Notes on 755 Hank Aaron Dr

Monday, March 27, 2017

Well then

It's 2017, and I haven't posted on this site in almost three years.  I could just admit that I'm never going to update it, but I'm too stubborn to do so.  So, maybe, just maybe, I should figure out why I'm not doing so?

Part of it is that my life is much busier now than it was when I started this.  I've got a nine year old son, so that's become my primary focus for my spare time, rather than writing stuff on the internet.  (Heck, I don't even comment much on Braves Journal or Baseball Think Factory these days, and that takes a lot less effort than writing a blog post.)  And my professional life has also moved on; I have a lot more responsibilities at work than I used to.  I like that, but it's different than the days when I was an operations guy, whose primary responsibility was to be there when things didn't work.  Consulting and managing don't work that way.

And of course, a big part of it is that the Braves themselves have been less interesting the past couple of years than they had been.  This isn't to say that the teardown that they've embarked on is exactly "wrong", but the resulting team has been a mix of has-beens and never-will-bes, with really too many of the former for my liking.  I realize that Tommy LaStella and Joey Terdoslavich were never likely to be stars, but I'd rather watch them struggle than watch Nick Markakis or Brandon Phillips.  Sure, the latter two are actual major league players, but there's no future potential for those guys.  And even worse, they're not particularly interesting.  They're perfectly cromulent players, but that's all.  So, boring, and hopeless.  What a combo.

That being said, 2017 might be more interesting.  The younger guys are starting to fill out the roster, and the older guys they've signed are more clearly intended as stopgaps.  And in some cases, those older guys are interesting - Bartolo Colon and R.A. Dickey.  They're not the future, but every time Colon bats is an adventure.  Plus, who doesn't love watching a big guy play baseball?  Knuckleballers are fun too.

I'm not enthused about the new ballpark.  I think it'll be even harder to get there from north Fulton than it was to get to Turner Field.  And don't get me started on the broadcasters.  The quality has fallen so far since the glory days of Skip, Pete, and Ernie....  Anyway, we'll see how it goes.  Maybe I'll have more to say this year.  Maybe this place will continue to be just another zombie page on the internet.