In April, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame announced that the Wu-Tang Clan would join its Class of 2026, making it the ninth rap group and the first-ever act from Staten Island to receive such an honor. Resultantly, the Forgotten Borough—still as conservative, if not as uniformly white, as it was during the Wu’s 1990s peak, when the island’s disaffected paisanos single-handedly put Rudy Giuliani’s mayoral bid over the top—decided to commemorate its hometown heroes through a special Wu-themed event at Staten Island University Hospital Community Park, home of the Atlantic League’s FerryHawks team.
If you’ve never heard of the FerryHawks, here’s some background: After COVID shut down much of the 2020 athletic season and caused Major League Baseball to seriously rethink its minor-league structure, the New York Yankees decided they would give up on their Staten Island–based affiliate team, scrapping the 1999 deal Giuliani had brokered to thank those voters. The now-spurned players, also identified as the Yankees, were forced to shut down their club and sever all MLB ties, ceding the future of Richmond County Bank Ballpark to one of those newfangled Investor Consortiums—in this case an incredibly motley crew consisting of, among others, Saturday Night Live’s current Weekend Update rotation, the Rock’s ex-wife, the UAE-backed asset management firm that owns YES Network, and the Mamdani-hating grocery-store-maven-slash-radio-host whose family runs the Manhattan Republican Party. The FerryHawks name was the favored choice of locals paying tribute both to a native bird and to the Staten Island Ferry, an imposing steel hulk that charges its passengers nought. It’s the only vehicle under the Metropolitan Transit Authority where open drinking, courtesy of tallboys conveniently offered for sale at the loading dock, is all but encouraged. It’s also the only one that’ll stand still for a free show from FerryHawks investors Pete Davidson and Colin Jost. More love for the hometown heroes.
Inside Staten Island University Hospital Community Park, you can still make out the faded lettering of “Richmond County Bank Ballpark” on the walls just below the box seats, which were mostly empty both times I visited the FerryHawks this season.
“Shaolin Night,” also known as the “Salute to Shaolin” game, was penciled in for Aug. 29, chosen for no particular reason I can ascertain. (One could posit that a real hip-hop head within FerryHawks HQ recognized that date as the release of Method Man’s 4:21 … The Day After, but I doubt it, since they didn’t even play “Say” at the game.)
No Wu-Tang members were able to make it that day because the group was scheduled to perform in Hartford, Connecticut.
The Salute to Shaolin took place the same month that saw the FerryHawks host special nights on behalf of Faith and Family, Italian Heritage, the Staten Island and Brooklyn Chambers of Commerce, Hispanic Heritage, Dogs, Country Music, and (just the day after Shaolin Night) Loving Staten Island.
As a child of post-industrial Michigan, growing up far north of the Tiger Stadium/Comerica Park/Fifth Third Park that housed a team notorious for breaking records for losses, I always had an affinity for that crumbling institution known as the minor leagues, the C-tier baseball teams in cheap infrastructure that seemed to have been meted out as pity gifts to any city that was not named Detroit. Our capital, Lansing, had its very own Lugnuts, whose mascot, Big Lug, was a seven-foot-tall purple dinosaur with lugnuts as nostrils. Jackson Field was a great, cheap place to hang out with friends mostly without supervision, and the team was mediocre enough that wins or losses didn’t hurt so much either way. An affiliate of the then-Oakland A’s, the Lugnuts long employed the services of a baseball clown named Myron Noodleman, who just so happened to be Bill Hader’s uncle. Noodleman unfortunately passed not long after I left the Greater Lansing area to start my career in New York, just months after I’d attended a Lugnuts game as a farewell to some college homies.
Eephus (2025) is not quite about these same subjects, but it is relevant nonetheless.
Good seats at SIUH Community Park only cost up to $26.50 on regular nights; for Shaolin Night, they came with courtesy RZA bobbleheads. Perks at the game itself included potential free tickets to Wu-Tang shows in Long Island and New Jersey, along with an auction for a special Wu-branded FerryHawks jersey worn during the game itself. You see, for one night and one night only, the team would be known as the “Shaolin Hawks,” while their opponents would remain the lame old, same old York Revolution. (“Revs,” for short.)
I attended my first-ever FerryHawks game just a couple nights beforehand, when the team’s record was 8–39 and they’d just suffered another loss to the Revs. That game recorded sparse attendance on a rainy day, the jumbotron kept glitching out to 502 errors, and my girlfriend and I left early. Joke was on all of us: It ended up with an extra inning and a pretty sick walkoff for the Hawks.
They beat the Revs on Shaolin Night, too. Clearly, the Wu is happy to bless their teams, whether that team be the Hawks or the Knicks.
As I type this the Hawks rank at dead last in their division with a 10–41 record. (The Revs are first.)
The week before the game, a significant contingent of Wu fans belatedly discovered that Raekwon is a longtime fan of Palantir, the notorious software firm best known for its Peter Thiel connections, ICE contracts, and sword-waving CEO. Alex Karp himself appeared in the new HQ photos with the Chef, in tribute to the Wu’s farewell tour. An old BET cypher where Rae dons a Palantir fleece got a second look. For some, the hurt felt especially acute since the Wu’s halftime Knicks game performance was widely perceived by New Yorkers (including yours truly) as a direct counter to the curse President Donald Trump’s MSG visit had bestowed upon the Knicks.
A complete playlist of Wu-Tang Clan songs played throughout Shaolin Night: “Protect Ya Neck,” “Shame on a N----,” “Can It Be All So Simple,” “Gravel Pit,” and “C.R.E.A.M.,” which closed out the night during a round of fireworks that, yes, at one point displayed that unmistakable W.
The “Gravel Pit” needle drop resulted from one of two trivia questions played for the crowd, the second of which quizzed the crowd on whether Snoop Dogg had ever collaborated with the Wu. The screen did inform the audience that Uncle Snoop had featured on “Conditioner,” but in fairness the programmers definitely realized “Gravel Pit” was the more recognizable selection from The W.
The first question asked was about the title of their first album.
An incomplete playlist of non–Wu-Tang Clan songs played throughout Shaolin Night: “Ten Crack Commandments,” “If I Ruled the World,” “Drop It Like It’s Hot.”
A bunch of kids with green Killa Beez–branded jerseys were in attendance, which is how I learned that Staten Island and New Jersey share a barely two-year-old flag football travel team named for the catchall Wu-Tang affiliate nickname.
Some of the official FerryHawks merch was marked down by as much as 50 percent.
Other bits of semi-official Wu merch spotted in the crowd: a blue “Wu York Knicks” jersey with “Shaolin 36” embossed on the back, a Crossfit/Wu-Tang crossover tee, and custom Wu-Tang-branded FerryHawks merch (different from the “Game Worn” black jersey up for auction).
The RZA bobblehead really does not look much like RZA, nor does its head bobble that much.
God bless small baseball teams, and may Wu-Tang always be for the children.
