Bleep you! Believe me!
Posted: May 19th, 2009 | Filed under: Baseball | 24 Comments »
Hoping to unveil a world premiere today at 11 a.m. central time. We’ll see how that goes.
In the meantime … I have been thinking exactly what to say about this:
First, let me say I get a huge kick out of it. I always enjoy the, er, um, let’s call it “riled up” George Brett. I have had the opportunity to spend quite a lot of time around George, and let me tell you: The guy’s hilarious. He’s not sportilarious* — no, Brett is legitimately very, very funny. His bits about a Royals-Rangers fight is one of the funniest things I’ve ever heard.
*Sportilarious, my word of the day — it is an adjective to describe athletes/coaches who make mildly humorous remarks and get Richard Pryor type laughs from the crowd. Take Fuzzy Zoeller. From what I can gather, if you were friends with Fuzzy Zoeller he would probably be in the Top 15 or 20 funniest people you know, but probably not much more than that. Look at the lines attributed to him on Wikipedia: “
On new golf courses: “Where are the windmills and animals?”
On Craig Stadler’s shoes: “Nice clods, Stadler. Did you get those at a Buster Brown fire sale?”
Yeah, that’s more or less the hilarity quotient. But because he has won a Masters and U.S. Open, man, the guy’s Jerry Seinfeld meets George Carlin meets Spinal Tap. Oh man, he has the crowd in TEARS with his gags! He has reporters holding their sides with his one liners! He’s a laugh riot! That’s sportilarious.
And, personally, I find this funny too. Several people wrote to me about this being “shocking.” But I don’t know what’s shocking about it. George Brett swears a lot, yeah. George Brett is intensely loyal to the Royals, yeah. George Brett thinks that many people in the media are idiots, yeah. I think after being asked for the 6,000th time in the last 15 years what he thinks about criticism of a Royals manager, he finally decided, “What the hell? Why don’t I just snap here?” I mean, this is the guy who went cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs after the pine tar homer — and EVERYONE loved that.
Here it is … in verse: George Brett’s, “Believe Me”
Every manager
takes criticism. Every
manager
is gonna take criti …
I don’t give a (bleep)
if you are
Joe
(Bleeping)
Torre
You’re gonna take criticism
I think the problem
is in this town
we’ve lost so many (bleeping) years in a row
that people don’t have any
patience
so as soon as he does
something
that the media
doesn’t like
they explode on him
(Bleep) you and
(Bleep) them.
Believe me.
There’s thirty teams in Major League Baseball.
Thirty.
No one’s ever called these guys
to manage
Have they?
No one’s ever called them
to be the general manager.
Why?
‘Cause they don’t know
what they’re talking about
sometimes.
And I’m sick and tired
of listening to it.
OK?
I’m sick and tired
of listening to it.
Believe me.
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first?
love the passion, the grit. passion and grit are key to baseball. almost more so than talent. just ask steve phillips.
Hey, I’ve never been first before.
I like what George had to say.
AH! I guess I’ve still not been first.
Here’s more George Brett hilarity, audio NSFW unless you’re a bathroom attendant:
Hall of Famer George Brett discusses _hitting with spring training NRI’s
If Buck O’Neil was Yeats, George Brett is Bukowski.
I hate the idea that you have to have been “in baseball” in order to have a valid opinion about baseball. While George may be right that they guys he mentioned are (or can be, at least) blowhard idiots that don’t know what they are talking about some/most of the time, the reason isn’t necessarily because they have never been “in baseball”. The reason is because they are blowhard idiots. There are tons of people that have never held a position “in baseball” that are far more qualified to manage (or be a general manager, or an analyst, scout, etc.) than a lot of guys that made a career out of playing the game.
Joe, maybe Beltran should have taken command and called off Murphy last night (like really called him off). I know you love him, and I like him a lot too. But the way he plays may lead to him not being recognized as great, as he does seem passive in situations, at times anyway. But you are no stranger to this, for I am pretty sure that you wrote a great piece about this in the past.
http://www.statisticianmagician.com/
Gosh, they should bring his fire and grit to manage the Royals. He would teach the players to run out ground balls as hard as they could…..and we all know that scrappy hustle is the key to winning in the major leagues!
I get so tired of this garbage in KC…….. a faction of people try to intelligently study and evaluate the moves Trey Hillman makes, moves that a lot of the time are contrary to what modern baseball logic states…….the other faction yells and screams about “hustle” and “the desire to win” and how “stupid pitch counts are” and tell tired old stories from the 70’s and 80’s about grit and hustle being the reason the Royals won games.
and by the way George has as many wins as a manager and GM as just about everyone on this blog….. 0.
I was thinking Joe forgot about a famouts George Brett tirade, but it dawned on me I was thinking of Hal McRae’s famous case of “apeshit”. I think I associated it with Brett because, if I remember correctly, the question that set him off was something along the lines of “why didn’t you pinch hit Brett earlier?”. With there being so many Royals fans here, I’m sure somebody can validate/correct that.
Joe, come on man…you just can’t do this to us…
“His bits about a Royals-Rangers fight is one of the funniest things I’ve ever heard.”
I completely expected that sentence to contain a hyperlink. But no, you went total tease on us. Do we have to buy you dinner and a movie before we get the goods?
Great rant, a classic really.
As to his points, while I disagree with the general premise that people outside of baseball can’t have valid opinions about the game, which is what George seems to be driving at, I do sympathize with the notion that Jack Harry and Kevin Kietzman are blowhards who often don’t know a damn thing about what they’re talking about. I once called into Kietzman’s show when I heard him saying that Kauffman Stadium is a pitcher’s park. He not only had no idea that Kauffman Stadium is actually a pretty good hitter’s park, but he also clearly had no concept about park factors in general, trying to blame Kauffman’s high park factor on the Royals’ crappy pitching staff of a few years back. So Brett is right, at least to a degree, which makes the rant even more entertaining. If there wasn’t a nugget of some truth trapped in there, it would be kind of pitiful and sad to watch.
And please, someone, tell me what the deal is with his pants. Were they an elaborate golf-related joke? Are they an homage to Rodney Dangerfield in Caddyshack?
George has intangibles and unprintables.
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To me, George Brett can do no wrong.
But beyond that, the Hillman bashing is a little out of hand. There have been a few questionable moves so far, but by and large the Royals are where they should be. They’re about even with their Pythagorean record, they’re giving good effort, they’ve got good pitching and hitting coaches for the first time in forever.
You wonder how some of these people survived the Baird years.
“why do you have to be in baseball to have a valid opinion about it?”. I read this EVERYWHERE online and it’s completely misguided. Anyone can have a valid opinion, but if you’re critical of people in a very public and loud way you can’t expect the subjects of your criticism to respect you. It’s completely illogical.
There’s a reason the R’s pregame video includes George’s slide-into-third, stand-up punch of Nettles.* Just thinking of that whole scenario still fires ME up to this day.
*At least they used to. I live in Colorado now and haven’t been The K this season.
There are very few athletes out there who, while on the field, HATE their opponents. George did. And that’s what he’s one of the best ever. That kind of mentality is on full display here.
Fuzzy Zoeller – boy was he ever HIL-arious when he made that joke about Tiger offering up collard greens at the Masters dinner…
Maybe the shocking part was the brief Nixon imitation.
We need a George Brett-Earl Weaver-Tommy Lasorda roundtable.
Just to correct my comment (#8) it was not Murphy in left, but Angel Pagan. I just saw the highlight, so I didn’t realize…
Joe, and McKingford #18 –
Yeah, this is a real knee-slapper, all right:
Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ufpU3X-t4w
Transcript:
*** “That little boy is driving well and he’s putting well. He’s doing everything it takes to win. So, you know what you guys do when he gets in here? You pat him on the back and say congratulations and enjoy it and tell him not serve fried chicken next year. Got it?”
***
***
*** “or collard greens or whatever the hell they serve.”
Hysterical, especially the “that little boy” part. Almost as funny as Al Campanis saying blacks “lack the necessities” to run a team.
Maybe this had something to do with Zoeller’s outburst:
*** With drink in hand, Zoeller made the remarks April 13 after finishing his final Masters round, a poor 78 that placed him in a tie for 34th in the final standings.
And a mere 25 shots behind Tiger. In other words, if Tiger had spotted him 3 shots per side, or 6 shots per round, he STILL would have lost.
http://edition.cnn.com/US/9704/21/fuzzy/
must…know…Rangers…bit
OK, the rant was great, and Brett is the king as far as I’m concerned. But the pants?!?!? No comments about his pants?