s still a relative cake walk, and just how abysmally terrible things were prior to switching.

Like, my old boss at my old place of work made my life a living hell every single day I was on the clock.  From her endless pursuits of hyper-analyzing everything I did, looking for any and every angle possible to criticize me about, to initiating a timeline in which I could have potentially ended up fired, because I didn’t CC her on an email once, the word “toxic” doesn’t even come close to being adequate at describing my work life at my old job.

I was driven to such misery that I’ve become partially numb to when work is actually sucking, because my current situation isn’t that great right now, but I’m able to compare it to where I was before, and it’s really not that bad in comparison.

Ultimately, I’m just glad to be employed.  I’ve had moments of concern for my job, because I’ve seen more people let go by this company in 13 months than I had seen in six years at my previous place, and when my workload becomes too trite and full of projects that don’t seem worthy for someone at my paygrade to be doing, not that I personally feel that I am above anything, perception is reality to the working world, and it’s not about what I think so much as it could be seen by those above me, that I’m getting paid too well for the scope of work that I’m being assigned.

But as long as I stay busy and am helping keeping shit assignments off of people who don’t want to do them, I suppose I can feel some modicum of job security.  And as long as I don’t have to deal with the c-word of the old boss I used to have, pretty much any job in the world is perfectly fine.

Whatever it is, I’m all in

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Source: Calvin & Hobbes creator, Bill Watterson, comes out of retirement to produce an illustrated book for grown-ups

Honestly, despite the accusations of the announcement lacking substance or any real hints at what the nature of this future work is going to be like, I don’t really need it.  Calvin & Hobbes has had such a profound influence on my life as a whole, you could tell me that Bill Watterson was coming out of retirement to produce a book on growing garlic, I’d still be interested, and anticipate there being some sage wisdom in it.

I don’t even care that Watterson isn’t even the artist in this book, I know he’s a legend already artistically, but he’s also a masterful storyteller.  Seriously, I believe it’s possible to remove all artwork and just leave the text throughout all of Calvin & Hobbes, and it would still be interesting.  I look forward to the return of Watterson in The Mysteries, and it’s definitely not something I would have ever imagined, being taken back to 1995, anticipating his next release, only to be devastated in knowing that it was going to be his last.

Either way, it’s something to genuinely look forward to this year, and much like I do with film and television I really look forward to, I’m going to do my best to avoid anything about it until it’s actually released.  It’s surreal to think that after finishing Calvin & Hobbes back in 1995, I’ll be reacquainted with his work again nearly 30 years later.

Re: the Super Bowl LVII ending

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Although I agree that the ending of Super Bowl LVII was less than thrilling, make no mistake, it was still one of the best Super Bowls there’ve been in recent years.  Patrick Mahomes and Jalen Hurts put on one of the most exciting Super Bowl quarterback battles since like Peyton Manning versus Drew Brees in XLIV, with both of them putting up monster numbers and neither of them blinking until the ending of the game.

And as much as I loathe the Philadelphia Eagles and revel in the fact that they’re the third Philadelphia major sports team to lose a championship in the 2022 season, I personally like Jalen Hurts.  He’s an honorable, mature man in a sport full of overgrown man-babies, and even throughout college, he demonstrated honor, class, integrity and has always been respectable in my opinion.  And despite being on the losing end of the Super Bowl, he put up the superior numbers against Patrick Mahomes, soon to be forgotten solely because he didn’t win the game.

But getting back to the point of this post, it’s been really interesting to me to see in the aftermath of the Super Bowl, all of the butt-hurt filthy casuals and not-actually sports fans who are bitching and moaning about the anti-climactic ending to the game.  Yes, the Chiefs downing the ball at the 1-yard line and milking the clock and kicking a go-ahead field goal with just eight seconds left sucked all of the excitement of the Mahomes/Hurts duel, but it was one billion percent the absolutely correct strategy to employ for the objective of winning the goddamn game.

The Kansas City Chiefs give absolutely zero fucks about what anyone thinks about the finish, because they accomplished the only thing that mattered: winning the goddamn game.  If the Eagles had the ball and they were in the same scenario, there is a two billion percent chance that they employ the exact same strategy.  Milk the clock, take the lead, and give the opposition as little time as possible to have any chance at countering.

And to the filthy casuals and not-fans who ask why?  Because throughout history, the NFL sees this scenario happen on a fairly regular basis, it’s just not often that it occurs in the Super Bowl.  Sure, everyone loves touchdowns, but when a field goal is all that is necessary to win, it’s always the right call to chew up as much clock as possible and kicking the field goal, and in fact, it’s actually more detrimental to score the touchdown if it means salvaging some time for the other team in order to make a counter attack.

One prime example of the touchdown blowing up in a team’s face actually involved the Atlanta Flacons who obviously haven’t ever recovered from the fuckup of Super Bowl Lee, and there was a game a few years ago where the Flacons were playing the Detroit Lions, and they were down with a minute left, 14-16.  When it was evident that the Flacons were going to score, the Lions basically conceded the end zone, hoping to salvage some time and get the ball back as quick as possible.  Despite the fact that a field goal was all that was necessary for the Flacons to win, running back Todd Gurley had a brain fart when rushing into the end zone, and despite his best efforts to drop at the 1-yard line, he crossed the plane and accidentally scored a touchdown.  The Flacons took the lead, but they left a minute on the clock, to which any NFL fan knows is the equivalent of like 15 when considering timeouts, commercials and clock stoppage.  Naturally, the Lions would score their own touchdown as time expired to defeat the Flacons, validating the importance of the strategy that the Chiefs employed.

In fact, off the top of my head, the same tactic was almost employed in Super Bowl XLVI, where the Giants tried to kill the clock, but Ahmad Bradshaw too, fell into the end zone despite his efforts to stop short.  It just so happens that the Giants defense managed to neutralize Tom Brady, but New York fans were sweating those last 82 seconds of the game, knowing Brady’s reputation for late-game heroics.

The point is, the Chiefs made the right call, and everyone bitching about it is just some filthy casual scenester tourist into the world of sports fandom, and your opinions hold zero weight and do not matter.  It wasn’t exciting, it wasn’t fun, but it got the fucking job done, and anyone who knows the game of football knows that in every single similar situation, the outcome would be the same 100% of the time.