Sports Daily: The pimento cheese revolution

SANDWICH WARS

Credit: Ashley Landis/AP

Credit: Ashley Landis/AP

I want to start this missive with a few disclosures.

Now brace yourself, for I am about to deliver a rare hot take.

🔥 Pimento cheese sandwiches are trash.

A wholly misguided enterprise, in fact. A culinary fail. A waste of time, effort and digestive enzymes.

🔥 You may be saying to yourself “Tyler, you’re absolutely right. But why are we talking about this?”

The short answer is “they mostly let me do what I want.”

The long one is “my co-workers Ken Sugiura and Jack Leo ate all of the famously cheap sandwiches at the Masters and then wrote about it and I have thoughts, too.”

That article is here. I strongly recommend you read it, and not just for the headline comparing pimento cheese sandwiches to Phil Mickelson.

🔥 You should also read it because Ken agrees with me.

In fact, he says he’d “rather eat from a sand trap.” (He continued with a dad joke, but we’ll ignore that part.)

Because I rarely develop strongly held convictions beyond “that’s dumb” and “who cares,” I asked a friend who has opinions about everything if both Ken and I were trippin’.

Her name is AJ Willingham. She’s the author of the AJC’s morning newsletter.

And she said yes, mostly.

🔥 Then she offered some tips for the ideal pimento cheese sandwich: “It has to be freshly (immediately) made, and the pimento cheese has to have some constitution about it. A thicker than average cut of white bread — bread of above-average quality, with a dense but not cakey crumb.”

I’ll have to give it a shot.

Would you believe I’ve always had a cakey crumb?

Got your own hot sandwich take? Want to defend pimento’s honor? Shoot me an email — then check out most Masters coverage below.

WELCOME BACK, MURPH

Credit: Mike Stewart/AP

Credit: Mike Stewart/AP

Braves ace Chris Sale struggled against the Phillies last night, giving up five runs in 4 1/3 innings — but the bullpen held strong and the bats came through for a 7-5 win.

⚾ Positives at the plate: Catcher Sean Murphy hit a three-run homer in his first at-bat of the season (and drove in another run later). Austin Riley’s seventh-inning RBI double put the Braves ahead for good.

⚾ Pitching updates: The Braves traded for righthanded reliever Rafael Montero of the Astros.

They also announced injured starter Reynaldo Lopez will not throw for at least 12 weeks. They purport to be hopeful he’ll pitch again near the end of the season.

⚾ Tonight’s game: Grant Holmes and Taijuan Walker are slated to start. First pitch is a 7:15 p.m. on FanDuel Sports.

HAWKS IN THE HOME STRETCH

Onyeka Okongwu’s career-high 30 points weren’t enough to push the Hawks past the Magic on Tuesday night. The 119-112 loss puts Atlanta in a tenuous position with three games remaining in the regular season.

😬 They’re now two games behind Orlando for the Eastern Conference’s seventh seed — and clinging to the eighth seed by just one game over Chicago.

Next up: A Thursday night trip to Brooklyn.

SPRING FOOTBALL

Credit: Tony Walsh/UGAAA

Credit: Tony Walsh/UGAAA

🏈 Georgia Tech is counting on its newest wide receivers to come through this fall. The Jackets also lost a defensive back to the transfer portal.

🏈 Georgia’s G-Day game on Saturday should look a lot like previous iterations, coach Kirby Smart said. But, again, it won’t be on TV.

🏈 Georgia State’s plans for its own spring football game include a wing festival — and different postgame meals for the winning and losing teams.

ALSO INTERESTING

😫 Georgia’s private schools would still very much like to change the current high school football classification model, especially when it comes to the playoffs.

🙏 Octavio Dotel, a longtime major league pitcher who played for the Braves in 2007, was among the dozens killed when a roof collapsed at a Dominican nightclub.

🤨 LeBron James is now … a Ken doll. He’s the first pro athlete to be so honored.

PHOTO OF THE DAY

Credit: Jason Getz/AJC

Credit: Jason Getz/AJC

The tradition unlike any other: Golfers skipping the ball across the water at the 16th hole during their practice rounds.

(This dates back to at least the 1980s, though the practice’s exact provenance remains a little murky.)

QUOTE OF THE DAY

Thanks for reading to the very bottom of Sports Daily. Questions, comments, ideas? Contact me at tyler.estep@ajc.com.

Until next time.