Remembering the Greatest
That all changed when my brother essentially went on steroids and beat it out of me. Thanks Broseph.
March 9th, 1997. One of the most important days of our generation.
Ten years ago tomorrow, the Notorious B.I.G was shot down and murdered, about 1,000 yards from where I live.
Biggie is up there with the most important musicians of our generation. Along with Snoop Dogg, Dr. Dre and Tupac, Biggie took hip hop/rap from a "black" thing and turned it into a mainstream thing. Fifteen years ago you wouldn't hear rap on Z100. If you did, it would be Vanilla Ice or MC Hammer. But the early-mid 90's marked a transformation in our culture and a lot of that is due to the kid we all knew as Big.
Biggie had a huge influence on baseball.
Was there anything better than Derek Bell in 2000, baggy t-shirt and sick mustache coming out in the 2-hole, right behind Rickey, stepping out to "Big Pimpin'"? Sure, that track might have been by Jay-Z, but he went to school with Biggie so we cool.
Is there a more underrated Met than Derek Bell? That dude hit .496 thru June and then I don't think he got a hit the rest of the season.
There were Mets who stepped out to Biggie tracks, most memorably a young and hungry Butch Huskey who helped immortalize "Hypnotize" back in the day. I'm fairly certain Jay Payton had a Biggie track at one point, but maybe not.
Everything in the game changed March 9th, 1997. Sip was a gritty 5'2 freshman about to embark on a JV baseball season comparable to the Fonz's 1999 campaign. Let's just say that out of the 2 hole with the big guys behind me, the Collegiate Dutchmen of 1997 made some serious noise.
I was at a party at some prep school gangster's house. Bobby Jones was warming up in florida excited to take the hill on opening day, the third of Sip's then 13 year-run. A movie called Titanic was about to be released.
Some called Titanic the ship of dreams, and it was.
A lot has changed in ten years, but a lot stays the same.
I still love the Mets. I still love the sounds of the Notorious B.I.G, though it does play a distant second to some Coldplay, Killers or Team Facelift.
And Sip Sr. remains a pretty stellar guy.
We'll always remember you BIG.
VCD,
Sip
(Pics courtesy of Popbox.com, answer.com)
posted by Sippy Momo at 12:20 PM
3 Comments:
Dude, "Big Pimpin'" was a Jay-Z track. Not Biggie.
wow... party foul
This was my bad. It originally read that Derek Bell stepped up to "Hypnotize" which of course was a Biggie track. The problem with that was that Bell stepped up to Big Pimpin' -- I made the change and just wasn't thinking about the broader point.
In retrospect, I might have changed it to Butch Huskey (who did step out to Hypnotize), but there were two reasons not to: 1, the post went into detail about Bell, and 2, the picture of Bell was just about perfect.
Anyway, yes, our bad on that one. Salt.
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