Lonely Island’s Bash Brothers Are Perfect

The fall of 1988 contains my first solid, sports memories. My Dad went to Notre Dame, so their run to a national title is embedded into my mind. It began my love for sports that has not subsided for three decades.

We lived in Ridgefield, Connecticut, at the time, which meant my Dad got the New York Times and the New York Post daily. It was the latter that shaped my young impression of the era’s most irrepressible duo, Mark McGwire and Jose Canseco, the Bash Brothers. Even then, I knew there was something different about the Bash Brothers. Jose Canseco’s New York trips weren’t only being covered in the back pages. He was everywhere. They were larger than life. That, to first grade Sean, was superstardom.

Still, when my phone alerted me that Lonely Island had made music in 2019 dressed up as the Bash Brothers, it didn’t register with me. “I bet that’s fun,” I thought and moved on. I’m sure I’d get around to watching the video.

What I didn’t realize was Lonely Island did a lot more than make one video. To be honest, the concept didn’t thrill me because it felt almost too tailored to me. Yet it was my wife who pushed for us to watch the Netflix special. I wrongly assumed the special included one video of the Bash Brothers along with others. I asked my wife what else happened in the special.