Wednesday, July 14, 2010

George Steinbrenner:
1930 – It’s About Goddamned Time

You can tell a lot about the life a man lived by those who come forward to eulogize him. In the past 12 hours, Rickey has born witness to Bobby Knight, Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani, Jerry Jones, and other self-proclaimed pillars of STRENGTH and CAPITALISM sing the praise of the late Yankees owner. If possible, Nixon himself would've scurried out from under the woodshack to laud this man for those thoughtful campaign donations. Politics aside, the fact of the matter is that the imprint George Steinbrenner left on baseball has forever changed the game for the worse.

Steinbrenner’s defenders argue that his relentless acquisition of superstar players didn’t violate MLB’s free agency regulations and we should therefore just clamor down, because, hey, he’s allowed to do it. Well guess what? It also doesn’t say that you can’t grab 57 pieces of spicy yellowtail when you’re at the sushi buffet, but that still doesn’t make it an OK thing to do. Where’s the regard for the greater good? Now look what happens: Rickey’s stuck eating those disgusting salmon & cream cheese pieces of sushi because that’s all that’s left. Seriously: who puts cream cheese in sushi? What the fuck? (In this analogy, the salmon cream cheese sushi represents Oliver Perez).

Leveraging free agency for all it’s worth has cheapened baseball and undermined the balance of the game. Those who would proudly defend an unrepentant asshole like Steinbrenner’s right to act like an unrepentant asshole are also themselves… wait for it… Yep! Unrepentant assholes! They’re the same sort of people who cry foul when Con Ed remotely regulates air conditioners in times of peak energy demand because dwindling wattage be damned, Benny in the Bronx needs his basement masturbatorium humming at 57 degrees year round! They’re the people who demand the right to carry guns into places of worship for no ostensible reason other than they kind of liked that shoot out scene in the church in that John Woo movie with doves flying everywhere.

In short, we’re a greedy and belligerent country and for Rickey, George Steinbrenner is the embodiment of a lot of that ugliness. He won’t be missed.

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4 comments:

Bob said...

Rickey? Is that you?

What does a guy have to do to get a Riding with Rickey post these days?

I guess we have the answer. We need to rub out some old baseball dude.

Unknown said...

Ticket prices, you forgot ticket prices.

Fay Vincent said it best yesterday during an interview, and I'm paraphrasing, "Normal people think Eisenhower was a great man, assholes like Steinbrenner think Patton was."

Noah said...

Rickey comes back from retirement! Yay Rickey!

"Normal people think Eisenhower was a great man, assholes like Steinbrenner think Patton was."

I love that. I am framing that.

G. Eldridge said...

I agree it's revisionist to make GS into a hero; but that's what America does to successful thugs. I too am ecstatic the fucker is dead.