JuiceCrewAllStar
Whole Milk Drinker
- Joined
- Feb 4, 2014
- Messages
- 37,177
- Reaction score
- 9,908
damn
terrible stuff
guess a press conference is being held in like 15 minutes
awful whomever it is
The best example of this is from All-Star weekend in 2007. I was standing in the clubhouse at AT&T Park in San Francisco when I saw Barry Bonds in the corner, sitting at his locker. Now, most players only have one locker. Some guys have two. But Barry? He had like five lockers … and a TV … and a recliner — like a massage chair. He owned an entire corner of the clubhouse. I think a lot of players were intimidated by him just because he was Barry Bonds. He was the best player in the world, and he just had this … presence. And when he was sitting in his corner of the clubhouse, he basically felt unapproachable.
I had never been so wrong.
I thought about Chi Chi’s advice, and I walked over to Barry’s corner, went up behind him and tapped him on the back.
He turned around and said, “Hey, Carlos. How are you doing?”
I felt like a little kid. It was an honor to me that he even knew my name.
Then I said to him, “Barry, when is a good opportunity for us to talk about hitting?”
He paused for a moment to think, and then he got up and said, “O.K., let’s go.”
Then he led me out of the clubhouse and out to the cages.
So there I was, alone with best player in the world, and he was basically giving me a private hitting lesson.
Just because I asked.
Now, the day has finally arrived where that further punishment has been handed down, and before it was announced the penalties were expected to to focus on signing classes from the last two seasons, with top prospects like Kevin Maitan, Abrahan Gutierrez, Yunior Severino, and Juan Contreras being made international free agents. Which is how it panned out.
Those players are the recipients of the Braves’ top-four signing bonuses in 2016, but that’s not all. According to Yahoo! Sports’ Jeff Passan, these four prospects are just the tip of an iceberg that includes up to 12 current prospects and restrictions on their international free agent signings in 2019 and 2020.
All prospects released from their Braves contracts as part of this punishment will keep their signing bonuses — but will have certain restrictions on their new free agent status — and just in case you thought there was an easy loophole here, the Braves won’t be able to re-sign any players they lose.
That means the Braves will be looking at a whole lot of money that they spent on prospects that will give them no actual return on the field.