Sunday, May 5, 2013

John completes the Lyle Overbay Homer Holler and, in doing so, for the first time ventures into the domain of 1980s alt-country music



During yesterday’s Hughesian victory over the untrimmed beards of Oakland, The Master revealed one long-awaited Homer Holler and fueled the growing Yankee “Adopt Lyle Overbay” campaign by adding a secondary component to the regular clobber-slobber.

For starters, John ended speculation that Chris Stewart, an eternal backup catcher, would never receive his personalized Homer Holler, in part because Stewart would never hit a HR.

John’s call: “Stewart chris-ens one!”

(Frankly, The Master can do more. But so can we. Nobody in the Yankiverse has devoted proper time to Stewart Clobber-Slobbers. Like everyone, we figured Stewart would play in 30 games and maybe hit one. Now, he’s our starting catcher. We need ideas. “It had to be Stew?” “Stew comes through…?”)

Also, Lyle Overbay finally received his secondary HR call. As every thinking fan knows, today’s Homer Holler comes in two sections:

The Setup: “It’s a A-bomb from A-Rod… It’s a Ribbie from Robbie… It’s Tex Message…”

The Closer: “Alexander the Great conquers again…. Robbie Cano, doncha know… You’re on the Mark, Teixeira…”

Until yesterday, John had given Overbay a setup: “Lyle hits it a mile” but had no successfully added the secondary piece. His shot against Oakland completed the clobber-slobber:  

“I love it! I Lyle Lovett!”

To my knowledge, this is the Master’s first foray into 1980s alt-country music. Thus far, he is considered the world’s greatest living authority on 1950s show tunes (“Something sort of Grandish), and he can hold his own on 1970s pop (“The Grandyman can.”) But John has seldom ventured into other waters. (For example, I bet he has never once heard a full version of “Enter Sandman.”) Yesterday, Lyle Overbay’s home run opened new Sterling vistas.  

Along with his glove and clutch hits, Lyle Overbay has brought to the Yankee organization a path to elements of the American culture that have previously been off-limits to the Lowe’s Broadcast Booth. Congratulations to both Lyle Overbay and Lyle Lovett.

We should all love it. (Now, is there part of a song The Master could sing? Nothing beats John singing.)

7 comments:

JM said...

Ah, come on, this is an easy one.

'Chris that ball goodbye!'

KD said...

"They're stewpefied!"

el duque said...

Excellent.

Anonymous said...

I find the Chris-tening to be offensive. If it was Ryan Braun would it be Ryan Braun bris-ed the skin off the ball and over the wall? How about Mormon John Buck... Uses his luck! One home run and three wives to fuck! Yeah, it's just all too much to have these bigoted overtones in what should be a lighthearted comedic family friendly home run call.

Anonymous said...

I agree, truly a missed opportunity for what could have been a stew-pendous call.

Leinstery said...

I don't think that it would work, but I for one would love to hear John shoehorn Stewart's homerun call into the lyrics of the old negro spiritual "pick a bale of cotton".

James Hetfield said...

You guys ought to know, just for the record, that back in early 1991, when we were recording "Enter Sandman", our drummer overdosed. We had to get a studio musician by the name of John Sterling (yep, the one and only) to sit in on the final track. So, those riffs you hear are John Sterling, drumming in his prime. The impromptu drum solo never made the album, but yeah that's Sterling hammering out the beat. He's cooler than you geezers thought, eh?