George Steinbrenner’s New Team: The New Hades Yankees

“The Boss” passed away on Tuesday, at the age of 80, from a heart attack suffered in his Tampa home.

Steinbrenner’s obsessive desire to win at all costs is legendary, and I have no doubt that he has already purchased the best team money can buy in hell. Given his “persuasive” nature, he surely found a way to f**k the eyes out of the Devil in this deal, too.

The criteria: the player needs to have been a legendary asshole and he must be dead.

To paraphrase The Righteous Brothers – if there’s a baseball hell, you know they’ve got a bitch of a team. So without further ado, I present to you, George Steinbrenner’s New Hades Yankees aka The All-Star Team From Hell.

Outfield: the Rock Star of the team, Detroit’s Ty Cobb! EASILY the most downright, out-and-out son of a bitch in the lineup, Cobb’s venom is legendary. He blamed his ferocity on the fact that his mother murdered his father, but down here that s**t doesn’t matter.

Allegedly forced into retirement because of gambling accusations, “The Georgia Peach” is the supernova of the team, and also its meanest motherf**ker.

Cobb’s life consisted of two things at which he excelled: baseball and violence. He hit .320+ in 23 of his 24 seasons, and also fist-fought a fan in a wheelchair during a game. His career average of .367 is the highest ever, and he once drove to Princeton to beat his son with a whip for failing out of school.

Cobb stole home a record 54 times, and he also slapped a black elevator operator for being “uppity”, and then stabbed the man’s friend when he intervened. A notorious cheapskate, Cobb was a rich man due to his relationship with the Coca-Cola Company.

He also was accused of sharpening his spikes so he would cut his opponents during his slides into bases. The greatest testament to his attitude is evident in a song released 35 years after his death. Soundgarden’s relentless, driving jam “Ty Cobb” contains the chorus “Hard-headed, f**k you all!” repeated over and over again. If Cobb were playing today, I can rest assured this would be his intro music.

Outfield: Kirby Puckett, Minnesota Twins. “Puck” ruined an otherwise stellar reputation after his forced retirement from the game due to glaucoma in his right eye.

The loveable Hall of Famer, it turns out, had a penchant for misogyny. His wife divorced him after his retirement, claiming that he had threatened to kill her. “They” even told a story about her locking herself in the bedroom, and Puck breaking the door down, “Shining”-style.

Puckett was also a renowned womanizer, with hoes in many different area codes. But the coup de gras came in a  Minnesota restaurant in 2002. The career .318 hitter was accused of holding a woman against her will in a bathroom, and squeezing her boob hard enough to bruise it. Anyone who has ever had a titty-twister knows that s**t hurts like a bastard.

The devil got his due in 06, when Puckett succumbed to a stroke, and on March 6th, he became the 2nd youngest Hall of Fame inductee to die, behind good guy Lou Gehrig.

Outfield: Joe “Ducky” Medwick St. Louis Cardinals/Brooklyn Dodgers. A real class-act, he was such an asshole that he got himself ejected during Game 7 of the 1934 World Series for starting a fight.

The Cardinals Hall of Famer slid into third spikes-a-blazing, and the Tigers third baseman did not approve and started firing back. Neither player was ejected at that point, but in the next inning when the Tiger fans began bombing ole Ducky with garbage and bottles.

He had no qualms about fighting his teammates either. He brawled with a pitcher once that had the nerve to call him out for lack of hustle, and even flattened his catcher for walking in front of him too many times while getting his picture taken.

Ducky, who preferred the self-anointed title of “Muscles”, was such a prick, that one of his former teammates is quoted as saying “When he dies, half of the National League will go just to make sure the son of a bitch is dead.” Medwick was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1968, after retiring with a lifetime .324 average.

First Base: Chick Gandil, Chicago Black Sox. Yes, THOSE Black Sox. Not only did this dickhead PLAY for those Black Sox, but he was the ringleader of the 1919 scandal which gave us the magnificent film “Eight Men Out”.

He was referred to by fellow conspirator Eddie Cicotte as “The Master of Ceremonies” for his pivotal role in the scandal. If that isn’t enough reason for this skidmark to burn in Hell, he was also quite the bastard in general.

During the infamous 1919 season, he was suspended for 5 games for knocking out a home plate umpire while arguing balls and strikes. He was also arrested in 1909 for stealing $225 from the OUTLAW LEAGUE team he was playing on.

Even other criminals hated this asshole! Needless to say, Gandil was never, and never will be, enshrined in any Hall of Fame. Unless they open a Dick Hall of Fame. Then he will surely be in the charter class.

Second Base: Billy Martin, New York Yankees. WELL known as a drunken, loud-mouthed, obnoxious, hell-raising son of a bitch. His behavior was so bad in New York, he was traded to Kansas City because it was feared that he was a bad influence on Mickey Mantle-no stranger to booze and ladies himself.

On his 29th birthday, celebrating with Yogi Berra and the Mick, Martin instigated a brawl at the famous Copacabana Night Club.

While a member of the Reds, the 1953 World Series MVP threw his bat at pitcher Jim Brewer, who had just hit him. When handing the bat back, Martin drilled him in the eye, breaking his cheekbone and keeping Brewer hospitalized for two months.

His only season managing the Twins came to end because he threw down with one of his pitchers in an alley. The sheer volume of fights this looney-toon engaged in would make the Broad Street Bullies proud. The 2nd time he was fired from the Yankees (the 2nd of 5) for fighting a marshmallow salesman in a hotel. A f**king marshmallow salesman.

The former All-Star also had his arm broken fighting one of his own Yankee pitchers in 1985. Yankee great Thurman Munson once said about him “If he ever looks mad at you, go ahead and hit him before he sucker punches you.” His Wikipedia page reads like a boxer’s more so than a baseball player’s. The bastard has not one but TWO sections titled “Altercations”.

Third base: Ken Caminiti, Houston Astros/San Diego Padres. He’s the role player on the squad. Unlike the bitch-ass Miami Heat, we here at JP don’t want to load our team up too much. Like Yankee skip Joe Girardi once said about the Pinstripes, “You need dirtbags too.” And here is one.

An admitted steroid abuser, the 1996 National League MVP makes the team based on his substance abuse problems, and his obvious lack of moral fiber. A lifetime .272 hitter, in 1996, steroids served him well.  He hit .326 with 40 dongs and 130 RBIs.

He would never sniff these numbers again. He would go on to sniff other things though. Mainly huge piles of cocaine. When he was found dead in a New York City hotel room in 2004, the autopsy revealed he died of an overdose of cocaine and opiates. HEYYYOOOO!!

Shortstop- Mike “King” Kelly, Chicago White Stockings/Boston Beaneaters. No, I did not make those names up. We have to jump in the wayback machine to get some dirt on the King.

Kelly was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1945. The 2-time batting champ is credited with inventing the hook slide, the hit-and-run, and the catcher backing up 1st base.

A jack of all trades, Kelly played every position, and most of them while drunk. He supposedly once caught a fly ball on the run with a mug of the good stuff in his hand, never spilling a drop.

His Hall of Fame manager once sent a detective on his trail, and the gumshoe reported that he spied Kelly drinking lemonade at 3 am in a saloon. Enraged, Kelly replied “It was straight whiskey! I never drank lemonade at that hour in my life!!”

Kelly was considered an infamous, if not clever, cheater. He routinely tried to skip bases, and was the originator of bush league tactics employed by current star Alex Rodriguez.

When two opposing players were both running for a fly ball, he would shout out one of their names. Once retired, he owned a semi-successful bar, but he drank up all of the profits. He died of pneumonia nearly broke at the age of 36.

Catcher-Marty Bergen, Boston Beaneaters. Described by Hall of Famer Jesse Burkett as “the best catcher the world ever produced.” Obviously Burkett was drinking the Kool-Aid Bergen was making. Because this dude was seriously, off-his rocker, insane. His career only lasted four years, and we’ll get to why in a sec.

He slapped teammate Vic Willis in the face during breakfast one day, with no explanation, and that seemed to start the downward spiral. After the loss of his son in 1899, he really went off the deep end.

Instead of catching pitches, he would become preoccupied with avoiding imaginary knife thrusts from would-be assassins. His career ended in 1899 due to his erratic behavior.

In 1900, he murdered his wife and two children with an axe, and then he sliced his own neck so severely with a straight razor that he nearly decapitated himself. Rest in piss, you crazy bastard.

Pitchers- Bugs Raymond, Detroit Tigers/ St. Louis Cardinals/NY Giants and Steve Howe, LA Dodgers/New York Yankees. These two LOVED themselves some substances. Hall of Famer Christy Mathewson once said of Raymond, “After a night out, don’t get too close to Raymond. His breath could stop a freight train.”

He was such a pleasant cork-sucker that one of his friends beat him to death in a hotel room during an argument. When told of his former player’s death, skip John McGraw, a well-regarded asshole in his right, replied, “that man took 7 years off my life.”

Steve Howe was also a big fan of the drink, but his poison of choice was that Colombian bam-bam. He chose it so much in fact, that he was suspended 7 times for use of it.

In 1993 he became only the 2nd player to receive a lifetime ban for substance abuse, although it was subsequently lifted. When he rolled his pickup truck and died in 2006, he was high on crank.

Both pitchers showed glimmers of talent, as Howe was RoY and Raymond posted a 2.03 ERA in 1908. But neither had any self control, and preferred the life of a pig than that of a successful professional athlete. Karma. Is. A. Bitch.

So there you have it, 2010 New Hades Yankees!! Managed by none other than legendary hard ass John McGraw. And for those of you who question why the New Hades Yanks are owned by Steinbrenner?

Well, he ruined the game of baseball for everyone who isn’t a dick-sucking Skankees fan. And he wasn’t that nice of a human being either.

Illegal campaign contributions to another colostomy bag, Richard Nixon, resulted in a felony conviction for “the Boss”.

And when Dave Winfield sued him for reneging on a contract section that obligated the Yanks to donate $300k to Winfield’s charity, what did the Boss do? He hired a degenerate gambler to dig up dirt on Winfield, one of the game’s good guys. So sleep well, Steinbrenner. This is all just bitterness that you didn’t buy my Tribe in 1971.

Special thanks to The Dead Ball Era!