03 July 2016

Ridiculous Things You Notice at a Braves Game

Hied ourselves to Atlanta for Braves-Marlins on Independence Day weekend. Jose Fernandez versus Lucas Harrel making his Braves debut. It was 9-1, just as you expected, except Fernandez was the smoked, not the smoker.

Baseball's a crazy game.

Some more oddness I observed:

• There are six or eight young women in every major American market who can list their summer job as "professional ballpark waver." At the Braves game we witnessed, these women walked onto the field for all the pre-game and between-inning promotions and did the following: smiled and waved to the crowd. Occasionally they held signs. So what are the qualifications for this position? How do they distinguish among the 200 pretty, young female applicants to determine which half-dozen would become professional wavers? Wrist pronation ability? 

• Organist Matt Kaminski, who plays the walk-up music for opposing players, is a comedic genius. He played "We're Off To See the Wizard" for Marcell Ozuna and "Jesus Is Just All Right With Me" for Christian Yelich. Matt, I want you to know that I got the jokes and was richly amused.

• I was shocked to see Jose Fernandez loaf on the basepaths after bunting early in the game. The Braves had trouble handling the ball and barely threw him out, so he would have been safe had he hustled. How does a manager allow that? I hoped he was nursing a leg injury, and the way he pitched, he might have been. More shocking: Ichiro jogged after a key base hit in the sixth inning. The runners moved up an extra base and Atlanta ended up scoring seven in the frame and breaking the game open. I would like to see a manager walk onto the field a la Bobby Cox and remove a player for lollygagging.

•  The umpires reviewed a close play at first early in the game. It took them several minutes to decide
whether the runner beat the throw. There should be a new rule: if they can't determine a call after three slow-motion replays it's too close to matter. Uphold the call and move on. As it was, after three minutes of review, it's very likely they got it wrong.

• There's nothing more annoying at an MLB game than the incessant, inane, commercial video chatter between innings at decibel levels designed to drown out passing aircraft. It nearly ruined my experience last year in Detroit and Cincinnati. In Atlanta, it was much more subdued. Note to league: can that crap.

• Based on one pinch hit at-bat, there is something wrong with Giancarlo Stanton. Dude fanned on three Little League swings. He looked like his own grandfather, not that I've ever seen the gentleman.

• At every home game, the Braves make a big show of replacing the number on the outfield wall
corresponding to how many MLB games are left at Turner Field. How tone deaf can you be? This is an abomination. The franchise is costing local residents something in the area of a billion dollars by ditching a perfectly fine 20-year-old stadium and conning a local suburb into building them a sparkling new many-hundred-million-dollar edifice. Hey Marietta: get a 50-year lease.

• Prior to the game, a local country act performed in the area of Turner that might be called the lobby or atrium. Wife and I stood 10 feet away and commented to each other on the fine craftsmanship. At one point I asked her, "why couldn't these two songs be hits on the country charts?" See, I'd never heard of John Berry before. Now I have. The songs were She's Taken A Shine and What's In It for Me, which reached #2 and #5 respectively on the country charts. Then Berry performed the national anthem on his guitar and slayed it.

• In days of yore, a kid went to a Major League game in the hopes of catching a foul ball. Today, kids dream of seeing themselves on the video board. So teams oblige by showing waving, screaming, shimmying, incredulous kids on the board every chance they get. This is a most bizarre phenomenon; don't these kids know what they look like? 

• The new video boards provide so much awesome information, like real time updates on out-of-town games and background on the batter and pitcher. I really appreciate that. But c'mon Braves, how about entering the 21st century and provide OBP and SLG. Sure, Ichiro is batting .340, woo-woo, but he hasn't worked a walk since the NBA playoffs started.

• Contrary to popular belief, there is no Augusta, GA. We stopped on the way home for a stroll on the River Walk along the Savannah River. Then we GPS'd downtown and it took us to -- nothing. We GPS'd City Hall and it's -- nowhere. We found a street that looked like it might bustle but it was two blocks long and ceased to exist if you turned any corner. This is a city of 200,000 residents. Not a single exit sign on the highway directs traffic "downtown." They did have a nice mall with a Whole Foods on the fringes of the "city" though. And a Moe's. Welcome to Moe's!

1 comment:

Unknown said...

And you forgot to mention how overt racism lives on in Atlanta whenever the team ever gives fans a reason to use the gross "tomahawk chop." Good thing they suck so bad.