So just how long should the Yankees wait before making some kind of move with Derek Jeter and/or Jorge Posada? While it’s become fashionable to proclaim both players as fully cooked and ready to begin their five-year waits for Hall of Fame consideration, those calls convey ignorance and a lack of knowledge about the Yankee organization. First off, it’s foolish to make full judgments based on the first month of the season. The same people that always cry out “sample size” conveniently forget about the principle when it involves players they don’t like. Jeter has been so reviled by some in the Sabermetric community that they’re ready to drop the guillotine at a moment’s notice.

His critics will quickly add that Jeter’s poor performance is a continuation of his 2010 finish, but his overall 2010 numbers were hardly as bad as what he’s done early in 2011. On the whole, Jeter was a passable player in 2010. So let’s give it more than a month before we proclaim a death knell. I would suggest the Yankees give Jeter at least until the end of May, if not until the middle of June, before they drop him to a lower spot in the batting order. And if his lack of hitting continues beyond that, let’s say into July, then it would certainly be fair for the Yankees to consider removing him entirely from the starting lineup.

There is another reason to have patience. Who exactly is ready to step in to become the starting shortstop? Bucky Dent and Tony Kubek are not available. Eduardo Nunez’ throwing problems make it clear that he’s not ready NOW; he might be later this season, he might be in 2012, but he’s clearly not ready at the present time. Ramiro Pena, starting at Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes Barre, is an excellent defensive shortstop but isn’t likely to represent any improvement over Jeter’s current hitting. Are Yankee fans really ready to wade through a bottom-third of the lineup that has both Pena and Brett Gardner? I know I’m not.

Then there’s the case of Posada, who’s coming off a respectable season in 2010. Would it be smart to give up on Posada so quickly, especially when he’s at least shown significant power over the first 30 games? I don’t think so. I would suggest a similar timetable with Posada. If he’s still struggling badly at the end of May, it would be fair to consider a platoon with another player, perhaps Andruw Jones. And if Posada is still struggling into July, and the Yankees are in danger of falling out of contention, then yes, it might be the right time for a total replacement.

In the case of Posada, the Yankees DO have tangible replacement options. Jones is one; the other is super prospect Jesus Montero, who is close to being ready to hit in the major leagues, if not handle regular catching duties. (Montero is finally drawing a few walks and has his batting average up to .372.) Montero could be just what an aging offense needs, particularly if Jeter’s punchless hitting continues. The problem with demoting Posada is what to do with him? Teams do not need backup DH’s who cannot play the field and cannot run the bases. Unless the Yankees change their mind about using Posada as a backup catcher, he could become a roster albatross by the middle of the summer.

It’s certainly possible that Posada and Jeter, who’s been nicknamed “Captain Groundout” by Rob Neyer, might be done as useful players. It’s just too early in a long season to draw that conclusion once and for all. So let’s give it a little more time before we make them walk the plank…

(more…)

More Chet.

[Photograph by William Claxton]

No showing from the Score Truck, a bad throw by Derek Jeter’s sub, and the Yanks wasted another decent start by A.J. Burnett as they lost to the Tigers, 6-3. Eric Chavez was hurt and there are hard feelings all around as the Bombers limp out of Detroit. I missed the game and got nuthin’ fuh ya, man.

Tomorrow is a new day…deep in the heart of Texas.

Time for a big start from A.J. and some big hits from the Yankee hitters.

It’s an afternoon affair at Comerica and we’ll be cheerin’:

Let’s Go Yank-ees!

[Image via Tropical Toxic]

Here is a wonderful essay by Pat Jordan which originally appeared in The Southern Review…

The Haircut

By Pat Jordan

Susie said I was starting to look like a French diplomat. She meant my hair. Long over my ears and swooping back on the sides like wings into a DA in back. I’d let it grow out of indifference ever since we left Fort Lauderdale three months ago to take up residence in Abbeville in the up-country of South Carolina. Abbeville was a small town of fewer than five thousand, a little bit old, a little bit worn, and a little bit out of the way. It was a “very Southern town,” code words of the locals which meant more than a few of its citizens had not yet reconciled themselves to the defeat of the Confederate States of America in the War between the States. They referred to those not born and raised in one of the original Confederate states as “Yankees,” but tried not to do it to their faces. When they slipped up, they quickly apologized, “I’m sorry I called you a Yankee.” I told them I was a “Yankee,” a Connecticut Yankee, actually, and that only people from New England were truly Yankees. People from New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, et cetera, were just northerners. They smiled, but did not accept that distinction.

There was a monument on the town square, a mini version of the Washington Monument, in Washington, D.C., but this one was devoted to the memory of soldiers who had given their lives for the CSA. On special weekends there were reenact- ments on the square. Men with beards, dressed in butternut and gray uniforms, rode tired-looking horses around the brick streets of the square to the strains of “Dixie.” The men carried flags, the Stars and Bars, which they waved at the townspeople, who waved back with mini flags. Last year, two black Abbevillians had donned Confederate uniforms and marched. Shelley, the owner of the Rough House, a local bar, told me Yankees didn’t realize that a lot of slaves fought and died for the Stars and Bars. I asked, “Why?” He looked at me and said, “Because it’s part of their heritage, just like ours.”

Shelley is very Southern. Over his bar he has a yellowed proclamation heralding Senator Strom Thurmond Appreciation Day, Abbeville, 1984. Shelley’s mother owns an antiques store and one of the items she had for sale was a painting of Abraham Lincoln. When Shelley saw it, he waited until his mother was busy, then took the painting and disposed of it. Shelley is a professional actor—stage, screen, TV. I told him he’d be perfect as Jeb Stuart for one of the reenactments.

Then I said, “I could play Grant.” He gave me a pained smile. And then he gave me some books to educate me about the War between the States. The books claimed the war was not about slavery, that was a pernicious Yankee lie, but was really about States’ Rights. He directed me around the corner to a bookstore that would further my education about the South’s insurrection. I stood in front of the bookstore window above which was a sign, All Things Confederate. It was closed. I saw a big Stars and Bars flag on a wall inside. On the front window was an ink drawing of General William Tecumseh Sherman over which was printed: Wanted For War Crimes.

The genteel ladies of the town who live in big, colonial houses on North Main hosted reenactment parties at which “Period dress is optional.” In Abbeville there is only one period of note, 1860 to 1865. Abbeville calls itself “The Birthplace and the Deathbed of the Confederacy.” When Jefferson Davis fled the Yankee army in 1865, he stopped long enough in Abbeville to sign papers dissolving the CSA. Five years earlier he had hosted a conference of South Carolina statesmen in Abbeville, where they signed the first articles of secession of any of the Southern states. That conference was held on a hill where our 1884 Victorian house sits. It’s called “Secession Hill.” Two concrete pillars stand sentinel on either side of Secession Hill, with plaques embedded in them that urge Abbevillians never to forget that once “no nation rose so white and fair” as the CSA. Our house is on top of that hill, on Magazine Street, named not for the magazines I work for, but a munitions factory that manufactured gunpowder as far back as the Revolutionary War. There’s a big old oak tree at the top of the hill. Rumor has it that during the great unpleasantness of 1860 to 1865, Yankee spies were hanged from that tree.

(more…)

A downstairs neighbor of ours smokes and we can smell it coming through the radiator vent. It’s noticeable, maybe because we’re so sensitive to cigarette smoke now. Both Em and I used to smoke and when we were growing up it seems as if all the grown-ups we knew smoked. If you are of a certain age, I dare you to find childhood pictures without an ashtray on the living room coffee table. You could smoke in movie theaters, at the game, on the train, and certainly in your own home.

That’s not the case these days and I don’t miss it though it’s still hard to believe that you are getting a bargain if you can cop a pack of smokes for $10.

[Photograph Joseph Holmes]

The one and only.

Freddy Garcia pitched a nice game tonight–made one big mistake to Magglio Ordonez is all–but the Yanks were shut-down by Max Scherzer, who was awfully good, allowing just four hits. Rough night for visitors as the Yanks lost again to the Tigers, this time 4-0.

Bombers turn to A.J. Burnett tomorrow afternoon and we’ll go to sleep praying for a Motor City pit stop from the Score Truck.

Meanwhile, as an aside, I used to have a clean dislike for the Angels. They gave the Yanks a hard time, sent them home twice in October. It was easy to hate them. But now, it’s something different–I curse them because they can’t beat the Red Sox. They’d be losing right now if the game wasn’t delayed by rain. Chumps.

Baby got back.

[Picture by Horst P. Horst]

Bronx Banter Book Excerpt

Here is Part Two of Evel Knievel’s Snake River Canyon Jump from Leigh Montville’s new book, “Evel:The High-Flying Life of Evel Knievel: American Showman, Daredevil, and Legend.”

(Click here for Part One)

Ten . . .

The time was 3:36 in the afternoon of September 8, 1974. The numbers came through the radio in the pilot helmet clamped tight over the man of the moment’s troubled head. No stopping now. He was going to travel over Snake River Canyon in this bucket of previously used bolts. Or not.

There was no turning back now. He was strapped into this compartment in the front end of this retread airplane fuel tank that had been salvaged from a government junkyard, one of those fuel tanks you see on the wingtips of fi ghter planes or private jets, a fuel tank that cost no more than $100 as scrap metal. He waited to be blasted into the sky. Maybe blasted to smithereens. Blasted in some manner or shape or form. That was for sure.

The fuel tank, which was supposed to be a rocket of course, had been altered, painted, given some kind of “jet propulsion” system, a set of surplus helicopter fi ns had been stuck on the side, and some corporate logos had been added to complete the red-white-and-blue American commercial package, but truth was truth: he was riding a homemade piece of shit. Three smart kids with an Encyclopedia Brittanica and a whole lot of spare time could have made this thing. Shot it off from their backyard.

Nine . . .

The sense of doom that had been an undigested worry in his stomach for the longest time had grown and grown in the past months, days, hours, and now, in the fi nal minutes and seconds, it filled his entire body, gushed out, covered his every word and action. He was a dead man. He had talked so much about the risk, the peril involved, while selling this event, this stunt, this whatever it was across the country, that he had convinced himself. He was a goner. He had created his own demise, built it from scratch, from an idea in his head to a public extravaganza televised around the world. “Man Kills Himself.” Come on, folks. Get your money up. Bring the wife and kids. “Right now I don’t think I’ve got better than a fifty-fifty chance of making it,” he had told Robert Boyle of Sports Illustrated. “It’s an awful feeling. I can’t sleep nights. I toss and turn, and all I can see is that big ugly hole in the ground grinning up at me like a death’s head. You know, I’ve always been concerned about kids—not just my own three, but all kids— what kind of an image I’m providing for them, what kind of an inspiration. I don’t know now. Maybe I’m leading them down a path to self-destruction. Our house in Butte is surrounded night and day by people wanting to take a look at me, to take something as a souvenir. And that damn little Robbie of mine, the 11-year-old, you know what he’s gone and done, He has got a big old sign out in front that says ‘SEE EVEL JR JUMP—25 CENTS.’ It’s not a good thing.”

Eight . . .

Push the button. That was all he had to do. Push the button and away he went. He had little control over what happened next. He had no steering wheel. He had no gears to shift. Nothing. He was so cramped he couldn’t put his arms out and attempt to fl y as a last gasp if trouble arose. The last- resort personal parachute hanging from his chest was nuisance rather than comfort. He had his hand on the lever for the drogue shoot, that was it. Wait ten seconds after liftoff and let it go. It would work without him if he passed out. He really was a passenger, not a driver. When he pushed that one button in front of him, the plug would be pulled on the seventy-seven- gallon boiler underneath, the water inside superheated in the past fourteen hours to 475 degrees, and 5,000 pounds of steam pressure would be released. The old airplane fuel tank . . . okay, the rocket . . .the rocket would be traveling at 200 miles per hour by the time it reached the end of the 108- foot ramp into the sky, traveling as fast as 400 miles per hour when it hit the height of its arc, 2,000 feet in the air. (Plus the 540- foot drop into the canyon. That meant he would be almost half a mile off the ground.) If all went well, the drogue parachute and then the big parachute would deploy from the back of the rocket, and he would slow down as he reached the other side. He would be traveling no more than fifteen miles per hour when a pointed shock absorber, sort of a pogo stick on the front of the rocket, would cushion the landing on the moonscape on the other side.

This, of course, was all hypothesis. No one ever had done this.

(more…)

Jonah Keri headlines Gelf’s Varsity Letters Speaking series tomorrow night. I’m not going to be able to make it due to a conflict in my schedule but Jonah is a rip–as evidenced by this interview with Gelf. If you are downtown, do yourself a favor and pop in.

Man, I’ve been loving these big, dark olives they’ve got at Fairway. They are meaty and buttery. Also come smoked but I prefer the regular jammies.

Witness: A very beautiful man.

[Photo Credit: Alfred Eisenstaedt]

Check out this brief but insightful interview with Wright Thompson over at the Bleacher Report. In it, Thompson talks about the importance of scenes in non fiction writing:

Use the right scenes

A bad scene is often worse than no scene. And I understand the difficulty of dealing with no access. I know that I have the luxury now of passing on stories if the access won’t give me the tools I need to hit a home run. I get that isn’t indicative of the real world, or the job I had to do at the K.C. Star.

But still, be aware of this. Deal with it as best as you can while dealing with the realities of the modern sports media relations machine.

Here’s a test: If you have to do verbal gymnastics to get from the scene to the story that comes after, you need a new scene. I’ve done it more times than I care to remember: scene, then bizarre twisted sentence or two to get me back on track. Take it from someone who’s made that mistake: don’t.

Understand how the scenes fit together

Sometimes a great scene doesn’t work. I recently wrote a story about cricket and couldn’t use perhaps the funniest thing I observed because it took away from the arc. It was a great scene for some story … just not this one.

Try to remember that. The story is more important than any individual part.

The story is the thing, the story is the thing, the story is the thing.

A mother on the subway this morning. She sat on the end seat, her infant on her lap, facing her. New kid, couldn’t be more than a couple of months old.

A big dude, teenager, got on the train and stood with his back to the door, right above the mother. His elbow was only a few inches away from the her head. He didn’t see her. I wondered how we manage to negotiate space in this town, wondered if he was uncaring or just oblivious. Then he looked down and saw the kid. He moved his arm, his stone face softened, and he smiled.

09 Ma and Pa

[Picture via The Dust Congress]

On a frigid night in Detroit, C.C. Sabathia gave up two hard hit balls to start the first and the Tigers scored two runs before the inning was over. Later on, two more runs scored off Sabathia–bunch of dunkers. The big fella wasn’t on his A-game, still, he was impressive, bending without breaking. It was a grind but also a fun performance, watching him compete–“gritty and gutty,” in the parlance of our times.

On the other hand, Brad Penny was effective for the Tigers but brutal to sit through. “If you have to write a term paper,” said John Sterling at one point early in the game, “you can do it between pitches.” Bob Lorenz and John Flaherty, the decidedly no-frills announcing team for YES, were calm and sober, a welcome departure from the usual YES histrionics. The Bombers were a sorry sight on the base paths and not much better at the plate, although Jorge Posada hit the ball hard a couple of times and is starting to swing the bat well.

Oh, well. A night to forget as the Tigers end their seven-game losing streak.

Final Score: Tigers 4, Yanks 2.

[Picture by Alfred Eisenstaedt]

Robbie Cano is back; Swish has the night off. Line up looks like such:

Derek Jeter SS
Curtis Granderson CF
Mark Teixeira 1B
Alex Rodriguez 3B
Robinson Cano 2B
Jorge Posada DH
Andruw Jones RF
Russell Martin C
Brett Gardner LF

Never mind the preamble…Let’s Go Yank-ees!

[Picture by Steve Perille]

Bronx Banter Book Excerpt

Here’s a smile for you. From Leigh Montville’s terrific new book, “Evel: The High-Flying Life of Evel Knievel:American Showman, Daredevil and Legend.” I reviewed the book in SI last week and can’t recommend it enough.

“Most of us think of what we do as writing,” said William Nack. “But Leigh Montville sits down and says, ‘Why don’t I tell you all a story?’ ”

“My philosophy has always been that sports should be fun—a thing of joy,” Montville once told SI. “I don’t get up a whole lot of outrage; I’d rather laugh. What I really like to do is take something and stand it on its head, look at it that way, from a different perspective.”

Montville is one of our best pure storyteller’s and he’s perfectly suited to tell the tale tale of Evel Knievel. Here’s the first of two-part excerpt detailing Knievel’s most infamous stunt–Snake River Canyon.

Enjoy.

Whoosh

The man of the moment made the moment a family affair. If this was going to be his last day on earth, then he would go out looking like a church deacon. Linda and the three kids would be there. His mother would be there from Reno. His father had been there all week. (“Bob always had to have a challenge,” his dad said at a press conference, sounding a bit like Ward Cleaver. “I tried to discourage him for years for fear of injury.”) His eighty-one-year-old grandmother, Emma, would be there. His half-sisters would be there from both sides of the family tree. His cousin, Father Jerry Sullivan, a Catholic priest from Carroll College in Helena, Montana, would give the benediction before liftoff.

His lawyers, accountants, bartenders, friends, and fellow reprobates from long ago had appeared already at the site. Bus trips had gone down from Butte. There had been a mass migration from the city, people driving the 364 miles in five, six, seven hours, depending on speed. The Butte High band had gone down to play the National Anthem. Everyone had assembled, former promoters, fans, everyone . . . Ray Gunn, his first assistant from Moses Lake in the early days, had returned for the show, friends again, signed up now to watch the jump from a helicopter and carry a bottle of Wild Turkey to the other side for an instant celebration.

The day would be part wake, part wedding reception, an all-time Humpty Dumpty experience. The broken pieces of Robert Craig Knievel’s life would be put together for this one time as they never had been put together, not once, in all of his years.

He would fly from Butte in the Lear in the morning with his family. Watcha would be at the controls and would buzz the crowd at the canyon, a dramatic touch. Watcha and everybody else would switch to a helicopter at the Twin Falls City-County Airport, arrive at the site to great applause, and the man of the moment would put on the flight suit in his trailer, and the show would begin.

Unless, of course, he canceled the show. “I have two demands that if you don’t meet I’ll cancel the show,”

Knievel said in an early morning phone call to Bob Arum from Butte. Arum prepared for the worst.

“First,” Knievel said, “I want to have all the press meet my helicopter when it lands. I want to make a statement.”

Arum said that would be impossible. Moving the entire press corps through the crowd could start a riot. (Another riot.) What he could do was bring Knievel to the press tent. That was possible. Knievel could make his statement that way. Same result.

Knievel agreed. “Second,” he said. “I want you to bring your two sons to my trailer before the jump. I want to say some words to them before the jump because people are going to blame you for my death and I want them to know it was my idea. And I want them to sit with my family at the jump.”

“Done,” Arum said, figuring that the two boys, ages eleven and nine, would do what he told them. “I’ll get them there.”

Knievel seemed sentimental in everything he did that morning. He seemed to be turning off the lights, locking all the doors. Just in case. He had a picture of the canyon, just the canyon, no Skycycle or ramp, that he secretly signed, “Linda, I love you,” across the blue sky. He told Kelly, his oldest son, last thing before everybody left Butte for the jump, to pretend to go back into the house for his shaving kit and hang the picture on the bedroom wall. He wanted that waiting for his wife if somehow the results turned out badly.

Even when he arrived at the site—plane flight, helicopter, there—he was sentimental. Even when he talked to the press.

“When I weighed last night all the good things and the bad things that were said, it came out a million to three for the good,” he told the press after he landed in Watcha’s helicopter. “So I hope all your landings in life are happy ones—and I thank you from the bottom of my heart.”

(more…)

Welcome to the new-look Bronx Banter, brought to you by Laura Chambliss and Ken Arneson. I wouldn’t have been able to do it without them and I can’t thank them enough for their talent and dedication.

As you can see, we are now designed more like a magazine or newspaper so you can search out your favorite subjects and dig through the archives with ease. I have just begun to go through and tag the entire Bronx Banter archives but there is enough to get started (this will be a work-in-progress with the hope that eventually every Banter post will be categorized and filed).

Nine recent posts will appear at the top of the page in the photo gallery but the regular features like  Beat of the Day and Taster’s Cherce, will have their own spot.  You can also access all of the most recent posts on the sidebar at the right hand side of the page.

So dig in and have at it. As always, we’re thrilled to have you.

[Photograph by Ruth Orkin]