“I will never have a heart attack. I give them”

Posted by Chopper | Sports | Tuesday 13 July 2010 5:37 PM

The Yankee kingdom has an empty throne. Today, George Stienbrenner passed away at the age of 80.

Whether you loved him or you hated him, there was nobody in baseball like him. Thankfully, he was ours. He was our fearless leader. He was The Boss.

George Stienbrenner rebuilt the downtrodden Yankees into the powerhouse that they are today. Bottom line, he saved the legacy of the franchise that I’m proud to be a fan of. 11 Pennants, 7 World Series titles, and the pieces in place for many more to come. Sure, he was loud, brash, dominating, and maybe even a little bit off his rocker…..but he always got results. Even during the title drought of the 80′s, no team in baseball won more games than the Bronx Bombers.

But, he also maintained the Yankee lore. There were no alternate jerseys, or names on the backs. You weren’t growing a beard, and if George told you to get a haircut…you got a freakin haircut. The Boss wasn’t going to let any player compromise the class and tradition of the team of Ruth, Gerig, Mantle, and Dimaggio, no matter how much they produced or how much money he paid for them. The legend of the Yankees was always bigger than the sum of its parts.

Of course, George made plenty of mistakes along the way. To whitewash his screw ups would be selling his legacy short. But even in failure, nobody did it like The Boss. How many owners would publicly call a pitcher a fat pussy toad…in spring training!?! Zero, that’s how many. And that’s what made him special. He never settled for second best. He re-invested every dime he made off the the Yankees into making them better. His tactics may have seemed ruthless at times, but not when you’re a Yankee fan. All he wanted to do was win, and it happened more often than not.

No one ever talked about the good that George did. It was always just a small footnote in the story of The Bronx Zoo. He gave away millions of dollars to charities on the condition that no one every mention where it came from. Hundreds of kids went to college, without knowing that Mr.Stienbrenner paid the bill. He took down on their luck players like Doc and Straw, and gave them chance after chance to turn their lives around. He even hired his own personal assistant after catching him putting graffiti on one of the stadium subway cars. He made the kid remove the graffiti, then gave him a job. That’s the Big Stien no one ever mentioned. He demanded results on the field, but the man had a heart of gold off of it. He was the best owner a baseball fan could ever have.

The last time I saw him was my last visit to old Yankee Stadium: the 2008 All-Star Game. It was an emotional day to begin with, and then came The Boss. Sure, he rode around the field in a golf cart and was obviously in fading health…but the electricity of having the King back in his castle for one more night is something I will never forget for the rest of my life. Dammed if I didn’t even get a little teary eyed. The Boss was like every Yankee fan’s crazy grandpa, and every October we got awesome Christmas presents. Nothing makes me happier to know that he went out a champion, just like he deserved.

9 days ago, we spent the 4th of July and George Stienbrenner’s birthday in the house that he built. A palace fit for none other than the greatest team in history of sports. It’s tough for me to accept that in those 9 days since, Yankee fans first lost the voice of the Yankees, and then their heart and soul. I suppose Big Stien just needed to wait for Bob Sheppard to get to heaven to announce his grand arrival.

My friends and I have never known a baseball world without George Stienbrenner. All I can hope for is that two little Stienbrenners can add up to be even half of what he meant to us over the years.

A hard rain fell over the city of New York today. My only guess is that George immediately fired Mother Nature.

Rest In Peace Boss. You’ll be sorely missed.

“Winning is the most important thing in my life, after breathing. Breathing first, winning next.” – George M Stienbrenner III

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Randoms

Posted by Chopper | News | Saturday 10 July 2010 4:41 PM

I am so fucking tired of Lady GaGa. Either get that man a beer or have her put some clothes on, because it’s killing me. Grace Jones needs to go all Tonya Harding on her ass.

So, the Celtics lost Game 7. Badly. Chokelike even. Blowing a 13 point lead? Come on guys. Sure, you can blame age, or injuries, or even the fact Kobe Bryant raped all the players wives during halftime. Me? I’m putting the blame squarely on Jay, who went to see Phish instead of watching Game 7 of the NBA Finals.

“Hi, I’m Lebron James. Some called me the next Micheal Jordan. Turns out, I’m the next Scottie Pippen..but not nearly as angry and scary looking.”

The year of the pitcher? More like the year of drug free baseball players. Don’t fuckin kid yourselves, there are a lot of mid to late 90′s starting pitchers sitting at home that are pretty pissed off right now. Defense? Stolen Bases? When the hell did these become important again? For as much as I’m happy to see baseball come back to the place where i loved it, it’s just odd to watch the transition.

On a side note: I have a tendency to use baseball terms a lot in my day to day life. I think I have issues. Well, other than the obvious.

Happiness? The definition of happiness is knowing I won’t have to watch soccer for four wonderful years. The World Cup is a crappier version of the Olympics without all the bearded Russian women. No, it’s not because I don’t understand it, it’s because it sucks.

Mel Gibson. It was nice knowing you. You had me at calling a female cop sugartits, but you lost me when you turned that into being a crazy racist asshole.

Yeah, so I wrote a blog about the oil spill like 3 months ago. Great job everyone. Now it just spews less oil. It’s things like this that make me think it might come in handy to know mandarin chinese someday.

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Back in the saddle

Posted by Chopper | News | Friday 2 July 2010 4:38 PM

Well, today marks 5 weeks since I got back in the good ol USA. I must say, it’s nice to be home. Don’t get me wrong, I had a great time…but there’s no whiffle ball games and beer pong in southeast Asia. Yup, back to regular life. No more jaunting off to islands, no more laying by the pool, no more feasting on kangaroo meat. Mmmmm kangaroo meat.

Yeah, so Australia kicked ass. I’ve always wanted to go, and it was the perfect opportunity with me only being 6 hours away. Ny buddy Neil heard of my plan, and sure enough…decided it was time to burn some vacation days. I must say, we kicked the crap out of Australia. I think we slept 5 hours a night, and drank at least 12 beers a day the entire time we were there. It was almost perfect. Except…..it’s ridiculously expensive. Well, at least Sydney is. Australia somehow managed to skip this whole global economic crisis. I don’t know, maybe they are all living off residuals from The Crocodile Hunter or something. Luckily, I had some cash saved up from that two months of not paying for anything…and I blew it like Monopoly money.

Speaking of Monopoly money: How in gods name can you tip a stripper with dollar coins? I mean, I’m not giving her $5..and all the other ways I can think of can’t be legal in most civilized nations. Well, except for Canada.

I quickly familiarized myself with the local beer. Fosters? Yeah, Fosters is a myth. A sham. A shamocracy even. I couldn’t find Fosters in one single bar in a 200 mile radius of Metro Sydney. The closest we came was a bartender that thought they may have a can in the basement. That’s it. Nothing. Australia pulled the David Hasselhoff of beer on us, just like we did with Germany. We told them “Oh, here…there’s nothing more American than David Hasselhoff, then you come to America and find out he’s just a washed up drunk guy that no one gives a crap about. Well, the Aussies turned it around on us. What’s even worse, is that they did it with beer. Not cool guys, not cool at all. Some things are just friggin sacred.

But just when you want to get mad at them, they break out the Koalas. Then everyone goes awwww, and you forget that they spent years hoodwinking you to buy 5 gallon cans of shitty beer. Oh Koalas. What cute little things they are. What cute, smelly, mean little things they are. Koalas are like the junkies of the animal kingdom. They wake up, paw around for a few hours, growl at a couple of people, get their fix, sleep for 20 hours, then do it all over again. I can see that shit at the tavern, I didn’t need to fly half way across the world for that nonsense.

The Australians have awful taste in music. I mean, terrible. I saw a kareoke night where people had to sing every bad 80′s and 90′s love gone wrong song that was ever written. But, they sure do love their AC/DC.

But I have to tell ya, if it wasn’t like umpteen hours away…I could totally live in Australia. Instead: I’m back in Boston, back around those I love, and back to doing what I do best: Making dick jokes, acting like a jerk, and offending people.

Let’s get movin.

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