The pride of Hoboken, Yo La Tengo is one of the longest running bands, and their oeuvre is so accomplished and has so many great pieces to it that picking one of their albums over any other is not an easy task. I decided on this one, because like their name, the album title is also a sports reference. Yo La Tengo means "I have it." In Ken Burns' essential documentary series Baseball (1994), Roger Angell, during a sequence about how bad the 1962 expansion Mets were, talks about how the language barrier between English speaking and Spanish speaking fielders led to a lot of errors.
From Wikipedia: "Ira Kaplan and Georgia Hubley formed the band as a couple in 1984. They chose the name Yo La Tengo, Spanish for "I have it". The name came from a baseball anecdote that occurred during the 1962 season, when New York Mets center fielder Richie Ashburn and shortstop Elio Chacón found themselves colliding in the outfield. When Ashburn went for a catch, he would scream, "I got it! I got it!" only to run into Chacón, a Venezuelan who spoke only Spanish. Ashburn learned to yell, "Yo la tengo! Yo la tengo!" instead. In a later game, Ashburn happily saw Chacón backing off. He relaxed, positioned himself to catch the ball, and was instead run over by left fielder Frank Thomas, who understood no Spanish and had missed a team meeting that proposed using the words "Yo la tengo!" as a way to avoid outfield collisions.[5] After getting up, Thomas asked Ashburn, "What the hell is a yellow tango?"
That was the 1962 Mets. By the way, while on this rather off topic spiel, the Mets colors are a tribute to the two dearly beloved New York teams that left previously for the west coast - the Dodgers and the Giants.
The title of this album comes from a Knicks game where, again from Wikipedia: "Sitting on the bench together during a game, Tim Thomas was caught on tape by the MSG Network in a profane exchange with fellow Knick, point guard Stephon Marbury. Thomas yelled at Marbury, "Everyone in this organization is afraid of you, but I'm not, and I will beat your ass."'
Great band, great album, great name, great title.
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