Monthly Archives: February 2011

I saw the elegant Picasso Guitars Show at the Modern today and it made me feel lighter, alive, and unbelievably happy.

Check out the site, and if you are in town, peep the show, it’s around through early June.

Bucatini All’Amatriciana last night at my aunt and uncle’s on the Upper West Side.

Simply the best.

What games do you play while riding the subway?

Here’s a few: What if the train stopped and this became like an episode of “Survivor”? Who would take charge? Who would be the Alphas, who would be the trouble makers, who would crack first?

Who would I bone, and in what order? There’s lots of variations of this game, of course, like “Which beautiful women are lousy in bed,” and “Which regular-looking girls are tigers?”

Who is carrying a concealed weapon?

I used to play, “Who could I beat up?” but I’ve given up on that one.

Another favorite is guessing what stop people will get off.

 Check out these spring training pictures by Michael G. Baron.

Check out this cool post from the always cool spot, Jeremiah’s Vanishing New York.

C.C. Sabathia reported to camp lighter; Joba Chamberlain is heavier. My favorite headline today comes from the Times of all places: Heftier Chamberlain Arrives with Thud at Yankees Camp:

Asked Wednesday morning for his impression of Chamberlain, General Manager Brian Cashman said: “He’s heavier. Let’s just leave it at that.”

Told that Chamberlain has said he packed on muscle, Cashman said: “He’s obviously heavier. That’s as much as I’ll say.”

…“You think about it as a manager, you think about what it says,” Manager Joe Girardi said. “As I said, Joba is going to be pretty much evaluated on how he pitches. That’s the bottom line. We’ve been very pleased in what we’ve seen so far.”

The Wall Street Journal asks: Is This the Fattest Yankee Team Ever?

Albert Pujols said that he didn’t want to negotiate after spring training started because he didn’t want his expiring contract to be a distraction this season. Well, good luck with that.

The current frenzy will certainly die down, but I expect Pujols’ contract to come up early and often as the season goes on. And why wouldn’t it? It’s not every day that one of the best hitters in the history of baseball comes this close to free agency. I don’t know who Ken Rosenthal’s source on this is, but if he’s right, the Cards may have seriously lowballed Pujols:

As many people have pointed out, including Craig Calcaterra at Hardball Talk and Christina Kahrl at Baseball Prospectus, the lack of a deal at this artificially created “deadline” hardly means that there won’t be a deal at some point. Still, I was struck by the negativity of Bill DeWitt, the Cardinals Chairman, when asked if he thought there was still a chance Pujols signs with the Cards after this season:

“I think that’s hard to say at this point,” DeWitt said. “We tried last offseason, so maybe the third time will be the charm… We did make every effort. We started the process early and had good dialogue throughout. It wasn’t that we ran out of time, it’s just that we were unable to reach agreement.”

That may just be a negotiating ploy or a PR stance, but he didn’t sound hopeful.

I don’t feel like I have a very good grip on Albert Pujols’ personality. I’ve seen a lot of reporters say recently that he’s a good guy, and they would know better than me, but in my own (admittedly quite brief) personal experience, covering the 2006 NLCS, he was an abrasive jerk with the media. There’s no reason why St. Louis fans would, or should, care about that – watching him play baseball is a beautiful thing, and that’s what’s important there. I only bring it up because I wonder what impact his personality might have on these negotiations. There’s no obligation for him to take less money than he could get elsewhere to play in St. Louis, and few athletes do. But I wonder if he will insist on being the highest-paid player ever, and whether there’s any room for compromise.

It’s always nice when a great player is able to stay with a team for his whole career – but if Pujols gets cut loose, that’ll be fascinating to watch in its own right, and it’s hard not to feed the hype on this.

Over at Esquire, Tom Chiarella profiles the hard luck and beautiful life of Liam Neeson.

[Photo Credit: WVS]

Constantine Manos

American Color

Bill Plaschke on the best spot to do lunch in Los Angeles: 

What I really wanted to hear, of course, was what the Dodgers thought about folks just walking into their house and hanging out in the middle of the day, so I phoned club spokesman Josh Rawitch with the news.

“I want to tell you about my favorite place to have lunch,” I said.

“Top of the park at Dodger Stadium, right?” he said.

“How did you know?” I said.

“You’re not the only one,” he said.

It turns out, other folks are aware of this place, and the Dodgers tolerate it for the good of the town.

“There are a lot of fans who refer to the top of the park as the best-kept secret lunch spot in Los Angeles, and it’s hard to argue with them,” Rawitch said. “While we don’t openly encourage it, the fact that it has become known this way is a reminder of just how special Dodger Stadium is to our fans, even when it’s empty.”

[Photo Credit: The Itinerant Fan]

You may recall that last month, I was thrilled when the Yankees claimed reliever Brian Schlitter from the Cubs. Alas, our favorite awesome headline generator was designated for assignment on Monday, to make room for Andruw Jones on the 40-man roster, and yesterday he was claimed off waivers by the Phillies. Those greedy bastards – they snap up all the great starting pitchers and then they have to go and take the great names, too?

One more for the road: Horseschlitt.

And I could look like Chevalier:

My old man believed in calling ’em like he saw them, especially when it came to compliments. If we were on a street corner with him, waiting for the light to change, and an attractive woman happened to be standing there, he’d think nothing of telling her, “My sons and I can’t help but notice what a beautiful woman you are and thought you might like to know as much.”

The woman would smile, sometimes unnerved, not knowing if it was a come on or what. Sometimes, if she was an assured New Yorker, she’d wink at my brother and me. It wasn’t a pick-up line, the Old Man just believed in expressing himself. Take it or leave it, honey. The man had charm to burn and no lack of chutzpah.

The overweight lover’s in the house…

In the New York Review of Books, Chess master Gary Kasparov reviews the new Bobby Fischer biography:

Fischer’s remarkable life and personality will surely produce countless more books, and probably movies and doctoral theses as well. But there is little doubt that none of the authors of those future works will be more qualified to write on Bobby Fischer than Frank Brady. A close acquaintance of the young Fischer, a “chess person,” as we call them, himself, as well as an experienced biographer, Brady also wrote the first and only substantive biographical book on him, Bobby Fischer: Profile of a Prodigy (1965, revised edition 1973).

It is hard to imagine a more difficult subject than Bobby Fischer to present in an accurate and evenhanded fashion. He was a loner who trusted no one. His charisma attracted both starry-eyed sycophants and spiteful critics. Fischer had strong opinions of the kind that tend to create equally categorical sentiments in those who knew him—and in those who didn’t. He had a very small family and both his mother, Regina Fischer, and his only sibling—older sister Joan Targ—have passed away. Fischer’s general inaccessibility also led to countless rumors and outright lies about him, making the biographer’s task a challenge.

With all that in mind, Brady’s book is an impressive balancing act and a great accomplishment. Before even picking up the book there is no reason to doubt that Brady liked Bobby Fischer and that he has a friend’s as well as a fan’s rooting interest for the American chess hero. But there are few obvious traces of that in Endgame, which does not shy away from presenting the darker sides of Fischer’s character even while it does not attempt to judge or diagnose it. What results is a chance for the reader to weigh up the evidence and come to his own conclusions—or skip judgments completely and simply enjoy reading a rise-and-fall story that has more than a few affinities with Greek tragedy.

This is a lengthy piece but worth the time. Fascinating stuff.

George King on Jorge Posada, DH.

Ben Kabak on prospects.

William with a fun piece on managers and their baseball cards.

[Photo Credit: Anthony Causi]

Seriously, now…got to love spring training.

[Photo Credit: The Best Way to Spend Time On Line]

It never goes away, just gets better…now in HD!

R.I.P. Kenneth Mars.

Here is a nice appreciation at the fabulously titled site, Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule.

I’ve heard of meyer lemons but until last Friday, never tried one, at least not that I can remember. Not long ago, I saw a simple salad dressing that called for meyer lemons, olive oil and garlic. Sure enough, I found meyer lemons at a market in Manhattan. I haven’t made the dressing yet, but used it in another dressing, and on an avocado. They are sweeter than regular lemons, and while they weren’t cheap (fifty cents a pop), they sure are lovely.

They are easy to find out in Los Angeles–check out 100 things to do with a meyer lemon in the L.A. Times.