We’ve moved a bunch of times and occasionally when I need something in the garage I’ll find myself fishing through an old box of stuff that my parents sent me that is basically junk from my childhood that they no longer wanted to keep in their garage.
99% of it is worthless.
But oh man, that 1% is priceless.
Case in point, this rap I found that I wrote somewhere between 5th and 7th grade.
It’s one of those things that I have almost no memory of writing, yet, the second I started reading it I was transported back to a time when the only thing that mattered to me and my friends in Shrewsbury, Massachusetts was watching the Red Sox, talking about the Red Sox and playing baseball pretending to be a Red Sox player….
So naturally, at some point in either 5th, 6th or 7th grade, right about the time I started getting into LL Cool J and Run DMC and all those guys, I set out to write a rap about two things:
- The Boston Red Sox
- How much of a tough guy / ladies man I was at 11 or 12
It seems to be a mash-up of the 1986 Red Sox and maybe the ’89 and ’90s teams. In the margin I wrote Marty Barrett’s name and crossed it out. Not sure what that means. Maybe I was mad at him for something. Also, in the upper corner is written Music 4. So was this an assignment? Did I not hand it in? Is this a rough draft and there’s a better draft out there (highly doubtful)? Who knows? What I can say for sure is that it is wildly incoherent, blatantly steals from LL, yet somehow makes a decent attempt at using Rich Gedman in a verse.
I’ll spare you the effort of trying to read my awesome cursive in thick, smudged pencil, so I typed the rap out below.
I also apologize that it ends abruptly… We’ll just never know what the 11 year old me was about to say after the immortal line, “Swimming playing baseball like…”
THE RED SOX RAP by: JONATHAN FINKEL
I’m the type of guy, that says what the heck,
You’re the type of guy who is a pain in the neck,
I hit homers like Jim Rice,
The hot ladies say I’m nice,
I throw strikes like the Rocket,
Tons of money fills my pocket,
‘Cuz I got it made like Wade,
That’s Boggs not Wayne (?)
I got it goin’ like Spike Owen,
I take the lead like Jody Reed,
Don’t make me annoyed,
I’ll put one by you like Oil Can Boyd,
Or I’ll hit you in the head man,
Like Rich Gedman,
And make you look so screwy,
They’ll call you Dewey,
Don’t call me green,
But I am the monster,
I can tell you are jealous,
‘Cuz I’m fast like Ellis,
If you don’t know that’s Burks,
Yeah my rhymin’ always works,
Swimming playing baseball like…
And sadly, it ends there… I spit straight fire, yo!
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