Atlantic League Baseball > High School Soccer (UPDATE in the comments, justice has been served!)

The other day York Daily Record Revolution beat writer Jim Seip complained via twitter that too much time has passed since my last rant on the blog, (click to enlarge):

Well, I hope this counts Seip:  The Perry Hall High School boy’s soccer team in Nottingham, Maryland had the rest of their season cancelled for celebrating a playoff win on a last-minute goal with the Berney dance, perfected by Corey Thurman and company before each of his home starts during 2011.  Yes you read that correctly, they were removed from the playoffs for Movin’ Like Bernie.  Obviously, high school soccer in Maryland is not governed by Atlantic League commish Joe Klein, a fellow resident of the Old Line State, Free State, Little America and America in Miniature (yes, I looked it up, and apparently those are all of Maryland’s nicknames).  Klein showed no aversion to “Movin’ Like Berney” when he visited for a Thurm start, and I even think I saw him laugh at it once even if he didn’t realize it was a hip-hop craze sweeping the nation.  I mean, we’ve all seen Weekend at Bernie’s I and II multiple times right? 

Here is the story from the local newspaper complete with hilarious photograph of a bunch of suburbanite kids who look exactly the same in mid-Berney dance.  (The artists changed the name from Bernie to Berney, presumably to avoid being sued.  This is unfortunate, as the thought of well-dressed men debating the intellectual property of a walking corpse in sunglasses and a powder-blue jump suit is exactly what this country needs after the ugly Michael Jackson trial.)  Well the parents of the (sore) losing team were just outraged at the celebration, and the players and coaches spoke out, characterizing the light-hearted celebration as a misunderstanding and not a taunt.  As you’ll see from the links, the principal chose to cancel the rest of the season under pressure, and there is of course the requisite facebook protest happening right now.

Overreact much?  I didn’t see Roy Howell complaining about Thurman and Co. doing the Berney, and he managed the Road Warriors for crying out loud.  If the Road Warriors manager can handle it, some high school soccer moms should be able to as well.  If you’re late to the Movin’ Like Berney party, here you go, it’s video time! 

Here is the inspiration, the conga line scene from Weekend at Bernie’s II:

 

Which several years later led to this hip-hop Revolution; the guy in the purple shirt is the man.  Needless to say, if I had moves like him I wouldn’t have dedicated my life to minor league baseball.  However, my Berney is more like the guy dancing alone in the gazebo.  You’ll see what I mean:

 

Which several months later led to this hip-hop Revolution (See what I did there?!):

 

Now if you’re a REAL fan of course you remember the Berney before each of Corey’s starts.  He was obviously the first to do it on the playing field.  It didn’t take long for our neighbor to the south and prized fantasy football player of mine Ray Rice to get in on it:

 

Final thoughts:  Only in politically correct America could we take a boring sport like soccer, and send a message to young people that they should make it LESS interesting.  As far as I can tell, doing the Berney on the futbol pitch is the best thing to happen to that sport since…well maybe ever.  And no soccer apologists e-mailing me with the “BUT IT’S THE MOST POPULAR SPORT IN THE WORLD” argument.  Yeah, that’s true.  But it’s also true because most countries don’t have baseball or football.  It’s easy to be the most popular sport in the world by default, when that’s all ya got.

In all seriousness, my apologies go out to the Perry Hall soccer team on behalf of mankind, for this Orwellian nonsense handed down by the thought police…err principal. 

Three months until pitchers and catchers.  Have a good weekend folks.

-Paul Braverman

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