Monthly Archives: September 2011

Yanks and Rays start a four-game serious at the Stadium tonight.

Cliff’s got the preview.

1. Jeter SS
2. Granderson CF
3. Teixeira 1B
4. Rodriguez DH
5. Cano 2B
6. Swisher RF
7. Chavez 3B
8. Martin C
9. Gardner LF

Never mind the scoreboard:

Let’s Go Yank-ees!

Over at Grantland, Michael Krause has a story about a real-life Crash Davis:

“Every year,” Chase Lambin said, “I think, ‘This is the year. This is the year it’s going to happen.'”

He’s played in Brooklyn, Port St. Lucie, Binghamton, Norfolk, Zebulon, N.C., Albuquerque, Japan, Syracuse, and now Rochester. He’s played in more than 1,000 games. He’s been up to bat more than 4,000 times. He’s been an All-Star in Class A, in Double-A, in Triple-A. He’s never made it to the major leagues. He turned 32 in July.

He walked out of the clubhouse and through the tunnel to the dugout and onto the field to stretch. He jogged to a spot in shallow center and knelt in the grass and said a short prayer. This was how he started the last day of his 10th season in professional baseball.

I think Krause is trying too hard here. The language is simple and blunt to the point of distraction. He is clearly a good writer and I understand why he’d want to keep the prose spare, but it came across to me as  self-conscious. But I don’t think the minimal style–which is the kind of writing I usually like–spoils the story and I felt like I was there in the locker room with Lambin. Man, what a life.

[Drawing by Ronnie Joyner]

G. D. Spradlin died this summer and over at the wonderful site,  Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule, you’ll find a nice tribute to the actor.

In case you missed it, check out Taylor Branch’s story about the same of college sports over at The Atlantic:

“I’m not hiding,” Sonny Vaccaro told a closed hearing at the Willard Hotel in Washington, D.C., in 2001. “We want to put our materials on the bodies of your athletes, and the best way to do that is buy your school. Or buy your coach.”

Vaccaro’s audience, the members of the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics, bristled. These were eminent reformers—among them the president of the National Collegiate Athletic Association, two former heads of the U.S. Olympic Committee, and several university presidents and chancellors. The Knight Foundation, a nonprofit that takes an interest in college athletics as part of its concern with civic life, had tasked them with saving college sports from runaway commercialism as embodied by the likes of Vaccaro, who, since signing his pioneering shoe contract with Michael Jordan in 1984, had built sponsorship empires successively at Nike, Adidas, and Reebok. Not all the members could hide their scorn for the “sneaker pimp” of schoolyard hustle, who boasted of writing checks for millions to everybody in higher education.

“Why,” asked Bryce Jordan, the president emeritus of Penn State, “should a university be an advertising medium for your industry?”

Vaccaro did not blink. “They shouldn’t, sir,” he replied. “You sold your souls, and you’re going to continue selling them. You can be very moral and righteous in asking me that question, sir,” Vaccaro added with irrepressible good cheer, “but there’s not one of you in this room that’s going to turn down any of our money. You’re going to take it. I can only offer it.”

The piece is long but terrific.

“Drapery Study for a Seated Figure,” By Leonardo Da Vinci (1470)

For reals. Bow down.

Food 52 has got seven dishes for you to make like you’re in Southeast Asia.

PM rush hour. Water main break Upper West Side at 106th St. Streets buckled, buildings flooded, subways shut down. UN in session on Upper East Side. Traffic snarled. How to get from midtown to Inwood?

There a usually a lot of routes to get to any given spot in the city. And we calculate the best way each time, and probably nine out of ten times we succeed. All those options, all those factors to consider, and most of the time we choose correctly and never think twice. We’re certainly not patting ourselves on the back for picking the express over the local.

But that one time we screw it up, our heads explode. This time, I was not as upset because it seemed that all the possible avenues were blocked for me. But if I screw it up because of my own ignorance (That parade is today?) I’m gonna stew in it.

[Photo by Metro]

Over at New York Magazine, Will Leitch weighs in on the Yanks:

This year has been monotonous, dull, and seemingly preordained, which is to say it has been the platonic ideal of a Yankees season. The last time the Yankees weren’t in first or second place in the AL East was April 8, when they were a game and a half behind the Blue Jays. The rest of the season, the team has been comfortably ensconced in playoff position, knowing, without much doubt, that they would be playing into October. There were a few bumps along the way, but minor ones, nothing to concern anyone. Some Yankees fans might grouse about the rotation, but all any fan can hope for his team is to secure a spot in the postseason, and the Yankees have had theirs secured for months. Most of the year has felt like one long twiddling of thumbs until the weather started getting cold and the games started mattering again.

If this sounds familiar, it’s because that’s what the Yankees 2010 season was like. And it’s what the Yankees 2009 season was like. For three consecutive years, the Yankees’ regular season has been an amiable slog. Since the 2008 season, the one year the Yankees missed the playoffs entirely (a disappointment the Yankees took in understated stride, spending $423.5 million on three free agents and opening the following April one of the most extravagant, expensive sports stadiums in the world), the Yankees haven’t had to worry about that happening. They haven’t had to worry about anything. It’s all you could want. Three boring, easy, calm, dominant years when drama is at a minimum. Boring, easy, calm, and dominant: This is becoming the signature trait of the Joe Girardi era. I feel comfortable now calling it an era.

[Photo Credit: N.Y Daily News]

The Juice Crew is good for you.

A.J. Burnett, John Lackey. They both pitched yesterday and not very well, though their teams won anyhow.

Here’s Burnett:

“Well, I didn’t get through the fifth because I wasn’t allowed to get through the fifth. It wasn’t that I couldn’t get through the fifth,” Burnett said of Girardi lifting him with a runner on second and none out in that inning. “Whatever people want to yell or whatever people want to think, I always have confidence in myself and that’s all that matters.”
(N.Y. Daily News)

And Lackey:

“Physically, arm-strength wise, I felt about as good as I had all year,’’ said Lackey whose ERA rose to 6.49 after he allowed 11 hits and eight runs in 4 1/3 innings. It marked the 13th time in the last 19 games a Sox starter has gone five innings or fewer.

“I’m glad we won, but I’m pretty frustrated,’’ Lackey said.
(Boston Globe)

Burnett or Lackey. Pick one.

Ground ball, fly ball, strike out (looking). That’s how Mariano Rivera became the all-time saves leader this afternoon as the Yanks beat the Twins, 6-4.

The best. The greatest. The pleasure has been all ours.

Thank you, Mo.

[Picture Credit: Ricardo Lopez Ortiz]

I won’t belabor the pernt but this is a game the Yankees should–and must–win. They are playing a hapless Twins team. So no excuses from Burnett. He needs to shut them down. Score Truck should take care of the rest.

Cliff has the preview.

1. Jeter SS
2. Granderson CF
3. Teixeira 1B
4. Rodriguez 3B
5. Cano 2B
6. Swisher RF
7. Jones LF
8. Montero DH
9. Martin C

No excuses. Just win, baby:

Let’s Go Yank-ees!

[Photo Credit: someonethatunderstands]

I finally went to Motorino where I enjoyed the pizza. It wasn’t the best I’ve ever had or my pick for the best in the city (I don’t have a “best”) but I could see how the Neapolitan style would appeal to some, so much so that they’d call it their favorite. It was good. The place was loud and it wasn’t cheap but the meatballs were outstanding. And I’m picky about meatballs, but these were worth the trip. Word to your moms and your grandmoms.

[Photo Credit: Serious Eats and Serious Eats]

The Show Must Go On

By John Schulian

With Steven Bochco’s stunning message–“You’re in show business, kid”–playing on a loop in my head, I headed back to Philadelphia to write the rest of my script. No sooner did I get there than his collaborator, Terry Fisher, called to say they needed the script sooner than planned. It was a lesson in the reality of episodic TV, and there was nothing I could do but roll with it. Just as I as picked up the pace, though, my father died.

He and my mother had lived in Marshall, Minnesota, since he retired from the hotel business. It was a farming town of about 12,000 near where my mother had grown up and far from what I think my cosmopolitan dad would have preferred. He let her have her way, though, as if he were trying to make up for all the long hours she had sat at home alone while he was working.

For him to do anything else would have been out of character. He was the only true gentleman I’ve ever met, a lovely guy with an abundance of charm and grace. I don’t recall ever hearing him swear, and I know for sure that he never lost his Danish accent. Unlike my mother, he was at peace with my decision to chase my dreams from one side of the country to the other. And yet I don’t think I realized just how proud he was of me until I was going through his things after he died. It seemed as though every time he found my syndicated sports column in the St. Paul paper, he clipped it out and saved it in a shoebox. I wish he had lived long enough to see me go to Hollywood. It would have been the perfect reward for all the Saturdays he took me to see the great old movies that captured my imagination when I was a kid.

This was the first time death had struck so close to me, and I’m still not sure I’ve ever grieved properly. There wasn’t time. After the funeral, I had to hustle back to Philly to make the new deadline for my script. If it hadn’t been the script, it would have been something else. That’s the way things work, as I’m sure we’ve all learned at some point. I’m just glad I was working for Bochco when things went sideways, because he was cool through it all. He told me to take care of what needed taking care of -– the show would still be there when I returned to Hollywood to work on a re-write. I’m sure he was feeling pressure himself – he had a lot riding on “L.A. Law” – but he never passed the pressure on to me.

I was already creating enough of it for myself. For one thing, the idea of re-writing would take some getting used to. I’d done a bit of it for magazine pieces, but in newspapers there was rarely time for it. In Hollywood everything was about re-writing. For my “L.A. Law” script, I worked with the show’s executive story editor, Jacob Epstein, the garrulous son of a New York literary family, who was a veteran of “Hill Street Blues” and happened to be 11 years younger than me. That was something else about Hollywood that took some getting used to: everybody seemed to be younger than me. Here I was, 41 years old, and the first headline I can remember reading in Daily Variety was about how writers in their 40s couldn’t get work. Sweet Jesus, I thought, I’m dead on arrival.

Maybe the talk about no work for writers of my vintage held true in comedy, where staffs skewed young, but in drama, where I was working, was filled with guys my age. Bochco, for one, was only a year or two my senior. His star writers on “Hill Street” had been around my age. Same with a lot of the writers on “Moonlighting” and “St. Elsewhere,” to name two other hot shows from that era.

So age wouldn’t do me in yet. I just had to lean into my work. Jacob and I would talk about how a scene needed to be different, and then I’d go into a room by myself, re-write it, and emerge an hour later. My newspaper training never served me better, though I’d always hated deadlines for the compromises they forced you to make. I’d been a slow newspaper writer, but by Hollywood standards, I was almost a sprinter. Or maybe I was more like Pavlov’s dog: tell me to re-write a scene, any scene, and I’d do it and come back begging for more.

Jacob turned out to be my greatest advocate at “L.A. Law,” lobbying hard to get me on the show’s writing staff. But Steven was too smart for that. He was also too gracious to be that blunt about it when I finished my re-write and started wondering what came next. I didn’t have any background in law, I was a rookie as far as TV writing went, and, quite frankly, Steven may have realized that I didn’t possess the magic he was searching for. I can tell you for certain that he re-wrote every word of my script, though the on-screen credit read “Written by John Schulian.” Jacob assured me that Steven was re-writing every script as he searched for the right staff. It would go on this way, Jacob said, until later in the season, when fatigue set in and the surviving writers had a handle on what he wanted.

Even though I wouldn’t be one of them, when I stopped by to visit the day it was announced that the premiere of “L.A. Law” was number one in the ratings, Steven gave me my first big Hollywood hug. (I’ve got to tell you this is the hugging-est damn town I ever was in.) Better yet, he arranged for me to meet with Bill Sackheim, a veteran of the Hollywood wars, who had been his mentor at Universal.

From day one, Steven had been the antithesis of what I’d heard about powerful people in show business. That was partly because he wasn’t producing a show that was on the air when my letter landed on his desk. He was contemplating what “L.A. Law” would be, and that gave him the time to give me more attention that he might have otherwise. Never was he was less than supportive, classy, and generous. He could easily have forced me to split the writing fee on my script with him, but he was too big for that. He didn’t need the money. He had already made millions, and he would make millions upon millions more.

I took him to lunch as a token of my gratitude, and since then I’ve only run into him once. It was at a prizefight in Las Vegas, in 1992, when I was working on an ill-fated script for HBO. He recognized me then. I’m not sure he would now. But that doesn’t matter. Everything I managed to accomplish in Hollywood in the next 20 years, every penny I made, can be traced back to the fact that Steven Bochco took a chance on me. I can never thank him enough.

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

Take a New York Minute out to look at this great photo gallery of the disappearing face of our city. From Retronaut, where else? Oh, and dig the book, by James and Karla Murray.

“Seated Figure with a Hat,” By Richard Deibenkorn (1967)

A few weeks ago, it would have been unthinkable, but there is now a real possibility that the Yankees will carry both Jesus Montero and Austin Romine on their postseason roster. Francisco Cervelli’s concussion is enough of a concern that it jeopardizes his postseason standing, while Jorge Posada remains a longshot to make the playoff roster. Without Posada, Montero becomes the primary DH, which would make it difficult for him to be the backup to Russell Martin. So that would necessitate carrying Romine as the No. 2 catcher. Romine is eligible for the postseason because the rules allow for a season-long minor leaguer to replace an injured player, in this case Cervelli.

Even if Cervelli is healthy, I would prefer Romine, who is the better defensive catcher. If the Yankees have to pinch-hit for Martin in the late innings of a close game, I’d rather have a more reliable receiver and thrower behind the plate. And there is simply none better in the organization than Romine, who might be the best defensive catcher the Yankees have had since Joel Skinner in the late 1980s.

Of course, I have no idea if Romine is ready to hit at this level (and it would be tough for him to match Cervelli’s second-half hitting surge), but I would be willing to take that chance. In the postseason, where runs are often at a premium, a good defensive catcher who can block pitches and throw out base runners is probably more valuable than someone who might bat once or twice in the late innings. So yes, my vote goes to the inexperienced Romine over the erratic Cervelli…

***

This is a minor point, but one that deserves mentioning. The Yankees currently have 36 players on their active roster, but haven’t found it fit to include minor league slugger Jorge Vazquez among their late-season promotions. I know what some people will say: Vazquez is not on the 40-man roster, so it’s problematic to include him among the callups. To that I say, “Bunk.” The Yankees are currently carrying at least three players who have little to no business being on the 40-man roster of a playoff team. They are Ramiro Pena, who makes Eddie Brinkman and Mark Belanger seem like Silver Sluggers, and doesn’t have the versatility to be a true utility infielder; journeyman Scott Proctor, who’s simply not a major league caliber pitcher any more; and Raul Valdes, a journeyman left-hander who ranks behind Boone Logan and Aaron Laffey for the lefty specialist role.

Though he’s hardly a primetime prospect, the 28-year-old Vazquez has more value than any of those players. Yes, he strikes out a ton (166 times), but he has legitimate power, can play both of the infield corners, and would be worth a look as a right-handed pinch-hitter. Vazquez likely wouldn’t play much, but he at least deserves a spot based on the 32 home runs he hit at Triple-A Scranton (or 14 more than Jesus Montero), not to mention the team-leading .516 slugging percentage he posted. At the very least, Vazquez profiles like longtime ex-Yankee minor leaguer Shelley Duncan; it would be nice for the Yankees to reward his production by giving him a late-season promotion. At some point, the Yankees need to show their minor leaguers that placement on the 40-man roster is based on merit, and not on being a name player (Proctor), or a failed prospect (Pena), or a pitcher who happens to throw left-handed (Valdes). Until then, too many minor leaguers in the system will remain frustrated by an organization that doesn’t reward minor league productivity…

***

There’s been much debate recently about the merits of the new Moneyball movie. Aaron Gleeman likes it, Keith Law hates it, and I find myself feeling indifferent. I haven’t even seen the film, but the story just does not strike me as that compelling. A sports movie needs to have a good ending, and that is something that the Moneyball A’s have lacked. Yes, they have made the postseason several times under the regime of Billy Beane, but have reached only one League Championship Series, and never once made the World Series, let alone won one. Where is the payoff, where is the climactic ending? I just don’t see it.

Based on the previews I’ve seen–and boy, they’ve been running trailers on this thing since the spring–Brad Pitt looks funny and charismatic in the role of Beane, but Jonah Hill looks terribly miscast as Paul DePodesta (or Peter Brand, as he’s called in the movie). Maybe I’m typecasting Hill based on his disgustingly funny role in Superbad, but I just don’t find him believable as an advisor to the general manager of a baseball team.

So I remain skeptical. I do plan on watching the movie, and maybe I’ll find it entertaining, but I keep thinking this: a film about Charlie Finley’s A’s would have been a whole lot better.

Bruce Markusen writes “Cooperstown Confidential” for The Hardball Times.

Freddy Garcia suffered his first loss since July 15th. (Photo Credit / Darren Calabrese - Canadian Press)

Author’s Note / Excuse: Apologies for the delayed post. If you need further proof that the NFL, not Major League Baseball, is the National Pastime, try getting online between 1 and 4 p.m. on a Sunday to access photos from a baseball game to include in a recap. The requisite sites were performing at speeds not seen since 1997.

Threads in this space, elsewhere in the Blogosphere, the Twitterverse, Facebook — basically anywhere you search for Yankees information — have featured criticism of Joe Girardi for managing passively over the past week and a half. That judgment was typically reserved for his bullpen maneuvering, specifically in the one-run losses in Baltimore, Anaheim and Seattle, and then again in the series opener at Rogers Centre Friday night. Not as prevalent in those threads was that the “A” lineup, while physically present on the field, was doing little to help the winning cause.

Then on Sunday, with the Yankees’ magic number to clinch a playoff spot at five, the starting lineup looked more like one you’d see in mid-March than mid-September. Girardi has stated publicly that he’s been looking for places to give the regulars some rest. The counter, “Win the games, win the division, secure the playoff spot and then rest people.” And so it was that the only regulars in the starting lineup were Brett Gardner, Nick Swisher, A-Rod and J Martin.

The result was a feeble, fundamentally unsound 3-0 defeat that left the Yankees 4-6 on this season-long 10-game, four-city road trip. Brandon Morrow dominated the Yankees, striking out seven and walking only one. The Yankees had five hits, only two of which left the infield. Like in the early going Saturday, they ran themselves out of potential scoring opportunities. In the first inning, with Eduardo Nuñez Nuñez on second and Robinson Canó on first, Canó was thrown out on the tail end of a double steal. Later, in the top of the sixth, Nuñez, who Michael Kay and John Flaherty lauded on the YES telecast during his first at-bat, once again incited fans’ ire by inexplicably trying to turn a single into a double. Nuñez hit a clean single to rightfield. Nuñez tried to catch Jose Bautista napping, but it didn’t work. Bautista fired behind the runner to first base, where Edwin Encarnación fired to second to catch Nuñez by a mile. Inning over, potential rally over. Nuñez’s one-out double in the ninth inning marked the only other time in the game the Yankees had a runner in scoring position.

Meanwhile, Freddy Garcia surrendered three runs on five hits and three walks in 4 2/3 innings, and he made a throwing error that contributed to one of the three runs. In short, Garcia did little to pitch himself into consideration for either five-man rotation over the final two weeks of the regular season, or the playoff rotation.

Other things we learned …

* The Ghost of Raul Valdes, who pitched out of a bases-loaded jam in the seventh, may have shown that he could be the Yankees’ LOOGY over the next two weeks and into the postseason.

* The Yankees’ bullpen, in the last two games, pitched 9 1/3 innings of shutout ball. The group allowed just two hits and walked four — three by Scott Proctor — in that span.

* The Rays are white-hot. They beat up the Red Sox again and are surging toward a September comeback to rival the 2007 Colorado Rockies. The Yankees have a six-game edge over the Rays in the loss column, which may seem cushy with only 10 games left, but this week’s series at Yankee Stadium cannot be taken lightly. Depending on Monday’s result against the Minnesota Twins, sweeping the Rays would clinch that coveted playoff spot for the Yankees, leaving next weekend’s series against the Red Sox open for clinching the division.

This week features the games the regulars get paid the big money to play. Let’s see how the manager and the team respond.