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| Not pictured: Hitler eating shit, but reports suggest he did. |
As a GM he put together a World Series winning team in Cleveland, which science has proven to be all but an impossible in the decades since. He testified at Flood v. Kuhn that the reserve clause hurt players and should be struck down. Hank Greenberg continued to be awesome until his death at the age of 75 in 1986.
Eat shit, Hitler.
KS
His face is on the Mt. Rushmore of Tigers icons right between Ty Cobb and Al Kaline. I remember being a little kid and watching a videotape my aunt had that covered the history of the Tigers and it was impressed upon me at an early age by that tape that Hank Greenberg was fucking awesome. I remember one scene was just the number 58 in black and white in huge font which took up the whole screen and man that seemed badass as hell, especially because when I was a kid, MLB was firmly in the 36 HR leads the majors every year era so those numbers were fucking mythical. I eventually "borrowed" that tape and watched it roughly a million billion times - a scientific number, no exaggerations here - as a kid and I still wish I had it today. That is all a bunch of rambling ass nonsense but fuck it, these are the frenzied, jumbled memories of an awestruck boy I am sorting through here, and really, that is sort of the point here.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I am loling like a damn fool imagining the expression on Mt. Rushmore Ty Cobb's face as he realizes he's stuck for eternity next to an actual Jew. But fuck Ty Cobb, he'll get over it.
Also, also, my favorite moment in World War II, one that's sadly far too ignored in our schools today, is the one where Hank Greenberg finds Hitler and shits in his mouth and then makes him swallow it all while threatening him with a giant baseball bat made from the femur of a giant Nazi he killed with his bare hands. That shit happened. HISTORY FEELINGS!
I wondered how much a part of Tigersdom Greenberg is now, and hoped you'd have something to say about it, Neil, and lol apparently you DO.
ReplyDeleteSeriously if you haven't watched this one you really should.
Also, totally with you re: how mythic the past seemed growing up in the 80s and watching guys lead the league with HR totals in the 30s or low 40s with the occasional monster year busting in to the 50s . . . actually nobody got to 50 until Fielder in 1990, right? And that seemed like a huge feat, and one only possible because of a very fat man constantly swinging for the fences in a very small park. Anyway yeah it is actually grand to be back to normal on that front. Like last year Bautista had one of the all-time great ridiculous out-of-the-blue seasons for 54 (if he hits 30 this year I'll be completely OK with that), then the best hitter of this generation came in at 42, then like a dozen guys (fifteen, actually, I just checked) in the 30s. That's more like it, you know?
(note that I am not pretending to be above thrilling at the drug-fueled awesomeness -- his, not mine -- of watching Barry Bonds take BP when the Giants came to Toronto for interleague, but you know what I'm saying here: that was awesome, but this is actually better.)
woops, it was sixteen guys who hit in the 30s. my entire argument lies in ruins.
ReplyDeleteYeah, Cecil was the first person in my lifetime to hit 50 and I remember it being one of those HOLY SHIT NOW HE'S IMMORTAL kind of moments, both because everything is amplified when you're a kid and because that shit just didn't happen anymore. Then Brady Anderson and a bunch of dudes hit 50 and it was all "Huh."
ReplyDelete(note that I am also not pretending to be above thrilling at the drug-fueled awesomeness -- his, and also mine -- of watching Barry Bonds, but you know what I'm saying here: that was awesome but this is actually better. Also, note that I hate anyone who bitches about the steroid era because fuck it, who cares, especially because Babe Ruth probably played while on speedballs and Mickey Mantle was probably so fucking wired on amphetamines that he could have ripped off his own leg and hit home runs with it and not noticed a damn thing. What I am saying, I guess, is that the joy of my childhood is in no way diminished because of the steroid era or whatever you want to call it and whoever tries to make that claim is likely cashing in on a false sort of sentimentality that I find maudlin and disgusting. I mean, I don't give a fuck that Barry Bonds got all Incredible Hulk and hit 73 home runs because that has nothing to do with what, say, Hank Greenberg managed to do or what I watched Cecil Fielder do. I guess it might be different for some kid who was 8 or 9 when Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire were doing their thing, but I don't give a fuck. We are not babies. We are capable of making our own judgments about what is valid and what is meaningful without it being clouded by some sort of THE SANCTITY OF THE GAME horseshit that is trotted out in order to make old white men feel better about their own fetishized childhoods. Because, really, that's what this argument is all about: not the preservation of your or my childhood or the childhood of kids today but of the preservation of a bullshit memory fetishized and warped into something cartoonish and dumb in the absence of anything honest or true by old guys with Mickey Mantle cards in the attic who need to cling to the little pieces of their memories that don't have anything to do with hiding under desks during air raid drills or of their dad beating the shit out of their mom or of police turning the firehose on some dude who might as well be Hank Aaron. The 50's fucking sucked, yo, and just because you need to convince yourself that Mickey Mantle would have played catch with you instead of buttfucking your mom and drinking all your dad's beer and then setting the family dog on fire with Roger Maris doesn't mean that I need to regard that as anything other than the pathetic neuroses of a doomed and stupid generation. Phew! LOTS AND LOTS OF FEELINGS!)
until Topps stops putting a Mickey Mantle card in every set: no peace
ReplyDeletewhich is to say, I agree with you 100% on all of the above, both on a rational basis and on the level of FEELINGS
Seriously, I bought a couple of packs of plain old 2010 Topps baseball cards last year -- it was the winter, and I'm not made of stone -- and the #7 card was Mickey Mantle. I have nothing against Mickey Mantle but I was like, and remain now like, fuuuuuck off.
ReplyDelete