Monthly Archives: April 2011

Phil Hughes is lost right now. He’s lost velocity on his pitches and is now lost in space. He threw more BP fastballs tonight and the O’s feasted on that weak sauce to the tune of five runs in four-and-a-third innings. It’s clear that something ain’t right, but what that something is, well, that’ll keep the angst-meter on blast for the foreseeable future, won’t it?

The Bombers inched their way back into the game behind a strong relief outing from Bad Bart Colon and trailed 5-4 going into the eighth. Colon put runners on the corners with one out and was replaced by Joba Chamberlain who uncorked a slider past Russell Martin. Felix Pie charged home from third but Joba beat him to the plate and blocked Pie’s leg, took the throw from Martin and made the tag for the second out.

Went something like this:

Joba struck Mark Reynolds out looking with some easy cheese on the outside corner, end of inning.

That  looked to be the last thing to get excited about as Alex Rodriguez, still hot, and Robinson Cano had two out hits in the bottom of the inning but Nick Swisher, ice cold, rolled over a grounder to end the inning. Joba pitched a scoreless ninth and then Jorge Posada hit Kevin Gregg’s first pitch into the right center field bullpen to tie the game.

And Yankee Stadium was happy.

Even more so when Curtis Granderson lined a ball off Nick Markakis’ glove in right field for a double. But Martin could not get a bunt down and whiffed. Brett Gardner, who has looked overmatched, did the same and Derek Jeter tapped out to short and the inning was over.

Yet all praise the Great Mariano, who worked around a lead-off single, and got the Yanks back up in short order. The lefty Mike Gonzalez walked Mark Teixeira on a full-count pitch to start the inning and then Rodriguez, who has been hitting just about everything on the screws, ripped a double to left. Second and third, no out. Robbie. Worked the count even at two, smacked a line drive right at the shortstop, one out.

The O’s chose not to walk Swisher, batting from the right side. Swish hit a hump back liner to Markakis in right, deep enough to score the winning run.

A.J., pie, game.

Yanks 6, O’s 5. Applause.

[First picture by Michel Gravel]

Calling Phil Hughes, calling Phil Hughes.

The Yanks need ya, Hoss.

Go git ’em, boys.

The news is not pretty for Jose Feliciano who will likely jern Damaso Marte on the 365-day-forever disabled list.

[Photo Credit: dpup]

The Tigers recently called up Alberto “Al” Alburquerque.

That man’s parents had absolutely the right idea. If my last name were Alburquerque, which sadly it is not, I would name my son the same thing and my daughter Alberta. Al is a 24-year-old pitching prospect from the DR, and I wish him a long and productive major-league career. It’s also at times like this that I fiercely miss Bob Sheppard. How much do you wish you could hear him say “Now pitching for the Detroit Tigers, Alberto Alburquerque”? I would cut off a toe.

Not only does the name roll off the tongue, but it gives me an excuse to link to my favorite clips from one of my favorite movies, Billy Wilder’s inky-black and still alarmingly relevant social and media satire, Ace In The Hole. Sadly the clip can’t be embedded, but check it out:

“Even for Alburquerque, this is pretty Alburquerque.”

The longer Al stays in the majors, the more often I get to say that, is the way I look at it.

Lumet week continues with this big of fire from “The Fugitive Kind”:

Hullo Sugar.

[Photo Credit: Jean Jacques Andre]

I’ve got a piece in the Scorecard section of Sports Illustrated this week on “21,” the fantastic new graphic biography of Roberto Clemente.

Deadspin has a cool excerpt…

This one is a keeper and the ideal companion to David Maraniss’ definitive biography, “Clemente.”

Look what I ran across again in Midtown yesterday? The Bronx Banter Scoretruck. I stopped to take a picture and the driver leaned out of the window and said, “You got to see the other side, it’s got the city on it an’ everything.”

But the light changed I didn’t have time. I said, “I want to see you guys update this for 2011!”

“Me too, bro! We’re going all the way.”

One day, I’ll catch the flip side of the truck. Good ol’ scoretruck.

From the Gothamist…man, does this ever look fuggin’ great (peace to Robby Rob for the link).

Last night, Jon DeRosa and I went to a book party at the New York Athletic Club for “At the Fights.” It was well attended–contributors like Robert Lipsyte, Thomas Hauser, Larry Merchant and Gay Talese were there. Joe Flaherty’s wife showed up, and so did W.C. Heinz’s daughter. Art Donovan, the football legend whose old man was a great boxing ref, was there too. George Kimball and John Schulian, pictured above, gave lovely speeches.

George talked about the relationship between boxing and writing, about how they are both difficult, solitary experiences. He said, “Writing is hard but editing this book was a complete pleasure.” Sure, the editors had to make agonizing choices–some fine stories like Jack Murphy’s “The Mongoose,” Frank Deford’s “The Boxer and the Blonde,” and J.R. Moehringer’s “Resurrecting the Champ,” didn’t make the final cut–but still, selecting from a wealth of fantastic writing must easier than writing itself.

If you care about good writing, doesn’t matter if you are a boxing fan or not, this is a book to have.

I gave up my seat for an older woman on the subway this morning. She was wearing a heavy green coat and carrying two shopping bags and a bulky purple purse.

I stood above her after she sat down. She had long black hair, speckled with gray, and a silk pink and purple scarf on her head, tied just under her chin. Something about her face, the shape of her mouth, reminded me of my grandmother on my father’s side. She raised her eyebrows as if she was having a conversation, which in fact she was, silently, with herself.

Her mouth chewed quickly and then I looked down and saw that she was holding a box of Dots. Eating Dots at 7:30 in the morning. It made me think–if you had to eat candy for breakfast, what would it be?

So there seems to be a formula to the Yankees’ wins in this young season: a whole big juicy bunch of runs. Yes, yes, April, I know – but thus far the Yankees have only won when they’ve scored 4 or more runs, and it’s usually more. Not that there’s anything wrong with scoring lots of runs, of course. And on the plus side, tonight those runs were paired with a nice, solid, hope-giving start by A.J. Burnett, as New York won 7-4.

It didn’t look so hot at the beginning, as the first two innings took more than an hour; and although A.J. Burnett didn’t allow a run in that span, he did burn through about 50 pitches and labored in and out of trouble. In the meantime, though, the Yankees went to town on Baltimore’s struggling starter Chris Tillman. The most damage came from Alex Rodriguez, who hit a three-run homer in the first, apparently being over his head cold, and then Robinson Cano in the second, with a two-run double. Jeter picked up a couple of infield singles, which if not exactly awe-inspiring at least got him on base and nudged his average towards respectability. And later, Jorge Posada broke an 0-for-19 streak with a booming solo homer.

Better yet, Burnett settled down after those first innings and came back to pitch a strong, encouraging game right into the 7th inning – which in retrospect may have been a bridge too far, as he promptly gave up two two-run homers. But as the Yankees had seven runs on the board by that time, there was no real harm done, and the trio of Robertson, Soriano, and of course Rivera ushered the team safely to a win. Which, weirdly, means that A.J. Burnett now has more wins by himself than the Red Sox. That’ll last a day or two max, but might as well enjoy these early season flukes where you can.

A much as I’ve been mistrustful of the Yankee rotation, a solid Burnett makes it merely short as opposed to horrendously short. Well – depending on what you think is going on with Phil Hughes.

It is still raining in New York.

Yanks, O’s–let’s get this in and Let’s Go Yank-ees!

[Picture by Amanda Friedman]

EJ Fagan at the Yankee Analysts tells us everything we need to know about Hector Noesi.

Lucian Freud, “Man’s Head, Self Portrait III” (1963)

The other night the Red Sox, who still haven’t won a game against anyone besides the Yankees, got blown out by the Rays (who have now amassed three entire wins), mainly because of a dreadful start by Daisuke Matsuzaka. Being in a contemplative mood at the time, I thought back to his signing – lots of exciting, tense negotiations and lots of freaking out by the Yankee fan base. I thought Matsuzaka was going to be an ace, or if not, at least a very good player. Why not? His career in Japan was fantastic. I can’t find it at the moment, but I remember writing something to the effect of, it’s going to be really tough for the Yankees to compete against that rotation now.

Mostly I loved the rumors about his mythical “gyroball.” So far as I know Matsuzaka didn’t start the rumors, but cannily, he didn’t deny them either, deciding that if batters wanted to psych themselves out waiting for the ball to do something crazy he wasn’t going to stop them. I spent a few weeks covering spring training in 2007, Matsuzaka’s first season in the U.S., and several batters who faced him in Grapefruit League games swore up and down that they’d seen the gyroball. In turned out that all they’d seen was a good slider, but the gyroball hype was a lot of fun, even though it didn’t last into the season. I wish more players would pretend to have imaginary pitches.

Anyway, Matsuzaka hasn’t exactly been a flop – not like, say, Kei Igawa, who the Yankees signed more or less in response, in a fantastic example of How Not To Make Baseball Decisions. Dice-K had an okay 2007 and a very a good (if lucky) 2008, got injured in 2009, and last year was mediocre but not useless. And of course his fate this year is hardly sealed; I don’t expect him to return to his 2008 form, but I also don’t expect him to keep being as bad as he was the other night, although I suppose it’s possible. In any event he hasn’t been the game-changer that it seemed like he could be, and while that’s good news for the Yankees it’s also somewhat sad. I don’t have much of a sense of Matsuzaka’s personality, largely because of the language barrier, but his body language and baby-face have always been expressive and he seems affable enough. It’s just yet another reminder, if we needed one, that when it comes to scouting players – especially pitchers – we still don’t know all that much.

New York Magazine has a fun little piece on the seven types of John Sterling home run calls (thanks to Was Watching for the link):

Look what I found, another dope site.

Hmmm, toaster bacon.

Bacon’s a fruit.

Check out this appreciation of Lumet from my friend Mike Fox, a British cameraman who worked on the second unit of “Lawrence of Arabia,” and “Lord Jim,” was was the camera operator on “Hope and Glory” and “Dangerous Liasons”:

I never had the privilege of working with Sidney Luemt, though close friends of mine did (on “The Deadly Affair”) when he was making films here. They liked him a lot.

I find it very difficult to place Lumet into any kind of genre, his films were so varied in content and technique. But his early brilliance was beyond the merest shadow of a doubt. “12 Angry Men” still stands even after all these years as the faultless paradigm for a one-set movie. (Hitchcock’s “Rope”, years before, failed miserably trying this.) How to analyse the success of “12 Angry Men”? God knows. Reginald Rose’s faultless screenplay; incredible casting; immaculate direction; atmospherics; credibility… I could go on. (One of the film’s many claims to distinction, according to Henry Fonda in various talk shows, was that it never returned its negative cost. In fact, I don’t believe this. United Artists – who bankrolled Woody Allen for years purely for the prestige it gave them – were one of the better regarded distributors, but they still used Hollywood’s notoriously bent accounting methods. On paper, distributors there could prove with ease, and did, that pictures like “Avatar” and “Titanic” actually lost them a great deal of money – thus relieving them of having to pay out contracted royalties to all and sundry.)

“Dog Day Afternoon” also broke new ground. Wonderfully made, and introducing Al Pacino as a young and remarkable actor (Marty Bregman’s protégée), whose performance was outstanding. (Pity he’s become a parody of himself, today much more a star than he was once an actor. It’s what Hollywood hype and big money does to talented actors.) And “Serpico” also deserves, at least, an honourable mention. But what always amazed me was “The Hill”. This subject was so British and Lumet’s direction so insightful, so perceptive, of all too typical British mores and class prejudices – embedded, double-distilled, into the British army – that I could barely believe that an American director could zero-in so accurately to their many British and very subtle dysfunctions. But Lumet did, and brilliantly so.

Having said all that: how can one pontificate on the work of a director who was so prolific; whose works were sometimes so great and sometimes so disappointing (“The Wiz”; “Gloria”–why a remake of a Cassavetes original done so well?; “Last of the Mobile Hot-Shots”). Of course, great creators must be allowed to fail. Even so, one always expected more and better from Lumet. And yet his better always tended to be of a type: New York, crime, cops, corruption, injustice, human weakness. So what. I know of directors pretending to greater talent who would give a kidney to have Lumet’s list of credits.

I guess if one had to sum up Sidney Lumet, one could do so by looking at the record: the film of his that was, run-away, the most deserving of 1958’s Oscar for Best Picture and Best Director was “12 Angry Men”. But it came up against David Lean and his “The Bridge On the River Kwai”, and they pissed it. Uncompromising art against hard-headed commercialism (gratuitously casting an almost redundant William Holden for American audiences). Lumet never ‘won’ and Academy Award, though he was honoured with one for his lifetime achievements.

It was great to have known Sidney Lumet – even if, personally, at second-hand. Without doubt, the movie industry was made a far better place for his presence.

[Picture by Gary Roberts]