George Springer and the Astros did a lot of amazing things this year. The team had a great regular season and managed to be a rallying force for the city of Houston, which was rocked by Hurricane Harvey in August.
Then, during the playoffs, Springer overcame a pretty poor ALCS showing to have an incredible World Series and take home the World Series MVP after the Astros won their first title.
However, those accomplishments may pale in comparison to what Springer says he and his teammates pulled off during the World Series celebration. In a recent interview with Bleacher Report, the 28-year-old outfielder claimed that they turned the trophy into a functional drinking device.
"We made a beer funnel out of it," Springer said. "I watched the guys holding it up, and they poured the champagne on it and they just started to drink it."
Now wait just a second here ...
Just in case anyone doesn't realize what said trophy looks like, here it is in all its glory.
Forgive me for being a skeptic, but I have quite a lot of trouble believing that a couple of drunk baseball players managed to turn this hardware into a beer funnel. Maybe Springer meant that his teammates placed a funnel at the heart of the trophy and ran the drinking tube through the flagpoles, which is definitely possible and a pretty good idea!
However, that's not exactly "making" a beer funnel out of the trophy. Springer's wording suggests that his team came together and used their creative spirit to craft a magnificent funnel. The Astros are quite a resourceful bunch, but even a decorated engineer may not be able to make that happen with this weird trophy.
Now, there's a good chance Springer could have been referring to this display in the locker room, which was captured by TMZ.
If so, that would classify as a gross exaggeration and misclassification. That would classify as more of a "beer luge" than "beer funnel," and even then it's quite generous. They're just pouring beer on the trophy and a very small percentage of the booze is finding its way into the drinker's mouth. It's certainly not an ideal setup.
By Springer's logic, it seems you can "make a beer funnel" out of just about any household item as long as you don't mind not drinking pretty much all of the alcohol. That seems rather dumb and silly, as the point of creating a drinking device is to actually be able to drink out of it. But I guess that's why he's just a professional athlete and World Series MVP instead of a proud, experienced drinker like you and me.
The Astros are likely used to being underestimated at this point, so I apologize if I'm failing to understand their incredible ingenuity when it comes to the World Series beer funnel. However, I have too much journalistic integrity to allow Springer to make a claim as bold as this one without questioning its authenticity.
