Monthly Archives: November 2008

The Source:

DJ Premier chopped this tune up twice. The first, is Gang Starr’s classic, “Ex Girl to the Next Girl”:

And here’s “Speak Ya Clout” (skip to the last part of this three-segment jam):

Yanks sign Marte.

Cliff’s analysis is forthcoming. In the meantime, swing, papi, swing:

By Luis Guzman

(as told to Alex Belth)

I grew up in Greenwich Village in the 60s on 10th and Hudson. I went to PS 41. Then when I was ten, we moved to the LES, to the Lower East Side. All my life I’ve been a Yankee fan, B. Mantle, Pepitone. I remember Horace Clarke, Kekich, Peterson, Hamilton, “the folly floater.” When I was between the ages of say 10 and 14 which would have been ’66 to 1970, I’d get together with my buddies in the Villiage, my man Wayne Teagarden, my boy Norman sometimes too, and we’d shine shoes outside of the bank of 7th avenue and Christopher Street. We’d shine shoes in the morning, make enough money, sneak on the train, get up to the Stadium, and sneak into the bleachers. We’d make $2-3 dollars which was pretty good back then. Sometimes we’d pay to get in, it depended. It was fifty, seventy-five cents. We’d fill up on hot dogs and soda and cracker jack, which was the thing at the time.

Back then, they had day games during the week. We used to go out Sunday for bat day and hat day and ball day and yadda-yadda day. It was great. I’d go to every Old Timers’ game, that was a big thing for me, and nothing was bigger than the day Mickey Mantle retired. We had seen Mickey play, he had hit a few home runs when I was there, that was big stuff man. But that day, his family was there, it was heavy.

Between 66-70 the Yankees weren’t doing too good. But we watched Mickey Mantle wind down his career, and you’d see other guys that would come in—Yaz with the Red Sox, Luis Aparicio with the Twins, Harmon Killebrew, Rod Carew.

We didn’t know at the time but the old Stadium was…it was amazing. They had those beams that would come down and we’d wonder how anybody would be able to see if they had to sit behind one of them. But we were always in the bleachers, the right field bleachers, cause we used to like looking into the bullpen to see who is warming up. Remember when the bullpen was in the tunnel? We’d be talking to the pitchers.

Back then Yankee Stadium was a real relaxed, kicked-back kind of a place. They didn’t have guys coming onto the field between innings like now, it wasn’t this high–security place. It’s when it was a ballpark. Dude, we used to wait for the third out in the top or bottom of the ninth and after the third out we’d jump over the railing and run around all over the outfield. There would be fifty, one hundred kids running around. But that’s all we’d do was run around. We were respectful about it. We’d wait for the last out, you know, bro.

(more…)

Alexi the barber has been looking for me. He doesn’t use telephones or emails and the only instant message he’s ever delivered is a quick right hook. I got the word from a guy who was talking to another guy who got a haircut earlier this week.

“Alexi was asking about you,” I was told. “He ain’t mad, but he wants you to own your words.”

I didn’t need a haircut, but I stopped at the barbershop to settle the score.

“Where have you been?” Alexi asked. “Your guy Roy Jones got clobbered on Saturday.”

“He put up a good fight,” I countered. “And win or lose he’s still my guy.”

“You don’t know when to quit,” Alexi said. “Your Yankees didn’t make the playoffs and now Jones got beat. What have you got left?”

“I stand behind my team and my guys,” I snapped. “The Yankees are gonna win the World Series next year. Derek will win the batting title, A-Rod the MVP, Wang the Cy Young and Mariano will save at least 50 games. And Roy will bounce back in his next fight, too.”

“So you’re a stubborn one?” Alexi asked.

I nodded.

Alexi smiled and said:

“I like that.”

News you can use …

• At the Times, Tyler Kepner lets Brian Cashman give his impression of how the Yankees will be involved in this year’s free agent market.
• The economic downturn is indeed impacting sales of some of the pricier seats and suites at the new Stadium, as reported by USA Today.  Seven luxury boxes down the foul lines priced at $600,000 remain available for the 2009 season. The team still had seven available in August, too.   As of August, 3,500 of the 4,300 premium seats had been sold, including the $500-$2,500 per-game tickets near home plate in the first nine rows of 25 sections ringing home plate.
• Over at WasWatching, Steve Lombardi points to a Gotham Baseball article which quotes an unnamed Yankee exec suggesting that Jim Edmonds might be a nice CF stopgap until Austin Jackson takes over.  (Oy!)
• MLB.com reports that the Yankees and Cisco Systems held a news conference Tuesday to announce the technological enhancements fans will see in the new stadium.  They include:

1. Live game broadcast on HD video monitors displayed throughout the stadium, including concession areas, the Great Hall, the Yankees Museum and other in-stadium restaurant and bar locations.
2. Premium luxury suites will be outfitted with touch-screen Internet Protocol (IP) phones that will allow fans to order concessions and Yankees merchandise for delivery to the suite.
3. Going forward, the new stadium is equipped to support future fan use of mobile devices for ordering concessions from their seat, viewing instant replays or chatting in real time with friends inside and outside the stadium.

• At that same press conference, Hal Steinbrenner was asked what his primary concern was for this off-season:

“I would be remiss if I didn’t say starting pitching,” he said. “The injuries to (Joba) Chamberlain and (Chien-Ming) Wang certainly didn’t help us last year. We need to build the starting pitching.”

• Still within that conference, Hal denied that his and his brother’s goals were different from Brian Cashman’s philosophy of trimming payroll and developing talent from within.

“Brian is the head of baseball operations,” Steinbrenner said. “The goal, as far as I’m concerned, is balance. Young players built from within and veteran mentors.”

• According to the Boston Herald, Mariano Rivera and A-Rod will be appearing at David Ortiz’s charity golf event in the Dominican Republic next month.  The event helps fund medical care for critically ill children in that country and New England.  (Don’t worry, Mo won’t be swinging a golf club so soon after having had shoulder surgery)
• Happy 36th birthday to Homer Bush.  Homer’s claim to fame may just be that he was included in a trade that brought Roger Clemens to Gotham.  A happy 47th to Greg Gagne, drafted by the Yanks and soon included in a 1982 trade that brought back the immortal Roy Smalley.
• This isn’t a Yankee birthday, but gotta include it.  On this date in 1865, the one and only Archibald “Moonlight” Graham was born. 
• On this date 50 years ago, Bob Turley, who had 21 wins and 19 complete games, is named the Cy Young Award winner (only one award given back in those days).  Turley gathers five votes to four for 1957’s winner, Warren Spahn.
• One year ago today, Jorge Posada re-signed with the Yanks for $52.4 million over four years. This makes Posada the highest-paid catcher in MLB history, edging out Mike Piazza’s $13 million average from 1999-2005.

Jay Jaffe pays tribute to Preacher Roe, pictured below with Pee Wee Reese and Jackie Robinson, who passed away yesterday.

Herb Score died today.

Score was perhaps most famous for being drilled in the face with a line drive off the bat of Yankee infielder Gil McDougald. Score did manage to come back, but arm trouble derailed what looked like a promising career. His decline was blamed on the beaning, but Score shrugged it off. McDougald was equally as devastated by the beaning, if not more so.

From Terry Pluto’s The Curse of Rocky Colavito:

“I know it was an accident. It looked like the poor guy just couldn’t get his glove up in time. The nicest thing was that Herb’s mother spent a long time on the phone with me. I’ll never forget that. But I never felt the same about baseball after that.”

Pluto continued: “[McDougald] retired after the 1960 season at the age of thirty, even though there was plenty of life left in his career. He batted .289 in the seven years through 1957, and .253 in the final three seasons after Score’s injury.”

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The Only Bond We Had

by Diane Firstman

My mom was born in the farm country of Monticello, NY in the late 1920s. My dad was born in the Boro Park section of Brooklyn around the same time. They met when my mom moved to NYC after high school to find a job as a secretary. They married in 1958.

Some time shortly thereafter, my dad began exhibiting signs of mental illness … bouts of paranoia and/or delusions. Amidst all this, I was born in 1963. It was obvious that my dad wasn’t capable of being a care-giver to the family, so my mom got a quickie divorce in 1965, and my dad returned to live with his mother in Boro Park. My mom and I stayed in our apartment in Jackson Heights, Queens.

Dad had visitation rights, once a week at my apartment for a few hours on a Saturday or Sunday. He would hop on the B train, then the F, and upon arriving at our house, plop himself down on the couch and turn on the TV, invariably to the Yankee game on Channel 11 with Rizzuto, Messer and White. My mom scolded him for this seeming lack of interaction with me. So, sometimes we’d ride the Q66 bus on Northern Boulevard out past Shea Stadium to Main Street in Flushing to do some shopping or see a movie in the (now boarded-up) RKO Keith theater.

I soon inferred that if I wanted to engage with dad, it was going to involve baseball, especially the Yankees. My dad heartily encouraged this. I took a fondness to Bobby Murcer, since he was the only “name” on those middling early 70s teams. So dad got me a t-shirt with an oversized Murcer head on a cartoon body. He knew I was good with numbers, so he got me a Strat-o-Matic game, and occasionally we sat down to play.

Our “big events” were schlepping on the train to Yankee Stadium (though, in my kid mind, we lived only 15 minutes on the 7 train from Shea … why couldn’t we go there?). In the early to mid-70s, before the Yanks made free agency their own version of “Candy Land”, you could easily walk up and grab a couple of field level seats on game day.

We went to Old Timer’s Day quite often, and regardless of the particular day/game, we always sat on the 3rd base side, seemingly always behind one of the girders (sigh). I’d be sitting there with the program dad had bought me, filling out the scorecard and attempting (in my own baseball shorthand) to keep score. Dad would be enjoying a beer or two and a dog.

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An Airman started his day by unloading a plane at Dover Air Force Base. It had just arrived from Vietnam and was filled with body bags. That was the worst duty at Dover in those days, but it was nothing compared to the duty of the dead American soldiers returning from halfway around the world.

The Airman felt like getting drunk when he finished with the bodies so he headed for a bar in town. He never considered the late-night walk back to the base while he was drinking and trying to forget.

He was about halfway back and starting to sober up when a car stopped and offered a ride. The driver took the Airman to a diner and bought him an early breakfast before dropping him off at the base.

That Airman was my father. He never could remember the name of the guy who gave him a ride and a meal on that long-ago night, but he never forgot what the man did.

My father never passed anyone in the military without at least shaking their hand and thanking them. He gave rides and bought meals, but never felt like it was enough.

He died nearly 10 years ago, but he’ll always be with me. I never pass anyone in uniform without extending a hand. It is my honor and the honor of my father.

I meet so many soldiers and see his face in all of them. I only hope they never come home through Dover Air Force Base.

I have included a couple of stories about soldiers at Yankee Stadium that were originally published on Yankees For Justice. These are just two of several million people that we owe everything – or at least a handshake and a thank you – on this Veterans’ Day and every day.

Saturday, June 21, 2008

A Soldier’s Story

Brian peered over the crowd at the players’ gate outside Yankee Stadium last night. He wore standard-issue military fatigues and clenched a baseball in his left hand.

“Thanks,” I said offering my hand.

Brian shook and smiled.

“Where are you from?” I asked.

“Oklahoma City,” Brian said. “I come from a family of Yankees fans that goes back to Mickey Mantle and Bobby Murcer, but this is my first time here. It’s the first time anyone in my family has been to Yankee Stadium.

“I’m stationed at Ramstein Air Base in Germany,” he continued. “I’m on my way home for a couple of weeks before I have to head back to Iraq. I just had to stop and see a game. I want to get this ball signed for my father. He’d really like that.”

“You can move to the other side of the fence,” I offered. “The players always sign for soldiers, especially Johnny Damon.”

“How do I get over there?” Brian asked.

We walked toward East 157th Street along Ruppert Avenue and appealed to the good nature of the police.

The cops nodded Brian through.

“Thanks,” he said.

Then he turned and waved at me.

“Thank you for helping me out.”

No, Brian. Thank you.

Saturday, September 20, 2008

Off The Island

Justin arrived at Yankee Stadium in full uniform. He walked proudly through the tunnel and got his first look at the field.

“It’s beautiful,” he said. “I can’t believe I’m finally here.”

His father placed a hand on his shoulder.

“You earned it,” he said.

Justin is a week off of Parris Island. He is a United States Marine and proud of it. His father is proud, too.

“I bought these tickets awhile ago,” his father said. “I surprised him when he got home from basic training.

“He’s a good kid,” his father continued. “He always tries to do what’s right. I didn’t want him to join, but there was no stopping him. He used to look at my Marine photos when he was little and that’s probably where it started.”

Justin doesn’t know where he’s going next. He might be headed to Iraq or maybe Afghanistan.

“But I’m here tonight,” he said. “Nothing else matters right now.”

Justin put an arm around his father.

“Thanks, Dad.”

Remember the veterans today, then read this:

• Derek Jeter will be gracing one of five regional covers for USA Today Sports Weekly’s Baseball Insider Special Edition, on newsstands today through December 15.  The Special Edition “provides fans with a unique ranking and analysis of all 30 major league teams … based on a formula that measures a teams’ success over five years (2004-2008), including post-season and regular season success, number of draft picks who’ve reached the majors, attendance and affordability for fans attending home games.”
• Joba Chamberlain garnered one 3rd-place vote in the BBWAA’s AL Rookie of the Year balloting.  Evan Longoria was the well-deserved winner.  (Shield your eyes before going to the link … its an “electric lime” background the BBWAA has chosen!)
• Maybe Brian Cashman is following the lead of Theo Epstein in terms of continuing with the same organizational philosophy for 2009.  As quoted in this piece on MLB.com today:

“New York deserves a champion, and that’s part of our mission statement,” Cashman said. “We’re trying to build for the future but win in the present. It’s that balancing act which keeps that payroll to the level it is. Our ownership has always been fantastic in giving us the resources we need to fix what’s broken. They’ll be there again for us.”

• At ESPN.com, Sean McAdam has a brief “Winter Forecast” for the Bombers.  Nothing there that we Banterers don’t already know, but …
• Have your tickets ready as you head over to a site called SecondAveSagas.com for an update on the new Metro North Yankee Stadium stop (thanks to LoHud’s PeteAbe for the link).
• As quoted in the Taiwan News (yes … I do indeed span the globe for my beloved Banter), Chien-min Wang assured the Taiwan public that his ankle injury has completely healed. The article also states “He also promised that he will take care of himself to prevent further injuries. Wang said that his physical therapist warned him against jogging since his ankles are still too weak for intense activities.”  And you MUST check out the outfit he had on upon arriving in Taiwan …. you go boy!
• Over at BaseballAmerica.com, John Manuel gives us the rundown on the Yanks’ Top 10 Prospects (as I alluded to over the weekend).  If you like gazing into a crystal ball, Manuel takes a crack at the 2012 starting line-up (warning: he thinks Jeter will still be manning short …. aiiiiiii!).
• Anthony DiComo of MLB.com has an update on the movement of Monument Park from the old stadium to the new one.  Workers began taking down the team’s 16 retired numbers and their corresponding placards on Monday, packaging them for safety during their move across the street. The monuments — statues of Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Mickey Mantle, Joe DiMaggio and Miller Huggins, along with a memorial to the victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, tragedy — are set to follow, with Ruth’s moving to the new park on Wednesday.
• What’s going on in the Hawaiian Winter League?  Tim Bontemps at the Post has the latest.  The best performance so far appears to be that of Jeremy Bleich.  The former Stanford lefty is 3-1 with a 2.05 ERA in 30.2 innings over six starts. He has struck out 31 and walked nine, and is pitching to a 1.08 WHIP.
• There are 183 free agents to be had this off-season, and Yahoo! Sports‘ Jeff Passan has decided to rank them all.  He says you can bookmark that page and track the signings as they occur.  By the way, Abreu comes in at #13 overall, Mussina (#27), Pettitte (#28), Giambi (#31), I-Rod (#35), Marte (#56), Ponson (#116) and Pavano (#118).  ESPN also offers a free agent tracker (unranked) here.

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If you still held out hope of seeing Matt Holliday in pinstripes, you can stop now.

ESPN is reporting that the Rockies are close to dealing Holliday to the Oakland A’s, in exchange for pitcher Greg Smith and some number of other players from a group including P Brett Anderson, OF Ryan Sweeney, OF Carlos Gonzalez and perhaps even closer Huston Street.

By Rob Neyer

My first visit to Yankee Stadium, and for that matter my first visit to the East Coast, was in 1991. I was working for Bill James then, and accompanied Bill to New York for the annual Society for American Baseball Research convention. At that time, I had seen only five major-league ballparks, and none east of Cleveland.

Of course I’d been reading about Yankee Stadium since I was a little boy. By 1991 I was utterly obsessed with baseball — this was before I developed any other serious interests — and in a sense Yankee Stadium was New York.

Just one problem: When Bill and I were in town, the Yankees weren’t. Instead we went to a Mets game at Shea. Now, I don’t mean to complain because it was baseball and it was New York and of course there’s been plenty of history at Shea Shadium. But it wasn’t where Ruth and Gehrig and DiMaggio played. So one afternoon during our stay, I hopped on the subway and headed for the Bronx, just to see what I could see.

From the outside, I couldn’t see much. If you’ve been there, you probably know that the building doesn’t look like much (and I didn’t walk around to the third-base side to see the big Louisville Slugger). But a big gate beyond the right-field corner was open to the sidewalk, and I could see the field, blindingly green in the sunlight. I wanted to see more, so I scrunched up my courage and walked in like I belonged there.

I got about two steps when a beefy security guard with a mustache and a blazer stepped right in front of me. I couldn’t see the green anymore.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

“Uh. I just wanted to, umm, see the field.”

“You can’t do that.”

So that was Yankee Stadium, and would be for nearly nine years.

(more…)

The weather was making everyone uncomfortable. The guys gathered around Juan Carlos’s coffee cart opened their collars and glanced at the early-morning sky.

“It looks pretty good,” someone said. “Another nice day is on the way.”

Everyone nodded and went back to their coffee.

“The weather is too damn good,” someone finally said. “We need it to get really cold. We need it to snow and sleet and pour down freezing rain so we can get this over with. We’re all looking forward to Opening Day and winter won’t even get here.”

“You gotta be patient,” someone else said. “The players need to rest up and Brian Cashman needs time to get the team rounded into shape.”

They all cracked smiles.

“We’re still gonna need a break in this nice weather,” someone said.

“It’s always gotta be something with us doesn’t it?” someone else said.

“Yeah.”

Unless you were living under a rock for the past year or so, had absolutely no interest whatsoever in the race for the White House, or somehow missed Cliff’s Honeymoonlighting post from a couple of days ago, you undoubtedly came into contact with Nate Silver and his election projection site www.fivethirtyeight.com.

Nate’s statistical acumen, part of the driving force behind Baseball Prospectus, is unquestioned.  Nate took that knowledge base, and applied it to predicting the outcomes of various political races. His projections for this recent election cycle were quite amazingly on the money.

Today’s New York Times has a very nice piece on our friend Nate.  In a quote similar to what we typically find on the cover of the BP annual, we read:

FiveThirtyEight is “among the very first things I look at when I get up in the morning,” said Allan McCutcheon, who holds the Clifton chair in survey science at the University of            Nebraska-Lincoln. “He helped make sense of some of the things that didn’t seem sensible.”

Nate even got a pat on the back from the analysis-disdaining Murray Chass:

Using his obvious brilliance with statistical analysis, Silver has expanded his numbers game to Presidential politics and has become an instant superstar in his first time at bat. He correctly forecast the outcome of the Obama-McCain race in 49 of the 50 states, called the total popular vote within a percentage point and was closer on the electoral college voting than anyone else.

That’s a performance that is more impressive and more worthwhile than anything he has done with VORP and WHIP.

Congrats to Nate on his work in both realms.

Some people are turned off by armchair pyschoanalyis, but not me. I love it, far more than I enjoy breaking down managerial decisions or roster construction. So let’s return to our favorite superstar head-case, Alex Rodriguez.

This summer, a magazine writer who once wrote a piece on Rodriguez, told me that the Yankee third baseman is clearly a bright and sensitive guy, the kind of guy who doesn’t feel comfortable in the locker room environment. “He knows it, so does everybody,” the writer told me.

I’ve asked some of the Yankee beat writers about Rodriguez and they contend that he isn’t as smart as he thinks he is, but that he does try, too-hard, to be one of the boys.

At the end of the season, I spoke to a Yankee scout who said what I’ve always assumed–Rodriguez’s problems stem from the fact that he didn’t have a father in his life as a kid. Armchair Shrink 101.

I got to thinking about this last week when I re-read an old–and expertly written–profile on Jimmy Connors and his stage mother Gloria, by Frank Deford (SI, 1978):

Playing, competing, with a racket in his left hand, Jimbo is more a Thompson [his mother’s madien name] than a Connors—in a sense, he is Jimmy Thompson. Has any player ever been more natural? But then, in an instant, he wiggles his tail, waves a finger, tries to joke or be smart, tries too hard—for he is not facile in this way, and his routines are forced and embarrassing, and that is why the crowds dislike him. He is Jimmy Thompson no more. He is trying so hard to be Jimmy Connors, raised by women to conquer men, but unable to be a man…He is unable to be one of the boys.

Rodriguez is the natural, he works as hard as anyone, yet he still comes across like a candy ass not a bad ass. I believe that he’s such an achiever that he can do anything he sets his mind to, but he also has a knack, a gift, for getting in his own way, for saying the wrong thing, for coming across exactly how he doesn’t want to come across.

He’ll be in the gossip pages all winter. After what some considered a “down” year in ’08, I can’t wait to see how he’ll produce next season.

Monday Monday (la la la la la la) …. here’s the press:

• Over at WasWatching.com, the Yankees’ “Top 10 Prospects” are listed, as per Baseball America.  OF Austin Jackson heads the list.
• PeteAbe at LoHud.com notes that Andy Pettitte filed for free agency, but only wants to play for the Bombers for a one-year deal.  Abraham suggests $12-13 million should do the job.
• Mike Lupica of the News joins the list of columnists piling on Mayor Bloomberg for the funding of new stadiums for the Mets and Yankees given the City’s budget cuts.
• John Perrotto of BP.com makes some educated guesses at where the premier free agents will land.  He expects the Yanks to land Sabathia (its all about the Benjamins, at the end of the day).  Also, Derek Lowe will be wearing pinstripes in 2009.  He sees Abreu re-signing, but not for the three years he was seeking.
• Happy 30th birthday to Jorge DePaula.  Happy 44th to “The Gambler”, Kenny Rogers.  Jack Clark turns 53.
• On this date in 1978, the Bombers traded Sparky Lyle and four other players to the Rangers, getting back top pitching prospect Dave Righetti and four others.
• On this date 80 years ago, Knute Rockne delivered his famous “win one for the Gipper” halftime speech to the Notre Dame team during a game at Yankee Stadium.

Some of my favorite magazine pieces by Pat Jordan are about his past–his failed baseball career, and his childhood growing up with a father who was a professional grifter.  Here’s a fine example of the latter, from the SI swimsuit issue in February, 1987.

Bittersweet Memories of My Father, The Gambler:

I remember the day I first became aware of the pervasiveness of my father’s gambling in our lives. I was eight years old and just beginning my love affair with baseball, which was encouraged by my parents. We were Italian-Americans and my mother loved the Yankees—DiMaggio, Rizzuto, Crosetti, Lazzeri, Berra, Raschi. She hated only Eddie Lopat and, later, Whitey Ford (my secret idol) with their pink, freckled Irish faces. (Today, approaching 80, my mother has a photograph of Dave Righetti taped to the mirror in her kitchen.)

My father was a Yankee fan, too. Only for him they were less a team he could point to with ethnic pride than one he could confidently lay 9 to 5 on.

One Sunday afternoon in July, my father invited three of my “aunts” and “uncles” to the backyard of our suburban house for a cookout. None of them was, in fact, my real aunt or uncle—they were my father’s gambling cronies—and, even more significantly, my father was not a cookout kind of guy. He took no pleasure in neatly mowed suburban lawns, especially if he had to mow them.

…The afternoon of my father’s cookout was hot and sunny. My “uncles” stood around the barbecue fireplace under the shade of a maple tree and sipped Scotch. They made nervous small talk while simultaneously listening to a Yankee-Red Sox game coming from a radio propped on the kitchen windowsill. My father was bent over the barbecue, lighting match after match and cursing the briquettes he was unable to ignite. He was a dapper little man who dressed conservatively—gray flannel slacks, navy blazer—and he always wore a tie, even around the house. He was very handsome, too, in spite of his baldness. He had pinkish skin, youthful eyes and a neatly trimmed silver mustache. He truly fit the part, at least in his dress, of a suburbanite entertaining guests. Even if those guests did look as if they had just stepped out of the cast of Guys and Dolls.

…My mother, a dark, fierce little birdlike woman, and my “aunts” sat around a circular lawn table that was shaded by a fringed umbrella. They were sipping Scotch, as well, while playing penny-ante poker—deuces and one-eyed jacks wild—and chatting. I stood behind them and followed their play of cards.

Soon I got bored with the adults and I lost myself in the baseball game. When DiMaggio hit a home run for the Yankees, I shouted, “Yaa!” and clapped my hands. Suddenly, I was aware that everyone was looking at me. My father’s face was flushed. I caught my mother’s eye. Her lips were pursed in a threatening smile. She called out sweetly, “We musn’t root for the Yankees today, Sweetheart! Uncle Freddie is down 50 times on the Red Sox.”

For those of you who are so inclined, I hope you took the Jets and the over today.

It’s a tough job. Not many people want it and even fewer can do it. Maybe that’s why everyone is always looking for the next great leader.

I’ve listened to a lot of talk about past leaders and present leaders and future leaders and I keep coming back to the way Charlie Manuel led the Philadelphia Phillies to the World Series title.

Manuel gave everyone a good look at what it means to be leader during the National League Championship Series when he told reporters:

“If I had never gone and played baseball in Japan (where he hit 48 homers for the Kintetsu Buffaloes in 1980), I don’t think I would have been a coach or manager. What I learned was there’s a lot of different people in the world, and there’s more people in the world than Charlie Manuel. And I mean that I learned to respect things more. I learned to care about more things.”

That helped mold Manuel into the best kind of leader: One who understands that everyone is different, but we are all the same.

It’s a simple lesson with a confusing past and an uncertain future. Figuring it out helped make Manuel a better person, a great leader and eventually a champion.

Before you settle in front of the tube for an afternoon of football, here’s what is going on:

• PeteAbe from LoHud gives us audio clips from various Yankees and general gossip while at the Joe Torre event Friday night.
• Over at Newsday, Ken Davidoff compares the organization-building philosophies of the Yanks and BoSox.  Here’s an interesting quote from Theo Epstein on the philosophy they employ:

“I think the goal is always to build a healthy organization. We try to keep that in the front of our mind,” Epstein said this past week at the general managers’ meetings in Dana Point, Calif. “If we ever get too focused on having to fill this hole, or having to get better in this area, we take a step back and say, ‘Does this make sense for what we’re trying to do over five to 10 years?’

• The Post’s Kevin Kernan has a nice piece on star pitching prospect Dellin Betances, who conceivably could be with the big club in 2010.
• ESPN reports that Willie Randolph was named to be bench coach of the Milwaukee Brewers.  Good luck Willie!
• From the “Does the construction union know about this?” department, “with the help of a few legendary players and Bronx teenagers, the New York Yankees carried pailfuls of dirt taken from home plate and the pitchers’ mound at their old home to a new one Saturday.” (Source: Canadian Press).  Here’s MLB.com’s coverage of the “event”, including video.
• Today’s birthdays: The only player in ML history whose last name begins with Mm, Kevin Mmahat, turns 44.  Kevin’s “career” consisted of 4 games in 1989, giving up 13 hits and 8 walks in 7.7 innings.  Dion James is 46.
• On this date in 1953, the United States Supreme Court rules 7-2 that baseball is a sport and not a business and therefore not subject to antitrust laws. The ruling is made in a case involving Yankees minor leaguer George Toolson, who refused to move from Triple-A to Double-A.
• On this date in 1998, Catfish Hunter announces that he is suffering from Lou Gehrig disease.  Hunter will succumb to the disease less than a year later.

I was a little too young for the original SNL.  I remember the end of the Bill Murray years and when I was in middle school the Eddie Murphy-Joe Piscapo was a big deal.  A few years later, I loved the Billy Crystal-Martin Short–Harry Shearer–Christopher Guest stuff–which you never see in re-runs these days–but I never really loved the show after that.  Some bits and performers here and there, sure, but never as an “event.”

Anyhow, thanks to You Tube, here’s a Saturday Night Revue of silliness for you:

Warming Up

First Course

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