The Yankees have been off since Sunday, and tonight was A.J. Burnett’s first start since July 8th. Perhaps as a result it was a little reminiscent of the Tin Man’s first scene in The Wizard of Oz (“He said ‘oil can’!”)*. Given that his stuff was a bit on the fuzzy side, and that he allowed six hits and five walks while striking out just one batter, it’s some combination of impressive and lucky that he got through six innings and kept the Yankees right in the game. New York started off the second half of the season with another comeback win and beat the Tigers 5-3.
Lucas French tossed a nice five innings for Detroit and held the Yankees to just one earned run – Hideki Matsui’s RBI single in the first, which tied the game at 1-1. But the Tigers kept chipping away at Burnett. New York added another run in the fifth, when Johnny Damon scored after a Mark Teixeira single and an error by left fielder Josh Anderson, but they still trailed 3-2.
It wasn’t until the seventh inning that the Bombers broke through, off of Joel Zumaya (a player whose career I’ve followed with interest, not only because he’s fun to watch but because he suffered one of the oddest injuries in baseball history… I mean, injuries are not generally funny, of course, but come on). As rain started to come down hard, Jeter singled with one of those classic inside-out swings of his, and Damon doubled. Then Teixeira, with his third big hit of the night, took a remarkably graceful swing at a 99 mph 3-1 fastball and knocked it into the second deck in right field.
That gave the Yankees a 5-3 lead, and that’s how things would stay, as Phil Hughes was decidedly un–rusty. He pitched two full innings, and though he allowed three hits he also struck out six Tigers – and reached 97 mph (on the YES radar gun, anyway) for the first time anyone can remember.
Mariano Rivera came in to pitch the ninth and it went pretty much like you’d expect.
Boston won, too, so the Yankees remain three games out of first, but they’ve also got a 3.5-game lead over Texas and Tampa Bay for the Wild Card. More importantly, regular baseball is back. Whose idea was it to schedule an off-day right after the All-Star break, anyway? The person or persons responsible should be led to a basement room and forced to listen to a loop of Chris Berman’s Home Run Derby calls until they’re prepared to offer a heartfelt apology.
—
*Please note that I am in no way trying to imply that the tinsmith forgot to give Burnett a heart.
by Cliff Corcoran |
July 17, 2009 5:41 pm |
461 Comments
Since their sweep at the hands of the Angels to close the first half, a lot has been made of the Yankees’ struggles this year against potential playoff teams (0-8 vs. Boston, 2-4 vs. Angels, 1-2 vs. Phillies). The exception to that trend is the Detroit Tigers, who dropped two of three to the Yankees in Detroit back in late April. The Tigers have been atop the AL Central since May 10, but, tellingly, can be stung by the same criticism given their 2-7 record against the Red Sox, Yankees, and NL Central leading Cardinals.
The Tigers are a good team, but they’re not a great one. Their offense has been average, their bullpen unexceptional, and their rotation top heavy. That last is the primary reason they’ve lorded over the Central thus far this season. Despite a rough start, 26-year-old Justin Verlander is having his finest major league season having gone 10-2 with a 2.22 ERA dating back to his confrontation with the Yankees and CC Sabathia in late April. Behind him, 25-year-old Edwin Jackson is finally delivering on his prospect promise in his seventh (!) major league season, dropping his walk rate to 2.6 BB/9 and going 8-4 with a 2.26 ERA and 11 quality starts in 12 turns since May 9. Twenty-year-old rookie and Morristown, New Jersey native Rick Porcello has been solid behind those two, but Venezuelan sophomore Armando Galarraga has been inconsistent, and the fifth spot remains unclaimed.
Coming out of the break, the Yankees have the ill fortune to catch both Verlander, who will rematch with CC Sabathia tomorrow, and Jackson, who will face Joba Chamberlain on Sunday. That makes tonight’s game against 23-year-old rookie lefty Lucas French, who is making just his third big-league start, the key to the series for the Yankees. An eighth-round draft pick out of high school in 2004, French seemed to make a leap upon reaching Triple-A this year, posting his best ERA, strikeout, and walk rates since rookie ball. French made two scoreless relief appearances for the big club in mid-May and was recalled at the beginning of July to take over the fifth spot in the rotation. After a short, but solid start against the Twins, he beat Zack Greinke and the Royals his last time out by limiting Kansas City a solo homer and five other harmless hits in six innings. That was impressive, but facing the Yankees in the new Yankee Stadium will be a much better test.
The offense behind French has a slightly different look than it had when the Yankees were in Detroit in April. Most notably, a .260/.330/.343 performance has cost 2007 batting champion Magglio Ordoñez the bulk of his playing time. He’s now the short side of a right-field platoon with 25-year-old sophomore Clete Thomas (.265/.339/.500 against major league righties this year). Similarly, Josh Anderson’s glove has proven unable to sustain his bat in left field, resulting in increased playing time for backup Ryan Raburn (.269/.346/.496 on the season). The eternally fragile Carlos Guillen is back on the DL and has yielded his DH spot to power-hitting ex-Yankee Marcus Thames, who hit .344 with four homers in his last eight games before the break. Meanwhile, three pillars of the offense this year have been Miguel Cabrera (of course), Curtis Granderson (still struggling against lefties at .194/.282/.291, but plenty dangerous against righties), and, much to my amazement, Brandon Inge, who has never posted an OPS over .780 before but is having a career year at age 32, hitting .268/.360/.515 with 21 homers and 58 RBIs (against career highs of 27 and 83, both from 2006).
A.J. Burnett will reopen the second half against the dangerous version of Granderson tonight hoping to keep his pre-break hot streak alive. A.J. has posted a 1.34 ERA over his last five starts, all of which lasted at least 19 outs. The Yankee offense behind him has Hideki Matsui batting fifth followed by Jorge Posada, Robinson Cano, Nick Swisher, and center fielder Melky Cabrera.
Today’s news is powered by a little “Squeeze” play:
MLB.com offers up their own mid-season report card on the Yanks, and has this prediction:
The 2009 Yankees are a playoff team. The AL East would love to make that a false statement for a second successive season, but there’s little reason to think the division or the Wild Card are not within New York’s grasp. The Yankees don’t match up well with the Red Sox, but they’ll will find a way to be playing in October. They might even beat the Sox at least once in their remaining 10 games.
[My take: OK folks . . . who wants to do the research on whether a team has made the playoffs despite going 1-17 or worse against another team?]
Baseball Prospectus’ Steven Goldman has some ideas for the second half of the Bombers’ campaign:
The current AL Wild Card leaders have endured great disappointment from their starting rotation. Their quality start percentage of 43% ranks 12th in the league, just ahead of Cleveland’s. Only robust hitting and an improving bullpen has allowed them to win with consistency, but not against good teams like the Red Sox (0-8), Rays (4-4), and Angels (2-4). One obvious solution, putting Phil Hughes into the rotation is complicated by the fact that Hughes has been the team’s most effective late-inning option in front of Mariano Rivera (opposing hitters are batting .115/.182/.197 when he relieves). They would be best advised to move him to starting and trade for another bullpen arm, which would probably be less costly than getting into the Roy Halladay gold rush.
by Cliff Corcoran |
July 16, 2009 3:38 pm |
21 Comments
In grading the Yankees first-half performances this morning, I was struck by the fact that every question mark the Yankees had on offense coming into the season has been answered positively. Robinson Cano, Jorge Posada, Hideki Matsui, Nick Swisher, and Melky Cabrera have all returned to their pre-2008 levels of production. Posada’s shoulder, Matsui’s knees, and Alex Rodriguez’s hip have all held up to regular play. Age hasn’t been much of an issue for the 35-year-old Captain, and has been only a minor hindrance to Posada, Matsui, and Johnny Damon. Brett Gardner has translated his minor league production to the majors, and Mark Teixeira has hit like Mark Teixeira.
Lest we take any of that for granted, consider how things have turned the opposite way for the Chicago Cubs. I take a look at the Cubs disappointing first half and offensive collapse over at SI.com. It looks a lot like what the Yankees went through last year with injuries and poor performance combining to sabatoge a would-be playoff team. The key question now is whether the respective good and bad luck of these two teams continue in the second half. Only time will tell.
by Cliff Corcoran |
July 16, 2009 11:07 am |
10 Comments
I left two grades out of my post from this morning. Here they are:
Joe Girardi, Manager
Girardi has impressed me in a number of ways this season. Starting with instantly rewarding Nick Swisher’s hot start with more playing time, Girardi has done an excellent job of rewarding performance with playing time throughout his roster. When Brett Gardner stumbled and Melky Cabrera got hot, Girardi didn’t hesitate to invert the roles of his two center fielders. Angel Berroa may have been on the roster for far too long, but Girardi barely used him, quickly recognizing Ramiro Peña’s superior skill set and rewarding the rookie with opportunities commensurate to his performance. Similarly, when catchers Kevin Cash and Francisco Cervelli were called up within three days of each other following injuries to Jorge Posada and Jose Molina, Girardi didn’t simply default to Cash as the starter because of his major league experience (which includes a .186/.248/.287 career batting line). Rather, he again favored talent over experience, making Cervelli the starter, and was rewarded for it. Girardi excelled at this in his bullpen usage last year, and has done it again this year, letting Phil Coke, Alfredo Aceves, and now Phil Hughes pitch their way to high-leverage duty while casting aside more experienced arms in Jose Veras and Edwar Ramirez.
Of course, managers manage people and not just teams, so there have been a couple of cases in which Girardi has persisted with a player in a role beyond the point at which the media and fans thought was appropriate. Specifically, Girardi put Brian Bruney right back into his eighth-inning role after Bruney was activated from the DL for the second time and stuck with Robinson Cano batting fifth behind Alex Rodriguez through a considerable slump with runners in scoring position. In both cases, Girardi was showing some necessary faith in those players, but not so much that he didn’t eventually move Bruney into the middle innings and Cano down in the order.
Girardi also deserves credit for lightening up this season after receiving poor marks for his militaristic approach to last year’s team. Starting with a spring training team field trip to a pool hall conceived by the skipper, this year’s Yankees team has been one of the loosest and most colorful in recent memory, from Nick Swisher’s iPod, to A.J. Burnett’s cream pies, to the post-game championship belt (donated by Jerry Lawler), to the Mariano Rivera-judged kangaroo court.
Still, Girardi continues to have a blind spot when it comes to the fragility of his players. Though he seems to have discontinued his practice of lying to the media about his players’ health, he initially failed to follow the doctor’s orders to give Alex Rodriguez proper rest following the third baseman’s return from hip surgery, and has too often overextended CC Sabathia beyond the big man’s effectiveness. Fortunately, CC’s pitch counts haven’t been dangerous (he has reached 120 pitches just twice, tellingly both times in Yankee losses), and Rodriguez has responded incredibly to having some regular rest of late. Still, taking those kind of chances with the team’s top assets early in the season is more than just obstinate, it’s potentially disastrous for the organization. Given Girardi’s injury blind spot, I wonder to what degree his approach is to blame for the fact that both Cody Ransom and Brian Bruney tried to cover up injuries to the detriment of the team.
B+
Yankee Stadium 2.0
Prior to Opening Day, my objections to the new Yankee Stadium were sentimental, political, financial, historical, and aesthetic. Then the thing opened and turned out to be a giant Homermobile. Worse, it had a significant, detrimental effect on the game being played on the field. Though it feels cavernous to fans, it plays like a bandbox and has been host to many game-changing pop-fly home runs. Just look at the pitching staff’s splits:
That is by far the most significant aspect of the new park, but beyond the way it plays, all of my preseason objections still hold. The best seats in the house have been half empty or worse because of their exorbitant price. The massive new scoreboards are poorly organized, making it unnecessarily difficult to catch any pertinent information with a quick glance away from the action. It’s gaudy, cacophonous, somehow looks cheap despite its billion-dollar price tag, caters primarily to luxury clients, has compromised the quality of the games being played on its field, and was utterly unnecessary in the first place.
by Will Weiss |
July 16, 2009 10:23 am |
10 Comments
Over the last ten months I’ve mentioned in this space numerous statistics on job losses and general cutbacks in the newspaper industry. As sites like Newspaper Death Watch continue to gain traction, and papers nationwide continue to scale back their sports operations and travel budgets, it’s important to get a feel for where the industry is for the people in the trenches, past and present.
Former longtime Yankees beat man and YESNetwork.com colleague Phil Pepe agreed, but limited his answer more specifically to baseball coverage.
“This is a problem that has been ongoing for a few years and seemed to have escalated during the current economic crisis,” he said. “Sad to admit it, but today because of the blanket coverage from radio, television and the Internet, newspapers are not as vital to the game’s well-being as they once were.”
With all that in mind, I still couldn’t help thinking that additional opinions needed to be sought. So I took the the e-mails and queried New York Times Yankees beat reporter Tyler Kepner, Gertrude Ederle biographer and editor of the Greatest American Sports Writing Series, Glenn Stout, Kansas City Star columnist and uber-blogger Joe Posnanski, Pepe and another of my ex-YES men, Al Iannazzone, who covers the New Jersey Nets for The Bergen Record.
As you’ll see, I asked each writer the same basic set of questions, including one standout from Banterer YankeeMama. The e-mails were exchanged over the course of several days in late April, hence the reason some of the material in the answers may seem dated.
I was impressed with everyone’s candor and genuine love for the craft of writing, and newspapers’ place — even now — as an outlet for that voice. Each recognized how technology has influenced the industry, and how a happy medium must be forged for bloggers, beat writers, newspapers and e-media to coexist. Money matters, however, skew the discussion.
On the topic of travel, Iannazzone said, “It’s mostly West Coast games because you’re not going to get them in the paper anyway. So it’s a way to save money wisely, I guess.” There were certain elements of the conversation that due to the sensitivity of the issue, Iannazzone would not divulge, but he did offer this nugget: “I know I traveled less this year than in my five years on the Nets.”
by Cliff Corcoran |
July 16, 2009 12:25 am |
37 Comments
With the Yankees getting the extra off-day today, I thought I’d take a quick spin through the roster and assign some haphazard and utterly meaningless grades for the first-half. I’m sure the commenters will have a ball with this one . . .
Mark Teixeira, 1B
.275/.378/.535, 21 HR, 63 RBI; -1.8 UZR
Tex is a career .288/.378/.540 hitter, so that line is right on target, and he’s a career .303/.390/.574 hitter in the second half, so he’s actually ahead of his usual pace. I’m suspicious of that poor UZR rating; Tex had a 10.4 UZR last year. I expect his fielding stats will even out in the second half. A
How has Cano’s comeback season gone? In 2007 he hit .306/.353/.488 with a career-high 41 doubles, and 19 homers. He’s right on target to match or surpass those figures this year. His defense hasn’t rebounded all the way to his +11.3 performance in ’07, but it’s come up to average after dropping to -8.0 last year. As devastating as Cano’s collapse was to last year’s club, his rebound has been that important to this year’s Yankees. A
Age appeared to be sapping the Captain’s power and speed in 2008, but his performance in the first half this year has made his ’08 season seem more like a fluke than a trend. His 17 steals are already his most since 2006. His ten homers put him on pace for his highest total since 2005. Of course, the new stadium is largely responsible for the latter (Jeter’s hit just two taters and slugged .415 on the road), but the rest of his game has been as good on the road as at home, if not better. At age 35, he’s third among major league shortstops in VORP, behind only 25-year-old superstar Hanley Ramirez and Jason Bartlett’s fluky first half. A
Alex Rodriguez, 3B
.256/.411/.548, 17 HR, 50 RBI; -4.3 UZR
Rodriguez missed the first month of the season due to hip surgery. Then his manager failed to obey his doctor’s orders and give him the requisite days off, prompting a wicked slump (.159/.312/.286 over 19 games). And still Rodriguez’s numbers are right back where they belong. Ignore that average, it’s coming up, and look at the on-base percentage, which is a whopping 155 points higher and consider that Alex has walked ten more times than he’s struck out thus far this season after having never walked more than he’s struckout before in his major league career. Rodriguez’s hip has hindered his speed (just three steals, though in only three attempts), but his defense is coming around. All things considered, it’s been another strong season. B+
Mr. Hemphill turned a flair for sportswriting into a columnist’s job at the old Atlanta Journal in the 1960s, when the New Journalism began to take hold. Like Jimmy Breslin, a writer he was often compared to, he turned his roving eye to ordinary Southerners overlooked by most writers and mined the inexhaustible vein of human experience that he summed up, in his collection “Too Old to Cry” (1981), as “lost dreams and excess baggage and divorce, whiskey, suicide, killing and general unhappiness.” He also wrote blunt columns about race at a time when the topic was incendiary in the South.
“He was the kind of general newspaper columnist that hardly exists anymore,” Roy Blount Jr., who worked with Mr. Hemphill at The Journal, said by e-mail in June. “He’d go out and do things and talk to people and write 2,000 words, daily. He wasn’t a talking head; he was walking ears, or listening legs.”
I had the opportunity to speak with Mr. Hemphill over the phone once a few years ago. He was charming and gracious though he was already ill with throat cancer. We spoke about his debut novel, Long Gone, and the 1987 movie adaptaion for HBO (which sadly, is not available on DVD). He didn’t have much to do with the film but was pleased with how it turned out.
by Bruce Markusen |
July 15, 2009 11:43 am |
1 Comment
In many ways, Lindy McDaniel is one of the most overlooked Yankee of the last 40 years. On the few occasions that his name is remembered, it’s usually in reference to the fact that he was the player the Yankees traded to the Royals for Sweet Lou Piniella. McDaniel is one of the forgotten Yankee closers (or firemen, as they used to be called), along with Jack “The Chief” Aker, Steve “The Burglar” Farr, and John Wetteland.
This Saturday, McDaniel will be attending his first Old-Timers’ Day, albeit at the new Yankee Stadium. I’m not sure if it’s a case of McDaniel never being invited to the old-timers’ conclave, or that he has simply rejected prior invites, but it’s rather remarkable that he has never returned to the Yankees in any official way since last donning the pinstripes in 1973. For whatever the reason, the drought will end this Saturday. And for a quality and class Yankee, it’s about time.
Acquired for another old favorite in Bill Monbouquette, McDaniel served the Yankees superbly as a durable and effective reliever from 1968 to 1973. Except for his performance in 1971, when his ERA ballooned to 5.04 (the second-worst mark of his career), he consistently turned back opposition hitters in the seventh, eighth, and ninth innings. The long, lean right-hander became a familiar site at the old Stadium, with his old-fashioned, baggy-uniformed look and an easy-going, over-the-top delivery. McDaniel did not overpower hitters, not in the manner of Sparky Lyle with his backbiting slider, Goose Gossage with his chest-high powerball, or Mariano Rivera with his chainsaw cutter. Employing a softer and more subtle forkball as his out-pitch, McDaniel complemented that offering with a pedestrian fastball, an effective slider, and pinpoint control.
Where McDaniel lacked power and dominance, he made up for those shortcomings with endurance and longevity. In 1970, he pitched 111 innings to the tune of a 2.01 ERA and a career-high 29 saves. In 1973, He once pitched 13 innings of relief in a marathon Yankee victory. (You can file that in the category of milestones that today’s relief pitchers will never achieve.) In his final season with the Yankees, McDaniel logged 160 innings at the not-so-tender age of 37. By the time that he retired after two encore seasons with the Royals, McDaniel had amassed 21 years in the major leagues—a rather remarkable total for a nearly fulltime relief pitcher who regularly pitched more than 100 innings a summer.
So why has McDaniel remained so underrated, both as a Yankee and otherwise? From the Yankee perspective, he conceded the fireman role to Lyle in 1972 and ’73, McDaniel’s final two seasons in New York. Then there is the issue of the postseason. Though he played for some competitive Cardinals and Giants teams, the two-time All-Star never sniffed the World Series in either the fifties or the sixties. With the Yankees, he was stuck with some mediocre-to-decent teams that never quite had enough to keep pace with Earl Weaver’s world class Orioles. So there were no Championship Series appearances for McDaniel, either.
Beyond the lack of team support, McDaniel never did much, on an individual level, to promote his own accomplishments. A gentlemanly and reserved man, McDaniel instead preferred promoting the word of God. As an ordained minister for the Church of Christ, McDaniel spent much of his off-the-field time teaching and interpreting the Bible. McDaniel did not preach within the clubhouse or the bullpen, but instead mailed each active major leaguer (at his own cost) a copy of his monthly religious newsletter, entitled “Pitching for the Master.” In looking through McDaniel’s file at the Hall of Fame Library, I could not find any examples of resentment from other players who did not appreciate the religious message. Given the recent backlash against Baseball Chapel, I wonder how Murray Chass would have reacted to McDaniel’s practice in today’s climate.
Nearly 35 years after he last threw a pitch, McDaniel continues to preach his religious beliefs. As with his pitching style, he does it without fanfare or fire-and-brimstone. Now 73, McDaniel-the-minister will wear the pinstripes for the first time in several decades come this Saturday. Though he never had the flare of Mo or Sparky, I hope at least a few Yankee fans remember just how good Lindy was during those five-and-a-half lean years in the Bronx.
Bruce Markusen writes “Cooperstown Confidential” for The Hardball Times.
I had the chance to talk to Stout about the book. Here is our conversation. Enjoy. Bronx Banter: I know you are comfortable writing about history, especially in the first part of the 20th century. What drew you to Ederle?
Glenn Stout: Her story is seminal, as central to the story of American sports in this century as that of Red Grange, Babe Ruth, Jack Johnson or Jackie Robinson, yet to most people Trudy, aka Gertrude Ederle, is unknown. I wanted to change that. In many ways she was both the first modern female athlete and one of America’s first celebrities. Had she not done what she had done, which is not only to become the first woman to swim the English Channel, but in the process to beat the existing men’s record by nearly two hours, the entire history of women’s sports would be radically different. You can, I think, break down the history of women’s sports in this country into “Before Trudy” and “After Trudy.” Before Trudy female athletes were anomalies, and their accomplishments, with just a few exceptions, primarily took place out of the public eye. Many early female athletes, like Eleanora Sears, and Annette Kellerman, were sometimes seen as publicity hounds who performed stunts, and not serious athletes. The question of whether or not women were either psychologically or physically capable of being athletes was still a topic of debate – at least by the men who ran sports. Although there would still be some who would stubbornly cling to that belief, by swimming the English Channel and shattering the existing men’s record, Trudy answered that question quite definitively.
She was the answer. One can argue that had it not been for her women would not have been allowed to compete in track and field and many other sports as early as they did – women competed in track events for the first time at the Olympics in 1928. It may have been another generation – until after World War II – before there was any acceptance of female athletes. I am old enough to remember when women could not play little league, or run marathons, and when school sports were pretty much limited to gymnastics and basketball. Now of course, women can and do play everything. Without Trudy that happens much later than it did.
Trudy also has a compelling personal story that I think resonates with any reader. She grew up in New York, the daughter of German immigrants and overcame anti-German prejudice in the wake of World War I to become arguably the most famous woman in the world. At the same time, she was partially deaf, and was able to overcome that challenge. Swimming the English Channel, while perceived to be somewhat commonplace today, is still extremely difficult – it was the first “extreme” sport. More people have climbed Mount Everest than have swum the Channel, and most of those who try to swim the Channel fail. In most years more people will succeed in climbing Everest than in swimming the Channel. When I first began to research the book, that really, really surprised me, and made Trudy’s story even more compelling.
BB: Why isn’t Ederle remembered like Grange, Thorpe, Ruth and the other greats of the first great era of sports? For someone who had such a profound impact, why has her legacy faded?
GS: Hopefully, my book will help rectify that, but there are several reasons. Trudy herself soon discovered she just wasn’t cut out for the spotlight. Within 48 hours of her return to the United States, where New York gave her an enormous ticker tape parade, she was in the fetal position in her bedroom, completely overwhelmed. She was both slow and reluctant to “cash in” on her achievement. Her attorney mis-managed her career, turning down easy money for a grueling vaudeville tour. By the time that got going a male swimmer had broken her record, and a second female swam the Channel, which stole some of her thunder – the public began to think that swimming the Channel was far easier than it is, something that holds true today. She also had increasing trouble with her hearing – she was partially deaf since a bout with the measles as a child, and that made her less comfortable in the public eye. And few years after the swim she fell and was virtually bed-ridden for a time. And let’s face it, swimming simply isn’t a big spectator sport like football or baseball.
BB: What is Ederle’s reputation in the world of women’s swimming? Is she properly recognized?
GS: Swimming historians certainly recognize her as one of the all-time greats, but in a sport like swimming, records have been broken so many times that it is difficult for any swimmer from her era to remain in the public eye. Her only contemporary recognized b y the public today is Johnny Weissmuller, and that’s because of the Tarzan films. But in the world of swimming, she has to rank as one of the top seven or eight swimmers of all-time. No one else combined her success at shorter distances with open water success, and in the world of open water swimming, I think she’s right at the top. Anyone who has ever swum the Channel, or thought about it, knows about her.
BB: How did Ederle manage to beat the existing time of swimming the channel by such a great margin? That seems almost inconceivable.
GS: There are a couple of reasons. For one, she used a stroke known then as the “American Crawl” essentially what most people recognize as the “freestyle” today. Her coach with the Women’s Swimming Association was one of the strokes pioneers and its greatest advocate. And although it had been used for about two decades, no one believed it could be used for long distance swimming – it was thought to be too demanding, physically. Long distance swimmers usually used the breast stroke at the time, with occasional use of the side-stroke and trudgeon. The crawl was much faster, and Handley recognized that women in general, and Trudy in particular, although not as strong as a man, had just as much stamina. She was the first swimmer to use the stroke in the Channel, and proved the superiority of the stroke. Secondly, her trainer for the Channel swim, William Burgess, was a real student of the Channel currents and tides, and he found a somewhat new route across that was something of a breakthrough. Also, before Trudy most of the people who tried to swim the Channel simply were not great swimmers. They had great stamina, and desire, but as swimmers were rather pedestrian. Trudy was world class at every distance from fifty yards on up. She was simply a far, far, far better swimmer than anyone else who had swam the Channel before. For a swimmer of her ability to take on the Channel would be the equivalent of Michael Phelps to do so today – if he had her stamina. And lastly, while Trudy was growing up she spent summers in Highlands, New Jersey, where she spent hours and hours swimming in the ocean. She developed a very special relationship with the water, once saying “To me, the sea is like a person – like a child that I’ve known a long time. It sounds crazy, I know, but when I swim in the sea I talk to it. I never feel alone when I’m out there.” When she was swimming, she was in her place, right where she wanted to be, and where others found only torture, she found joy, and when you love what you do, well, there are no limits.
by Cliff Corcoran |
July 15, 2009 2:23 am |
59 Comments
How did the individual All-Stars do in last night’s 4-3 American League victory? SI.com asked me to grade the players. I gave Derek Jeter a B-, Mark Teixeira a C-, and Mariano Rivera part of the AL bullpen’s collective A+. See the rest here.
Just a note letting you know that Marty Appel, a maven of all things Yankees in the Seventies, will be discussing his new book, Munson: The Life and Death of a Yankee Captain at the Yogi Berra Museum & Learning Center on Sunday, Aug. 2 – the exact 30th anniversary of Munson’s tragic death. Appel’s talk will begin at 3 p.m., and books are available at the Museum for him to sign afterward.
Call (973) 655-2378 for info and reservations. This should be a good one.
by Will Weiss |
July 14, 2009 9:04 am |
30 Comments
Tom Verducci’s “The Yankee Years” caused a tremendous stir in spring training, when the tabloids got hold of it and railed Joe Torre for allegedly violating the cardinal rule of keeping clubhouse events in the clubhouse. YES Network fired Verducci from “Yankees Hot Stove” for the way he portrayed the Yankees’ front office in the book, and he was put on the spot by numerous outlets, including our own Alex Belth in an SI.com Q&A.
I finally got around to reading the book, and I wholly disagree with the negative criticism heaped upon Torre, Verducci and the book earlier in the year. It’s not an “as told to” story, as Alex points out. It reads like a well-researched textbook on the Yankees from 1995 to 2007, with notes and observations by a reporter who had been there through all of it. The anecdotes from the Yankee manager of the time, as well as former players, coaches and staffers enrich the context of the story.
As a Yankee fan, I almost think you have to read this book to gain an understanding of the teams of the YES Network era and just how tough a job Joe Torre had, and how difficult it was to pull those 2005, ’06 and ’07 teams into the playoffs after what they went through those years.
Was there information I knew already? Certainly. The details of Bernie Williams’ near move to the Red Sox and Andy Pettitte’s near trade in 1998, the Roger Clemens trade in 1999 and the components of the dynasty breaking up following the Game 7 loss of the 2001 World Series have been recounted in numerous books this decade, most notably in Buster Olney’s “The Last Night of the Yankee Dynasty.” Moreover, covering the team from 2002 through ’06, Torre would tell the local press corps some of the anecdotes Verducci recalled in the book, like the fan in Tampa during Spring Training of 2002 telling him, “Don’t worry Joe. We’ll get ’em this year,” and his fondness for Pettitte, given the way he stepped up in Game 5 of the ’96 World Series, out-dueling John Smoltz. I got to see the best and worst of David Wells’ second tour of duty, Jeff Weaver (Torre said the day of Weaver’s introductory press conference: “That kid will be leading the parade here some day.”), Gary Sheffield, Randy Johnson, Kevin Brown, and of course, Carl Pavano, and Jason Giambi, Johnny Damon and A-Rod’s brain cramps in the clutch and Chien-Ming Wang’s inability to handle being the ace of the staff.
For me, the most revealing quotes came from bullpen catcher Mike Borzello, who was the key source on the “A-Fraud” items, and Mike Mussina, who was great because he presented the point of view as an outsider to those championship Yankee teams. He acknowledged the greatness of Mariano Rivera but looked back on three games: Game 7 of ’01, and Games 4 and 5 in Boston in ’04, and wondered why and how he blows those three games? It sounded selfish at first, but if you were in the same spot, how would you have answered? I came away from this with a different level of respect for Moose. His insight helped shape the book.
The stories of the emotional toll dealing with Management took on Torre over the last three years of his tenure got me thinking about his current situation in Los Angeles. He has a similar makeup to what he had in 1996 and ’97. A good mix of veteran free agents like Manny Ramirez, Orlando Hudson and Rafael Furcal, and young players like Russell Martin, James Loney, Matt Kemp and Andre Ethier, and an even younger pitching staff figuring out how to win. But beyond that, the loyalty of the coaches he brought with him shifted as well. The way Verducci portrays Larry Bowa and Don Mattingly and their places in the coaching hierarchy during Torre’s last few years on the job, it’s easy to see why they followed him to L.A.
Why bring this up at this juncture of the season? The Yankees clawed back to sniff first place and had a chance to hold or share first place and had a chance to sweep the Angels in Anaheim. The makeup of the team, particularly Joba Chamberlain’s place on it, is under heavy scrutiny. It’s looking like a repeat of the last four years, only with a greater sense of impending doom because the Yankees’ run of 13 consecutive playoff appearances ended, while Torre’s didn’t.
If it happens again, Verducci might want to consider a similar book for Mr. Girardi.
Will you watch? Listening to Chris Berman for a couple of hours is too much for me to stomach. But I can always watch with the sound off. Cool that Mr. Pujols is participating this year.
