Monthly Archives: July 2011

Taken by my uncle, on vacation in Barcelona.

It’s boolchit hot, man. Dog Day hot. Do the Right Thing hot. Africa hot. You name it. The city is roasting, man. A regular schvitz-a-thon.

This is why air-conditioning was invented.  Stay inside if you can. Boy, what a day to play hooky and go to the movies. If you’ve got to be out, find a way to cool-out and drink a ton of water.

[Photo Credit: Nivek]

Bobby does Bob.

Man, Robbie Cano’s old man has some puss, huh?

Nice Derby.

[Photo Credit: New York Post]

El Sluggo’s will be mashing balls over the fence tonight in Arizona with Chris Berman calling the action. Hide the children.

Happy All-Star festivities to ya.

[Painting by Liam Brazier]

Living at the end of the line alters your relationship with the subway. You rely on it’s presence and emptiness in ways that would not be appropriate in the middle of the city. There is also a level of accumulated filth at the end of the line that probably does not apply there either.

On weekday mornings, after the train empties out, somebody takes to the train with a mop and bucket and slathers chlorine on the floors. The odor is stiff and intense and often, but not always, worse than the filth. At rush hour, the trains are moving in and out too quickly for all of the cars to receive this treatment. So you can weave through the waiting train searching for a car that doesn’t overwhelm you one way or the other.

Friends and Connections

By John Schulian

When I became a sportswriter, it was as though I was inducted into a special lodge filled with lots of guys and a few women who shared my interests, my passions, my problems. I didn’t have to explain to them who Red Smith and Larry Merchant were. They thought it was cool if I slipped an obscure cultural reference into a game story, and they sympathized if an editor boned me on deadline. They even knew when I was looking for a job, sometimes before I did.

I never experienced anything like it during my five years on the city desk in Baltimore, and I say that even though I loved the Evening Sun and still consider many of the people I worked with as friends.  But when I started there, I was a rarity–a single person. Everybody else seemed to be married, with children, and dead-set on becoming middle-aged before they hit 30. Only later did more single people start showing up, bringing with them their passion for rock-and-roll and sports and carrying-on.

With sportswriting, on the other hand, I knew instantly that I belonged. And by the time I left newspapering, I was part of a band of ink-stained gypsies that seemed to turn up at every major event: Red Smith, Jim Murray, Dave Anderson, Blackie Sherrod, Eddie Pope, Furman Bisher, David Israel, Mike Lupica, Bill Nack, Dave Kindred, Leigh Montville, Ray Fitzgerald, Diane Shah, Stan Hochman, Joe Gergen, Pete Axthelm, George Vecsey, Jerry Izenberg. Unfortunately, Tony Kornheiser didn’t fly much, which cut into his traveling, but on those rare occasions when he did go airborne, he had to drink his courage first, which only made his legendary neuroses more fun than ever. Anyway, they were, and are, good folks one and all, and if I forgot to name anybody, the same description applies to them. I was proud to be in their number.

My best friend at the Post was Tom Boswell, even though he had made his peace with those rat bastards on the copy desk. He had better diplomatic skills than I did, for one thing, and he also loved what he was doing. Where I looked at things strictly as a writer, he maintained a fan’s sensibility. He was, and is, very much an enthusiast. I didn’t have a name for it until a year or two ago when I heard Robert Hilburn, the L.A. Times pop music writer for 40-odd years, speak. Here was a guy who was absolutely in love with the music and the artists and the world they lived in, a guy who was as excited by U2 as he had been by Bruce Springsteen and John Lennon. Totally unjaded. Just like Boz. Boz is as fired up about Stephen Strasburg and Bryce Harper as he was about his first Roy Sievers baseball card. He writes like a dream for readers who are on the same wave length as he is. That’s why he’s the biggest sportswriting institution in D.C. since Shirley Povich.

Boz and I were both single and about the same age when we met at the Post. He was finishing up a tour as the prep writer-–you’ve never read better or more imaginative high school coverage-– and he was moving onto the baseball beat, with golf as a sideline. If we were working late, we’d walk across the street to get dinner at the Madison Hotel. This is the same hotel where a Style section writer canoodled with Kathleen Turner when she was the hot-tomato femme fatale in “Body Heat.”  All I remember Boz and me getting there was Reuben sandwiches and an English trifle for dessert. There’s a reason why sportswriters are seldom lean.

Boz was great company, not just full of baseball stats and theories but an endless source of quotes from French philosophers and Emily Dickinson. The only knock on him was his threads–no natural fibers, colors unknown to civilized man. The kindest thing that could be said about his wardrobe was that it didn’t contain white shoes. Then, when I was working in Philly, he shows up wearing a blue blazer, a pink polo shirt, khakis and nice loafers. I knew instantly that he was in love. Only a woman who truly cared about him would have taken the time to dress him at Brooks Brothers. He married her, too.

The other great friend I made in Washington was David Israel, who was then the enfant terrible sports columnist at the Star, the city’s No. 2 paper. He was 23 or 24 and as different from Boz as Mick Jagger is from Tony Bennett. David was all hair and opinions and hot babes and finding out where the party was. I was dating the woman I would marry, so I wasn’t doing any night crawling with him. What we bonded over was writing.

I was looking for a way out of Baltimore when he hit Washington, and I remember my friend Phil Hersh, who was covering the Orioles for the Evening Sun, saying that David had liked a feature I’d written about a stolen pool cue. (My hustler friends again.) David asked if this guy Schulian was a city columnist, and when Phil told him I was a rewrite man, David threw the paper in the air. That’s when I knew he might be a kindred spirit.

He’s six years younger than I am, but he’s always been the best-connected guy I know. Back then he was already friendly with Breslin and Dick Schaap. He’d met them when he was a summer intern at Sport magazine. If I’m not mistaken, it was Breslin who helped him get the column at the Star. David had the chops to handle it, too. He was smart and outrageous and fearless -– he’d knock anybody and anything, and he did it with more style than whoever passes for a newspaper hell-raiser today.

I remember one time in Dallas, after a big Redskins-Cowboys game, the first thing he said to me as we were leaving was, “Did you use the tape?” The Redskins had lost and the tape they’d peeled off littered their dressing-room floor. It was forlorn and bedraggled, perfect for evoking the mood.

“Yeah,” I said. “You?”

“Yeah.”

Just a little thing, but also the kind of thing someone with a writer’s eye looks for.

Anyway, David and I talked a lot about writing, and he went with my girl friend and me to see some concerts, and I hung out with him on the road. Before I knew it, there was talk he might become the Star’s city columnist. He couldn’t have been there much more than a year, but in those days, dying No. 2 newspapers were always taking chances like that. That’s why they were so much fun to read.

David had this plan that if he became the Breslin of D.C., he’d lobby for me to succeed him as the Star’s sports columnist. I would have done it in a heartbeat. But the city column didn’t work out, so David stayed in sports and I stayed at the Post. I wasn’t beside-myself unhappy there or anything, but I knew I could be happier somewhere else. I just wasn’t sure where that was, or if I would ever get a chance to get there.

Then, later that year, David told me his old paper, the Chicago Daily News, was looking for a new sports columnist. The Daily News had been at death’s door since before I read it in grad school, and now its new editor, Jim Hoge, who was already running the Sun-Times, was importing talent for a last stand. David had covered college sports for the News before he became the Star’s columnist, and predictably he had stayed tight with Hoge.

“Tell him I’m his guy,” I said.

“You mean it?” David said.

“Damn right I do.”

Not long afterward, just before the NFL playoffs are about to start, Hoge comes to D.C. on business. He doesn’t have time for a sit-down  with me, but he wants to know if I’ll share a taxi out to National Airport with him. Hell, yes, I will. I don’t know what I said to impress him, but he asked to see my clips. And then I got a call to meet with the Daily News’ sports editor, a folksy, easy-going guy named Ray Sons. And then, wonder of wonders, I was the new sports columnist at the Chicago Daily News.

My first day on the job was Jan. 31, 1977. It was my 32nd birthday. Best one I ever had.

Click here for the full “From Ali to Xena” archives.

Patti sings Buddy.

Nicole Franzen wins again.

Growing up in the ’80s, I had a room full of sports posters. Reggie, Dr J, Mike Bossy, and Mean Joe Green were joined over the years by Michael Jordan, Rickey Henderson, and Don Mattingly. It was wall to wall in some areas. But I hated, hated the posed shots. I just wanted in-game action.

Looking back though, those over-the-top poses were hilarious. The one I remember most clearly had Mattingly as a pinstriped hitman:

I recently saw a retrospective at the SI Vault of this style of 80s posters pioneered by John and Tock Costacos. They placed the players in preposterous, larger-than-life scenes. Here’s Dave Winfield’s entry:

I think the Chicago Bears defense in Bermuda shorts is the most priceless misfire. Were you guys into posters?

Some more shots from Derek Jeter Day, 2011.

Here’s my scorecard.

A nerd at work.

And here’s when the wife took over…

“Ambulate to first,” that’s a walk. “Cue P.C. Richards,” that’s a strikeout. “Home Rupton,” that’s when B.J. Upton hit a home run. I like that one, Chris Berman, you paying attention?

And here’s a shot of the crowd when Jeter got his big hit:

A young Richard Diebenkorn channels Edward Hopper

Alex Rodriguez will have surgery today on his right knee and is expected to miss between 4-6 weeks.

It was the wise move but this one is going to hurt. I’m curious to see who the Yankees will pick up as a back-up for Eduardo Nunez.

[Photo Credit: N.Y. Daily News]

Photo by Nick Laham/Getty Images

C.C. Sabathia provided the perfect cure for a hangover. With the Yankees still basking in the glow of Derek Jeter’s 3,000th hit, it would have been easy to overlook Sunday’s rubber game against the Rays, but the big lefty almost single handedly made sure there wouldn’t be a morning after.

For much of the game, it seemed as if the Yankees and Rays had packed away their bats for the All Star break a little too early. With Sabathia and James Shields on the mound, that was probably a wise decision. Neither team made much use of them anyway. For seven innings, the two aces not only traded zeros, but did so with relative ease. In 11 of the game’s 17 half innings, the Yankees and Rays sent only three batters to the plate, and in the other six, the two teams never used more than four.

Before Sabathia and Shields got on a roll, the Yankees and Rays each mounted an early threat, but both opportunities were forfeited by questionable decision making. The Rays had the first chance to break out on top when Sean Rodriguez started the third inning with a double. However, with no outs in the inning, he was then inexplicably gunned down trying to steal third. After Rodriguez’ costly blunder, the Rays never advanced another runner past first base.

In the bottom of the third inning, the Yankees also gift wrapped an inning for Shields. After Eduardo Nunez led off with an infield hit and Derek Jeter reached on a perfectly placed bunt single, the Yankees decided to play some small ball with Curtis Granderson, one of the league’s most potent hitters in the first half.  That decision eventually backfired when Nunez was thrown out at the plate while trying to score on Mark Teixeira’s shallow fly ball.

For most of the game, it seemed like the Yankees and Rays were standing around watching Sabathia and Shields pitch. Unfortunately for Tampa, B.J. Upton wasn’t one of the bystanders. In the fourth inning, the enigmatic centerfielder was picked off trying to steal second base, and then, in seventh, he was doubled off first base on a fly ball to right. In the bottom half of the same inning, Upton tried to return the favor by doubling off Robinson Cano, but his throw ended up in the seats behind first base. With a good throw, Cano would have likely been out. Instead, the winning run was placed on third with only one out.

Upton almost got a reprieve when Russell Martin lined out, but Shields compounded his centerfielder’s error by making one of his own. With Cano creeping down the line, Shields attempted a pick off, but threw wildly, allowing the go ahead run to score. Ironically, Shields’ worst pitch of the day was delivered to third base, and it ultimately cost him the ballgame.

After being staked to a 1-0 lead, Sabathia mowed down the Rays in the eighth and then, instead of giving way to Mariano Rivera, stepped atop the mound to start the ninth. How much to did the big lefty want the complete game shutout? For the second out, he caught Ben Zobrist looking at a 97mph heater. Then, for the final out, he blew Elliot Johnson away his fastest pitch of the game. The radar gun read 98mph. Sabathia let out a primordial roar. It was the perfect punctuation to an outstanding first half by both Sabathia and the entire team.

Yanks and Rays end the first-half of the season today.

It’s another hot one in the Bronx.

Let’s Go Yank-ees.

So how exactly do you put a bow on a game like this? By now you know that Derek Jeter got his 3,000th hit on Saturday afternoon, and you probably also know that he did it in ridiculously dramatic fashion. My first inclination was to give a short summary, the kind you used to see in the papers in the out-of-town scores column, but as Dr. Jeter reminded us, “We need a victory,” which makes this game important. So…

For the last few weeks A.J. Burnett has been the team’s second-most consistent starting pitcher, and early on he looked fairly dominant with two strikeouts in the top of the first. With David Price on the mound for the Rays, it certainly seemed like hits would be at a premium throughout the afternoon. Jeter, of course, led off the bottom of the inning, and the crowd was amped, but not overly so. He worked the count full, fouled off a couple pitches, and then finally pounded a ground ball through the hole at short for his 2,999th hit. The Stadium exploded, but it was kind of a selfish cheer; they were only partially cheering for Jeter, mainly they were cheering for themselves — “He’s gonna get it today! We’re gonna see it!”

In the bottom of the second the Rays reminded us that there was actually a game going on. Burnett set down the first two batters of the frame, but then Matt Joyce launched a long home run into right, giving the Rays the first run of the game. Partially lost in the Captain’s Quest has been the resurgence of the Red Sox and the perseverance of the Rays. A loss here would put the Yankees as close to third place as first.

But Burnett got back on the beam in the third, striking out two more (he would total nine strikeouts in 5.2 innings). It certainly didn’t look like Rays would get much more off of him.

Brett Gardner grounded out to open the third, and then Jeter came up for the at bat that everyone was waiting for. The Stadium noise completely drowned out Bob Sheppard’s recorded announcement, and everyone in the house was standing, living and dying on each pitch. I spoke with a friend who was at the game and he described it as a tennis match atmosphere, with the crowd buzzing after each pitch, then quickly silencing in tense anticipation of the next. It came across on television as well, especially when Jeter swung and fouled off pitches deep into a 3-2 count. As each foul flared off into the seats above the Yankee dugout, the crowd exhaled as one, groaning with disappointment.

Price delivered the eighth pitch of the at bat, a slightly flat curve ball that arced directly into Jeter’s wheelhouse. You’ve seen this swing a thousand times. He pulled his hands in just a bit, turned his hips to meet the pitch, made pure contact on the sweet part of the bat, then sprinted out of the box and fired his bat back towards the on-deck circle.

Meanwhile the ball was soaring towards the gap in left center field, an obvious hit at the very least. As the crowd noise escalated, Michael Kay’s voice rose to a fever pitch, and outfielders Joyce and B.J. Upton slowed their pursuit, everyone realized at the same time that Jeter had done the impossible, the same as he always has. It has been almost thirteen months since he had hit a ball over the fence at Yankee Stadium, and this one actually carried beyond the lower bleachers in left, settling into the meaty mitts of a kid named Christian López who was seated next to his father in the first row of the second tier of bleachers.

As Jeter slowed from his sprint and into a trot as he rounded first base, he allowed a quick smile, perhaps as he noticed Tampa Bay first baseman tipping his cap. By the time he was approaching the plate, his team stood waiting, with old friend Jorge Posada fittingly offering the first congratulations with a bear hug that was probably more about Jeter’s first 2,999 hits than this one. Rivera was next in line, and then the entire team joined in, hugging, high-fiving, helmet-banging. DH Johnny Damon and the Rays had been watching from the top deck of the visitors’ dugout, and now they hopped the railing to join the rest of the 48,103 in a prolonged standing ovation.

It’s hard to explain what this moment meant. I stood in front of my television, clapping and cheering as Jeter rounded the bases, brushing tears from eyes as I watched him embracing his teammates, and my voice was shaky as I explained the significance of the hit to my children. Through all five boroughs of New York City, through Connecticut and New Jersey, and all across the country, hundreds of thousands of fans were certainly having the same conversation and feeling the same emotions. In that moment, we were one.

David Price returned to the mound after the celebration waned, and again we were reminded that there was a game going on. Curtis Granderson drew a walk, and Mark Teixeira followed with a single to push him to second. After Robinson Canó struck out, Russell Martin guided a ground ball through the hole between short and third, scoring Granderson to give the Yankees their first lead of the game at 2-1.

But the lead was short-lived. Perhaps suffering from the long home half of the third (33 pitches plus the Jeter delay), Burnett struggled a bit in the top of the fourth, walking Ben Zobrist on four pitches to lead off the inning and then serving up a home run to Upton to give the lead back to Tampa Bay at 3-2.

This was Jeter’s day, though, so it was no surprise when he led off the fifth inning with his third hit of the day, a ringing double to the wall in left field. Granderson singled him home to tie the game, then advanced to third on a Teixeira single and scored from there on a short sacrifice fly by Robinson Canó to make it 4-3 Yanks.

The game finally settled into a groove for a while, or at least until Mr. Jeter came up again with two outs and Gardner on first in the sixth and, naturally, lined a hard single to right field, his fourth hit of the game. Whether it’s because of renewed energy from his twenty-day stint on the disabled list or the adrenaline from the chase to three thousand, Jeter’s looked different lately, as evidenced by these three consecutive rockets, the home run, the double, and this single. And for any who were still a bit skeptical, Jeter added a stolen base to his stat line as he and Gardner executed a double steal before being stranded at second and third.

If it had all ended there, if the bullpen had smoothly gathered the last nine outs of the game, people still would’ve walked out of the Stadium shaking their heads, wondering how Jeter could’ve fashioned such a fairy tale ending to his quest. But it didn’t end there. The normally lock-down David Robertson entered the game in the eighth and immediately gave up a booming triple to Damon. Just a few pitches later a Zobrist single would bring Damon home with the first run Robertson had allowed in a month, and the game was tied again. But Jeter was due up third in the bottom of the eighth. He couldn’t… could he?

Turns out he could. Eduardo Nuñez (spelling Alex Rodríguez, who may or may not be missing for the next month) led off the eighth with a double, moved to third on a Gardner sacrifice, and stood waiting like Rapunzel in the castle as Jeter came to the plate and the Rays’ infield pulled in tight to cut off the run. Joel Peralta was pitching by now for Tampa Bay, and he looked ready to bury Jeter as he worked towards a 1-2 count. Afterwards, such luminaries as John Flaherty, Randy Levine, Mariano Rivera, Jay-Z, and Alex Belth would all report that they were expecting a triple to complete the cycle, but perhaps that would’ve been too much to ask for. Instead, it was a simple ground ball up the middle, easily out of reach of the drawn-in infielders, and Nuñez walked in with the go-ahead run. Jeter ran to first just like he had done 3,002 times before, rounded the bag, then turned back to the base as his arms spread wide and came together with a single clap. Have you seen that before?

He was five for five, and the crowd was in ecstasy. (By the way, the last time Jeter went 5 for 5? It was five years ago; I wrote about it the other day.) They had come hoping for history and had stumbled into a script that made A Field of Dreams look like a documentary. This, of course, was the way the game would have to end. Rivera came in to pitch the ninth, and save for a Kelly Shoppach drive to the warning track in center, it was as uneventful as ever, and the game was done. Yankees 5, Rays 4, Jeter 3003.

After the game, everyone who stepped in front of a microphone seemed to be reading from the same teleprompter. It was a Hollywood ending that would’ve been rejected by any Hollywood executive with any sense. The aging captain of the New York Yankees, battling injury and deflecting a steady barrage of questions about his decline as analysts and fans alike are wondering in print and conversation about when the team will drop him in the lineup or find a better short stop, rises to the occasion and does what no one thought possible. He hits a home run for his 3,000th hit and ends up driving in the game-winning run with his fifth hit of the day.

It was all completely unbelievable, and yet it still made perfect sense. Such is the life of Derek Sanderson Jeter.

[Photo Credit: Michael Heiman/Getty Images]

A little bit of Reggie in Derek’s performance today, huh? The man has a flair for the dramatic. He lived up the hype and then some. A magic moment for Jeter and Yankee fans everywhere. I was with the wife in the Todd Drew seats. Never forget it.

The full recap will be up in a bit, but in case you don’t know, Mr. Jeter notched his 3,000th hit today. Spread the word.

Man, it sure is hot out there.

Derek Jeter is two hits away from 3,000. Alex Rodriguez could be headed for surgery. He’d miss a month if he has it now or he could wait until the end of the season. Drag.

Yanks-Rays today:

Let’s Go Yankees.

[Photo Credit: Hygge and Sisu]

It’s a Demo…

And while we’re at it:

[Photo Credit: Elliot Erwitt]