Yankees Suck
September 4, 2015 7:48 AM   Subscribe

The twisted, true story of the drug-addled, beer-guzzling hardcore punks who made the most popular T-shirts in Boston history.
posted by zamboni (42 comments total) 16 users marked this as a favorite
 
Rooting for the Yankees is like rooting for small pox.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 7:57 AM on September 4, 2015 [11 favorites]


Next Affleck movie right here.
posted by maryr at 7:59 AM on September 4, 2015 [8 favorites]


Our drug dealing T-shirt dudes are harder than yours

Insert tawmmy from quinzee pic here.
posted by JPD at 8:00 AM on September 4, 2015 [9 favorites]


Too bad the big stupid popup that won't go away makes it impossible to read.
posted by Old'n'Busted at 8:03 AM on September 4, 2015


Mets Rule.

(Actually, last time I was in Maine, i saw a shirt for sale that said "I hate Eli Manning" on it. I suppresses an urge to jump up and down saying Nyah Nyah )
posted by jonmc at 8:03 AM on September 4, 2015


Love this. While it pains me to admit present day Boston can call itself "Title Town", without irony or derision, those t-shirts are a perfectly distilled, laughably pathetic expression of a pre-2004 provincial city's inferiority complex.
posted by jalexei at 8:15 AM on September 4, 2015


And then they moved to DC and formed Minor Threat.

True story.
posted by clvrmnky at 8:20 AM on September 4, 2015 [4 favorites]


those t-shirts are a perfectly distilled, laughably pathetic expression of a pre-2004 provincial city's inferiority complex.

Yankee fans do the same thing. I once went to a Yankees/Sox game in Yankee Stadium, and about midway through the game, one of the guys hawking ice cream decided to up his game a bit. Instead of wandering through our section pitching, "Ice cream! $3 a bar!" He went with, "Special 'Boston-Sucks' Ice cream! Now only $3 a bar!" Everyone in my section - who'd already seen him about two or three times - cracked up when he started calling it that, and his sales started going up. Three innings later he was sold out, and spent the rest of the game periodically running out and running up and down the aisles, leading my seating section in a united chant of "BOS-TON SUCKS! BOS-TON SUCKS!"

I was the lone Red Sox fan in the midst of the crowd, but even I thought it was cute.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:20 AM on September 4, 2015 [4 favorites]


Also: it's funny because both the Sox and the Yankees suck.
posted by clvrmnky at 8:20 AM on September 4, 2015 [4 favorites]


This is a fantastic read, thanks. And yeah, people would definitely pay to see this on the big screen.
posted by uncleozzy at 8:26 AM on September 4, 2015 [1 favorite]


Rooting for the Yankees is like rooting for small pox.

The way I heard it was rooting for the Yankees is like rooting for the house in Blackjack.
posted by Rock Steady at 8:40 AM on September 4, 2015 [15 favorites]


Fantastic read.

A friend of mine was at a Bruins game (not against the Devils, Islanders, Rangers, etc.). After one of the times the Bruins scored, someone got a chant of "Yankees Suck" going in the crowd. Which was loud enough to be heard all over the Garden (I can't remember which incarnation of the Garden this was (it may have even been the Fleet Center), but I'm sure it was before 2004). At times, before the Red Sox started winning World Series Titles, I think a good chunk of Boston cared more about hating the Yankees than supporting the Sox.

With John Henry, the Sox showed that they too could purchase one of the best teams in baseball. And as much as I like living hear and actually appreciate the News not being as much of a rag as the Post, the NY Daily News can suck it.

(Two ways to bring out my inner Masshole- stick me in traffic behind someone with a Bush/Cheney sticker or let me talk about baseball.)
posted by Hactar at 8:40 AM on September 4, 2015 [1 favorite]


“Everyone said we were crazy,” Manza recalls. “‘You’re gonna be eating those shirts!’ We started with two grand and we must have made it back the first night. The next week we bought twice as many shirts. Then the next week, twice as many shirts. That was the curve. Exponential.”

I love it so much that a bunch of drug-dealing Boston ska bros are the only people in history to use the word "exponential" correctly.
posted by escabeche at 8:50 AM on September 4, 2015 [24 favorites]


This was me except with Longhorn shirts, in my garage back in the 80's. Not so much dude-bro, but just tryna make a damn buck. Never did trunk sales at the parking lot -- the guy I printed for did. & there was always competition. One year, there was a guy bootlegging for the other team on the other side of the lot, who had managed to spell the opposing team name "Noter Dame." Man, I wish I had one of those -- best typo ever.

It never took off though really, until he went legit. The year Ricky Williams won the Heisman trophy was the year I made half again as much money as any other year in my life to date. Our automatic cranked out about 600 of those an hour for maybe 2 months straight. Sports fans are passionate about T-shirts.
posted by Devils Rancher at 8:57 AM on September 4, 2015 [1 favorite]


For many of us, rooting for the Yankees is like rooting for the team our parents and grandparents loved. Evil, I know!
posted by Superfrankenstein at 9:14 AM on September 4, 2015


While it pains me to admit present day Boston can call itself "Title Town", without irony or derision, those t-shirts are a perfectly distilled, laughably pathetic expression of a pre-2004 provincial city's inferiority complex.

Yeah, but the Yankees still suck.
posted by maryr at 9:45 AM on September 4, 2015 [5 favorites]


Even Boston's right twice a day.
posted by Naberius at 9:48 AM on September 4, 2015 [1 favorite]


At times, before the Red Sox started winning World Series Titles, I think a good chunk of Boston cared more about hating the Yankees than supporting the Sox.

The usual joke/bumper sticker is "My favorite team is the Red Sox and my second favorite team is whoever's playing the Yankees." Even post-2004, Sox fans hate the Yankees pretty deeply. What the World Series really did was allow a generation of fans to forgive the Mets for winning in '86. They are, after all, our natural allies in Yankee-hatred.
posted by maryr at 9:48 AM on September 4, 2015 [2 favorites]


maryr, I actually used that exact line when I was talking to some friends last weekend.
posted by Hactar at 9:53 AM on September 4, 2015 [2 favorites]


The Red Sox were, by far, the last team to integrate, and maintained a reputation as the most racist team in the league for decades. The street outside their stadium is named for beloved long-time owner Tom Yawkey who even Boston fans admit was a racist. The same owner personally protected a serial sexual abuser of minors who worked as a clubhouse attendant.

Even into the era of the new ownership group, which has admitted the mistakes of the past, minority players have complained about their treatment at the hands of Boston fans, writers, and management. Boston fans are known to be exacting and demanding, but black and latin players say the pressure on them is much greater, and as recently as 2007, outfielder Gary Matthews Jr. complained of racial abuse by Boston fans. Three years before that, Barry Bonds said he'd never play for Boston, as it's "too racist".

For some reason, Red Sox fans get really angry when you point stuff like this out. Go Dodgers :p
posted by cell divide at 9:56 AM on September 4, 2015 [4 favorites]


These LA Dodgers?
posted by Rock Steady at 10:06 AM on September 4, 2015 [2 favorites]


A couple months ago I wore a Red Sox hat while visiting New York, and a variety of people from all walks of life struck me up in friendly conversation about the recent Red Sox-Yankees series. No taxi attempted to run me down, nobody insulted me or even honked at me.

I'm a little worried the rivalry might be dying. New Yankee Stadium is weird and cavernous and corporate. I'd feel completely safe going there with my family dressed in Boston gear. Is this really what we want from our national pastime?
posted by vogon_poet at 10:06 AM on September 4, 2015 [4 favorites]


escabeche : I love it so much that a bunch of drug-dealing Boston ska bros are the only people in history to use the word "exponential" correctly.

Wait, isn't doubling a geometrical progression? Or, because two is special, is it both? Jessamyn should know this...
posted by wenestvedt at 10:13 AM on September 4, 2015 [2 favorites]


New Yankee Stadium is weird and cavernous and corporate. I'd feel completely safe going there with my family dressed in Boston gear. Is this really what we want from our national pastime?

Don't worry, there will always be Philadelphia.
posted by escabeche at 10:14 AM on September 4, 2015 [4 favorites]


I went to college in Boston in the early 90s, and every single day someone knocked on my dorm door (who let you in here?) or stood in the middle of the quad, selling t-shirts out of a duffle bag for ten bucks each. Always ten bucks, only ten bucks.

For example, there was the "passed-out drunk Bart Simpson fake vodka ad" shirt, of course, and tons of others. Most were a take-off from a beer ad, but never too complex, because the local campus name had to be worked in somehow. (I went to two different schools, and saw several duplicate shirts that had been altered for the school in question.) So they could do the Budweiser beer label logo, but only a little bit of type would change each time.

The funny thing is that they used good garments: I still had some of those t-shirts ten years later!
posted by wenestvedt at 10:20 AM on September 4, 2015


"I didn’t know people didn’t get into fights when they went out till I moved to New York."
posted by sy at 10:30 AM on September 4, 2015 [2 favorites]


A friend of mine, on a visit to New York:

FRIEND: *sits quietly in bleachers taking in the Yankees vs. Blue Jays game while wearing his Blue Jays hat*

MAN IN SEAT IN FRONT OF HIM: *turns around in his seat* "Hey, buddy! Do ya want a punch in the fuckin' head?"

FRIEND: "Uh, no thanks."
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 10:34 AM on September 4, 2015 [5 favorites]


Yeah, but the Yankees still suck.

[yawn] At this particular moment in time, my Yankees are playing far better than expected (based on spring training and the start of the season roster I figured they'd struggle to win 80) and the Red Sox, as they've been three of the last four seasons, are continuing to stink. Mightily.

All is more or less as it should be.
posted by jalexei at 10:57 AM on September 4, 2015 [2 favorites]


Ugh. This just reminded me of all the punks and hardcore kids in the early 2000s who just WERE jocks. Assholes who were into better music, and being more of a self-righteous asshole than the jocks.

Total narcissism of small differnces, that punks vs jocks thing.
posted by entropone at 11:40 AM on September 4, 2015


I have to say that I'm rather enamoured of the animated drop caps in the Grantland piece. Tee hee. They used a bong for an "I."
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 12:02 PM on September 4, 2015 [4 favorites]


While it pains me to admit present day Boston can call itself "Title Town"

Well if it's any consolation it doesn't look like the Bruins' new GM is going to bring home any titles any time soon. I guess they have that football thing though.
posted by Hoopo at 12:23 PM on September 4, 2015


The usual joke/bumper sticker is "My favorite team is the Red Sox and my second favorite team is whoever's playing the Yankees."
Growing up a basketball fan in L.A.: "My favorite team is the Lakers and my second favorite is whoever's playing the Celtics." From the West Coast, Boston always seemed like "New York with a thin lacquered coating". That was the Jerry West/Wilt Chamberlain era (and I got Harold "Happy" Hairston's autograph in a supermarket). I would have considered a "CELTICS SUCK" t-shirt back then, even though "SUCK" was far less acceptable for public display in those days. For baseball, I preferred the Angels to the Dodgers, even though they never won much and played 30 miles farther away, but I was a weird kid. And I grew up a mile from where the first Audi dealership in California had the names of L.A. Rams legends Roman Gabriel and Merlin Olsen on the sign. In those days, my second favorite NFL team was either whoever was playing the Cowboys or whoever was playing the Vikings because those two teams ALWAYS kept the Rams out of the SuperBowl. Now, in L.A., it's "NFL? What's that?" and that's a very good sign.
posted by oneswellfoop at 12:43 PM on September 4, 2015 [1 favorite]


Yeah, but you'll be getting the Olympics soon, ha ha.
posted by maryr at 1:44 PM on September 4, 2015


I'm really tired of people denigrating blowjobbery.
posted by srboisvert at 2:24 PM on September 4, 2015 [7 favorites]


The Boston hardcore scene was the fucking worst.



I have no opinion on the Yankees.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 2:52 PM on September 4, 2015 [3 favorites]


Incorrect the worst hardcore scene was upstate New York. But Boston was close second. Except Slapshot. Slapshot is great.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 4:13 PM on September 4, 2015 [1 favorite]




The Green Monster in Manhattan (Bostonians will recognize the Wall's voice).
posted by adamg at 6:01 PM on September 4, 2015 [1 favorite]


> For some reason, Red Sox fans get really angry when you point stuff like this out. Go Dodgers :p

Boston's still got plenty of problems with racism, but following that observation with an unreserved cheer for the current occupants of Chavez Ravine seems a bit off.

/Edit: Oops, didn't follow Rock Steady's link.
posted by benito.strauss at 6:35 PM on September 4, 2015 [1 favorite]


I'm a native of NYC, I live in Boston, and I could not care less about any team sport. I don't care about NY teams, and I'm certainly not going to start caring about Boston teams. I've met people here who demand that I must be a Yankees fan, and seem alarmed that I couldn't care less about the doings of grown men who play a ball game for a living.
posted by 1adam12 at 1:06 AM on September 5, 2015


I was a straight edge hardcore kid who moved from the cozy midwest to Boston in 97. I went to about 2 shows before I checked out. Full of self-righteous violent jocks.

Admire the hustle on the t-shirts though.
posted by These Premises Are Alarmed at 5:28 AM on September 8, 2015


Every band on this page except for Gorilla Buscuits is trash.

Hoo boy, you are not wrong.
posted by Pope Guilty at 8:37 AM on September 8, 2015


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