Monthly Archives: August 2011

Phil Hughes goes tonight in Chicago. Another big start for him.

Never mind the riff raff:

Let’s Go Yank-ees!

Here’s Charles Simic on the lost art of postcard writing:

Until a few years ago, hardly a day would go by in the summer without the mailman bringing a postcard from a vacationing friend or acquaintance. Nowadays, you’re bound to get an email enclosing a photograph, or, if your grandchildren are the ones doing the traveling, a brief message telling you that their flight has been delayed or that they have arrived. The terrific thing about postcards was their immense variety. It wasn’t just the Eiffel Tower or the Taj Mahal, or some other famous tourist attraction you were likely to receive in the mail, but also a card with a picture of a roadside diner in Iowa, the biggest hog at some state fair in the South, and even a funeral parlor touting the professional excellence that their customers have come to expect over a hundred years. Almost every business in this country, from a dog photographer to a fancy resort and spa, had a card. In my experience, people in the habit of sending cards could be divided into those who go for the conventional images of famous places and those who delight in sending images whose bad taste guarantees a shock or a laugh.

I understand that impulse. When you’re in Rome, everyone back home expects a postcard of the Coliseum or the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel: send them instead one of a neighborhood pizzeria with five small tables, three potted plants and the elderly owner and his wife wiping their hands on their aprons and smiling broadly. Fans of quaint and kitschy postcards spend their entire vacations on the lookout for some especially outrageous example to amuse their friends back home, while their spouses consult serious guide books and stroll for hours with moist eyes past great paintings and sculptures in some museum.

Once they find the right card, they are faced with the problem of what to write on the other side. A conventional greeting won’t do. A few details about the trip and an opinion or two about the country they are visiting are okay, but even better is to come up with something clever, since every postcard is written with a particular person in mind.

Sweet essay.

Over at Baseball Prospectus, Sam Miller has a fun piece about Error Faces.

Check it out.

[Photo Credit: N.Y. Daily News]

Penelope Cruz.

[Picture by Cass Bird]

A few months ago, Mulhholland Books ran a good two-part interview with Pete Hamill and Pete Dexter (part one and part two).

It’s worth checking out:

Hamill: When I first became a newspaperman—June 1st, 1960—it was the beginning of my real life—it really was. When I first got a presscard with my name on it I wore it to bed like dogtags for a month. It said, “Hey, okay, do it. Leave your game on the floor,” you know? And I think there were a whole bunch of us like that, including you, Pete. So we’re going to lose things now. Just the transition from newspapers into websites means that journalism will stay alive, but not the feeling that came with going into a city room, and having guys bounce ideas, and wisecracks, and rotten jokes, and everything else off you before you ever got to write the first sentence of your piece. I mean, that sense of serendipity that comes from being among people who know things you don’t know, and who help educate you every night or every day that you show up, I think that’s going to get lost if you just park in front of a computer somewhere.

But with all that, I don’t have any regrets about it. I feel sad, and melancholy from time to time, but I never think, Gee, I wish I’d gone to work for Goldman Sachs instead.

Dexter: There’s something there that you said that’s really true. A lot of the best things you write come out of, somebody will say something, and it’ll make you think of something else, and bang, people are calling you smart, and…

Hamill: When it’s all about chance.

Dexter: [laughs] You have the chance. And I’m sad about it, and I regret that there’s nobody—you’re not passing along to people now. There’s nobody who’s going to wake up tomorrow and put a press card around his neck, I mean—that just doesn’t happen anymore. And to me, I don’t know any other kind of job I could’ve done.

Hamill: The same with me—that I could have done and be happy at the same time. I mean I could’ve done other jobs I guess—you know, lifting orange crates into trucks or something—but to be happy, to feel like I couldn’t wait to wake up the next day and do it again, that feeling—I don’t think a lot of people have that anymore, including young people going into the business to become journalists.

Hamill’s latest novel, Tabloid City, is about the newspaper business.

It was a close game so I wasn’t rooting for Adam Dunn to get a big hit last night. But I couldn’t help but feel for the guy. As Mark Gonzalez writes in the Chicago Tribune, there is no place for Dunn to hide. Man, it’s tough to see a talented guy so lost.

[Photo Credit: Fox Sports]

Food 52 offers their take on fried green tomatoes.

When I think back on being a little kid, I think of West End Avenue and 103rd street and I see sneakers hanging from a telephone wire.

One of my favorite aspects of this year’s edition of the New York Yankees has been the consistent presence of speed throughout the lineup. Sure, there are lots of old knees around, but with players like Curtis Granderson and Brett Gardner, along with Eduardo Nuñez out there recently, the team sure is fun to watch. On Sunday afternoon we saw this when Gardner roped a three-run triple into the right field corner against the Orioles. Nuñez scored easily from first, and Gardner arrived at third standing up, and the Yankees had a lead they wouldn’t relinquish.

On Monday night in Chicago, Gardner picked up right where he had left off. He led off the game by pounding a ball into the dirt and beating everyone to first base for an infield single. A few pitches later Gardner took off on a 2-1 count as Granderson shot a line drive down the right field line. It never occurred to me that Gardner would be able to score on the play, but not only did he score, he scored easily. He slowed up at second to make sure the ball had gotten through the infield, then shifted into high gear. He hit the bag at third at top speed, then glanced out towards the outfield and broke it down. He coasted the last forty-five feet. Two batters later Robinson Canó stroked a single to right and Granderson scored to make it 2-0.

Have you heard of CC Sabathia? He attacked the White Sox with cold-hearted efficiency, dispatching them on eight pitches in the first, six in the second, and eleven in the third. There was a blip in the fourth — a Juan Pierre single followed by an Alexei Ramírez home run — but not much else.

The Yankee hitters weren’t doing much against Jay Peavy — after those two runs in the first they were able to scrape out only one more run on a Robby Canó double play — but Sabathia made it stand up. He finished up in style, striking out two in the eighth, including poor Adam Dunn for the final out.

Keeping with the efficiency theme, the Great One came on for an uneventful ninth, throwing nine pitches for nine strikes. Yankees 3, White Sox 2.

So here’s my question. What if CC just keeps on winning? Taking a look at the calendar, he’s got five more starts in August and another five in September. Based on how he’s been going this year, it probably isn’t a stretch to imagine eight wins for him over the final two months. So what if he finishes the season with something like this: 24-6, 250 Ks, 2.70 ERA, 1.15 WHIP. You don’t think they could give the Cy Young to anyone else? Could they?

[Photo Credit: Charles Cherney/AP]

Yanks are in Chicago for a four-game series against Ozzie’s White Sox. This weekend, of course, they’ll be in Boston for three against the Red Sox.

Over at PB, Cliff has the preview. And Jay Jaffe write about the imminent arrival of Jesus Montero:

Montero’s overall .283/.342/.429 line at Scranton is still not terribly impressive, but he finally showed considerable pop in July, batting .271/.346/.514 with four homers, upping his season total to 10. He’s drawing his walks, too — eight in 78 plate appearances during the month, the second in a row in which he’s taken passes in at least 10 percent of his PA. His defense is still cause for concern, but there are modest signs of improvement; while he’s gunning down just 20 percent of would-be base thieves, opponents are running somewhat less often against him this year, and he’s cut his rate of passed balls almost in half.

On the other hand, Baseball Prospectus’ Kevin Goldstein compared his defense unfavorably to one of the more notorious bat-first backstops of recent memory: “Mike Piazza is a MUCH better defensive catcher than Jesus Montero. We need to get away from that comparison, because it’s a bad one.” Ouch.

Left unsaid in the report of Montero’s near-imminent rise is where he’ll be picking up his at-bats. Aside from an early-season power spike, Russell Martin’s overall numbers (.225/.326/.366) are no better than in recent years, and since May 1 he’s hit just .201/.309/.287, which is basically what one might accomplish by swinging at pitches with a rubber chicken. Francisco Cervelli (.235/.305/.306) is even worse, as usual, and he’s thrown out just two out of 24 base thieves. Jorge Posada’s hitting .235 /318/.383 overall, and .284/.351/.406 since the Big Sitdown, having gone a whole month without homering; furthermore, he’s just 6-for-53 against lefties, with a lone double as his only extra-base hit. Andruw Jones (.227/.315/.445 overall) hit .242/.342/.545 in July, and is up to .268/.348/.524 against lefties; that thin slice may be the most likely segment of these players’ time to be preserved.

Jeter sits tonight as the Yanks go to a six-man rotation.

Brett Gardner LF
Curtis Granderson CF
Mark Teixeira 1B
Robinson Cano 2
Nick Swisher RF
Eric Chavez 3B
Jorge Posada DH
Eduardo Nunez SS
Francisco Cervelli C

Oh, it’s all just so exciting.

Let’s Go Yank-ees!

Who? Guy at the grocery store. What? First time caller, long time listener. Gist? Who brought the Yankee fan? Evidence of delusion? “We’ll be happy to take those rings from you.”

Yankee Snark? “They make new rings every year, and the Giants won last year, but otherwise, good luck.”

I’ve been involved in this type of conversation a lot, but usually it’s my father-in-law that instigates it as means to a friendly introduction. This time, the guy at the grocery store started things off and seemed genuinely a little bit hurt that a New Englander would marry outside the Red Sox family.

I felt a little sad for him, until I realized my in-laws were not disagreeing with him. Hey, I’m standing right here guys.

Overall? Mostly good-natured, slightly delusional, hugely confident. Not too bad, but let’s see what happens at the beach.

A Summons to Manhattan

By John Schulian

It’s startling to think of how much movement there was among sports writers in the 70s and 80s, especially when you consider the state of the business today, with everybody frozen in place, just glad to have a job. Dave Kindred took his column from Louisville to the Washington Post, Skip Bayless traded feature writing at the L.A. Times for a column at the Dallas Morning News, Bill Nack gave up his column at Newsday and became one of Sports Illustrated’s most venerated writers. I suppose it was inevitable that I would have my day in the barrel.

Oddly enough, it was the New York Times again, and this time I got a call from someone who really was the sports editor there, Le Anne Schreiber. She was the first woman to hold that job at a major American daily, and one of her first challenges, in 1979, was to find a successor to Red Smith. He was in his 70s but still wrote with the elegance and gentle wit that was his trademark. I remember in particular a column about morning at Saratoga, and how Mike Lupica and I instantly started quoting lines from it the next time we saw each other. Just the same, the Times wanted an heir apparent in house for the day Red crossed the finish line.

I went to New York to meet executive editor Abe Rosenthal and the paper’s other mucky-mucks, and they pumped me full of praise and told me my picture might one day be hanging on a wall filled with photographs of the paper’s Pulitzer prize winners. The job they were offering was a big step down from the one I had at the Sun-Times: one column a week and long features the rest of the time. When Red left the paper, I would be first in line to replace him as a four-times-a-week columnist. The money they were offering wasn’t what I was making in Chicago, either. But this was the New York Times. Better yet, this was a chance to claim a small piece of newspaper history by being the man who succeeded Red Smith.

I was married at the time, and my wife, Paula Ellis, wanted me to take the job. Not only would she have been closer to her family, in Bethesda, Maryland, she would have had more opportunities professionally. She was in the newspaper business, too-–very smart, very driven, with a glorious future ahead of her as an editor, publisher, and journalism foundation executive. I understood where Paula was coming from. I felt more than a little guilty, too, since I was giving far more of myself to my column than I was to being a husband. But I was the one whose career would be at risk if I went to the Times. I didn’t want to be sportswriting’s answer to George Selkirk, the poor soul who replaced Babe Ruth.

I thought about the Times’ sports section, which Tony Kornheiser, bless his heart, once compared with to Raquel Welch’s elbow. It seemed to be improving steadily. But no matter how brainy and talented Le Anne Schreiber was-–and, buddy, she had brains and talent in spades-–there was no guarantee that the section might not backslide into mediocrity. Beyond that, I wasn’t sure the Times would give me the freedom I enjoyed in Chicago. Rosenthal and Co. might have loved the character sketches I did, but some of my commentary got pretty rough. I don’t recall ever seeing a Times sports columnist peel the hide off someone the way I did.

So there was that. And there was the thought that people would think I was sitting around waiting for Red Smith to die. Worse, maybe Red would, too. And the money bothered me, even though it was only a couple grand shy of what the Sun-Times was paying me. And then there was New York itself, which was decidedly short on charm in that era, a point that was driven home every time I visited and saw the decay, poverty, and violence.

But I also heard the siren song of friends and colleagues who said the Times would give me the biggest soapbox in the business. There would be chances to write books that would never come my way in Chicago. Dave Anderson, a wonderful guy as well as a pro’s pro, called to say how much he was looking forward to working with me. Lupica told me he was looking forward to reading me regularly, although I suspect he really wanted to see if I was as slow a writer as he’d heard.

Long story short: everything was up in the air when I arrived for my final visit with Abe Rosenthal. He ushered me into a small sitting room off his office. It was the essence of plush–perfect furniture, exquisite Oriental rugs, pricey art on the walls. All together, it was probably worth more than my entire house in Chicago. I’m sure I gawked like the hoople I was.

Rosenthal offered me tea and I said no thanks. After some obligatory chitchat, I told him, nicely, that I wasn’t sure I would be comfortable perched on Red’s shoulder, waiting for him to finish his last stand. If I said no, would the Times come back to me when Red was gone? And Abe Rosenthal said, “John, the brass ring is coming around now. You better grab it.”

In that instant, I knew I wasn’t going to take the job. No way I was going to be told to take it or leave it. Some friends who heard the story later told me I was nuts to be offended, that Rosenthal had every right to put things in those terms. But grabbing his brass ring wasn’t my style.

I read later in the Village Voice that Frank Deford and Pete Axthelm had turned down the Times, too. That was good company to be in. And the guy who ultimately took the job was good company as well. Ira Berkow was a perfect fit at the Times–a thoroughly engaging writer who came at his column subjects from a unique angle and had a big heart for the underdog. What Ira wasn’t, of course, was Red Smith. He was Red’s biographer, and a damned good one, but that was as close as he was going to come.

I wouldn’t have been Red Smith, either. I would have tried mightily and I would have failed and I have no idea how I would have reacted, only that it wouldn’t have been pretty. One Red Smith is all you get. It was one of those basic truths that took a long time to sink in, but once it did, it made me gladder than ever that I said no to the Times. And when I tell you that I never second-guessed my decision, feel free to factor Red into the equation.

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

Smitten Kitchen, again and again.

Woody and Mia, before the fall:

“I could go on about our differences forever: She doesn’t like the city and I adore it. She loves the country and I don’t like it. She doesn’t like sports at all and I love sports. She loves to eat in, early — 5:30, 6 — and I love to eat out, late. She likes simple, unpretentious restaurants; I like fancy places. She can’t sleep with an air-conditioner on; I can only sleep with an air-conditioner on. She loves pets and animals; I hate pets and animals. She likes to spend tons of time with kids; I like to spend my time with work and only a limited time with kids. She would love to take a boat down the Amazon or go up to Mount Kilimanjaro; I never want to go near those places. She has an optimistic, yea-saying feeling toward life itself, and I have a totally pessimistic, negative feeling. She likes the West Side of New York; I like the East Side of New York. She has raised nine children now with no trauma and has never owned a thermometer. I take my temperature every two hours in the course of the day.”

[Picture via Kateoplis]

Tribute:

We’re proud to reprint this story by Pete Dexter which originally appeared in Inside Sports (May 31, 1980).

By Pete Dexter

The child in the child is somehow faded. She is eight years old but there is nothing in her manner to say she isn’t nineteen, with a house full of screaming babies and a high school sweetheart who doesn’t always come home at night anymore.

She walks the front yard like walking is already a chore, collecting the mongrel puppies. There are nine of them and her fingers disappear into the long coats as she picks them up, then puts them in a cardboard box next to the front door.

The house is a shack, about a block from the abandoned half-mile dirt track where LeeRoy Yarbrough, the most famous man ever to come out of west Jacksonville, Florida, got his start racing automobiles. About three blocks from the place where, a month before, cold sober, he tried to strangle his own mother.

“He live right up that road there,” she says, pointing a puppy. “Him and Miz Yarbrough, but they ain’t there now. Everybody knows LeeRoy, sometime he come by and sit on the steps, but now he wrung Miz Yarbrough’s neck, he ain’t home no more.”

The screen door opens and a woman in white socks steps halfway out the door. Missing teeth and a face as narrow as the phone book. “You git them puppies up yet? You know what your daddy tol’ you.”

The door slams shut, but the woman stays there, behind it in the shadows. In west Jacksonville it always feels like there’s somebody watching behind the screen door.

“We got to take the puppies down to the lake,” the girl says. “Daddy got back from the country [farm] and says so. He goin’ take them out to the lake with him tonight.”

I ask her why she just didn’t give the puppies away. She shakes her head. “I tol’ you,” she says. “Daddy got back from the country.”

I’m going to tell you right here that I don’t know what picked LeeRoy Yarbrough off the top of his world in 1969 and delivered him, eleven years later, to the night when he would get up off a living room chair and tell his mother, “I hate to do this to you,” and then try to kill her. I can tell you some of how it happened, I can tell you what the doctors said, what his people said. But I don’t know why.

It has business with that little girl and her puppies, though. With not looking at what you don’t want to see, putting it off until you are face-to-face with something unspeakable.

And tonight those nine puppies go to the bottom of the lake.

A Short History

“They ain’t ever been no fits on neither side of the family. That’s how the doctors knowed it was them licks on the head that made LeeRoy how he is.” Minnie Yarbrough is LeeRoy’s mother. She is seventy-six years old, and she’s sitting on the couch in her living room, as far away from the yellow chair in the corner as she can get. That is where it happened.

It’s an old house on Plymouth Street, in west Jacksonville, brown shingles, a bad roof, the porch gives when you step on it. An empty trailer sits rusting in the backyard. Inside it’s dark. The windows are closed off and Minnie Yarbrough keeps the door to her room locked any time she isn’t in it.

“I was born and partial raised in Clay County, Florida. Mr. Yarbrough was partial raised in Baker County. Both of us come from Florida families, Baptists, and there was never no fits on either side. Mr. Yarbrough died in 1974, but he’d of mentioned it if it was. We was together forty-three years…”

Lonnie LeeRoy Yarbrough was one of six children. He was the first son, born September 17, 1938, and named after his father, who ran a roadside vegetable stand.

Lonnie Yarbrough hauled the vegetables in an old truck and played penny poker with his friends to pass the time.

LeeRoy passed his time at Moon’s Garage. He put his first car together when he was twelve—dropping a Chrysler engine into a 1934 Ford coupe—and wore the police out stopping him along the back roads of west Jacksonville. He quit Paxon High School after the tenth grade, and he won the first race he was ever in at Jacksonville Speedway when he was sixteen.

Even now, sitting in the Duval County Jail, waiting to be processed out to a state hospital, he can tell you exactly what he was running that day. A 1940 flat-head Ford, bored out 81/1,000ths of an inch, with high-compression heads.

He can tell you that, but he can’t tell you who is president.

(more…)

Man, when I was in high school I had the biggest crush on Michelle Pfieffer. Beautiful, funny and talented. This photo gallery takes me back.

The Yankees did not make a move before the trade deadline yesterday. Did Brian Cashman blow it? Or was he wise to not panic?

Here’s Joel Sherman in the Post:

Cashman said he never got close to a trade. Not for Ubaldo Jimenez. Not for Hiroki Kuroda. Not for Heath Bell. Not for anyone.

Instead, Cashman decided a 106-game sample size was significant. The Yanks are 64-42 after trouble was forecasted following Cliff Lee’s decision to go to Philadelphia and Andy Pettitte’s retirement. The Yankees have the majors’ third-best record, are sitting on Boston’s doorstep and are 6½ games up in the wild-card race.

So Cashman did not feel desperation, though he knew his trade-deadline inactivity would trigger a new round of “the Yankees are doomed.” Cashman, in fact, feels sure the Yankees have enough depth, even in pitching, to weather the rest of the season.

And over at The Yankee Analysts, Larry Koeslter writes:

Bottom line, Brian Cashman and company didn’t like any of the hypothetical deals they were mulling enough to pull the trigger, and that’s OK. The Rockies were asking for a Cliff Lee-type package for Ubaldo Jimenez, and Ubaldo is not Cliff Lee. NL Central lifer Wandy Rodriguez wasn’t exciting anyone enough to surrender anything worthwhile, and Hiroki Kuroda decided he likes being on a losing team too much to leave Los Angeles. I personally wouldn’t have minded seeing Erik Bedard come to the Bronx instead of Boston, but he’s not exactly a sure thing either.

One thing seems almost certain now — Jesus Montero will be making his Major League debut for the Yankees soon; it’s really just a matter of when. And with the news that Manny Banuelos was promoted to AAA today, it’s not out of the question that we could see the Yankees’ prize pitching prospect pitching important innings in another month as well.

Oh, and Alex Rodriguez comes back in roughly two weeks. So for those upset that the team didn’t make a trade, it’s probably best to keep in mind that help is still on the way, only this time it isn’t costing the Yankees anything except time.

[Photo Credit: Magritte via todayandtomorrow]