My Sports Life Is A Rock Song: Baba O'Riley

Editor's Note: This is normally Banky's gig, but I'll give it a stab just this once.

My brother bought a used PA the other day. He's been in a series of bands and is good at making loud noises, so it made sense. When I first heard he was looking, I gave him $200. Now if you know my brother, you're aware that giving him any amount of cash is akin to dropping it in a creek after a rainstorm. But my foolish spending was an investment. You see, I get to use that PA on Saturday afternoons this fall to tailgate at college football games, and if I can save up enough gas money that PA, a generator and me will erect ourselves in the Invesco parking lot December 7.

I spent two hundred dollars so I can play Baba O'Riley really, really loud.

I've always loved that song, but it was taken away from me for many years by an evil batting-helmet-throwing bitch-ass twerp named Paul O'Neill. And now I'm taking it back, with several thousand watts of authority behind me.

Paul O'Neill played half his career for the Cincinnati Reds, and he was a pretty darn good player. Not great, not lousy, pretty darn good. Take a peek at any player on Baseball Reference and they'll give you his stats in exhaustive detail, as well as a neat little feature where they align that guy with other players of similar stature. For O'Neill, it's outfielders like Moises Alou, Bobby Bonilla, Garret Anderson, Ruben Sierra. Pretty darn good ballplayers, right? Not great, not lousy, pretty darn good.

Then, in 1992, Paul O'Neill was traded to the Yankees. At the time it didn't matter, because the Yankees were kind of a joke. They never went to the playoffs, the Stadium was always deserted, and Don Mattingly alone tried in vain to lift the team back up to its former stature. In fact, the player O'Neill was traded for (Roberto Kelly) perfectly embodied the Mattingly Yankees. He was average in every way--in fact, those New York clubs also employed another Kelly (Pat Kelly) and I could never remember which was which. I think Pat was the white one.

So O'Neill made his way to the Bronx and started playing right field, and no one really noticed. Unfortunately for me, and my relationship with Baba O'Riley, there was a large knot of soon-to-be-great players working their way up through the Yankees' farm system. Within a couple of seasons, O'Neill would be joined by Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera, Bernie Williams, Jorge Posada and Andy Pettitte. Even worse, the banishment of George Steinbrenner over the Dave Winfield Affair left the front office in the hands of actual capable baseball men like Bob Watson and Brian Cashman. They refused to trade this young talent and they acquired veterans that could work with new manager Joe Torre, guys like Joe Girardi, David Cone and Tim Raines.

They started winning World Series, every single fucking year, but that didn't bother me. Every great era of baseball has coincided with a Yankees dynasty--they always spend the most money and by default end up with great players. In fact, many of the most memorable teams in baseball history are the ones that defeated dynastic Yankee clubs--the Cardinals of Musial in '42 and Gibson in '64, the Brooklyn Dodgers in '55, the Milwaukee Braves in '57, Bill Mazeroski's walk-off Pirates in '60, Sandy Koufax's Dodgers in '63, the Big Red Machine in '76, the Dodgers again in '81, and of course most every champion this decade: Angels, Marlins, Diamondbacks, and the '04 Red Sox coming back from 0-3 in the ALCS.

No, it wasn't their greatness that bothered me, it was Paul O'Neill. Paul O'Neill might have been the single most annoying baseball player ever to don stirrups. He bitched at umps as if he were channeling Tim Duncan, Greg Popovich, Manu Ginobli and Tony Parker all at the same time. Any bad at-bat could result in an entire dugout getting violently rearranged, but a strikeout meant he would walk up to the concourse and upset every peanut cart and hot dog stand in the park.

Then there was the helmet toss. Paul O'Neill elevated it to an art form. If the "art" you're discussing looks like this.

Take all of that, the bitching and the yelling and the bush league shenanigans, and top it off with the fact that Paul O'Neill got to walk out to the hallowed left-handed batter's box at Yankee Stadium--the same one that Donnie Baseball, the Mick, the Babe and Reggie all dug into--to the strains of the greatest at-bat song of all time. Fuck him, and then fuck him again.

Baba O'Riley was ruined for me for quite some time. I knew I'd come back, eventually, once O'Neill retired and the awful chalky residue he left behind was rinsed from my palette. Now is that time, as Paul O'Neill has gone from anonymous outfielder to obnoxious asshole to inexplicably beloved Yankee heartthrob to unquestioned national joke. Thank you, Joe Posnanski, for helping this process along, and get ready to rock on, Rockers. Baba is back.

Update: In re-reading Posnanski's bit on the O'Neill number controversy, I realize that I essentially copied his riff on O'Neill's comparable players from Baseball Reference. This was entirely unintentional--I read the Posnanski piece when it came out weeks ago and perhaps these ideas stuck in my subconscious. Sorry, Joe, I'm trying to give credit where it's due. At the end of the day, Paul O'Neill is still a first-rate douche, and on that we are all in agreeance.