Monthly Archives: January 2011

Hard to pick against Tom Brady, but still…

Let’s Go Jets!

American Comfort:

Saturday Day Morning Slide.

It’s chilly out there. Hope you are safe and warm inside…

(more…)

The Museum of Modern Art is open ’til 8 tonight. Just sayin…

When I first met Cliff, he took me to school. He said that proper form is one space, not two after a period. I’d spent my whole life thinking a double-space was the way to go. Not so, Schmucko.

Dig this article from Slate, breaking down actual facts.

I needed a winter hat and for Christmas my mom gave me a fruitilicious one.

“I thought you would like the colors!” she said. She quickly added that I could return it if it wasn’t my style (isn’t it great how you can spot European colorfulness a mile away–even though she bought the hat in Vermont.)

Anyhow, the hat is ridiculous but I need to keep my keppy warm so I’ve been wearing it.  I like to ask people, sotto voice, “Be truthful,” and then I whip out of the hat, “Do I lose my street cred with this hat?”

Some people say, “No, it’s fine,” while others don’t skip a beat, “Yes, you sure do.” It’s not that the people who say it looks okay are lying–though some might be–it’s just a matter of taste.

Last night, Jon DeRosa went out for a meal and I asked him if the hat made me lose my street cred.

“Yes,” he said, “but you get some of it back just by having the balls to wear it.”

My man!

Bowie Friday for Diane…

I feel like a DJ at the radio station, taking requests from listeners (or in this case, faithful readers) about articles they would like to see written in this space. Last week, we received a request for a “Card Corner” centered on Sparky Lyle and his 1978 Topps card. Well, Shazam, here it is!

Not that this is a rough assignment; Lyle will always be a favorite subject of this writer. First, he was a terrific pitcher, a true fireman who often came into games with runners on base and was usually asked to pitch multiple innings. Few relief pitchers of the 1970s performed this role more vitally than Lyle. Second, Sparky was a fully certified baseball maverick, an outlandishly colorful figure with a great sense of humor and an enormous propensity for pulling the practical joke. How could a writer not love penning a few hundred words about someone like this?Bruce Markusen writes “Cooperstown Confidential” for The Hardball Times.

We all remember Lyle as a Yankee; some of us even remember his early days with the dreaded Red Sox. But how many of us realize that Lyle was originally linked to another American League East team? It was the Orioles who signed him in 1964, one year before the institution of the major league draft. The Orioles, however, failed to protect Lyle after his first professional season and lost him in the old first-year draft, a draft that would soon became as obsolete as bonus babies and the reserve clause. The Red Sox pounced, claiming Lyle and assigning him to Winston-Salem of the Carolina League. After two years of minor league seasoning, the Sox brought him to the big leagues in 1967.

Lyle’s rookie season coincided with Boston’s “Impossible Dream” of winning the American League pennant. It’s easy to overlook just how important Lyle was to that championship team; in 27 late-season appearances, he pitched to an ERA of 2.28, struck out a batter per inning, and even saved five games in the heat of a dizzying pennant race. The Red Sox didn’t include him on the World Series roster, but it’s debatable that they would have even reached the postseason without their only effective left-handed reliever.

Lyle should have had a long career in Boston, but the Red Sox did not fully appreciate his talents. That’s about the only way to explain their unfathomable decision to trade Lyle to the Yankees for Danny Cater, a singles-hitting first baseman of modest propositions. Cater was an OK first baseman, a decent hitter for average with a good glove, but he was really nothing more than a platoon player. Why give up a 26-year-old left-hander with a great arm and a superhuman slider for a 31-year-old journeyman and a middling minor league shortstop named Mario Guerrero? It didn’t make sense then, and it doesn’t make sense now.

The Yankees benefited immediately from the Red Sox’ shortsightedness. Lyle became the Yankees’ relief ace practically from Day One in 1972; he would lead the American League in saves and games pitched, while maintaining an ERA under 2.00. He would become an un wanted sight to AL hitters, mostly because of a fantastic slider that rivaled Ron Guidry and Steve Carlton in its greatness. Guidry threw his slider harder, but in his prime, Lyle threw his slider with more movement, more of that down-and-to-the-right bite. When thrown for strikes, it was practically unhittable for left and right-handed batters alike.

Lyle remained the Yankees’ unquestioned closer until 1978, when Topps happened to release one of his best cards ever. Most of his earlier cards were the standard fare, posed shots and up-close portraits, but this one gave us Lyle in action. The photograph captures two traits of the Lyle delivery: the manner in which he reared back to throw the slider, and the quirky way that he curled his glove toward the batter. Unfortunately, as good as the Topps card was, the 1978 season turned out to be one of Lyle’s most difficult. That winter, George Steinbrenner decided to bring Goose Gossage to the Bronx as his latest big money, free agent prize. The arrival of the Goose rendered Lyle a high-priced middle reliever, with rare opportunities to save games. With Rawly Eastwick and Dirt Tidrow also pitching out of the pen, Lyle became an afterthought at the times.

Unhappy with his muddled role, Lyle asked for a trade. After the season, the Yankees sent him to the Rangers for a package of prospects and young veterans, led by prized young left-hander Dave Righetti. In the long term, it would become a prosperous deal for the Yankees, while Lyle would begin the inevitable descent that afflicts most players. Now in his mid-thirties, Lyle never recaptured the form that he displayed from 1972 to 1977.

When Lyle left the Yankees, so did some of the fun. He was their primary prankster, the man who squatted on birthday cakes, scared Phil Rizzuto with a werewolf mask, and did a Bela Lugosi imitation while rising from a casket that had somehow been delivered to the clubhouse. Lyle was such a clubhouse cutup that I would never have imagined him becoming a coach or a manager. So, after working as a commercial actor and casino greeter for awhile, he did the unexpected in 1998, becoming the manager of the Somerset Patriots, a team in the independent Atlantic League. Lyle apparently knows what he’s doing, having won five league titles in a span of just over a decade.

I guess some guys are just good at whatever they try. First, Sparky was a great pitcher. Then he dabbled in writing. His diary, The Bronx Zoo, is one of the best baseball books I’ve ever read. And now he’s establishing a reputation as a highly effective minor league manager. It makes you wonder what he might do if given the chance to manage a big league club, maybe even the team known as the Yankees.

Tonight at the Walter Reade Theater, the very creepy..

This?

or that?

I listened to a street musician/comedian on the subway last night. When he was finished with his song he said, “I take donations and child support payments. I take spare change and chump change, folks. I take tax donations and college credit. Thank you. I take cell phone minutes.”

The last one got me.

Some thoughts on the Rafael Soriano signing…

Steve Goldman at the Pinstriped Bible writes:

Soriano has a checkered injury history, and there is a better-than-average chance that somewhere in the course of his deal the Yankees will pay him to soak up the post-surgical sun. Despite this, the worst-case scenario is that they have a very qualified eighth-inning pitcher who can close on the off chance that Mariano Rivera needs to rest/is injured/suddenly pitches his age. Still, the Yankees had good bullpen resources and a lot of additional options for the pen in whichever of their 900 starting prospects they choose to demote from the rotation and groom for middle relief. Further, as good as Soriano is, he’s only going to give you somewhere between 60 and 75 innings, and as bad as some of the relievers looked in the 2010 postseason, those innings aren’t going to be so much better than what the holdovers would have delivered that the extra outs really justify the move. There has to be another shoe yet to drop for this move to make sense.

Joe P at River Ave:

In terms of the 2011 team, there are no complaints. The Yankees had plenty of money to spend, and they certainly upgraded the back end of the bullpen. This will lead to a greater enjoyment of the 2011 season. The Yanks might win a few games that they otherwise would have lost, and we will all be a little less irritable the next mornings. That doesn’t bother me. What bothers me is what this means for the 2012 and 2013 teams.

…In Soriano the Yankees get an excellent reliever who can help lockdown the endgame. It cost them a lot of money relative to his potential contribution, and it cost them the chance to draft a young player. If he stays healthy and locks down the eighth inning before sliding into the closer’s role for the final year of the deal, it might end up working out. But knowing what we know now, about relievers in general and Soriano specifically, I’m not too excited over this deal. Though I realize I’ll sleep that much easier during the 2011 season.

Ovet at It’s About the Money, Stupid, Jason likes Soriano but isn’t wild about losing a draft pick to the Rays.

Larry Koestler adds:

Soriano has been one of the 15 best relievers in the game during the last three seasons, so this isn’t exactly Kyle Farnsworth redux (although it is eerily similar to Steve Karsay, another injury-prone pitcher who happened to be the fifth-best reliever in baseball by fWAR over the three seasons preceding his signing with the Yankees in 2002), but it’s still a pretty ugly deal. To focus on the positives for a moment, the Yankees’ 8th-9th inning endgame should be quite treacherous for opponents to deal with, although that’s also assuming they’re able to deliver Soriano and Mariano Rivera a lead — no sure thing with the uncertainty in the rotation.

And that’s probably the aspect of this deal that I find most critical. The money’s bad, but the greater problem is that Brian Cashman still hasn’t done anything about the gaping hole also known as the Yankees’ fourth and fifth starters. As literally every single person on my Twitter feed has noted, the silver lining to this move could (and should) be the rightful move of Joba Chamberlain back to the rotation. There is literally no reason to keep him in the ‘pen now. Unfortunately Chad Jennings already spoke to someone with the Yankees, and apparently there have still been no internal discussions about moving Joba back to the rotation. Here’s holding out hope that perhaps that’s just another “we won’t surrender a draft pick for a relief pitcher” red herring, but if they were planning on converting Joba back to a starter I’m not sure why they’d be playing it this close to the vest.

The crew at NoMaas do not like the deal and I don’t think Steve Lombardi is too impressed either.

MLB Trade Rumors has more.

Looks like the Yanks have signed Rafael Soriano to a whole mess o ducats.

Something tells me that the analysts aren’t going to be kind to the Bombers on this deal.

Albert talks life with Esquire.

It’s brick cold in New York today. Short ribs anyone?

The brilliant ladies at Food 52 break it down.

Young woman looking at Jacob Lawrence’s paintings at the Modern.

Rich Lederer, the man who helped get Bert Blyleven elected to the Hall of Fame, set the Internet community back years this week when he got his tits lit in a Twins Fantasy Camp game. Way to go, Rich. It’s back to the basement for you. When will these Nerds ever learn?

Over at the New Yorker, Joan Acocella writes about why people love Stieg Larsson’s novels?

Having got American readers to buy more than fourteen million copies, collectively, of Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy books—“The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” (2008, American edition), “The Girl Who Played with Fire” (2009), and “The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest (2010)—the management at Knopf has decided that it would like them to buy some more. So the company has issued a boxed set: the three crime novels, plus a new book, “On Stieg Larsson,” containing background materials on the late Swedish writer. If you have been in a coma, say, for the past two years, and have not read the Millennium trilogy, about a crusading journalist, Mikael Blomkvist, and a computer hacker, Lisbeth Salander, battling right-wing forces in Sweden, the set, at ninety-nine dollars, is not a bad bargain. But if you decided to pass on the novels your resolve should not be shaken by this offer. As for “On Stieg Larsson,” don’t worry. It is a small thing—eighty-five pages—and nothing in it solves the central mystery of the Millennium trilogy: why it is so popular.

I’m in the minority here because I haven’t read any of the trilogy. Any of you guys enjoy the books?

Let’s get “classy” shall we?