Photo via Twitter user Thickie Don.
There’s a reasonably new baseball tradition in which the previous year’s World Series champion sends a giant pizza order to the newest Series winners. The Chicago Cubs became the fourth straight team to reward their Series successors with pepperoni and cheese, shipping 40 pies from the Original Fuzzy’s Pizza to the Houston Astros on the day of their victory parade. But the Astros have taken pizza parties to a new level of wholesome, when one of their players picked up the tab for a Texas high school’s ‘Stros-themed celebration.In August, James Yasko, an AP History teacher at Waco High School, promised his students that if the then-struggling Astros won the World Series, he’d buy pizza for the whole class. The students pretty much rolled their eyes in unison, both because the school is in “[Texas] Ranger country” according to Yasko, and because the Astros went 11-17 that month, with one dismal five-game losing streak.But, as anyone who even glanced at the internet last month knows, Houston beat the Los Angeles Dodgers in a straight-up insane seven game World Series. And Yasko kept his word, ordering a pile of Little Caesar’s pizzas for his classes. “Told my AP US History students I’d buy them pizza if the @Astros won the World Series,” he tweeted, with a pic of the pizzas. “So that’ll be $54, guys.”
"I was totally kidding," Yasko told the Houston Chronicle. "It wasn't like I couldn't afford to pay rent because of the pizza party." We've reached out to Yasko for comment and will update when we hear back.
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Less than an hour later, he got an unexpected @-reply. “Got Venmo?” infielder Tyler White asked. White, who played in 22 games for Houston this season, assured Yasko that he was serious. Yasko quickly set up a Venmo account, and White just as swiftly sent $60 bucks to it.
"I was totally kidding," Yasko told the Houston Chronicle. "It wasn't like I couldn't afford to pay rent because of the pizza party." We've reached out to Yasko for comment and will update when we hear back.
The donation from White—and from a few other Astros fans who chipped in—means that Yasko’s students will be getting a second pizza party. This, as much as anything, illustrates why you should stay in school, kids: because there might be free pizza.