Stein Hoister of the Year
This column is a reprint from Unwinnable Monthly #193. If you like what you see, grab the magazine for less than ten dollars, or subscribe and get all future magazines for half price.
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A tongue-in-cheek but also painfully earnest look at pop culture and anything else that deserves to be ridiculed while at the same time regarded with the utmost respect. It is written by Matt Marrone and emailed to Stu Horvath and David Shimomura, who add any typos or factual errors that might appear within.
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For the better part of my 47 years, I have been lifting up my right arm to deliver food and beverages – a lot of it beer – in to my piehole. For the past two years, I have been doing weight training three times a week at a local gym.
These two pursuits seemed unrelated, if not in direct conflict with each other.
Until now.
That’s because Unwinnable Monthly had a representative in the 2025 Sam Adams Stein Holding Contest at Astoria’s famed Bohemian Hall beer garden.
That representative was me. AND I WON!
WE WON! Unwinnable Monthly won. Iron Lion (my gym) won. And my 10-year-old, who practically forced me to enter, and cheered spastically for me the whole time, won, too.
I think even the Wife of the Year felt a secret pang of pride, even though all she said to me after was that when I stepped up to enter the field against some pretty jacked competition, she didn’t think I stood a chance – with them all such young strapping men and “you pushing 50.”
Perhaps, honey, if I weren’t such a family man, I might have milked my invigorating celebrity status after the event to carry home, on my champion right arm, a pretty young lady – perhaps even one who isn’t pushing 45. But alas …
Truth be told, I didn’t think I had much of a shot either. A guy from my gym was right across from me, plus at the far end of the table I could see a dude practically bursting out of his Troy Polamalu jersey. My goal, as has long been the case with videogames in this column, was to not embarrass myself. And, if I somehow managed to win, to retire as champion forever.
Here’s how it went down: We were instructed to lift our gigantic glass beer mugs (filled to the brim with water for weight) and hold them straight in front of us, elbows straight. Drop your arm and you’re out. Spill any of the water and you’re out. Get eliminated first and you can never look your sons in the eye again.
My fear of being first to get eliminated went away pretty quickly when I noticed one of the dudes across from me struggling within what seemed like the first 10 seconds. His arm was shaky and he was bending his elbow – my only fear was that he wouldn’t be caught cheating. Never mind that – he soon tapped out.
The next 5 minutes are a blur. I remember watching the guy from my gym bow out and tell me, “You got this!” I remember my 10-year-old jumping and screaming. I remember our friend Sarah videoing it on her iPhone to either compound the potential shame or, as it turned out, give me a video clip I’ve since watched a dozen times.
But mostly, I kept my arm straight and tried to think about anything other than what I was doing. I didn’t snap out of that until I heard the Hoist Master say we were down to the final three. Me, Troy Polamalu and another big young dude on my side of the table, all of the way down on the end.
And then … Polamalu was done. Two competitors left. I’m struggling at this point, probably putting far too much pressure on my rickety old pushing-50 lower back. He’s stone cold focused, barely moving at all. I’m done for, I know it.
At about 5 1/2 minutes, though, I notice he’s beginning to tremble. A little at first but then a bit more. You can see me look at him in the video and get almost a second wind seeing him struggle. And then … his wrist rotates a couple times, less and less steady until … he spills!
I high-five my gym buddy, get hugs from my boys and am handed the prize – a pretty cool Sam Adam’s stein (which was the reason my kids wanted me to enter in the first place) plus some T-shirts, photos and, of course, a free celebratory beer.
Just like that, a legend was born. And an undefeated Stein Hoister, nearly a half-century in the making, retired from the sport forever.
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Matt Marrone is a senior MLB editor at ESPN.com. He has been Unwinnable’s reigning Rookie of the Year since 2011. You can follow him on Twitter @thebigm.
