July 2008 Archives

Okay Brett, I've come down here to Hattiesburg to meet with you. I hope we can come to some sort of peace agreement and end this whole unpleasantness.
Unpleasantness? What're you talkin' about? Ain't no unpleasantness out here, Mr. Murphy. I just wanna get out there on the football field and have some fun.
Of course you do. But if you showed up at Packers camp right now, it would just be a huge distraction for everyone involved. We need to decide the future of our relationship and proceed from there.

'Relationship'? That's some pretty fancy talk. Brett Favre don't know from fancy talk. He's just a simple guy who wants to toss the pigskin around and have some fun. Just like in this here advertisementation.

I wasn't too upset about the Yankee Love Fest that was Fox's coverage of OMG THE LAST ALL STAR GAME AT YANKEE STADIUM. I mean, yeah, it was completely over the top and so full of fake, sepia-toned wistfulness it would make Ken Burns retch.

But the months and months of hype leading up to it meant you knew it was gonna be like that. If you insisted on watching the All Star Game, knowing full well it was going to be 4 hours of Joe Buck bending over and spreading for the Pinstripe Bullet, you really have no right to complain about it.

I did wish, however, that more attention had been paid to the two following details.

1) Yankee Stadium hasn't been condemned. It's not about to turn into dust. It's old and outdated, but the Yankees could continue to play there if they really wanted to. So essentially, this "celebration" of the last year at Yankee Stadium is really a celebration of the Yankees building a billion dollar monument to themselves--with more than half of that money coming from city bonds, while the team tries and hold New York over a barrel for even more public funds to complete it.

1a) Oh, and they destroyed one of the few public parks in their Bronx neighborhood in order to do it. The team insists that they'll pay to replace it with another public park, but that new park will be located on the other side of the Deegan. So go fuck yourselves, local residents, we need that space for a Hard Rock Café!

2) When the history of Yankee Stadium is rehashed by nostalgia junkie writers, they inevitably bring up Ruth, DiMaggio, Mantle, and so on. They seldom mention the fact that the current Yankee Stadium shares almost nothing with the Yankee Stadium that those legends played in, except for the name. The Stadium received an enormous makeover in the early 70s (totally publicly funded, by the way), to add a few seats and completely drain it of all idiosyncracies and charm. If you see pictures of the original version, it looks more like Ebbets Field or the old Tiger Stadium, a classic pre-war ballpark. The redesigned version that opened in 1976 looks like Shea Stadium in navy blue (which even the most ardent Mets fan will tell you is a bad thing). So when people lament the impending loss of the House that Ruth Built, guess what? That place has already been gone for over 30 years.

But again, the full-press Yankee love was hardly surprising. What I did find surprising was the unbridled worship of George Steinbrenner that came along with it. During the broadcast, Joe Buck went out of his way to spend an entire inning talking about how great Steinbrenner was, and how he deserves to be in the Hall of Fame. Tim McCarver, who I think might now be legally retarded, agreed with him, as if Big Stein was as much a no-brainer HOF vote as Mariano Rivera.

Today's NY papers were all pretty much in line with this POV, praising Steinbrenner and his winning winningness, and his ability to have his team's stadium host an All Star Game. Midget Mike Lupica's column was typical of the lot, chronicling George's trip onto the Yankee Stadium field as if it was Caesar crossing the Rubicon.

At this point, I have to rub my eyes and blurt a Hanna Barbera-ish "ah-geda-ah-geda-HUH?" Because apparently I blinked some time in the last 15 years or so, and it must have been at the exact second someone switched the setting on George Steinbrenner's Public Opinion to Adoring Adulation. Because for as long as I've been alive, it was set at either Derision, Disgust, or Searing Hatred.

There's few things I hate more than historic revisionism. And I especially hate it when it's being performed on an event that I remember. I don't like someone trying to mindfuck me into thinking that my memories are the total opposite of what I vividly remember. The case of George Steinbrenner is a minor one in the grand scheme of things. But that doesn't mean I can't call bullshit on his image makeover.

Allow me to flash back to my childhood, when I religiously read and reread a series of books called The Baseball Hall of Shame. The first volume had a chapter called "Odious Owners," and its inaugural inductee was Big Stein himself. I quote from their intro:

"Revolutions have been won with less bloodshed, human rights violations, and atrocities than that which have been inflicted on the Yankees during George Steinbrenner's reign of terror."

This is from a book published in 1985, and reflects the general opinion regarding Steinbrenner's ownership at the time: He was not the driving force behind the team, but an impediment to any hope of success.

Almost immediately after Steinbrenner bought the Yankees in 1972, he was banned from the game for 15 months because of illegal contributions to Richard Nixon's CREEP fund. He got around the ban by berating his least favorite players via tape recorded, obscenity-filled tirades. He also probably orchestrated the extremely unpopular swap of Bobby Murcer for Bobby Bonds in absentia, the first of many really horrible trades he would insist on during his career.

Joe Torre managed for 12 years, so it's easy to forget that Steinbrenner used to run through managers like tissue paper. From 1972 to 1996, the Yankees had 20 managerial changes, all of them instigated by Big Stein himself. This includes five different tours of duty for Billy Martin. Their love-hate relationship was the stuff of Sophoclean tragedy.

He also fired Yogi Berra a mere 17 games into the 1985 season. And rather than tell the Yankee legend himself, Steinbrenner dispatched coach Clyde King to deliver the bad news. Class.

Steinbrenner didn't just shitcan managers on a whim. He was also fond of meaningless firings of various coaches as warning shots to whoever happened to be in the manager's seat at the time. The tales are legion of him firing low-level employees who offended him in some way. And he loved to banish players who'd had a bad outing or two to Columbus as punishment.

Barring that, he would publicly question the heart and integrity of his players. Whether it was doubting the "guts" of pitcher Jim Beattie or calling Hideki Irabu "a fat pussy toad", Steinbrenner was always willing to destroy a player's reputation and confidence just to grab himself a few headlines.

By the late 1980s, fed up fans started bringing signs to the park saying things like STEINBRENNER MUST GO. This prompted the owner to kick out the offending protestors, which in turn prompted free speech lawsuits from the ACLU.

Oh, and he secretly paid a professional gambler $40,000 to dig up dirt on Dave Winfield, a move that resulted in his second suspension. So, to reiterate: classy.

I still remember when Steinbrenner was suspended in 1990. I remember it because I was at my grandparents' house, and so was one of my uncles, an absolutely insane Yankees fanatic. He was literally jumping up and down. YES, HE'S GONE! FINALLY, THEY GOT RID OF THAT SON OF A BITCH!

My uncle's reaction was the prevailing feeling among fans, who gave a standing ovation at Yankee Stadium when the news was announced: with Steinbrenner gone, maybe the team could finally get back on the right track.

So what happened in the intervening years to cause a total 180 in reputation? The fact that he's sick and frail helps. Nothing makes a person's reputation bulletproof more than a debilitating disease. When Ronald Reagan left office, his reputation was at its lowest ebb. But once he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's, suddenly his legacy was unassailable. Now, Republicans want his face on everything from the penny to Mount Rushmore.

More importantly, the Yankees have made the playoffs every year since1995. During that time, they won six AL pennants and four World Series titles. The Yankees are amid a dominant streak unseen since the Bronx Bomber dynasty that began in the late 1940s and lasted into the early 1960s. You can gloss over a lot of past indiscretions when you win.

Here's the problem, though: George Steinbrenner has had virtually nothing to do with this success on the field. Unless you want to give him credit for not being as much of a meddling douchebag as he used to be.

You can directly trace the team's rise back to the top to his suspension in the early 1990s. While Big Stein was away from the game, the Yankees farm system was nurturing prospects like Mariano Rivera, Bernie Williams, Derek Jeter, and Andy Pettitte. Considering Steinbrenner's track record of trading away minor leaguers for beaten-up vets, it is highly likely that most of these future franchise cornerstones would never have worn pinstripes if he was running the team while they were minor leaguers.

In The Last Night of the Yankee Dynasty, Buster Olney ascribes the success of the 1990s  Yankees to a new hands-off approach by Steinbrenner. And you would agree after looking at what free agents were acquired under his watch. He did go hard after Reggie Jackson, which resulted in two World Series titles. But after that, his record is pretty checkered, particularly when it came to pitchers. Thanks to Steinbrenner's whims, the Yanks were stuck with such stiffs as Tim Leary, Andy Hawkins, Doyle Alexander, and Steve Trout.

Of course, the Yankees became a multibillion dollar juggernaut under Steinbrenner's watch. But seriously, who cares? That's great for his bank account, and it should keep Hank in gold diapers for another few years, but it's not relevant to baseball as it's played on the field. It makes me think of how many people praise Madonna for being such a great "businesswoman". Good for her, but does that make her last album any less shitty?

Most sportswriters nowadays barely acknowledge Steinbrenner's past at all. And if they do, they dismiss it by saying, "everything he does, it's because he wants to win so bad." Who the fuck doesn't want to win? Yeah, George Steinbrenner totally revolutionized the game. For decades, owners tried to succeed by losing, until Steinbrenner came along and said, "Screw you guys, I'm going to try to win by winning!"

And what kind of message does this send? It's okay to treat people like toilet paper as long as you're doing it in the service of winning! In fact, as long as you really, really want to win badly, anything you do is completely excusable! A country based on those values is totally the kind of country I want to live in!

I'm not saying you can't make an argument for putting George Steinbrenner in the Hall of Fame. And if being a bad human being were a disqualification, there would be a lot less plaques in Cooperstown. But you have to consider the several decades of mismanagement and douchebaggery outlined above.

If you think he's still a HOFer after all that, fine. But you can't ignore some really shitty history. Unless you're 99 percent of the media, apparently.

During Monday night's Home Run Derby, Josh Hamilton hit some of the most impressive moon shots ever clubbed within the confines of the House that Ruth Built. And as we all know, anything accomplished at Yankee Stadium is at least 10 times more important than anything accomplished anywhere else.

The only things bigger than the home runs Hamilton hit were the lengths to which the ESPN talking heads went to praise him. You see, Josh Hamilton's a recovering heroin addict--perhaps you heard about it when you weren't too busy not living under a rock for the last year.

Granted, Derek Jeter wasn't taking part in the Derby, so ESPN had to find someone else to verbally fellate. But their unblinking love of Hamilton--a man they couldn't pick out of a lineup before the night began--was so embarrassing, it was approaching near Favre-ian levels.

Rick Reilly, the finest sports commentator 1987 had to offer, was particularly cringe-worthy in what I believe was his first on-air ESPN gig. He kept credulously repeating a dream Hamilton said he had, in which he was interviewed at Yankee Stadium after a home run derby. How amazing that he had that dream! How prescient! How [consults thesaurus] portentous, even!

You will warp your children. It's an inevitable byproduct of the parenting process, just like how you can't make a hot dog without two or three rat turds finding their way into the mix.

Some warping is a good thing, in the long run. A completely unwarped, innocent child would grow up to be one of those scary, infantile grown ups who's way too into Harry Potter. If you're lucky, you warp your child so that they have a healthy skepticism about The Ways of the World. If you're unlucky, they grow up to collect other people's skin. But in all likelihood, you won't know how you've warped your child for good.

I can trace my own warping--positive and negative--to a lot of things. But I know that parental TV viewing played a major part. Particularly, my dad's fondness for Monty Python. He never forced me to watch it, but it was on in the house often, back in the days when Python was a PBS staple.

I remember liking it a lot when I was way too young to know what I was watching. I had to ask my dad to translate certain Britishisms like pram and lorry and explain allusions to historic events I hadn't learned about yet. But I liked the really weird cartoons, and the fact that in any given episode you'd probably see some boobs (PBS was the best friend to a kid without cable in the 80s).

Was I destined to be a nerd anyway, and annoy the shit out of my friends by repeating sketches they'd never see? Yeah, probably. But the fact that I could recite "The Lumberjack Song" at age 7 definitely sped up the process. Was it my father's intention to bruise my fragile psyche with anagrams and cross dressing? I doubt it. Still, it happened.

Jose, we can't have you throwing tantrums out on the field. You're a grown man and you can't act that way anymore.
I know, coach, I just get so emotional about this game.
Emotion is good, but you can't let it get the best of you. That's why I brought in a New York baseball legend to set you straight. He's an expert in learning how to control your emotional impulses.
Wow, four-time world champion Paul O'Neill!
That's FIVE time world champion, you ASSHOLE!
/rips off batting gloves, flings them across clubhouse
Oh yeah, I forget you won one with the Reds.
How could you forget that?! We swept the A's!! I mean, C'MONNN!!
/takes off batting helmet, bounces it off ground 12 feet in the air
I'm sorry, I was just a little kid when that happened.
And it woulda been SIX if stupid Mariano could've shut the door on the fucking DIAMONDBACKS!! JESUS!!
/bites knuckles until bloody
Whoah, that's not fair. Mariano Rivera is, like, the best closer in the history of time.
You don't know what you're TALKING ABOUT! That ball was nowhere NEAR the plate!
/yanks jersey out of pants, pops three buttons
Ball? What ball?
Yeah, exactly--it was a BALL!! I don't take strikes, okay? I CRUSH THEM! If I don't swing, that means IT'S NOT A STRIKE!
/bashes water cooler with Louisville Slugger
You see, Jose? This is the way a professional athlete acts.
It looks more like the way a whiny crybaby acts to me.
WHAT?!
/puts hands on hips, rolls eyes skyward
No, you don't understand. He's showing passion!
Does "showing passion" include kicking his cleats off and eating them?
/gnaws on Nikes
Yes, it shows he's fiery! That's how he led the Yankees to four World Series titles!
I thought it was because he was a good hitter in a lineup full of other good hitters. Plus all their pitchers were on steroids.
Well, yeah, that too.
When you put on the pinstripes, you have a duty to uphold the legacy of Ruth and Mantle and...OH, YOU GOTTA BE SHITTING ME WITH THIS STRIKE ZONE, UMP!!
/rips open sunflower seed pack with teeth, swallows entire pack, spits it out onto floor
You see, Jose, you have a long way to go before you can be the kind of inspirational leader that Paul was in his prime.
So if I wanna act like a spoiled brat, I have to be old, white, and on a winning team that's not full of broken down veterans.
Pretty much, yeah.
GOD, I will EAT your CHILDREN!!
/pulls leather strings out of fielder's mitt one by one with his teeth

Years ago, there was an article in the Onion entitled, "Romantic-Comedy Behavior Gets Real-Life Man Arrested". As with most late-90s Onion material, it was letter-perfect in its execution. Movies routinely depict characters doing things that would get an actual person some serious jail time. Or at the very least, would not be considered brave or charming, but just downright creepy.

The Onion article was the first thing I thought of when I read this story in The New York Times. The "plot" reads like a bad 80s action movie starring Patrick Swayze (I realize this sentence is redundant). Except instead of becoming the most famous bouncer in America, the protagonist of this story gets a lot of people thrown in jail, ruins a whole bunch of reputations, and inspires millions of dollars in lawsuits.

A federal agent calling himself Sergeant Bill showed up in a small town in Missouri, an area plagued by a methamphetamine problem (in your SAT drug analogies, meth : rural America :: crack : ghetto). Sergeant Bill vowed to clean up this one-horse town, and the town, which had applied for federal law enforcement grants, was grateful for his help. With the help of local police, he used strongarm tactics to put the dealers out of business (this is where you'd put the montage of bad guys getting busted). Peace and quiet returned to this sleepy village.

Except a few months into his crusade, it turned out that the "federal agent" was nothing of the sort. Sergeant Bill had deceived local police and politicians through a labyrinthine series of ruses, aided by some collaboration and childlike levels of gullibility. Sergeant Bill had no federal connections whatsoever. He wasn't even being paid by anyone. He just showed up in the town to smash some drug dealers' skulls, and the entranced local officials followed him merrily as if he were the Pied Piper of Ass Kicking.