It’s dem O’s again.
C.C.’s on the hill.
Brett Gardner CF
Robinson Cano 2B
Travis Hafner DH
Lyle Overbay 1B
Curtis Granderson LF
David Adams 3B
Ichiro Suzuki RF
Reid Brignac SS
Austin Romine C
Never mind the dampness:
Let’s Go Yank-ees!
[Illustration by Frank Miller via This Isn’t Happiness]
Over at Deadspin, Barry Petchesky brings us back to this week in 1998:
Beginning on Thursday and running through October 6th, the Whitney presents a show of Hopper’s drawings.
Sweet.
From P. Kael:
Personal Best is a celebration of modern American women’s long-legged bodies. It’s also a coming-of-age movie that shows what most us go through–the painful experiences that later on we like to see as comedy. The surprise of this film–written, produced, and directed by the celebrated screenwriter Robert Towne (The Last Detail, Chinatown, Shampoo)–is that most of the story is told non-verbally, and character is revealed in movement. This is perhaps the first directing debut by a writer that buries motivation and minimizes the importance of words. Towne may have had to cut a couple of strings off his fiddle, but he plays a great lush, romantic tune. He bears down only on sensory experience, and he uses the actors, who are in fact athletes, as dancers. He presents a physical world that few of us know much about–the world of women athletes–and when he shows the adolescent Chris Cahill (Mariel Hemingway) preparing for the start of a race by hammering a block into the ground it’s like Melville doing a how-to-chapter. This is a very smart and super-subtle movie, in which the authenticity of the details draws us in (as it does in Melville); Towne cares enough tot get them right, and he cares about the physical world in a reverent, fanatic way. When he shows Chris and the other heroine arm-wrestling, he concentrates on their throbbing veins and their sinews and how the muscles play off one another. He breaks down athletic events into specific details; you watch the athletes’ calves or some other part of them, and you get an exact sense of how their bodies work–it’s sensual and sexual, and it’s informative, too. This film celebrates women’s bodies without turning them into objects; it turns them into bodies. There’s an undercurrent of flabbergasted awe. Everything in the movie is physically charged…Watching this movie, you feel that you really can learn something essential about girls from looking at their thighs.
Feb 22, 1982
Photograph by Moa Karlberg.
A New York minute in pictures brought to you by the great Saul Leiter.
In the spring of 1996, my friend Mike took me to A-1, a record shop in the East Village. I looked through a couple of crates of records and then started a conversation with a blond-haired kid who was hanging out talking music. An hour later we were still talking.
Mike had been looking through the $2 dollar bins on the floor and he came up with two steals: Ice Cube’s Kill at Will ep and BDP’s By All Means Necessary.
Right there, I knew the difference between a dedicated beat digger and me. I liked the music but didn’t have the stamina to go through the entire store for a bargain.
That fall, the Yanks won the World Series and I went to Los Angeles for four months on a job. The next time I went to A-1 the blond-haired kid, Jared Boxx, was working there.
It wasn’t long before he left with two co-workers to open their own record store, The Sound Library. And when the partners there split up, Jared co-ran Big City Records.
Now, The Sound Library and Big City are history but A-1 is still around.
And wouldn’t you know it but my friend Mike works there. Seventeen years after he first brought me in I stopped by to say hello. Bags came along with me and took some pictures.
DJ’s aren’t buying vinyl like they used to. And now A-1 sells a lot of rock albums. Mike said they can’t keep records by Blondie, The Talking Heads of Led Zeppelin on the shelf. He blames the video game Guitar Hero.
It was great catching up, hearing some music, and seeing my old friend.
Perfect for a rainy Sunday night.
An appealing rainy spring day here in New York. Cool and breezy. Unless, of course, you are at the Stadium to watch a baseball game. But if you’re home, it’s a fine day to make some food, sit back, relax, and cool out.
1. Granderson CF
2. Cano 2B
3. Wells LF
4. Hafner DH
5. Overbay 1B
6. Nix 3B
7. Suzuki RF
8. Brignac SS
9. Romine C
It’s our man C.C. against the knucklenerd R.A..
Never mind the drizzle:
Let’s Go Yank-ees!
[UPDATE: Never mind all that–this one is called. No Yankees today.]
[Photo Via: Think Different]
The Knicks visit Indiana tonight for Game 6. They lose and their season is over. I wish I had faith in them. I wouldn’t be shocked if they win but I also wouldn’t put any money on it.
But I’ll be watching all the same.
Get ’em, boys.
[Photo Via: Bread City]
The Yanks were ahead 3-1 in the bottom of the fifth thanks to a third inning home run by Robinson Cano, who swung ahead of a change-up from Brandon Morrow but still managed to yank the ball over the wall in right field.
“Morrow got ‘porched,'” said David Cone in the YES studio.
Now in the fifth, Cano was up again. Two men were out, a runner on first. Toronto’s catcher J.P. Arencibia walked to the mound to talk with Morrow, who’d thrown 56 pitches so far. They arrived at their plan, Arencibia returned behind the plate and set up outside, away from Cano.
Morrow hit Arencibia’s glove with the first pitch a fastball low and outside. It was called a ball. The next pitch was another fastball but this one drifted further outside, 2-0. Arencibia set up outside again, but Morrow’s third fastball was middle-middle. Fortunately for him, Cano swung late. He hit the ball hard but the drive stayed foul down the left field line.
“He’s off just a little bit,” said Paul O’Neill on the YES broadcast, “just behind it, just ahead of the [home run] he hit out of here.”
Next came a beautiful, tight slider. It started straight down the middle and then ducked down and in. Cano sung over it and the count was even, 2-2. Morrow made a mistake on the following pitch and hung a slider. Again he was fortunate as Cano missed it, then rolled his head, looking up at the heavens, grinded his teeth and took the long walk around the back of the plate, Manny Ramirez-style.
Cano got another slider, 89 mph, this one outside. He was ahead of it and the ball hit off the end of his bat. It made a weak sound, good for a broken bat and a foul ball.
Cano walked casually to the dugout where the bat boy handed him a new bat. Cano leaned down and shaved down the handle and Vernon Wells, waiting on the on-deck circle, passed him the rosin bag which Cano tapped on the bat, little puffs of smoke rising in the air. Cano walked back to the plate, spit on his hands, rubbed them together and adjusted his batting gloves. He got to the plate and bent over and stretched his legs. Got in the box, weight on his back leg, waved his bat with his right hand twice and waited for the pitch.
Morrow came back with with the slider. This one was rotten, too, and Cano didn’t miss it.
The ball landed over the bullpen in right center field. Another two-run home run. The only Yankee fan who was disappointed was the guy in the first row who had the ball into and out of his hands.
Travis Hafner added a two-run home run in the eighth, David Phelps minus his good stuff, survived trouble, and the Yanks cruised to a 7-2 win.
No complaints here.
Oh, and Reid Brignac is the newest Yankee.
David Phelps vs Brandon Morrow this afternoon at the Stadium.
I’m headed out early and the line-ups aren’t posted yet.
Be back later with the recap.
Enjoy this fine–if overcast–spring day, y’all.
Never mind getting complacent now:
Let’s Go Yank-ees!
[Painting by John Musgrove]
The Yankees’s DL squad needed a left-hander in to compliment Ivan Nova and Michael Pineda; Andy Pettitte obliged them as he joined the walking wounded yesterday (15 day DL).
So Hiroki Kuroda went out and made us forget that storyline–oh yeah, it’s called “a narrative” these days–as he two-hit the Blue Jays over eight innings. How solid has this guy been? Man, what a pleasure.
Final Score: Yanks 5, Jays 0.
[Photo Via: Hellanne]
It’s our man Hiroki against the hot-hitting Blue Jays.
Brett Gardner CF
Jayson Nix SS
Robinson Cano 2B
Vernon Wells LF
Ben Francisco DH
Lyle Overbay 1B
David Adams 3B
Ichiro Suzuki RF
Austin Romine C
Never mind the band aids:
Let’s Go Yank-ees!
[Photo Credit: Melissa Wahler]
David Wells threw a perfect game 15 years ago today. Jay Jaffe remembers…
Head on over to Grantland and check out Ben Lindbergh’s story on the art of framing pitches (featuring Francisco Cervelli and Chris Stewart).
[Photo Credit: Reuters]
Whadda ya want from me?
The Wife on 34th street last night. (It’s gotta be the shoes.)
