Phil Hughes and the Yanks look for a win and a series split vs. the Twins.
1. Jeter SS
2. Granderson CF
3. A-Rod 3B
4. Cano 2B
5. Teixeira 1B
6. Swisher RF
7. Ibanez LF
8. Martin C
9. Nunez 2B
And if the early results have you down, check out this bit of hilarity from the one and only Ted Berg.
[Image Credit: Clker.com]
Backup catcher can be a thankless job. Off all the bench positions, the second string backstop is arguably the most scrutinized and most criticized, particularly because so many people tend to overlook defense and hone in on their typically meager offensive contributions.
Most Games by a Yankees’ Catcher, Since 1918
Note: Includes games in which the player PH for the existing catcher.
Source: Baseball-reference.com
Over the years, the Yankees have been blessed with several elite catchers. From Bill Dickey to Yogi Berra, Elston Howard, Thurman Munson, and Jorge Posada, the Bronx Bombers have often enjoyed a comparative advantage behind the plate. Combined, that quintet has played 44% of the team’s “catcher games” (based on total games played at catcher, not in each season) and accounted for around 50% of most statistical contributions from the position. However, these all-time greats have had some help along the way.
The Best vs. the Rest: Comparison of Yankees’ Catchers, Since 1918
Note: Includes games in which the player PH for the existing catcher.
Source: Baseball-reference.com
In addition to the All Stars mentioned above, the Yankees have had 114 catchers since 1918, ranging from Billy Shantz, who appeared in only one game but never had an at bat, to Rick Cerone, who played 567 games as a catcher and finished seventh in the 1980 MVP balloting. This less than stellar group of backstops has compiled a batting line of .254/.326/.367, which, while paling in comparison to the rates posted by the team’s better catchers, still seems respectable (for context, major league catchers hit a combined .245/.313/.389 in 2011). However, those totals include the contributions of several starters, and today, we’re only concerned with the backups.
Most Games as a Yankees’ Backup Catcher, Since 1918
Note: Includes games in which the player PH for the existing catcher. Backup role defined as any catcher but the one with the most games behind the plate in an individual season.
Source: Baseball-reference.com
Norwegian-born Arndt Jorgens ranks as the most prolific backup catcher in Yankees’ history. From 1929 to 1939, Jorgens served as a second stringer to Bill Dickey, joining the likes of Benny Bengough, Buddy Rosar (both of whom also rank among the top five) and Joe Glenn in that role. Interestingly, Dickey’s Hall of Fame successor, Yogi Berra, also ranks as the second most tenured backup. Berra was a second stinger, at least in terms of catching, both at the beginning of his career and the end, when he moved to the outfield to make room for Elston Howard. Turnabout was fair play for Howard, who spent the first five years of his career alternating between the outfield and Berra’s primary backup.
Top-10 Career OPS by a Yankees’ Backup Catcher, Since 1918
Note: Includes games in which the player PH for the existing catcher. Backup role defined as any catcher but the one with the most games behind the plate in an individual season. Totals above exclude years in which the player led the team in games behind the plate. Minimum of 150 career plate appearances.
Source: Baseball-reference.com
Older Yankees’ fans probably remember Ron Hassey very well. In 1985 and 1986, the plodding catcher posted a prolific OPS of .846, while serving as Butch Wynegar’s primary backup. In the process, he also earned the nickname “Babe” because his lefty swing and titanic homeruns resembled the Bambino. In the 1990s, Mike Stanley was a similar-styled player. Before ascending to the starting job in 1993, his bat made him a fan favorite when he was Matt Nokes’ backup in 1992. After becoming the lead man, Stanley turned the role over to Jim Leyritz, who provided steady offense behind the plate in nine seasons as a second stringer for the Yankees. However, Leyritz greatest notoriety came in the postseason, during which he authored two of the most dramatic home runs in franchise history.
10 Best/Worst OPS Seasons by a Yankees’ Backup Catchers, Since 1918
Note: Includes games in which the player PH for the existing catcher. Backup role defined as any catcher but the one with the most games behind the plate in an individual season. Minimum of 75 plate appearances and seasons by Yogi Berra and Jorge Posada excluded.
Source: Baseball-reference.com
Considering the relatively limited playing time of a backup catcher, their offensive performance is difficult to predict. For every Benny Bengough who surprises with an exemplary season, there’s a Joel Skinner who consistently makes fans groan every time they see his name penciled into the lineup. Although the Yankees have recently had some success getting offense from their backup catcher, Jose Molina (2007) and John Flaherty (2003-2004), for the most part, the team’s second stringers have been light with the bat. Luckily, there is organization depth at catcher because as frustrating as it is to have a backup who can’t it, it’s much worse when the same is true about the starter.
“Taxi” by Saul Leiter (1957)
Pat Jordan plays golf with Justin Verlander:
Verlander stops the cart, and we go into the woods to look for his ball. Two egrets, each standing on one leg, point it out. He drives it out of the woods and into a sand trap. We get back into the cart. Frankie ambles by and says, “There’s some pretty flowers in the woods, huh?” I say, “Yeah, Justin’s showing me the whole course — woods, rough, water hazards.” Verlander replies, “I’m just trying to be a good host, show you all aspects of the course.” I say, “Then why don’t ya show me one of the greens?” I pause, and then say, “With your ball near the pin.” Verlander glares at me, and then laughs. “People in real life don’t get ballplayers’ humor, the way we talk in the clubhouse,” he says. In “real life,” people say things they don’t mean. Ballplayers do the opposite. Verlander says, “I’m always hurting someone’s feelings.”
He sprays sand out of the trap, his ball barely reaching the green. Three shots later, we head off toward the next hole. His fastball topped out at 86 mph his senior year of high school, and scouts weren’t interested. So he went to Old Dominion University in Virginia and spent the winter lifting weights. He gained 20 pounds, and by the end of his freshman year, his fastball had been clocked at 96 mph. “All 20 pounds of muscle went to my legs,” he says, which helped him drive toward the batter with his fastball. “Blessed, I guess,” he says. “I was born to be a pitcher.”
[Photo Credit: Ben Walkter/AP]
At the barber shop uptown we talk baseball and listen to music and sometimes nobody says anything and that’s okay, too.
There is an excerpt from Frank Deford’s new memoir in SI this week: “When the NBA Was Young.”
Fun read. For more on Deford, check out this fine podcast with Richard Deitsch.
Over at Food Republic Chuck Thompson writes about 7 types of ballpark eaters.
[Photo Credit: Hoarded Ordinaries]
One Night Only
By John Schulian
As soon as they heard Levon Helm was coming, the guys in the band began to imagine him sitting in with them, playing the drums, maybe even singing “The Weight.” It was one of the songs they did when they got together on Friday nights, finished with another week’s filming of a TV drama called “Midnight Caller,” just letting the music ease them out of the harness. There was music everywhere on that show, from the old MGM Studios in L.A., where we wrote it, to San Francisco, where we filmed it. You couldn’t go a day without someone turning you on to an album or talking up a concert. Or you’d walk into the executive producer’s office and find him practicing a new lick on his guitar, a pleasure that almost always seemed to come before business. But the executive producer knew he was a better singer than a guitarist — fitting, I suppose, since his name was Bob Singer. He sang lead for the band that came into being when four kindred spirits found each other on the soundstage, and the band bore his name, Bobby and the Bonemasters. All of which meant it was Singer who would have to ask Levon Helm if he was interested in hanging out with a bunch of rock-and-roll dreamers.
Of course Levon’s primary purpose on “Midnight Caller” had nothing to do with music or his history as the soul of the band known as the Band. He was guest starring as an ex-convict who wanted to go back to prison because it was the only place he knew how to exist. The script was my contribution to the proceedings. I had pictured Levon in the role from the day in 1990 that the idea hit me, not because he was a trained actor but because he was one of those naturals who seemed as real as calloused hands when he was on camera. He had been pluperfect as Loretta Lynn’s father in “Coal Miner’s Daughter,” and it was hard to forget his easy grace as he lit Robbie Robertson’s cigarette in “The Last Waltz.” What I didn’t find out until later was how much acting he’d had to do in that documentary about the Band’s final concert at full strength. He was brimming with anger because he thought Robertson was sacrificing everything they had accomplished for his own selfish purposes.
But acting ability ceased to matter as Singer tried to work up his courage to approach Levon on the Bonemasters’ behalf. It was Levon’s earthy, soulful voice that haunted Singer now — the juke-joint joy of “Rag Mama Rag,” the grief and defiance of “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.” Levon had plunged into the musical fires of the Sixties with Dylan and emerged playing the most quintessentially American rock ever with the Band. But he was its only American, a cotton farmer’s son from Marvell, Arkansas, surrounded by four Canadians. He drummed, took an occasional turn on the mandolin, and like the Band’s other two singers–Rick Danko and Richard Manuel–made memories with his voice. He had been on stage at Woodstock and the Isle of Wight and on the cover of Time magazine, and now Singer was going to invite him to the Bonemasters’ lair in the lunchroom of the converted San Francisco printing plant where “Midnight Caller” had its soundstages. Somehow that didn’t compute.
To calm himself, Singer concentrated on remembering how gracious Levon had been when they’d met in L.A., a true Southern gentleman with a bushy beard that made him look older than the 50 years he was then approaching. Singer figured that if he got shot down, it would at least be painless. So he took a deep breath, explained about the Bonemasters and offered his invitation.
“Y’all gonna have any beer?” Levon asked.
“Oh, yeah,” Singer said. “We’re gonna have beer.”
“I’ll be there.”
That was, in its way, a historic moment. Other musicians had guest starred on the show, but only Levon said yes to the Bonemasters. When Billy Vera, a rhythm-and-blues stalwart from L.A., turned them down, it was with a contempt that suggested he would rather eat road kill. Hoyt Axton, the country singer whose mother wrote “Heartbreak Hotel,” never got invited because he was too busy living the life that enabled him to open concerts by saying, “Hi, I’m what’s left of Hoyt Axton.” But Roger Daltrey would have been welcomed if the part he played hadn’t cranked up his anxiety level by requiring him to sing a non-Who song. Still, he gave the cast and crew something to remember by loosening his vocal chords with a kick-ass version of “Hey Joe.”
Some of the Bonemasters started thinking their night with Levon Helm would be solid gold when filming wrapped at 8 that Friday, a good three hours earlier than usual. Singer, however, wasn’t one of them. He was worried that Levon would get a load of the lunchroom, with its linoleum floor and pea-green walls, and decide it was too small-time for him. Or maybe he’d get chased off if Jim Behnke, “Midnight Caller’s” unit production manager, went on one of his guitar solos that got lost in space. Or maybe Singer himself would do the chasing if nerves cracked his tobacco-cured baritone.
Levon walked into the room as if he understood that a heavy step might destroy the equilibrium. The Bonemasters were already playing, so he grabbed a beer and one of Singer’s harps, then plugged into an amplifier and settled in a corner. Everything was fine until he started to play along with the band. “I’m not getting any sound,” he said. “The amp’s not working.”
Great, Singer thought. He’s been here 10 minutes and we’ve already proven what rank amateurs we are. He’s going to take off.
But Levon didn’t so much as blink even when he discovered there wasn’t another amp. He just played the guitar Singer wasn’t using, and when it came time to blow harp, he did it into the microphone. It didn’t sound as good as it would have through an amp, but the important thing, the absolutely crucial thing, was that he stayed.
At first the Bonemasters looked to Levon for requests–they were up for anything–but he told them, “You go on and play what you want to play.” So they dove into a repertoire that included songs by the Beatles, the Stones, the Allman Brothers and Lynyrd Skynyrd. As usual they were at their tightest when they did “Honky-Tonk Woman.” “Boys,” Levon said, “I’d keep that one in the set.”
The next thing the Bonemasters knew, he was teaching them some country songs, the kind he’d been listening to since he was six years old and saw Bill Monroe and The Blue Grass Boys at a tent show in Marvell. And when they got back to rock and roll, Gary Cole–the Bonemasters’ drummer, the star of “Midnight Caller,” and the future Mr. Brady in the Brady Bunch movies–asked Levon if he would like to take a turn on the drums. Levon couldn’t resist. He sounded just the way he did on all those albums with the Band, the tasteful fills, the clever way he got behind the beat, everything so tight, so perfect. Cole and Singer stood off to the side and hoped they weren’t gawking.
They were seeing more than a great drummer at work, though. This was Levon’s life in microcosm, a life filled with nights like the one they were living with him, nights that go beyond getting rich, famous, high or laid and exist for the undiluted joy of making music. You could trace them back beyond the Band and Dylan to Levon’s stops with Ronnie Hawkins’ Hawks and the Jungle Bush Beaters, all the way to those stolen hours as a kid listening to Jimmy Reed and Muddy Waters on the radio and imagining himself in their world. And if you follow his trail forward from his session with the Bonemasters, you will find more of the same, as a solo act, with the RCO All-Stars and the reconstituted Band, right up to the midnight rambles he hosted in Woodstock until throat cancer sent him off on his last ramble.
After a life so full musically, it is hard to imagine that Levon remembered sitting in with the Bonemasters, but there are pictures to prove he did. One of “Midnight Caller’s” prop masters came down to the lunchroom and snapped a bunch of them -– Levon surrounded by Singer, Cole, Behnke and Kenny Collins, the assistant director who played such solid bass. When the guys in the band checked out the pictures later, there was no denying that Levon looked like he was enjoying himself. But there shouldn’t have been any doubt as soon as he said his friend Clarence Clemons was in San Francisco and offered to invite him over to play some saxophone, the way he did for Bruce Springsteen. It didn’t happen, though, because one of the guys had kids at home and a babysitter going off duty at midnight, and that’s the way the real world goes around.
So the Bonemasters reveled in what they got with Levon, which was more than they ever expected and remains the first topic of conversation on those rare occasions when they run into each other more than 20 years later. In fact, the only thing Levon wouldn’t do that night was sing one of the Band’s songs, not that Behnke didn’t try to tempt him by playing the intro to “The Weight” at every opportunity. “The Weight” was a Bonemasters staple and it begged to be sung, but Singer, who usually did the honors, felt sheepish about it. After all, the man who put the song over the top for the Band was there with them. Finally, Levon said, “You sing it, Bob.”
There was no backing out–the load was right on Singer. He tucked into “The Weight” with no goal beyond getting to the end of it. It’s a surreal parable about a good deed that consumes its doer, and it’s filled with the kind of characters more often found in Flannery Connor’s novels than a rock-and-roll song. By the time he finished with Crazy Chester, Jack the Dog and all the rest of them, Singer wasn’t sure if he should take a bow or run for the hills. Then he looked over and saw Levon grinning and flashing him a thumbs-up. A fellow could live a long time and not have a finer moment.
[Featured Image by Ahron R. Foster]
In the classic Soundgarden tune “Outshined”, Chris Cornell writes:
I just looked in the mirror
And things aren’t lookin’ so good.
I’m looking California
And feelin’ Minnesota.
That brief stanza may be an apt way to describe Hiroki Kuroda’s start Wednesday night. He was both looking and feeling California in the home opener last Friday against the Los Angeles Angels. In the song, “feeling Minnesota” is a euphemism for feeling terrible. On the field, Kuroda wasn’t feeling Minnesota, Minnesota was feeling Kuroda. Four of the first five Twins to come to the plate in the first inning got hits and scored. By the time Kuroda had thrown 13 pitches, the Yankees were in a 4-0 hole.
Hiroki Kuroda's second Yankee Stadium start was much rougher than his first. (Photo Credit / Getty Images)
The Yankees’ lineup, which was without Alex Rodriguez and Brett Gardner but had Mark Teixeira back, did their best to bail out Kuroda, responding with three runs of their own in the bottom of the first. Trailing 4-3, they loaded the bases with one out and a realistic chance to post a crooked number until Eric Chavez ended the threat by grounding into a double play.
Three different times the Yankees would get to within one run of the Twins, but not once could they tie the game. Three straight innings — the fifth, sixth and seventh — the Yankees put the leadoff man on base and mounted threats, but couldn’t score. After the first inning, the only runs they were able to manage came off solo home runs from Robinson Cano and Derek Jeter.
6-5 final, series finale with Phil Hughes on the mound Thursday. Are you confident?
ROOT FOR THESE GUYS
“He was just up all night,” manager Joe Girardi said. “He didn’t seem to have it from the get-go.”
Despite the poor result, which raised Kuroda’s ERA to an even 5.00 and his WHIP to 1.61, Kuroda remains an integral component to the Yankees’ starting rotation, based on his skill set, veteran presence, and experience. We’ll have about 30 more chances to root for him.
Marquis’ debut was delayed; this story has been well document. He left the Twins with two weeks to go in Spring Training to attend to his daughter, who lacerated her liver in a bicycle accident. Ken Rosenthal does a tremendous job of portraying the details of the story here. As a father of one little girl and another on the way, I applaud what Marquis did. There’s no decision to make.
His daughter had four surgeries and is recovering well. According to reports, a full recovery is expected within three months. How fortunate Jason Marquis was to be home with his family, and STAY home when he joined his new team. As a bonus, his family got to be on the field with him yesterday (nice work by YES taking video and showing that B-roll during the bottom of the first inning).
And he got the win.
Hiroki on the hill at the Stadium tonight after his terrific debut last week.
1. Jeter SS
2. Granderson CF
3. Teixeira 1B
4. Cano 2B
5. Swisher DH
6. Ibanez RF
7. Chavez 3B
8. Martin C
9. Gardner LF
Let’s Go Yank-ees!
[Picture Credit “Waterfall in Summer” by Hiroki Imada (1998)]
Our pal Summe Anne looks at some fresh baseball art. Dig it.
[Featured Image by Summer Anne Burton; Reggie by Peter Chen; Bake McBride by Will Johnson]
“Crouching Boy” by Michelangelo (1530-33)
Oh, come on, now.
For you fellow Fat Fuckapotamus’ out there, Smitten Kitchen offers a recipe that looks worth trying out.
It was a hot summer night very long ago, when my career in this racket was brand-new and distinctly alternative. I was in a beneath-the-sidewalk joint in Harvard Square called Jonathan Swift’s, and I was listening to Levon Helm play with the Cate Brothers, who were formidable players in their own right, and old friends of Levon’s from Arkansas. We were all deep into the howl of the evening when it occurred to my friend and I that we were enjoying the show so much that we really ought to buy Levon a beer. So we ordered one up, and the waitress brought it out to the stage and Levon took a long pull, looked down at the two of us, touched his drumstick to his forehead and said, “Thank you, neighbor.”
It was what they were all about, Levon and the rest of The Band, in 1968, when the country was coming apart at the seams. Nothing was holding, least of all Mr. Yeats’s center. There were tanks in Prague and there was blood on a balcony in Memphis, Tennessee. The traditional American values of home and family and neighborhood were being fashioned into cheap weapons to use against the people who saw the death and gore as the deepest kind of betrayal of the ideals that made those values worth a damn in the first place. The music was disparate and fragmented; the Beatles were producing masterpieces that they couldn’t or wouldn’t take on the road. Brian Wilson was long gone, spelunking through the canyons of what was left of his mind. Jim Morrison, that tinpot fraud, was mixing bullshit politics with kindergarten Freudian mumbo-jumbo and his band didn’t even have a damn bass player. Elsewhere, there was torpid, silly psychedelia. The British were sort of holding it together, but, in America, even soul was coming apart. Nothing seemed rooted. Nothing abided. Nothing seemed to come from anything else. The whole country was bleeding from wounds nobody could find.
…He was the true Voice of America, as far as I’m concerned. And, after The Band split up, he kept touring, wrote a hilarious memoir, and then started hosting the Midnight Ramble in his barn in upstate New York. He was as generous with his talent and his time as any artist ever was. There was a message on his website on Tuesday saying that, goddammit, he was in the last stages of a long and brave fight with cancer. I wanted to write all of this before he passed. I wanted to thank him for the way he sang, and for the throb of his drums, and for the way he helped point the way home for all of us who thought we’d lost our country. He brought us back to what was really important: the fugitive grace of a young democracy, that America, for all its flaws and shortcomings, for all its loss of faith in itself and its stubborn self-delusions, was a country that was meant to rock. For that, I return his salute from long ago. Thank you, neighbor. And godspeed.
Morning Monk.
Photo: AP
Backup catchers should be seen, but not noticed. During the YES broadcast, that’s how former Yankees’ second stringer John Flaherty described the life of a number two backstop. Chris Stewart must not have gotten the memo.
Over the first 10 games of the season, the Yankees have had no problem getting men on base, but driving them in hasn’t been as easy. So, after squandered scoring opportunities in the first two innings by leaving a total of five men on base, it seemed as if it would be another frustrating night in the Bronx. However, all that changed in the bottom of the third.
After falling behind 3-1 in the top half of the inning (which also featured the ejection of Twins center fielder Denard Span and manager Ron Gardenhire), the Yankees quickly mounted another rally, but this time they would not be turned away. The unlikely hero in the inning was Stewart, who, in only his fifth at bat of the season, gave the Yankees a 4-3 lead with a bases loaded single that knocked Twins’ starter Francisco Liriano from the game. In total, the team scored four runs in the inning and then never looked back.
Once staked to a lead, CC Sabathia took his game to another level. In each of the next three innings, the big lefty retired the Twins in order and at one point set down 13 consecutive Minnesota batters. Meanwhile, the Yankees continued to tack on runs, including two more RBIs from Derek Jeter, a homerun by Andruw Jones, and a final tally by Stewart, who ended the game with a career-high 3 RBIs. The outburst was more than enough for Sabathia, who departed with one in the eighth having given the Yankees only their third quality start of the season.
Although Stewart was the focal point of the offense, just about every hitter had a good night. However, there was one exception. Alex Rodriguez was not only the sole member of the lineup without a base hit, but his failure to drive in a run extended a peculiar streak that has seen the Bronx Bombers go 11 straight games without an RBI from the cleanup slot, the fifth longest such stretch in baseball history. For most teams, such a prolonged period of futility from the cleanup slot would debilitating, but the Yankees’ have managed to win six of their first 11 games without a contribution from the four-hole. Of course, that really shouldn’t be surprising. What else would you expect from a lineup that has a backup catcher capable of driving in three runs in one game?
C.C. looks to pitch better tonight.
1. Jeter SS
2. Swisher DH
3. Cano 2B
4. Rodriguez 3B
5. Teixeira 1B
6. Granderson CF
7. Jones RF
8. Gardner LF
9. Stewart C
Let’s Go Yank-ees!
[Photo Credit: Jim McIsaac/Getty Images]
