The wife and I met friends for dinner in Manhattan on Saturday night. On our way downtown, we were sitting on the subway when I gave my seat up to an older woman. She was with a friend and we all got to talking. They were on their way to Church. I gave them the names of a couple of restaurants. We had a nice exchange. Shirley and Phyllis.

We stopped by Pearl River and then had dinner in a loud, expensive restaurant where the food was so good it reminded me that cooking is more than a craft but an art. It was drizzling when we finished and walked uptown to the Stand. Then we said good night to our pals and headed west to catch the subway. When the train reached 34th street, Shirley and Phyllis got on.

What are the odds? Not only that we’d get on the same train but the same car.

I called out to one of them and before they got off they gave us their phone numbers and invited us to church.

We talked about how strange it was that we ran into each other again and Shirley said, “God is Good.” Then and Phyllis got off.

I don’t know if I would have put it that way but I agreed with the sentiment. Then I looked up and the woman standing in front of us was wearing this shirt:

Pat Riley wasn’t angry at John Starks for the shooting guard’s poor performance in Game 7 of the 1994-95 Finals. He was disappointed in Starks for the decision he made at the end of Game 6. With only a few seconds left in the game and the Knicks trailing by a basket, Starks took an inbound pass. The play called for him to dump the ball down to Patrick Ewing who would then try and tie the game, sending it to overtime. Instead, Starks took a three-point shot, hoping to win it all. But it was blocked by Hakeem Olajuwon and the Rockets won the game.

That off-season, Riley wanted Starks to know how hard he would have to work in order to be trusted at such a critical moment again.

That moment never came.

The Mavericks beat the Heat last night to win the NBA Finals and there is a lot of talk about how the Heat will eventually have their day. It’s a safe bet that they will. However, Dan Marino never made it back to the Super Bowl after his second season, and there is no guarantee that LeBron James will make it back to the Finals either.

In the meantime, while I am one of many fans celebrating the Heat’s loss, I’m also pleased for Mark Cuban, Dirk Nowitzki and the Mavs. Yup, this is just about the best way the season could have ended.

The Yanks handled the Indians with relative ease today. The hit parade , 18 in all, was impressive: four  for Curtis Granderson, three for Alex Rodriguez and Brett Gardner (two doubles and a triple), two a piece for Jeter, Swisher, Cano and Posada. Yeah, Freddy Garcia pitched well, but it was the bomb squad that took care of things, but good as the Yanks won their third straight.

Final score: Yanks 9, Indians 1.

[Photo Credit: Joseph Holmes]

Fab Five Freddy Garcia looks to regain his footing after one of the worst performances of his career. As expected, Bartolo Colon was placed on the DL.

Jeter SS
Granderson CF
Teixeira 1b
Rodriguez 3b
Cano 2b
Swisher RF
Posada DH
Martin C
Gardner LF

We’ll be rootin’:

Let’s Go Yank-ees!

[photo credit: S Petrenko]

Grand Master…Clifford Brown.

[Painting by Tim Doyle]

This photo isn't from tonight, but it's basically what Girardi looked like.

The Yankees’ skeleton of a bullpen is showing, but still: after the embarassing Red Sox sweep, that was more like it for the Yankees. There was a benches-clearing near-brawl, and the offense woke up, and carried Ivan Nova and the team to an 11-7 win that wasn’t, for most of the game, actually all that close.

The Yankee scoring started in the first and didn’t really stop. Jeter, Teixeira, and Rodriguez all walked — it really was not Fausto Carmona’s night — and then Cano’s RBI single,Swisher’s sac fly, and Posada’s single gave the Yanks a quick 3-0 lead. it was Jorge Posada Figurine Night, which seemed like a cruel twist of fate a week ago, but Posada got 3 hits tonight and seems to be struggling back towards respectability, at least for the moment.

The second inning is where things got a bit exciting: Curtis Granderson homered, and immediately afterwards, Carmona plunked Teixeira square in the upper back, and too close for comfort to his head. You never know what someone’s thinking, of course, but it looked about as deliberate as these things ever do. Teixeira came up yelling at Carmona, Carmona yelled back, Joe Girardi rushed out and pushed Teixeira out of the way so he could scream at the Indians himself. The benches cleared, the bullpens emptied. No punches were thrown, and no one was ejected, but Girardi and Indians manager Manny Acta were screaming into each other’s faces, inches apart. No one’s veins pop more alarmingly than Girardi when he’s furious; it’s quite a sight.

The Yankees kept hitting after that, and the Indians couldn’t keep up — despite the best efforts of the Yanks’ depleted bullpen — but things didn’t escalate further. The other really noteworthy hit came in the bottom of the fourth. The Yanks were up 5-0 when Alex Rodriguez absolutely annihilated a pitch into the bleacher seats just left of dead center – if not the longest homer that’s been hit in the new Stadium, certainly up there. When A-Rod jogged by and high-fived Robbie Thomson, the coach looked downright frightened.

The game got closer than it should’ve; in his major league debut in the eighth inning, newly arrived reliever Kevin Whelan seemed to have a nasty case of nerves, walking four hitters batters and forcing in a run. That made it 11-3 – the Yankees had continued tacking on – but things deteriorated further in the ninth. Neither Amauri Sanit nor Lance Pendleton was any better than you might’ve expected, and finally Girardi called on Mariano Rivera to prevent disaster. It worked – but it also underscored just how much the Yanks need a good reliever or two.

Still: all in all, just the kind of night New York needed. If Ivan Nova figured something out, well, that would just be a bonus.

Sweet dreams, and may your weekend be devoid of popping neck-veins. (Unless that’s your thing, in which case, have a popping-neck-vein-palooza!).

She asked how come I don’t smile/I said “Everything’s fine, but I’m in a New York state of mind.”–Rakim

Yanks looks to stop sucking tonight against the Indians. Cliff does the preview, we do the rootin’:

Let’s Go Yank-ees!

Over at Grantland, there is a long, entertaining oral history piece compiled by Alex French and Howie Kahn on “The National,” Frank Deford’s influential, short-lived sports newspaper:

Peter Richmond (Main Event Writer): I had a Nieman fellowship at Harvard when I heard about The National. You’re obliged, if you get a Nieman, to go back to the newspaper you were working at. I worked at the Miami Herald as the national sports correspondent. I’d go to the Super Bowl, the World Series, the NBA Finals. I’d go to prize fights. I had a column. Then I got a free ride at Harvard for a year. In the middle of it, I had heard in the New York Daily News that Frank Deford was rounding up this all-star team for The National. I thought, “Oh my god. I’ve got to get there.”

Charles P. Pierce (Main Event Writer): As soon as I heard about it, I basically hurled myself out a window.

Frank Deford: What was my sales pitch like? It wasn’t a reach, and I wasn’t blowing smoke. I’d say, “This paper is going to be the first of its kind. We’ve got this extraordinary staff and we’ve got a lot of money behind it. Go look up anything you want about Emilio Azcárraga. He’s into this, and these sorts of things have worked all over the world, so why can’t they work in the United States? Then I’d pause and say, “I understand it’s risky. We all know this is new territory. But you’re a sports guy. Don’t you want to be part of this?”

Rob Fleder (Main Event Editor): Here was this great adventure and chance to invent something new. It was clear even before it started, and certainly long before it failed, that you were going to get one chance to try this in your life. This was as close to a frontier as we had.

Pierce: Rob Fleder, who was one of the original founding members of Rotisserie baseball, literally in the Rotisserie restaurant, had seen some of my stuff in New England Monthly. He called and said, “Would you like to come down and talk about this thing we have?” So I went down to New York. They didn’t even have real offices yet. They were in some space with pieces of paper hanging on the door.

For all their fine work, somebody at Grantland should have known how to spell Glenn Stout’s name. Otherwise, this is a terrific read.

And while you are at it, dig Charles Pierce’s memories of “The National”:

Oh, money. Yeah, wait. I should tell this story about money, first. In the spring of 1991, the last spring of our newspaper’s life, I got a call from New York. Mike Lupica was leaving the paper to return to the New York Daily News, a development that surprised approximately nobody. He was taking with him his “Shooting From The Lip” column, the three-dot bullet template invented by the great Jimmy Cannon and subsequently appropriated by almost everyone else in the history of newspapers, including, most notably, in USA Today by Larry — “If it’s Wheatena, I’m all in!” — King. The column had been running in The National every Friday, and it had developed an audience. They wanted to keep the idea under a different name, and someone had mentioned that I’d done a similar kind of thing when I was writing a column at the Boston Herald. So they asked me if I’d do it.

Of course, I told them, but I’d need more money to do it.

How much, they asked.

I had no idea, so I quoted them a figure that I thought probably indicated I was on mushrooms at the time.

They didn’t even blink.

You start this week, they said.

Fun stuff.

CC Sabathia heads to the dugout after giving up a 2-0 lead in the seventh. (Photo Credit: Getty Images)

The start of Thursday’s game was delayed 3 hours and 27 minutes due to thunderstorms that ripped through the New York metropolitan area. The lone West Coast game in San Francisco started and finished before the Red Sox-Yankees series finale.

And if you thought a first-inning home run by Curtis Granderson, one that gave the Yankees a 2-0 lead, would be the start of a big night against Josh Beckett, you’d have thought wrong. Beckett, who entered the evening 2-0 against the Yankees this season, with 19 Ks and holding the Yankees to a .128 batting average against him through 14 innings, settled in and only allowed five more base runners (2 H, 2 HBP, 1 BB), and no one advanced beyond second base.

CC Sabathia, on the other hand, was an ace in his own right, but only through six innings. The turning point was a dumb-luck triple by Jed Lowrie to right field in the top of the seventh inning. The ball was scooting along the ground down the right field line, and Nick Swisher anticipated playing the carom. Instead, the ball stayed close to the ground and skidded, finding its way onto the metal below the padding of the wall and hydroplaned past Swisher and into the corner. Swisher fell down in the process. This mishap, all of which took about two seconds to develop, allowed David Ortiz, who led of the inning with a seemingly harmless single, to score.

At that point, you could sense the Red Sox’ attitude morph into a collective “We’ve got ’em now.” And they did. When the carnage of the inning was completed, 11 men were sent to the plate, eight got hits, and seven scored. Ortiz alone had two hits, scored a run, and drove in two. Ballgame over. The outs were louder than some of the hits. The singles by Jason Varitek, Jacoby Ellsbury, and the bases-loaded single by Adrian Gonzalez that eventually sent Sabathia to the showers were seeing-eye singles. Bleeders. But they were better than anything the Yankees could muster against Beckett.

The good tidings the Yankees brought home following a 6-3 West Coast trip have officially been erased. A one-game lead is now a two-game deficit. The Yankees are 0-6 against the Red Sox at home this season, and 1-8 against them overall. A quarter of the Red Sox’ wins and a third of the Yankees’ losses have come against each other.

We could say, “This is setting up for the typical second-half surge against the Red Sox,” but doing so could be a mistake. This Yankees team has not hit well with runners in scoring position. The Red Sox have. (Thursday’s split was 7-for-15 for the Red Sox, 0-for-5 for the Yankees). The Yankees’ bullpen is in shambles, with the recent news of Joba Chamberlain’s season ending and the high likelihood of his requiring Tommy John surgery. The starting lineup only carries one hitter with a batting average above .275.

To paraphrase former NFL coach Dennis Green from one of the all-time greatest post-game press conferences, the Red Sox are who we thought they would be. What are the Yankees?

Raining in the BX. Maybe they’ll get this one in…

The Yankees today announced that they will shut down Phil Hughes for the rest of his career rather than risk any further injuries.

General Manager Brian Cashman told reporters, “You can’t be too careful with young pitchers. And our franchise has so much invested in Hughes that we think the prudent course to ensure his long-term health is to never allow him to throw a baseball again.”

Phil Hughes had hoped to return to the Yankees earlier than never, but is facing his life-long rehabilitation with a brave face. “Your first instinct as a pitcher is, ‘hey I want to pitch.’ But after listening to the doctors and the coaches, it’s pretty clear that this is safest path for me. It stinks I won’t be able to go out there and help the team this year, or any year, but you have to look at the big picture.”

Drs Frank Jobe & James Andrews have submitted applications to dental schools across the country. “It took a smart team like the Yankees to finally figure out the scam. It was a good 30 years,” Dr. Andrews said from the throne room of his palace in the country of Sports-Hernia.

After season ending surgery to Joba Chamberlain shortened the bullpen, the Yankee organization declared they would make sweeping revisions in their pitcher development. Minor League pitch counts would be reduced from 90 to zero for all promising prospects. And Major League pitching coach Larry Rothschild will screen a few episodes of The Six Million Dollar Man in order to figure out to transition from human arms to robotic replacements.

Larry Rothschild said he would make some popcorn in preparation.

Speaking of Tommy John, Joba Chamberlain has a torn ligament in his right elbow and is likely done for the year.

Over at IIATMS, check out this piece by Josh Weinstock:  “What Makes a Groundball?”

[Photographs by Scott Mlyn]

Copyright @ 2011 Scott Mlyn All Rights Reserved.

I remember being fascinated by this movie poster when I was a kid. It was cool and sinister. Wasn’t until years later that I saw the movie, which remains overlooked, but is now available on Blue Ray DVD. Dig this Q&A with Peter O’Toole in the New York Times:

Q: How is it that “The Stunt Man” was as well-reviewed and widely nominated as it was, and yet played in so few theaters?

A.Don’t forget this is a long time ago, and I wasn’t very au fait with everything that was going on in any way. But apparently the guy who put up the bread, the money, I think he was a supermarket builder or something. [Melvin Simon, the producer, was a shopping mall developer.] He had bought the script and the entire idea on the fact that it was an art film, and it made sense on his balance books to lose money. I think eventually it crept into 11 cinemas, which is a bit shameful. [After a successful test run for “The Stunt Man” in Seattle, 20th Century Fox picked up distribution rights for the film but ordered only about 300 prints.]

Q.Was it disappointing to have put in so much effort into something that was not seen by a large number of viewers, or is that just the way it goes sometimes?

A.It’s almost the nature of my line of work. [chuckles] I began in the theater, don’t forget. I was with the Classical Repertory Company, the Bristol Old Vic, and we did 12 plays a year. Over a period of four years you can imagine the number of times one had the highest hopes [laughs] and you find you’re playing to – as the old actors used to say – Mr. and Mrs. Wood. Which meant nobody was in the audience but the seats. I’m used to it, but it was a disappointment.

For more on O’Toole check out Gay Talese’s 1963 Esquire profile, “Peter O’Toole on the Ould Sod.”

My father was a schvitzer. Schvitz is a Yiddish word for sweat. His mother was a schvitzer too (but only on one side of her face, it was the strangest thing). I remember calling the old man during the summer months. “How you doin’, Pop?”

“Wet,” he’ say, or “Damp,” or “Moist.”  Sometimes he’d just say, in his best Zero Mostel:  “HOT.”

I thought of the great family schvitzer last night watching Alfredo Aceves on TV. I have never seen a baseball player sweat like that. The bill of his cap was water-logged after a few batters, thick drops of perspiration falling in his face. Aceves was in trouble in the sixth inning, but then Brett Gardner froze at third on a passed ball, Derek Jeter to hit into a double play. Aceves didn’t stop sweating but he saved the rest of the bullpen and finished the game.

Hey Aceves, this schvitz’s for you.

[Photo Credit: Weegee]

On Tuesday night David Ortiz hit a massive home run and honored it with a party at home plate. He had so much fun, he did it again in his first at bat on Wednesday night, smashing a two-run, two-out drive deep into right field. This time he held the dinger a private affair in the dugout, but nevertheless set the tone for a route for the Red Sox. There was some pre-game blather about beaning Ortiz, but I guess Burnett didn’t read the back pages this morning. And anyway, I doubt he could have hit him even if he wanted to.

The Red Sox stomped on the Yankees, Burnett and Francisco Cervelli’s private parts until the score was 7-0. Then the Yankees finally solved the knuckle ball and began chipping away in the fourth. They knocked out Tim Wakefield and the score was 8-5 when they loaded the bases in the sixth for Derek Jeter. But he couldn’t keep the heat on former Yankee Alfredo Aceves and tapped into a rally-killing double play.

The double play was still in order because Brett Gardner couldn’t find the errant ball on a wild pitch and none of the runners advanced. For shame. In past years, Gardner scored over 45 per cent of the time he reached base. This year, he’s down to 39 per cent, and I have to think he’s spooked on the bases.

In a year where rousing, come-from-behind victories are the rarest breed, the Yanks’ fate was likely sealed with the double play. But Red Sox added three more with two outs in the ninth to put it beyond reach. The final, embarrassing scoreline was 11-6. Hello second place.

Even after getting rocked tonight, the Yankees have the best run differential in baseball by a hefty margin. They have had several heartbreaking blown leads and only a few miracle comebacks, so their actual record is less impressive than their statistics would suggest. The Red Sox have a more ordinary track record, but without the bad luck, they’ve got an actual record that matches their output. The result is a virtual tie atop the American League East, and one would think, two fairly even teams.

The results on the field have been anything but even. The Red Sox have dominated the Yankees this year with seven wins and only one loss. It’s annoying, disgusting and depressing but it’s not definitive. We know it’s not definitive because in 2009, the Yankees lost the first eight games against the Red Sox yet clawed back and ended the season with nine wins apiece. And then won the World Series.

Whether the 2011 Yankees may be able to pull off a similar turnaround remains to be seen, but either way, the season doesn’t end tonight. They send out their best pitcher tomorrow night against one of their biggest villains. I’d like to see them pull themselves off the mat and hand CC an early lead. Then I’d like to see CC hand Mariano a late lead. And then I’d like Mariano wrap up a win and reclaim a share of first place. It won’t seem so impossible once they do it.

Tonight gives the case of two unpredictable pitchers, A.J. Burnett and Tim Wakefield. They could be super, they could be garbage. I can’t call it, can you? I feel like the Yanks should win the game and the series but nothing’s shocking around these parts.

In the meantime, Mark Teixeira is in the line-up but Russell Martin (back) is out. Also, the Yanks placed Joba Chamberlain on the D.L. with a strained flexor muscle.

Derek Jeter SS
Curtis Granderson CF
Mark Teixeira 1B
Alex Rodriguez DH
Robinson Cano 2B
Nick Swisher RF
Brett Gardner LF
Eduardo Nunez 3B
Francisco Cervelli C

Never mind the blood lust, how about a win?

Let’s Go Yank-ees!

Itt was  difficult to concentrate on the game last night after Mark Teixeira got hit. What happens if he was seriously hurt? Almost immediately, we started talking about it in the game thread. Today, over at PB, Jay Jaffe offers “The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook”:

First Base: While losing Teixeira would have been a major blow to the offense given his current productivity, the Yankees would have no shortage of internal options to cover the position. The most obvious solution would be to move Nick Swisher to first, where he has 256 games (192 starts) of big league experience, and to sally forth with a Chris Dickerson/Andruw Jones platoon in right field, more on which momentarily. Additionally, Jorge Posada, who has 30 games and 16 starts at first, could figure into the picture against righties if his bat continues to show some life. After going 3-for-3 off the bench last night in Teixeira’s stead—including his first two hits of the season against lefties—he’s hitting .260/.374/.351 since May 1, which is certainly slappy but not entirely useless. Eric Chavez, who’s nearing a return to baseball-related activities, could eventually take at-bats against righties as well, and at some point, the Yankees would probably take a look at righty-swinging Jorge Vazquez, who has already mashed 19 homers at Triple-A Scranton while batting a lopsided .280/.326/.564.

…Third Base: The path of least resistance would call for plenty of Nunez and Pena until Chavez is ready. If Joe Girardi smoked what Joe Torre was smoking, the team could spot Russell Martin at the hot corner (his pre-conversion position), which could create some space for Jesus Montero (still hitting a relatively uninspiring .294/.336/.416 at Scranton) to assume some of the catcher duties. Not likely, but not impossible. Another relatively improbable option would involve Brandon Laird, Scranton’s regular third baseman and an object of wintertime fascination around these parts; he’s hitting a disappointing .275/.306/.392 with three homers this year after bopping 25 homers between Trenton and Scranton last year.