I’m late in linking to this, but check out this memoir piece by Ted Berg:

Late in the summer of 2002, Chris moved from his home in Boston to my parents’ house, to a hospital bed set up in our living room. What started as melanoma on his shoulder had spread through his body and into his brain. We knew – though we never said it out loud – he was dying, and it became clear it was easiest for everyone to let him do it there. Weird time.

The best I can figure it was Saturday, Aug. 31, when I watched my last game with my brother. Baseball-reference tells me the Mets lost a 1-0 tilt to the Phillies, an unlikely pitchers’ duel between Randy Wolf and Steve Trachsel.

I can’t recall any of it. All I remember is that I was charged with carrying my brother from a wheelchair to the easy chair in the den where he would watch the game. And I remember how light he was, how frail he felt – this guy who weighed 230 pounds just a year earlier, the football stud with the broad shoulders, my big brother. And I could feel the cancer just under his skin, invasive little bumps. It was everywhere, and terrifying.

The next day I packed up my car, told my brother I loved him, and headed off for my senior year of college. He died two days later.

I skipped the Mets’ home opener in 2003, the first I missed in 16 years of being a Mets fan. Soon after I graduated and moved back home, the Mets called up their top prospect – the 19-year-old shortstop, you know the guy.

It is only now, eight years later, that I realize Chris never saw Reyes play.

Over at New York Magazine, Mark Jacobson recalls the famous Fritz Peterson and Mike Kekich wife-swapping trade.

[Joe D Lamp via Pitchers n Poets]

So…the Yanks vs. the Reds, huh? Well, okay, then. Cliff has the preview.

This afternoon, Jack Curry tweeted: Brian Gordon on role w Yanks: “If they want me 2 b the official rosin bag guy, I’ll be that guy.”

That’s a good one.

Johnny Cueto won’t start tonight for the Reds but tomorrow instead.

Here’s the order:

Nick Swisher RF
Curtis Granderson CF
Mark Teixeira 1B
Alex Rodriguez 3B
Robinson Cano 2B
Russell Martin C
Andruw Jones LF
Eduardo Nunez SS
Ivan Nova RHP

Let’s Go Yank-ees!

Yeah, I know it’s Monday. Snap out of it and look alive.

[Collage I did in 1993]

This is a few weeks old, but check out this good, and funny, piece by Noreen Malone on the “em-dash” over at Slate:

The problem with the dash—as you may have noticed!—is that it discourages truly efficient writing. It also—and this might be its worst sin—disrupts the flow of a sentence. Don’t you find it annoying—and you can tell me if you do, I won’t be hurt—when a writer inserts a thought into the midst of another one that’s not yet complete? Strunk and White—who must always be mentioned in articles such as this one—counsel against overusing the dash as well: “Use a dash only when a more common mark of punctuation seems inadequate.” Who are we, we modern writers, to pass judgment—and with such shocking frequency—on these more simple forms of punctuation—the workmanlike comma, the stalwart colon, the taken-for-granted period? (One colleague—arguing strenuously that certain occasions call for the dash instead of other punctuation, for purposes of tone—told me he thinks of the parenthesis as a whisper, and the dash as a way of calling attention to a phrase. As for what I think of his observation—well, consider how I have chosen to offset it.)

Living and Dying in ¾ Time

By John Schulian

Call me self-deluded, but my shortcomings as a writer didn’t stop me from campaigning to become the Evening Sun’s city columnist, the Breslin of Baltimore, if you will. The strategy I concocted was simple: in addition to writing the best feature stories I could, I would write about rock and roll. There were always great acts coming through town or playing in D.C. or out at Meriwether Post Pavilion in Columbia, the planned city. But the Evening Sun acted as if rock and roll didn’t exist, even with Rolling Stone getting bigger and bigger in the cultural zeitgeist. So I asked the city editor if I could write about a Grateful Dead concert, and he said sure, why not. And then I wrote about Alice Cooper, who borrowed my pen and used it to stir his drink. I wrote about Muddy Waters, too, even though he was too drunk to talk before his show and I spent most of my time hanging out with his piano player, Pinetop Perkins, who was a hell of a nice guy.

Anyway, one thing led to another, and before I knew it I had a once-a-week pop music column. I spent a lot of weeknights and weekends going to shows and interviewing musicians in hotels and motels and bars. I still had to take my regular turn on re-write and do my features and anything else that came my way, but it was all worth it. The music was great even if Sly Stone never showed up and Al Green’s girl friend looked like she wanted to dump hot grits in my lap. I wrote about great, great talents like Bruce Springsteen (just before he hit it big), Bonnie Raitt, Stevie Wonder, Emmylou Harris, Sonny Stitt, Steve Goodman, Ernest Tubb, Bo Diddley, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, and Arthur (Big Boy) Crudup, the bluesman who wrote “That’s All Right, Mama,” which became one of Elvis Presley’s early hits. I wrote about Kinky Friedman, too. Twice, in fact, because he was so funny, Groucho Marx in a cowboy hat. He played the old Cellar Door in Georgetown and dedicated a song to my future ex-wife. Thank you for being an American, Kinky.

Wonder of wonders, when I said I’d like to go to Nashville to write a week’s worth of stories about country music, the Evening Sun sent me. Yeah, that’s right, the paper that threw nickels around like manhole covers. Nobody ever told me why and I never asked. I just went. And I had the absolute best experience of the nearly 16 years I spent in newspapers.

In a week of reporting, I played pinballs with Waylon Jennings, whose greasy mixture of country and rock stirred my soul; had an audience with Dolly Parton-–a genius songwriter, in case you didn’t know-–and she was as smart as she was funny and self-effacing; sat with Chet Atkins, the king of Nashville in those days, while he puffed on a cigar in his darkened office and mused about the shadow that Hank Williams still cast over the country music business 20 years after his death at the ripe old age of 29; had a beer and a bowl of chili at Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge, where all the great songwriters–Willie Nelson, Roger Miller, Kris Kristofferson–had taken refuge when they hit town; spent an afternoon with Tom T. Hall, a wonderful songwriter, while he laid down a demo of a song called “You Love Everybody But You”; and got on stage at the Grand Ole Opry when its home was still the Ryman Auditorium and it was strictly a radio show.

For the sake of perspective, I wanted to do a piece on Nashville as a whole–its aristocracy was locked in a culture war with the folks on Music Row–so a friend from the Army told me to call a guy he served with in Vietnam. A reporter from the Nashville Tennessean named Al Gore. He picked me up at my hotel and drove me all over town, giving me the rundown on its politics, social structure, race relations, and everything else I wanted to know about. Gore couldn’t have been smarter or more accommodating or nicer. Years later, when I saw his presidential campaign, he seemed like a completely different person, and not one I’d want to show me around Nashville. More like one whose brain waves had been intercepted by Martians.

And then there was Paul Hemphill, who was as open as Gore became sealed off. Along with Johnny Cash’s “Live at Folsom Prison,” which I listened to almost every day that I was in the Army, Hemphill’s book “The Nashville Sound” opened my mind to country music. There’s certainly never been a better piece of work on the subject. I’d read Hemphill in Life and Sport, and one of the guys at the Evening Sun had worked with him at an Atlanta paper and carried his favorite Hemphill column in his walle. He said Hemphill was good people, so I got his home address and wrote him about the trip I planned to take to Nashville. He wrote back right away with the names of people I should look up. From that moment forward, we were friends until he died last year. Mostly we stayed in touch by phone and letters and, later, e-mail. I was stunned by how candid he was about his life, especially his drinking and his frustrations as a writer, but that was Hemp, honest in the way every truth-seeker should be.

We only met once, in ’97 or ’98, when I was in Atlanta working on a story for Sports Illustrated. He took me to a bar called Manuel’s, which was a favorite haunt for politicians, cops, and newspaper reporters He loved the place-–he’d written about it a lot-–and you could tell the people there loved him. He was one of the great writers of his generation and one of those true Southern liberals who overcome the ignorance and bigotry they’re born into. I wish more people knew about him, just like I wish I’d been able to make more trips to Manuel’s with him.

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

The emmis according to chef Sara Jenkins:

I’m perturbed that people have gotten so turned around that they think restaurant food is the best food, and that today’s modern, self -aware “foodie” thinks that the highest level of cooking is to cook restaurant-style food in the home. Even in the finest restaurants, restaurant food, while delicious and deserving of its place as entertainment and theater, is really not the best food at all. It’s over-sauced and over-salted and over-rich, because the only thing restaurant chefs have to worry about is that the food tastes exquisite on the table. They don’t have to worry about whether you should eat less salt and fat or eat more vegetables or if you are consuming trans fats or saturated fat or petroleum. Even very good restaurants buy industrial commodity chicken and veal bones for their stock, and bulk up the plate with cheap commodity vegetables. What you pay for in most restaurants is for the transformation from ordinary into good or exquisite. And one of the ways that food is transformed is through copious amounts of butter, salt, and stocks.

If you really want to put great food on the table day in and day out, restaurants are not really what you want to emulate. What you need is a few techniques and a few standards and eventually you will have the ability to improvise and adapt. Learn a couple of recipes well and then build on them. I’m a huge fan of broiling a fish filet or even a fish steak. It’s quick, it’s easy, it’s healthy, and you can change it endlessly depending on what you season it with. I like to have a couple of different dried grains and beans in my pantry, because you can cook up lentils so quickly and mix them with olive oil and herbs, and have a simple and quick dish anyone can make in 20 minutes. I keep a couple of great cast-iron pans, and because they hold and transmit heat so well I can pan-sear things as diverse as shrimp, chicken breast, or lamb steaks. On weekends I am more likely to make a slightly more complicated braise or stew that can get extended later in the week with some beans or grains.

I control the amount of salt and fat that goes into my cooking, and know that I have bought high-quality ingredients I want to put into my body. Best of all, because I’m cooking for two or three or at most for 10, I control what I cook so much better than in my restaurant kitchen. As proud as I am of the food I put out professionally, I know the best food of mine you can ever eat is what I serve you at my home table.

Right on, sister. I like to eat out but I need to cook at home. I get happy thinking about what to cook. And I enjoy shopping, preparing the meal, serving it, and, of course, eating. I can’t imagine life without cooking.

The Cardboard God of Hellfire, our man Josh Wilker, has a new book out. I recently had a chance to ask him a few questions about it.

Dig:

Bronx Banter: How did this project come about?

Josh Wilker: I guess the series editor, Sean Howe, is a fan of my blog. He contacted me to see if I had any interest in working on something for the series. I wrote him back an email listing several of my favorite movies, including “The Bad News Bears in Breaking Training.” Sean liked the idea of me writing about Breaking Training rather than any others on the list, and I was into it, too. (I also would have gotten excited about writing about “Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia,” but it’s probably better for my mental health that I focused for a long while on Tanner and Kelly and Ogilvie rather than Warren Oates and a severed head.)

BB: How long is the book–it’s really a long essay, right?

JW: Yeah, it’s not that long, maybe a little over a hundred pages. I just checked the Word doc I sent the editor—it’s about 30,000. It’s got chapters though, which is kind of book-like. I think the idea was for the books in the series to be similar to those in the 33 1/3 books on albums.

BB: I love that this is a pocket paperback. When I got it the first thing I did was see if it fit in my back pocket. There is something so comforting about that.

JW: Right, all books should be that way. Nothing better than heading out the door and not having to carry anything and still have something to read on the train.

BB: What was the first baseball movie you saw as a kid?

JW: “Breaking Training” was probably the first. I’d read a lot of baseball books by the time I saw that movie, but I don’t think I saw any other movies. I guess the first time I saw any sort of fictional baseball on the screen was when Bugs Bunny took on the Balboniesque sluggers on the Gashouse Gorillas.

BB: Why did you chose it over the original “Bad News Bears”?

JW: Probably because I suck. There are lots of other reasons, too, among them that the second movie had a much stronger personal connection to me, and felt more like my own flawed little love rather than a generally acknowledged classic, and also that the second movie seemed to me to have much more potential as a jumping off point to talk about a lot of facets of American culture that fascinate and/or nauseate me, such as the central American myth of the road narrative, the changing ways in which children are raised in America, the malignancy of sequels, the “man alone” myth, etc. But above all that, if I’m being truthful, I don’t see myself as worthy of tackling something canonical. I’m too flawed to be some learned authority shedding light on “Citizen Kane” or “The Godfather.” I relate to the lesser sequel, even love it, and wanted to sing its praises. Maybe it’s kind of a Charlie Brown Christmas tree kind of thing.

BB: When did you see the original?

JW: Unlike my first viewing of “The Bad News Bears in Breaking Training,” which I remember vividly, I don’t remember when or where I saw “The Bad News Bears.” In line with a life that has often felt like an aftermath, like I arrive everywhere just after the things that mattered occurred, I saw the sequel first, and it was years before I saw the original. I probably saw it in my twenties, during which I spent a lot of time catching up on all the classic movies from the 1970s. If I were a couple years older, I probably would have seen it in the theater when it came out, and I’d surely have a different relationship to the two films.

BB: What did you think of “The Bad News Bears” when you finally saw it?

JW: It’s a fantastic movie, one of the last great films of the gritty late 1960s to mid-1970s golden age. I don’t recall my first time watching it, as I’ve said, but I’ve watched it many times since then—as with Breaking Training, I own the DVD. Matthau is of course brilliant, and I also like the occasional long reaction shots some of the Bears get to have, those long wordless shots that you don’t see anymore in movies (and which were gone even by the time of the sequel two years later). Jimmy Feldman gets one of these, as does Rudi Stein, in both cases showing a heart-wrenching human kid reaction to Buttermaker getting caught up in a win at all costs mentality. Both of these characters are marginal, so the fact that they each get to have one of these moments lends a sense to the movie that everyone is worth something.

BB: Where did you see “Breaking Training?”

JW: I saw it at the Playhouse Theater in Randolph, Vermont. In piecing together my personal experience of the summer of 1977, I came to the conclusion that my brother and I would have seen the movie during our yearly two-week summer visit to see our dad in Manhattan, but we lost a couple of movie-going days due to the blackout. It was god to see it back home, because I saw it in a theater packed with all the kids I played little league with, which could not have been a more receptive audience. It’s the most alive, enthusiastic movie audience I’ve ever been a part of.

(more…)

Whenever the Yankees and Cubs hook up, which is every three years, I suppose, it’s hard for me not to think about how difficult it is to suffer through long championship droughts. The Yankees haven’t won the World Series since 2009, and I can’t help but feel for all the babies who have been born since then, all of them crying helplessly into the cold night, yearning for a mother’s love, a warm bottle of milk, and a World Series ring.

Will 2011 finally be the year to silence those cries? If Sunday night’s game in Chicago’s Wrigley Field was any indication, it just might be. CC Sabathia was on the mound for the Yanks, and although that’s usually a good sign, the Big Man didn’t have his usual easy outing. Brett Gardner had given him an early cushion with his leadoff home run, but Sabathia gave up a ringing double to Chicago’s Reed Johnson to lead off the bottom half of the first, and the game was tied after a sacrifice fly and a ground ball chased Johnson home.

CC slipped again in the third inning. Young phenom Starlin Castro singled to right, Aramis Ramírez singled to center, and our old friend Alfonso Soriano came up to the plate with two outs. Every time I look at Soriano I think of two things: first, I remember that home run he hit off Curt Schilling in Game 7 of the 2001 World Series, the one that should’ve won that Series and etched Soriano’s name into Yankee history; second, I think of the player I hoped Soriano would have become with the Yankees, a perennial all-star at second base on his way to the Hall of Fame. Thankfully, though, the Yankees didn’t waste too much time replacing Soriano with another perennial all-star at second base on his way to the Hall of Fame, so I’m only bitter about the first memory.

But back to our game. Just seconds after the good folks at ESPN flashed some stats about Soriano’s success against Sabathia, Sorry unleashed that beautiful swing — too long for consistent success, but beautiful when it connects — and ripped a long blast into the left field bleachers to open a 4-1 Chicago lead. Bitter.

In the top of the fourth, however, the Cub defenders faltered a bit and let the Yanks creep back into the game. (The defensive problems in this inning were just the tip of the iceberg, but more on that later.) With Alex Rodríguez on first base after having drawn a walk, Robinson Canó tapped a dribbler out in front of the plate. Catcher Geovany Soto pounced out of his crouch, plucked the ball from the grass, and split the diamond with a strike to second where Castro waited at the bag for what looked to be the first out of an inning-ending double play. But Castro didn’t wait long enough. He skipped off the base just before the throw arrived, losing that out, then threw late to first, losing that one as well. Nick Swisher accepted Castro’s charity, grounding a ball through the right side of the infield to score A-Rod and cut the Cub lead to two. Russell Martin kept the train moving by drawing a walk to load the bases, and then the Cub defense gave the Yanks another run. Eduardo Nuñez hit a grounder to third. The ball was softly hit, certainly not hard enough to turn a double play on the speedy Nuñez, but not so softly to prevent Ramírez from coming home to cut off the run. As it turned out, Ramírez chose poorly. He went to second for the out, Canó came in to score, and the Yanks were only down by a run.

Two innings later the game was tied. A-Rod led off with a single and got to second on a Canó groundout. With A-Rod on second base, ESPN analyst Bobby Valentine spent about five minutes explaining what anyone who’s ever played the game (except A-Rod, apparently) already knew — A-Rod’s lead off second base put him directly in the baseline rather than a few feet towards left field to give him a better route around third base on his way to the plate. When Swisher singled to right, Valentine’s words seemed prophetic; Rodríguez had to stop at third. No matter, though. Russell Martin lofted a sacrifice fly to right to score him and tie the game at four.

Two innings after that, the game was essentially over, and again it was the middle of the lineup doing the damage. A-Rod singled again to start the inning (he’s got the average up to .289, by the way), Canó pushed him to third with another single, and Swisher stepped on a 2-o fastball from reliever Sean Marshall, dropping it into the stands in right for a 7-4 Yankee lead.

The Cubs had given us a taste of poor defense in earlier innings, but the main course was served in the ninth. Gardner led off by flipping a ball down the line in left, and as soon as the ball hit the grass I expected the speedy Gardner to have a shot at a double. Soriano, who’s never been confused with Tris Speaker as a defensive outfielder, obviously wasn’t thinking the same thing. He jogged after the ball and seemed legitimately surprised to see Gardner rounding first. He realized his error, but it was too late, and Gardner slid in safely with a double. This, however, wouldn’t be Soriano’s worst play of the inning.

Curtis Granderson ripped a line drive down the line in right, good for a standup triple and another Yankee run, then Mark Teixeira drove Granderson in with a booming double — or at least that’s what the box score would have you believe. In reality, Teixeira hit a soaring pop fly to right field. Jeff Baker, just switched out to right field from first base in the ninth inning, tracked the ball deep into the corner but somehow allowed it to drop at his feet. By the time Baker corralled the ball and fired it back into the infield, a confused Teixeira was standing on second base and the Yankees were up 9-4. A couple pitches later A-Rod rocketed a double off the wall in left — or at least that’s what the box score would have you believe. In reality, Rodríguez hit a towering fly ball to the gap in left center. Soriano and center fielder Johnson converged on the ball, with Soriano appearing to have the ball measured. And then the ball fell between them, bounced in and out of the ivy as the two fielders watched, and A-Rod’s “double” scored Teixeira with the game’s final run. Yankees 10, Cubs 4.

Those three ninth-inning runs were important, as they gave Mariano Rivera the night off, and Brett Gardner was the key. Gardner had three hits on the night, and is hitting .404/.481/.553 in the month of June, leading to all sorts of speculation about where Derek Jeter might fit in the lineup upon his return from the disabled list. I’m not overly concerned  about lineup positions, but if Gardner keeps hitting and Jeter keeps struggling, Girardi’s handling of the situation will go a long way towards determining whether or not this Yankee team will be the one to end the championship drought. Something to watch for this summer.

[Photo Credit: Jonathan Daniel/Getty Images]

If you could have predicted that by the middle of June exactly one quarter of the Yankee pitching staff consisted of journeymen Brian Gordon, Luis Ayala, and Cory Wade, you would have qualified as a full-fledged soothsayer. Heck, you might have your own infomercial by now, making you ready to take the place of the indicted Don LaPre. But here it is, a solid ten weeks into the season, and the Yankee staff is barely recognizable.

By now, I’ve become used to Ayala, a great story who came back from nearly being abducted by home invaders in Mexico to winning the last spot on the roster this spring to being an important part of the late-inning bullpen structure.

In contrast, I’m still getting used to the other three no-names. I’ll be honest with you; I had never ever heard of Gordon prior to this week. When I first heard his name, I thought he might be related to Tom “Flash” Gordon, but that notion quickly became ridiculous. I later learned that he is an outfielder-turned-pitcher who turned heads as a starter for the Lehigh Valley Iron Pigs, the Triple-A team managed by Hall of Famer Ryne Sandberg. Gordon doesn’t throw overly hard, but he has an appealing tendency to throw strikes and owns a deceptive curveball that runs about 68 miles an hour.

Gordon made a decent first impression in his Yankee debut and will make his next start under National League rules. That will allow him to take his place in the Yankee batting order and possibly fare better at the plate than most of their pitchers have in the interleague matchups. If the Yankees are smart, they’ll think about using Gordon as an emergency outfielder and pinch-hitter, which might help the paper-thin bench that has been harmed by the loss of Eric Chavez and the unwillingness to promote Jorge Vazquez.

In the case of Wade, I vaguely remembered him pitching middle relief for Joe Torre’s Dodgers a few years back. Sure enough, a check of Baseball-Reference.com confirmed my hazy memory. Wade had one good season in 2008 and a terrible season in 2009, before falling through the surface of the Earth into baseball oblivion last summer. In actuality, he spent 2010 pitching badly for three different teams in three different minor leagues. He’s been much better this year, exhibiting pinpoint control (only six walks in 36 innings) for the Durham Bulls before being released and signed by the Yankees. Like Gordon, Wade made a good first impression in his Yankee debut; if he can continue to throw strikes and spot his pitches, he might be able to stick long-term, or at least until Rafael Soriano is able to start delivering on that exorbitant contract he signed last winter…

***

Even though he is having his worst season in pinstripes, I still like Nick Swisher. A couple of Cooperstown-area Yankee fans who go to the Stadium and sit amongst the “Bleacher Creatures” told me that they appreciate Swisher’s byplay with the fans in the cheap seats. Of all the Yankees, he reacts the most boisterously in responding to the first inning roll call. He’ll carry on a running conversation with the Creatures, making them feel as if their opinions matter. In an era when too many players fear any interaction with fans as if they were carrying the plague, Swisher’s approach is refreshing.

Yes, the Mohawk hair cuts are ridiculous, and his breathless post-game interviews can be heavy on the clichés, but this guy exhibits such an admirable passion for the game that it‘s hard not to like him (unless your name is Ozzie Guillen). And despite Keith Olbermann’s claims to the contrary, Swisher will hit. Except for one off-season with the White Sox, he’s been a consistent walk-producer and home run hitter throughout his career; he‘s due for a big second half, once he straightens out his left-handed swing…

***

One of the best weekends of the year is upon us in Cooperstown. The Hall of Fame Classic takes place on Sunday, featuring about 30 retired players in a seven-inning old-timers’ day. Unlike the previous two years, there won’t be much of a Yankee presence at Doubleday Field this weekend. In fact, only three former Yankees are scheduled to participate: Hall of Famers Goose Gossage and Phil Niekro and 1980s outfielder Billy Sample. I’ve never interviewed Gossage, but I’ve often talked to “Knucksie” and know Billy well, and can vouch for them as two terrific guys.

Sample had a nice career as a role player and platoon outfielder, but he was a phenomenal minor league player. During his three-year apprenticeship in the Rangers’ farm system in the late 1970s, he did not hit below .348. His lifetime minor league average, covering over 1200 plate appearances, was a cool .355. His on-base percentage was an otherworldly .443. If we were to create a Hall of Fame for minor league players, Sample would have to be a serious candidate.

Since leaving MLB.com in 2008, Sample has been out of baseball, but has been doing some freelance research and writing work. In fact, his new baseball screenplay recently took top honors at the Hoboken Film Festival for Best Screenplay. Now he’s looking for a producer. Hey, if Moneyball does well, perhaps that will improve the market for baseball films, and create a new wave like we saw in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

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

Russell Martin likes to bring the pain.

[Photo Credit: David Banks/Getty Images]

Clarence Clemons died yesterday and the world is smaller for it.

Former Marlins teammates AJ Burnett and Ryan Dempster squared off in the middle game of the marquee interleague series of the weekend, at Wrigley Field. There was potential for a pitchers’ duel, if the “Good AJ” showed up, and if Dempster maintained the good control he’s shown at home thus far (almost a 4-to-1 K/BB ratio in 52 1/3 innings pitched at Wrigley this season).

That wasn’t to be, though. The game was tight and low-scoring, but more because both teams missed opportunities, rather than Burnett and Dempster dominating. Both pitchers followed the “bend but don’t break” M.O. Burnett allowed two runs, struck out eight and walked three in 5 1/3 innings pitched, while Dempster allowed only three runs while walking a season-high six batters, and struck out six.

The Yankees had their chances. They had base runners every inning, but were only able to push runners across in the third and sixth innings. In the third, Curtis Granderson led off with a single — doesn’t it seem like when the Yankees score, he’s in the middle of the rally? — and later scored on Robinson Canó’s double. Nick Swisher followed with a sacrifice fly to bring in Alex Rodriguez, who singled and advanced to third on the Canó double.

The Cubs tied the game in the fourth, making Burnett pay for issuing a leadoff walk to Blake DeWitt. Two batters later, Carlos Peña hit a laser into the right-field seats.

Sometimes, the most important moment in a game isn’t a timely hit, it’s a baserunning mistake. Following a one-out walk to Kosuke Fukudome, Starlin Castro lined a single to center. On that hit, Fukudome was running on the pitch but did not advance to third. On the FOX broadcast, Tim McCarver said there was “no excuse for Fukudome to not be on third base with one out, or at least get thrown out trying.” The next batter, DeWitt, who figured in the Cubs’ first rally, bounced into a 4-6-3, inning-ending double play.

Eduardo Nuñez carried the positive vibes from the solid turn of the double play into the top of the sixth, lining a single up the middle on an 0-2 count and later scoring on a Granderson sac fly to give the Yankees the lead. (The Granderson RBI was off lefty James Russell. Granderson, versus lefties this season: .277/.341/.651, 20 RBI.) In the ninth, Nuñez drove in what would be the go-ahead run with a double.

Mariano Rivera made things interesting, yielding a leadoff home run to Reed Johnson and a single to Alfonso Soriano. But he needed just four more pitches to record three outs, inducing Geovany Soto to ground into a double play and striking out Jeff Baker.

That would be the high-level overview of the game. Two plays in particular preserved this victory for the Yankees: the first was the double play that ended the fifth. The second came in the sixth inning. Canó missed an easy catch on a force attempt that turned a potential first-and-third, two-out situation into a bases-loaded, one-out scenario. On a full count, Soto lined to left. Brett Gardner made up for his base running gaffe in the top of the sixth by making a nice catch on the liner and firing a one-hop strike to home. A huge collision ensued between Peña and catcher Russell Martin. Martin hung onto the ball, showed it to both Peña and home plate umpire Sam Holbrook.

Sometimes over the course of a season, winning teams win games despite an odd boxscore. Saturday, the Yankees walked 10 times and only scored four runs. They got 11 hits and went 4-for-13 with runners in scoring position yet left 13 men stranded. They committed two errors and ran themselves out of an inning.

Yet in the end, the formula that usually leads to a victory — timely hitting, a few key defensive plays, above average starting pitching and a capable bullpen effort — put a W up for the Yankees. By all accounts, they should have beaten the Cubs about 11-3 in this game. But as the better team, being able to hang on and win the close game is encouraging and should serve them well as the season wears on.

I was in the subway last night when a double rainbow graced New York. But Inga Sarda-Sorensen was in central park and took this cool picture.

Yanks-Cubs again this afternoon in Chicago.

Brett Gardner LF
Curtis Granderson CF
Mark Teixeira 1B
Alex Rodriguez 3B
Robinson Cano 2B
Nick Swisher RF
Russell Martin C
Eduardo Nunez SS
A.J. Burnett RHP

Never mind the cleverness:

Let’s Go Yank-ees!

So the Yanks played this afternoon at Wrigley and I missed the whole damn thing cause I was at work. No, that’s wrong, I caught the 9th inning when the Yanks put the tying run on base. But they only had five hits all afternoon and couldn’t do anything against Carlos Marmol. It was a quick, seemingly uneventful 3-1 loss. One game. That’s okay. But if they lose again this weekend, hard feelings, man, I don’t care how endearing the Cubs are. That team is horseshit.

For one week starting today, Film Forum is screening a new 35 mm print of Howard Hawks’ great 1938 comedy Bringing Up Baby.  Sheila O’Malley, who writes the terrific blog, The Sheila Variations, has a fun piece about the flick and it’s racy subtext at Capital New York.

Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn and Howard Hawks – what more can a movie lover ask for? This is one of the great screen comedies, folks, don’t miss it.

I went back to L’Artusi last night. Just as good as the first time, still slammin’.

 

Girl at the bus stop in the Bronx last night. She was hardly wearing anything. I’m not a father but I felt, for a brief moment, what a father, or mother, must feel like when they see their daughter start to grow up too fast, too soon.

Word to Chi-Town.