I gave up my seat for an older woman on the subway this morning. She was wearing a heavy green coat and carrying two shopping bags and a bulky purple purse.

I stood above her after she sat down. She had long black hair, speckled with gray, and a silk pink and purple scarf on her head, tied just under her chin. Something about her face, the shape of her mouth, reminded me of my grandmother on my father’s side. She raised her eyebrows as if she was having a conversation, which in fact she was, silently, with herself.

Her mouth chewed quickly and then I looked down and saw that she was holding a box of Dots. Eating Dots at 7:30 in the morning. It made me think–if you had to eat candy for breakfast, what would it be?

It is still raining in New York.

Yanks, O’s–let’s get this in and Let’s Go Yank-ees!

[Picture by Amanda Friedman]

Look what I found, another dope site.

Hmmm, toaster bacon.

Bacon’s a fruit.

Check out this appreciation of Lumet from my friend Mike Fox, a British cameraman who worked on the second unit of “Lawrence of Arabia,” and “Lord Jim,” was was the camera operator on “Hope and Glory” and “Dangerous Liasons”:

I never had the privilege of working with Sidney Luemt, though close friends of mine did (on “The Deadly Affair”) when he was making films here. They liked him a lot.

I find it very difficult to place Lumet into any kind of genre, his films were so varied in content and technique. But his early brilliance was beyond the merest shadow of a doubt. “12 Angry Men” still stands even after all these years as the faultless paradigm for a one-set movie. (Hitchcock’s “Rope”, years before, failed miserably trying this.) How to analyse the success of “12 Angry Men”? God knows. Reginald Rose’s faultless screenplay; incredible casting; immaculate direction; atmospherics; credibility… I could go on. (One of the film’s many claims to distinction, according to Henry Fonda in various talk shows, was that it never returned its negative cost. In fact, I don’t believe this. United Artists – who bankrolled Woody Allen for years purely for the prestige it gave them – were one of the better regarded distributors, but they still used Hollywood’s notoriously bent accounting methods. On paper, distributors there could prove with ease, and did, that pictures like “Avatar” and “Titanic” actually lost them a great deal of money – thus relieving them of having to pay out contracted royalties to all and sundry.)

“Dog Day Afternoon” also broke new ground. Wonderfully made, and introducing Al Pacino as a young and remarkable actor (Marty Bregman’s protégée), whose performance was outstanding. (Pity he’s become a parody of himself, today much more a star than he was once an actor. It’s what Hollywood hype and big money does to talented actors.) And “Serpico” also deserves, at least, an honourable mention. But what always amazed me was “The Hill”. This subject was so British and Lumet’s direction so insightful, so perceptive, of all too typical British mores and class prejudices – embedded, double-distilled, into the British army – that I could barely believe that an American director could zero-in so accurately to their many British and very subtle dysfunctions. But Lumet did, and brilliantly so.

Having said all that: how can one pontificate on the work of a director who was so prolific; whose works were sometimes so great and sometimes so disappointing (“The Wiz”; “Gloria”–why a remake of a Cassavetes original done so well?; “Last of the Mobile Hot-Shots”). Of course, great creators must be allowed to fail. Even so, one always expected more and better from Lumet. And yet his better always tended to be of a type: New York, crime, cops, corruption, injustice, human weakness. So what. I know of directors pretending to greater talent who would give a kidney to have Lumet’s list of credits.

I guess if one had to sum up Sidney Lumet, one could do so by looking at the record: the film of his that was, run-away, the most deserving of 1958’s Oscar for Best Picture and Best Director was “12 Angry Men”. But it came up against David Lean and his “The Bridge On the River Kwai”, and they pissed it. Uncompromising art against hard-headed commercialism (gratuitously casting an almost redundant William Holden for American audiences). Lumet never ‘won’ and Academy Award, though he was honoured with one for his lifetime achievements.

It was great to have known Sidney Lumet – even if, personally, at second-hand. Without doubt, the movie industry was made a far better place for his presence.

[Picture by Gary Roberts]

The other night I was in a cab with a chatty Russian driver from Brooklyn, a fat guy with a baby face.

He didn’t shut up the entire time which was okay with me. When he got to my apartment building he turned to me and said, “My father had four rules to life. One, whatever you do, try your best everyday. Some days won’t work out–hell, some days I can hardly leave my house–but try your best. Number two, don’t pay attention to what other people say because who cares? So, there you have it.”

“What about the other two?” I said.

“Ah, I forget. I have it written down somewhere.” He shrugged.  “What counts is this: Do your best everyday, disregard what they say.””

[Photo Credit: Wired.com]

Rainouts.

A.J. goes today, Hughes tomorrow. Mark Feinsand has more on Hughes in the Daily News.

And here is Brian Costello on Hughes’ early-season struggles in the Post:

“It’s obviously something to be worried about,” Hughes said. “This is my job, my livelihood and when I don’t have the stuff I know I’m capable of going out there with, it’s worrisome and it’s frustrating. I’m still confident in the fact that it will be there, but it’s something I’m worried about.”

Well, at least the Yanks have Kevin Silwood, no, wait…

[Photo Credit: Excalipoor]

The O’s make their first trip of the season to the Bronx tonight, the start of a three-game series. Buck’s got ’em lookin’ good so far, doesn’t he?

 Cliff has the preview.

We do the cheering.

Let’s Go Yank-ees!

Picture by Patrick Joust.

The latest from Joe Sheehan:

[Derek Jeter is] just like hundreds of late-thirties baseball players who have lost the fraction of a second of reaction time or bat speed or both that represent the difference between being a major leaguer and being a minor leaguer. I cannot emphasize enough just how small a difference we’re talking about here. The difference between being good enough and not isn’t heart or desire or dedication or work ethic, although those things can close the gap. The difference is biology, physiology, musculature. It’s these tiny edges one guy has on another, and the edges don’t last forever. Almost every player crosses the line at some point. It is quite possible that Jeter has done so, moving in microscopic increments over the past three years, and is no longer on the right side of it.

Like any competitor he’s fighting the process, working extensively on mechanical changes this spring that would serve to cancel the lost microseconds, then discarding them before tax day when the results weren’t there. Leave aside the visuals and look at the output. The “toe-tap” approach Kevin Long looked to instill only seemed to exacerbate Jeter’s inability to get the ball in the air. A season after he hit nearly two of every three balls in play on the ground, he’s hit four of every five on the ground to kick off 2011. You can count the line drives he’s hit on one hand and the fly balls he’s hit on the other. Two years ago, Jeter went through a similar process to sustain his defense, working on his flexibility to improve his range. That change took, at least for a season, but this one appears, in the early going, to be moot.

Oy.

Guest Post By William D. Jackson

Last Friday, I checked into my Facebook account and saw a post from a friend referring to Sidney Lumet, the renowned director of such movies as “12 Angry Men,” “Serpico,” and “Dog Day Afternoon.” I instantly knew he was being memorialized.

I was caught by surprise, actually; the same way I was surprised when Sidney Pollack died. They were both full of energy, even if they appeared worn around the edges. Mr. Lumet certainly appeared to have walked a long way to the stage he was currently sitting on when I attended the TriBeCa Film Fest preview of “Before The Devil Knows You’re Dead” in 2007. I was with a friend who’s a big Phillip Seymour Hoffman fan; he was there with Lumet and Ethan Hawke. My friend begged me to stand up and ask a question during the Q&A afterward, so I stood up and got noticed.

“I just wanted to say two things,” I said. “Mr. Hoffman, my friend here is a big fan of yours and wants to say hi” to which he and the audience laughed as she squirmed in her seat. “The other thing is, being that you shot most of this on location around the city, I wonder if you have any war stories to share concerning that experience.”

Hoffman talked about how while they were filming one scene inside a car with Marisa Tomei, they had to pipe in air because it was so hot inside, that after literally having a fan or an ac in the back seat out of frame that had broken down early on. Sidney spoke about how much give and take there is when you’re on location, but for the most part he loved it. His favorite shooting days were in Astoria, Queens. I sensed a reflective look from both of them, and Hoffman looked at me the whole time as if to say, “Ahh, I know you’re in the biz!”

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Joe Posnanski talks with Bill James.

[Picture by Bags]

Last week I had a piece on George Kimball and “At the Fights” in Sports Illustrated. First time I’ver ever made the magazine.

I’m bursting with pride about it, man, I won’t lie.

Much has been made of the ever-increasing frequency of Derek Jeter’s ABs ending in a grounder to short or second.

I decided to take a look at this via Baseball Reference.  Here is Jeter’s year-by-year games, ABs that ended in a ball to the infield, total ABs for the year, and the percentage of total ABs that ended in the infield.

Verdict: Many more worms are dying at the hands of the Captain.

And suddenly it is warm in New York, at least for a minute.

Skirts, skirts, where are all the ice cream skirts?

Pauline Kael on “Dog Day Afternoon” (from “When The Lights Go Down”):

In “Dog Day Afternoon,” we don’t want any explanation of how it is that Sonny (Al Pacino) lives in both heterosexual and homosexual marriages. We accept the idea because we dont really believe in patterns of behavior anymore–only in behavior. Sonny, who is trapped in the middle of robbing a bank, with a crowd gathering in the street outside, is a working-class man who got into this mess by trying to raise money for Leon (Chris Sarandon) to have a sex-change operation, ye the audience doesn’t laugh. The most touching element in the film is Sonny’s inability to handle all the responsibilities he has assumed. Though he is half-crazed by his situation, he is trying to do the right thing by everybody–his wife and children, the suicidal Leon, the hostages in the bank. In the sequence in which Sonny dictates his will, we can see that inside this ludicrous bungling robber there’s a complicatedly unhappy man, operating out of a sense of noblesse oblige.

The structure of “Dog Day Afternoon” loosens in the last three-quarters of an hour, but that was the part I particularly cared for. This picture is one of the most satisfying of all the movies starring New York City because the director, Sidney Lumet, and the screenwriter, Frank Pierson, having established that Sonny’s grandstanding gets the street crowd on his side against the cops, and that even the tellers are on his side, let us move into the dark, confused areas of Sonny’s frustrations and don’t explain everything to us. They trust us to feel without our being told how to feel. They prepare us for a confrontation scene between Sonny and Leon, and it never comes, but even that is all right, because of the way that Pacino and Sarandon handle their contact by telephone; Sonny’s anxiety and Leon’s distress are so pure that there’s no appeal for sympathy–no star kitsch to separate us from the nakedness of the feelings on the screen.

How about a little Talking Heads to get us going today?

CC Sabathia vs. Josh Beckett was billed to be a pitcher’s duel. In terms of score, it was a pitcher’s duel. But it wasn’t a “classic duel” in the way Clemens-Pedro May 28, 2000 was, where two strikeout masters overpowered hitters from the outset. Sabathia bent, but didn’t break, while Beckett was as dominant as he perhaps has ever been.

Sabathia had his B game, maybe his C game. His final line was an alphanumeric dream: 5 2/3 IP, 9 H, R, ER, 4 BB, 4 K, 118 pitches, 69 strikes. But as he’s done so often in his two Yankee seasons, Sabathia demonstrated an ability to make big pitches to get outs at crucial times. He allowed 13 baserunners but only one crossed home plate.

Beckett, on the other hand looked like the 20-year-old who led the Florida Marlins to a 2003 title, yielding just two hits and striking out 10. Beckett effectively mixed a two-seam fastball, four-seam fastball, and his wicked curveball to keep the Yankees off balance, and off the scoresheet. He tossed eight shutout innings and retired the last 14 batters he faced. Jonathan Papelbon came on and retired the side in order in the 9th.

Given Beckett’s mastery and the Red Sox leaving 16 men on base, the Yankees were fortunate to lose by only a 4-0 margin.

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With the Yanks and Sox playing tonight, today gives cooking and cleaning and hanging around, reading the paper, watching some NBA, checking out the Mets, and loungin’ with the Mrs and the pussy cats.

[Photo Credit: Nina Server via This Isn’t Happiness]

Beautiful day at Fenway Park. The game was no gem, it moved at a characteristically glacial pace, but in the end the Yanks ran away from the Red Sox and won, 9-4. Russell Martin hit two dingers, Curtis Granderson hit a bomb against a left hander and Robinson Cano also hit a long homer. Eric Chavez had three hits, including two doubles off the Green Monster and Alex Rodriguez had a couple of hits too.

Ivan Nova did not pitch well, didn’t even make it through five innings (Carlos Silva signed a minor league deal in the middle of the game; who is next–Rudy May?). The game was close for a minute at 5-4 but David Robertson got out of trouble and then the Yanks pulled away. Joba Chamberlain tossed a nice 1-2-3 inning and Soriano and Rivera weren’t needed (even though Rivera warmed up in the ninth just in case).

A nice win on a pretty day.

Ahhhh.