Monthly Archives: July 2012

Groucho pimps goods over at How to Be a Retronaut.

Image Via This Isn’t Happiness.

Dig this! A series of fictitious dishes designed by my cousin Dinah.

[Photo Credit: Etsy]

Rock and fuggin Roll. Pictures by Bob Gruen over at Everyday I Show.

If you’re out there on the East Coast and you decided not to stay up late for this one… Well, you made the right decision, as very little of note took place on Thursday night in Oakland.

One thing I love about baseball is that franchises have identities, and as odd as it might be, teams cling to those identities from one decade to the next, for better or for worse. How much have the Chicago Cubs changed over the past century? Aren’t the Dodgers always developing young talent, whether that kid is named Rick Sutcliffe or Mike Piazza or Matt Kemp? And the Yankees? Goes without saying.

On Thursday night the Oakland A’s reached back to their roots and made Charlie O. Finley proud, reminding us all that even through the division titles and league pennants and World Series rings they’ve won over the years, they’ve really just been a minor league team at heart. In an attempt to set a world record, the A’s invited fans to bring their dogs to the game; before the first pitch all 718 dogs and their owners paraded around the warning track, some in costume, others au naturel (the dogs, not the fans), and then retired to the stands to watch the rest of the game. There was no word on whether or not they actually set the record, but since neither Kevin Millar nor Pedro Martínez were involved in the attempt, it might actually have worked.

If you only watched that opening before going to bed, at least you saw the best part.

The Yankees started out as it seems like they’ve been starting all their games recently. Derek Jeter singled to right, and two batters later Alex Rodríguez hit a laser to left, putting runners on first and second with one out and the game’s hottest hitter coming to the plate in Robinson Canó. Business as usual.

The A’s had young A.J. Griffin on the mound, a big dorky-looking kid with glasses and four major league starts to his name. He had been good in those four starts, throwing six innings in each and allowing just seven runs for an ERA of 2.63. We know the Yankees tend to wilt in the presence of new pitchers, but surely this night — with this promising start — would be different.

It wouldn’t.

Canó sliced a line drive towards left, but Yoenis Cespedes raced in and made the grab for the first out. Or did he? After catching the ball on the run, he fumbled the ball on the transfer and it trickled to the turf behind him. Chaos ensued. Jeter assumed it was an out, so he went back to second, and A-Rod danced around a bit, shuffling back and forth at least five times between first and second. Cespedes stood stock-still for a few seconds in left, as if not even he knew what the hell was going on.

Third base umpire Brian Knight finally singled safe, but not everyone was convinced (probably because they knew he was wrong.) Cespedes picked up the ball and fired to Brandon Inge at third, nipping Jeter by about eighty-nine feet, then Inge flipped it to second, just missing A-Rod for what would’ve been the strangest 7-5-4 double play you’ve ever seen.

Replays confirmed that Knight and the rest of the umpiring crew had botched it, but the end result was the same as it would’ve been — two outs and runners on first and second. It just kind of set the wrong tone. Mark Teixeira grounded out to first and the inning was over.

Freddy García drew the start for the Yanks, and he was decent enough, allowing nine hits over almost six innings, but usually able to wriggle out of the trouble he started, just not here in the first inning. With two outs and Jemile Weeks on third, Cespedes pounded a monstrous home run to left for a 2-0 Oakland lead.

And then the Yankee hitters went to sleep for a while, lulled into submission by Griffin’s assortment of fastballs, changeups, sliders, and seventy-mile-an-hour curveballs. Raúl Ibáñez singled with one out in the second, but the next eleven Yankees went down like dogs, a string that stretched until Jeter opened the sixth with a blooped single to right.

By this point the A’s had added two more runs to double their lead to four, but it looked like the Yankees might make at least some of that back in the sixth. Following Jeter’s single and a Curtis Granderson strike out, A-Rod and Canó singled to load the bases, Canó’s hit extending his hitting streak to a worth-talking-about twenty-two games.

With Teixeira coming up, the only hitter in the lineup who’s been as hot as Canó, it was impossible not to dream about a game-tying grand slam, and when Tex launched a fly ball to deep center, there was a brief second when it looked like he might’ve done it… but alas, it was just a warning track sacrifice fly to score the Yankees’ first run. Swisher backed that up with a hard single to right to plate A-Rod and bring the Bombers to within shouting distance at 4-2.

Nothing of interest happened until the top of the ninth, as two questions remained. Could the Yankees pull out the win? (A graphic of cold water immediately told us that they were 0-30 this year when trailing after eight innings.) And if they couldn’t win, could they at least scratch out a run to keep their quirky but potentially historic streak alive, as they had scored three or more runs in forty-two straight games. Swisher rocked a homer to right to keep the streak going, but it wasn’t enough. A’s 4, Yankees 3.

The Yanks are hot, they’ve got the best record in baseball, but…there’s always a but, right? But, no time to get complacent. And there’s always trouble lurking out west. They’ll play four in Oakland starting tonight. Nothing is easy. Keep in rollin’, fellas.

Never mind the late games: Let’s Go Yank-ees!

[Photo Credit: Brad Mangin]

This looks promising.

Over at Deadspin our pal Eric Nusbaum has a good piece on a game called Out of the Park Baseball:

The summer after my freshman year of college, I told somebody’s mother that I wouldn’t be attending her son’s funeral. I remember the moment, if not the conversation, with great clarity. I was working in my dad’s shop, filling orders for spare bike rack parts, when my phone rang. My hands were sticky with glue from the ancient packing-tape dispenser.

Here are some things I didn’t tell her: I never met your son. We only talked on the phone once or twice. He had my number in the first place because we played at being general managers in the same imaginary baseball league. When Chris and I did speak, it was about lineup exports.

Here is something I don’t remember if I told her: I’m so sorry.
I was 18. Chris, sick as he was, could not have been much older. I panicked. Our friendship was too convoluted and trivial to explain in the moment. Who was I to waste the time of a mother as she slogged dutifully from A through Z in her dead son’s contact list when I didn’t even know what her dead son looked like? But there was also another thing that was harder to admit: Chris’s death turned something fake into something real.

Last night I sat in a barber’s chair in the Bronx. The rain had stopped. There was one customer in the place, the sound of an electric razor buzzing filled the room. So did the voice of one of the barbers. He sat in his chair, feet propped and talked into his cell phone.

My barber smiled and looked at me in the mirror. Maybe he thought I understood Spanish better than I do but I didn’t need to know what was being said to understand he was arguing with a woman.

“His girlfriend?” I said?

“Maybe,” my barber said. “Maybe her boyfriend.”

We both grinned.

While the buzzing and the arguing continued to the right of me, I heard Vin Scully’s voice coming from the television set to the left of me. The Dodgers and Phillies were in extra innings and the game was on the MLB Network. Vin sounded tired. So did the crowd. I remembered The Simpsons episode when Homer goes to a game and doesn’t drink: “I never knew baseball was so boring.”

But it was boring in a soothing way. Soon, the buzzing stopped and so did the arguing. The room felt still in that heightened way of quiet that occurs sometimes just before you fall into a deep sleep. The only sound was Vin’s voice. I felt calm and happy.

[Photo Credit: Flick River]

[Picture Via Live. Laugh. Love]

[Photo Credit: Summer Sleep, By Irving Penn, 1949]

I like sweets but I crave salad.

[Photo Credit: Chef-ru]

Robert Creamer died yesterday. He was one of the old school Sports Illustrated writers. Later, he was an editor at the magazine, as well as the author of major biographies on Babe Ruth and Casey Stengel. Creamer was also featured in Ken Burns’ Baseball documentary.

Read this piece on Creamer by Jack McCallum. (The Times doesn’t have an obit posted yet.)

Just last week, I ran across a letter Creamer once wrote to the New York Times concerning John Lardner:

Admirers of fine writing about sports consider John Lardner to be at least the equal and possibly the superior of such masters of the craft as Red Smith and W. C. Heinz. If he had lived longer, there is little doubt that he would have produced more excellent work, but what John Lardner achieved was certainly what his vast talent promised.

Amen, to that.

Dig this 2002 article by David Margolick on a gang of baseball writers–including Lawrence Ritter, Ray Robinson and Creamer–that got together every month to schmooze.

Here’s a sampling of Creamer’s work from SI:

On Ty Cobb;  Yogi; Mickey Mantle; Roger Maris; Al Lopez; Avery Brundage; the greatest Yankee team ever;  autograph hounds; and the unbarnacled truth.

Check out the big excerpt SI ran from his Ruth biography. And while we’re at it, how about another?

Finally, here is a terrific 1964 profile on Vin Scully, “The Transistor Kid.”

Rest in Peace.

[Photo Credit: Georgia Fowler]

Before the storm hit town and cut today’s game short–called after seven–Hiroki Kuroda didn’t allow a run and that was good enough to give the Yanks a three-game sweep over the Blue Jays.

6-0 was the final and the Bombers will enjoy their flight out west.

[Photo Credit: Dhani Jones]

Still summer, still Johnny Blazin’ hot out there. Thunderstorms expected this afternoon on getaway day for the Yanks and Jays. The Bombers head out to the west coast after the game.

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

Never mind coasting: Let’s Go Yank-ees!

[Image by Zach McCaffree via This Isn’t Happiness]

From the Atlantic...

R. Crumb by Drew Friedman.

Via Laughing Squid, dig this sampling from Drew Friedman’s Legends of Comics Portraits.

More summertime goodness from Nicole Franzen: maple and lime roasted peaches.

Keep it together…

[Photo Credit: Ralph Gibson]