Yanks have a chance to make life miserable for the Sox this weekend.
Supposed to rain for the next three days.
Derek Jeter SS
Curtis Granderson CF
Mark Teixeira 1B
Alex Rodriguez 3B
Robinson Cano 2B
Nick Swisher RF
Andruw Jones LF
Jesus Montero DH
Russell Martin C
Never mind the galoshes:
Let’s Go Yank-ees!
[Photo Credit: Retrogasm]
There are few things in this world that are as essential, and as satisfying, as a good bakery.
This coming from someone who doesn’t have one anywhere near him.
[Photo Credit: Dina. M]
Tampa spanked a Scranton-New York mash up 15-8, and that score does not do the game justice. It was 12-0 after four innings. The American League East Champions are entitled to a sleeper after clinching last night.
From this game we should take the following, in decreasing order of importance: nobody got hurt, Bartolo Colon was terrible, and Jesus Montero went three for three with two walks after a couple of ghastly games. The only regulars in the lineup were Jeter, Swisher and Teixeira, and they all came out after the game was out of hand in the fourth. Mad props to the Scranton boys who scored eight runs in the final few frames.
If I didn’t mention it earlier, the Yankees are American League East Champions. Before the season, I thought they had little chance to take the East crown. During the season, they proved me wrong and stayed close to the top, but I still never thought they’d outclass Boston because Boston was murdering them head-to-head. So to win the East so early that the last series with the Sox means diddly squat? Inconceivable.
Happy to be wrong. Hope I’m as bad at prognosticating the Postseason results because I still can’t see this rotation getting it done. To me, we’re in 2004-2007 territory. A great season, a great run differential, but having to throw one bad starter after another in the Postseason. The good news is that in AL at least, looks like everybody is in a similar jam. The Yankees can coast home from here, win a couple of the remaining games, rest players liberally and still pick up the best record in the AL. That’s what they’ll probably do.
But of course, given the fact that they play out the string against Red Sox and the Rays, the Yankees will determine the Wild Card winner. Should the Yankees arrange the off-days for the regulars so that the Rays play Scranton four times and the Red Sox draw the Bronx Bombers for all three games at the Stadium? There are two possible reasons for doing this: 1) The Yankees hate the Red Sox and want to ruin their season as early as possible. 2) The Yankees fear the Red Sox and want to avoid them in the ALCS if possible.
Going out on a limb, I think the first one is purely a fan’s reaction. Yankee fans would love to stick to the Sox, but for the Yankee organization, I hope it’s low on the priority list. If it came down to the last day of the season, and everything else was set in stone, and the Yanks could twist the needle by starting Brackman in the final game at Tampa, I could see that happening. But not some week long choreography.
But the second one deserves consideration. The Yankees are 4-11 against the Red Sox. CC Sabathia has struggled in all five tries against them this year. Of all the teams in baseball, they seem the most comfortable against Mariano. The most able to lay off the cutters outside the zone anyway. As a scaredy cat fan, I think they should do whatever possible to end Boston’s season now so that they don’t have the chance of losing to them in the ALCS.
Luckily, the Yankees are not comprised of scaredy cat fans. When I was a player, I certainly was not upset to see a top team knocked out of a tournament before we had to deal with them. But I also didn’t get too worked up about it one way or the other. If a team wants to consider itself a true champion, they’ve got to have the huevos to take out all comers. Whatever lineup Girardi puts out there should just try to win every game they play, and let the chips fall where they may.
Give guys rest. Line things up for the ALDS. But manipulate the final week of the season to push a floundering team out of the Postseason in favor of an equally good surging team? Pass.
Dig Diane get all Star Wars with it.
[Photo Credit: Ayolucas]
September is the month when baseball’s long marathon breaks into a sprint known as the pennant race. For some teams, it’s an opportunity to take a victory lap, while for others, it’s a time to either go to the whip or hold on for dear life. However, not every team finishes the year by charging hard toward the finish line. Just as many end the season bringing up the rear, seeking a merciful end to a long summer of losing
The ultimate stigma for a baseball team is a 100-loss campaign. Among the 2,446 major league seasons played by the existing 30 franchises, only 140, or less than 6%, have ended in such ignominy. Unfortunately for the Houston Astros, 2011 was such a year. However, long-time fans should be willing to cut the organization some slack. In the club’s 50-year history, this was the first time it suffered 100 defeats, leaving the Colorado Rockies and Los Angeles Angels as the only two franchises to never pass the century mark.
100-Loss Seasons by Franchise
Source: baseball-reference.com
No team has lost 100 games more often than the Athletics, who caused fans in three different cities to suffer through 16 seasons of milestone futility. In the National League, the Phillies lead the way with 14 seasons at 100 or more losses, which might explain why Philadelphia has a reputation for being so ornery. Between the two clubs, the city of brotherly love has been witness to 25 years of historically bad baseball, so you probably can’t blame its residents for not believing in Santa Claus.
Longest Current Streaks Without a 100-Loss Season
Source: baseball-reference.com
It took 50 seasons for the Astros to finally drop 100 games, which is noteable because the franchise broke into the National League along with the New York Mets, who lost a record 120 games that year. In 2003, the Tigers gave the Metsies a run for their money, but pulled up short at 119. Even in losing, those Tigers left something to be desired.
Among American League teams, the Yankees enjoy the longest stretch without a 100-loss season, an honor it almost forfeited in 1990. That year, the Bronx Bombers lost 95 games, the most since going down to defeat on 102 occasions in 1912. In the National League, the Dodgers and Cardinals each boast an even longer active streak without a 100-loss season. Both teams last passed the century mark in 1908, which just so happened to be the year the Chicago Cubs won the World Series. Since then, the Cubs have failed to win another Fall Classic, while the Dodgers and Cardinals have gone on to lead the National League in pennants.
Losing Seasons by Franchise
Source: baseball-reference.com
The Astros weren’t the only team to establish a new mark for futility this month. When the Pirates lost their 82nd game on September 15, the franchise increased its record long run of losing seasons to 19. Only 50 games prior, the Pirates enjoyed a share of first place in the N.L. Central, so at least their fans had the chance to dream just a little. The Orioles weren’t as kind to their followers. By the All Star break, it was clear that Baltimore was headed for its 14th consecutive year below .500, which not only extended an organizational record, but also brought the franchise within one of the Red Sox’ and Athletics’ American League leading string of 15 subpar seasons.
Not surprisingly, the Yankees streak of four consecutive losing seasons is the shortest in the American League (the Diamondbacks, in 97 fewer years, have only had three straight subpar seasons). The Pinstripers also own the distinction of having the lowest percentage of below-.500 seasons in the major leagues. On the other end of the spectrum, the Rangers have had the highest percentage of losing campaigns (62.7%) among teams in existence for at least 50 years. Meanwhile, no franchise can compare with the Phillies aggregate level of futility. In the 129 years since the team entered the National League, 72 seasons, or 55.8%, have ended up below .500. Once again, the nastiness expressed by Philadelphia sports fans makes all the sense in the world.
It’s easy to cheer for winners. That’s why bandwagons get so full this time of year. However, we shouldn’t forget all those other teams that get run over and left for dead along the victory trail. After all, in competition, success requires someone else’s failure. So, here’s to the losers. Just don’t let them play for my team!
Bronx Banter Guest Post
By Nick Fleder
I started going to Yankees games with my dad when I was four. I was shepherded to the outside gate to have French fries and Diet Coke before we found our way to our seats on the first base side of the diamond, close enough to the action that an errant throw on a double play could hit us in the head.
We walked past the same toothless usher who always guarded the section 71 seats at the old Yankee Stadium, and I would harass the same first baseman, Tino Martinez, for game balls until he retired and yielded his annoyance to Jason Giambi. Attending so many Yankee games, roughly twenty a year, was why I fell so hard for the sport. But even watching every game, part of the time starry-eyed under the stadium lights and the rest of the time in front of my kitchen TV set, didn’t completely satisfy me. I wanted to play.
* * *
Dad caught on to my baseball passion and coached me through Little League. But I was afraid of the ball and no good as a hitter. I stood at the rear of the batter’s box and rarely took the bat off of my shoulder. I had trouble keeping my eye on the ball and vividly remember one at-bat on a Friday night under the lights at Loshe Park in Sleepy Hollow, NY. It was my third time up and I was facing a flamethrower, my friend Nick. I chopped the ball to shortstop and was out by a good ten feet. No runs scored on the play, but my friends and teammates cheered for me making simple contact, which sums up what kind of ballplayer I was. I still wanted to play.
Dad bought me a metal pole advertised on ESPN, the one that had a ball fixed in a black padding. I worked on hand-eye coordination by batting the ball at torso level over and over again, while it coiled around the pole like a tetherball and returned to its original position. I was decent at hitting a ball when it was stationary, but that didn’t help me when it was moving, in a game, so when I finally gave up playing, Dad wasn’t disappointed, probably because I wasn’t either. But he saw what baseball meant to me.
Later that year, he tested something on me he had never tried on my older brother, Jackson, who was indifferent to the game but appreciated the spectacle of the ballpark—the heckling fans, the salesmanship of the hot dog vendors and the cheering after a home run. He took me to his fantasy draft.
* * *
My father was involved in the first fantasy league ever, and plays in what’s left of that league still today. He brought me into the world of fantasy sports through an expensive ($260 in, up to $1500 out) league of adult men (with a wealth of baseball knowledge) when I was almost ten, roughly six years ago. The league (originally called the Rotisserie league but now aptly named “AARP”) was the focus of one of the ESPN 30 for 30 documentaries, “Silly Little Game,” and the creator, Dan Okrent, still plays. It almost instantly became an obsession for me.
Draft day was even better than the trips to Yankee Stadium. We developed a ritual of grabbing a Quizno’s sandwich before heading off to scrape together an underwhelming roster using the SI Baseball Preview sheets. Dad guided me with tips for the auction, telling me to speak up and pronounce my bids with confidence, encouraging me to stare my opponents down, look them directly the eye when I bid to try to get them to drop out. He used a ten-year old boy to try to intimidate his opponents.
We didn’t have a useful strategy, despite his twenty plus years of experience. Maybe it was to make it fun for me, but our overall approach was not exactly a recipe for success: he told me to identify a couple of superstars and pay “whatever it takes” for them, and allowed me to keep the expensive superstars left over from our roster the year before.
Our incompetence wasn’t limited to the drafting of the players. We traveled to the ESPN offices on 34th Street in Manhattan for our first draft together, only to hear from the deadpan security guard on the second floor that he “had no idea of any draft at ESPN.” A phone call later, we realized we had returned to the site of the previous draft but that we were across town from this year’s draft location – the commissioner’s apartment. Amid the chaos of drafting by cell phone from a bus for the first thirty to forty minutes, Dad made good on his promise to buy any superstar whose name I would recognize; Todd Helton for $40? Maybe. David Wright for close to the same amount? Surely. Carlos Delgado for $45? Why not? We didn’t have a list of sleepers, or even a list of players we wanted, but it really didn’t matter at the time.
One league led to another. To my friends, my growing obsession, fueled by my interest in sabermetrics and the acquisition of MLB Season Pass and NBA League Pass subscriptions on our TV at home, looked an awful lot like a gambling addiction. My pal Max teased me. “You know it’s a growing problem, how much money you bet on sports?”
But it was just a deeper way of connecting to the game, incentive to watch as much baseball as I could, and a little reward for all the hours I devoted to it. I had watched the sport through the prism of the Yankees, which meant the AL East. Soon after I began playing fantasy baseball, though, I found myself flush with knowledge about the NL West. The money was a factor in my love of fantasy leagues—free leagues were much less interesting, after all, with owners regularly dropping out—but what appealed to me most is the chance to match wits and baseball knowledge with grown-ups.
* * *
Dad and I talked fantasy baseball while watching the Yankee games during dinners and my Mom suffered through the discussions. I continued to bounce ideas off him – “How does Ryan Howard for a cheap Aroldis Chapman sound?” – and we kept the Fleder Mice in conversations through our successes and our failures. He taught me the importance of keeping cheap speed (hello, $3 Angel Pagan), and how clean innings from a relief pitcher can pile up to provide more value than a starting pitcher who works every fifth day (meet a $2 Rafael Betancourt, and compare him to a $30 Josh Johnson) and as a result of the anecdotes of Roto wisdom he provided, I grew fascinated with the ins-and-outs of both the fantasy game and baseball itself.
Fantasy baseball appealed to me like nothing else I’d ever done, and playing the silly little game made me realize what my dream job in life would be. But with 30 General Managers in MLB and close to 7 billion people in the world, the odds are stacked against me. Even if I shorten the odds by accounting for only the roughly 300 million people in the U.S., my chances of actually running a big league team when I’m older are slim.
I continue to play the fantasy game for the same reason Dan Okrent invented it and my dad participated in the first place. When you can’t play baseball any more, because of arthritis or fear of the fastball, and when you get bored of watching your Cubs lose every year or your Yankees cruise to the postseason almost without fail, and when you itch for your favorite team to make a blockbuster trade, you can turn to your imagination. Dad may not be heaven-bound for creating a Rotisserie monster, but I love him for showing me how to play. And without jumping to conclusions, it looks like we’re going to finish in first place in our AARP league this year.
Nick Fleder is a high school junior who roots tirelessly for the New York Yankees. Fantasy sports are currently his only form of income.
The Bombers’ magic number to clinch the AL East is three, to make the playoffs, it’s two.
It’ll be Hector Noesi and not Phil Hughes.
Gardner CF
Jeter SS
Cano DH
Rodriguez 3B
Swisher RF
Posada 1B
Jones LF
Nunez 2B
Romine C
Never mind the jokes about the “Headline,” Beavis:
Let’s Go Yank-ees!
[Photo Credit: Muggleborn]
The Big Leap
By John Schulian
The fact that I lived through my experience at “L.A. Law” and had an on-screen writing credit to show for it gave me a seal of approval: “You worked for Steven Bochco? You’re just the guy we’ve been looking for.” It didn’t seem to matter that I’d just hit town and barely knew my hip pocket from a teakettle when it came to screenwriting. That’s how much clout the man had.
Steven made the call that got me in the door with his mentor, Bill Sackheim, at Universal. Sackheim was an embraceable curmudgeon who’d been through the wars in both TV and movies, writing westerns for Audie Murphy and Joel McCrea, producing and co-writing “Rambo,” and dealing with the nightmare that was Sally Field in her “Gidget” days. It didn’t take long for me to realize that time spent with him would be an education, and believe me, I needed educating, especially in the art of constructing a story for the screen.
But while I was trying to develop an idea for a Sackheim project about newspaper reporters, I got a call from a young “Miami Vice” writer named Mike Duggan. I’d met him at Jacob Epstein’s 30th birthday part, and here he was not three weeks later, telling me his boss was looking for someone to help write a two-parter about boxing. Once again the stars were aligned.
In less than two hours, I was in “Vice’s” offices–Building 69 on the Universal lot–meeting Dick Wolf, who was running the writing staff. The very same Dick Wolf who would go on to create “Law & Order” and all its spinoffs. He’d come over from “Hill Street Blues,” where he had clashed famously with the brilliant but erratic David Milch. In his spare time, he was producing two movies he’d written. I don’t know when he slept, but he always walked around grinning like the kid who got the most toys at Christmas.
I shook hands with Dick, and then he introduced me to an amiable, prematurely gray guy who was just about to leave: Kerry McCluggage. Kerry was “Vice’s” supervising producer that afternoon; two days later he was named president of Universal Television. Just like that, I was on a first-name basis with one of the most powerful people in the business. When I’d bump into him on the lot, he’d always say hello and ask about the show, as if I really knew anything about what was going on.
On that first Saturday, however, all that mattered was making a good impression and getting the assignment. I spun a couple yarns about Muhammad Ali and then a few about Don King, and I knew I had scored when Dick showed me the story for the first of the two boxing episodes and asked what I thought of it. I pointed out a few things he had wrong and he didn’t try to debate me, didn’t even flinch; he just fixed them. Then he said, “Okay, we need the script by Tuesday.”
Dick looked at me, still grinning, but there was a question in his eyes that I have to believe involved whether or not I would run out of his office screaming when I heard the deadline. He was asking me to do a rush job, but I’d spent 16 years in newspapers doing rush jobs. This would simply be one for higher stakes.
“Fine,” I said.
“Then you do acts two and three. I’ll do one and four.”
The race was on. I hustled back to Le Parc, where I was staying again, and started hammering away on my Olivetti. I didn’t stop until Tuesday morning when Dick swung by the hotel and I ran out the front door to hand him what I had written. A couple of hours later, he called to say I had passed my trial by fire.
I should point out that the script Dick and I lashed together in three days wouldn’t be the one we shot. It would simply be something the production team in Miami could work off for casting, location scouting, and that sort of thing. While all that was being taken care of, Dick and I went to work on a rewrite that was a far better piece of work.
“Miami Vice” was in its third season when I showed up, and no longer had the heat it did when its stars, Don Johnson and Phillip Michael Thomas, made the cover of Time and established Crockett and Tubbs in the national lexicon. But I was still in tall clover. I didn’t even mind that I was working in a spare office full of the empty cardboard boxes that signified the previous occupant’s failure. Every time I finished rewriting a scene, I’d trot it down to Dick’s office. Halfway through the process, he looked at me (grinning, of course) and said, “I don’t know where you learned to do it, but you know how to get into a scene and out of a scene.” All those years of reading W.C. Heinz, Jimmy Breslin and Gay Talese, the masters of the scene in journalistic form, were paying off. They had always relied on the tools of drama–character, dialogue, the kinetic energy of the moment–and just as I had followed their lead in my newspaper and magazine work, now I was doing it in a medium where the scene was everything.
There were other links to my not-so-distant past as well. Our cast featured rowdy heavyweight Tex Cobb, Olympic champion Mark Breland, and the one and only Don King. I put words I’d heard King say in his character’s mouth, and he made a hash of them. Stuff like “afoxanado” and “low and scurrilous cad.” I even had him say someone was “matriculating on the veranda.” Everything was set up to make King look great. And he whiffed, the big goof.
Cobb was an infinitely better thespian, which should come as no surprise to anyone who remembers him in the Coen brothers’ “Raising Arizona.” My fondest memory of him, of course, is that he was the first man I killed on TV. But far more thrilling than that was hearing Crockett and Tubbs saying my words, and seeing the stylized shot of three killers swaggering through a gymnasium door with bad intentions, lit perfectly, with clouds of man-made fog wafting in for atmosphere. It was pure “Miami Vice.”
I got all those mental keepsakes, and a full-time job, too. Dick hired me as a staff writer, and then he and I set to work on the second of the boxing episodes. Or maybe we wrote part two first. Things were moving so fast that they blur in my memory. The one thing I’m absolutely certain of is how lucky I was as I sat in my office, now clear of boxes, and banged out my half of the next script. Without realizing it, I had hopscotched past thousands of writers who would have sold body parts and family members to be where I was.
We already knew that Ivan Nova has pitched well enough to be the Yankees number two starter. David Cone said on the broadcast tonight that young pitchers often start at home in the playoffs but that Nova has pitched even better on the road. So there’s that. And we know the kid makes us feel better than Bartolo, Hughes, Fab Five Freddy or A.J. Burnett. Against the Rays, he showed us why as he had a slider working, threw a sharp breaking curve ball and the heater was moving, clocked around 94 mph. He didn’t putz around and threw strikes. Mmm, mmm, good.
And when he ran into trouble, Nova didn’t panic. He gave up a lead off single in the top of the seventh, leading 5-0. Then a phantom hbp call put another runner on before Nova walked the number nine hitter to load ’em up. But he got Desmond Jennings out on a fly ball to Brett Gardner in left and then “escaped unscathed,” as they like to say, when B.J. Upton grounded into an inning-ending double play. Good thing too because although a five-run lead might sound like plenty, the Yanks left 637 men on base over the first six innings (for good measure they left the bases juiced again in the seventh and two men on in the eighth). Curtis Granderson did most of the damage with three hits, including two doubles, and four RBI. Eric Chavez also had an RBI base hit.
Nova lasted through two outs in the eighth, gave up a hit and Boone Logan got the final out. Luis Ayala came on to pitch in the ninth and the first pitch he threw was smacked right back at him. Ayala got a glove on it and the ball continued on past him. Robinson Cano moved to his right, slowed down to make sure his timing was right, fielded the ball, turned his body and side-armed the ball to first in time for the out. It’s a play that has become Cano’s signature move and man, does he ever look smooth making it. Always tops it off with a big smile too. After a walk, Jeter started a slick 5-4-3 double play to end it. Mark Teixeira with the beautiful scoop–and he had a couple of those tonight.
Final Score: Yanks 5, Rays 0.
And the magic number to clinch a playoff spot is down to two.
[Photo Credit: Symbiopsychotaxiplasm]
Yanks and Rays start a four-game serious at the Stadium tonight.
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]
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.
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]
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.
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]
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.
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.
Because there is no clock in baseball–or because the clock is controlled by outs not time–a single play or at-bat can become its own mini drama. Take Saturday afternoon. Bartolo Colon got smacked around and the Yanks made some base running mistakes (Robbie Cano, lookin’ at you, son) and were trailing 6-1. Then Alex Rodriguez hit a line drive, three-run home run in the sixth inning and suddenly they were back in the game, down 6-5. It was the first pitch and it was inside but Rodriguez tucked his hands in and turned on it, an encouraging sign.
Derek Jeter led off the seventh with an infield base hit and then Curtis Granderson had an at bat that was long and memorable. It lasted twelve pitches but there was a time out in the middle of it when a foul tip struck catcher Jose Molina on the forearm that lasted almost five minutes. When play resumed, with the count 2-2, Granderson kept fouling pitches off, and some good pitches at that–fastballs and especially good curve balls, diving down in the strike zone. He fouled one ball on the ground by his feet and it bounced straight up and knocked the bill of his helmet. “A painful at bat,” said Michael Kay on the YES broadcast. Finally, pitch number twelve, a change up, also a good one, down and away, was put in play. Or out of play, as Granderson skied a home run to left center field, his 40th of the year.
How good must that feel? He’d already gotten two hits and drawn a walk. Then he hung in there, fouling pitches off, and hit a tough change up for a home run.
It was the difference in the game. Mariano Rivera worked a scoreless 9th for the save, tying with with Trevor Hoffman at 601.
Final Score: Yanks 7, Jays 6.
A most satisfying win–a come-from-behind special–especially since the Red Sox also lost.
