That’s the old term for a fastball pitcher who always has a lethal curve ball. Yeah, the home plate umpire had a generous strike zone last night, but Justin Verlander was a load. What an impressive performance.

I liked the A’s chances against the Red Sox more than I like the Tigers’ chances, but so be it:

Let’s Go Tigers.

For our man Ken:

Let’s Go A’s!

[Photo Via: It’s a Long Season]

Never mind nuthin’:

Let’s Go Buc-cos!

You can watch “League of Denial,” the PBS Frontline documentary about concussions and the NFL here.

Say the Pirates lose today, what’s worse the pain Pirates fans will feel or the pain Braves fans feel right now? Or the pain that A’s fans would feel should they lose tomorrow night. The Pirates are the Cinderella team of the 2013 playoffs. But the Braves and A’s keep making the playoffs only to get knocked out before they reach the Whirled Serious.

Last night I IM’d with an A’s fan and he said the Game 4 loss would haunt him for the rest of the winter. Unless, I said, they win Game 5.

He said, “The A’s never win Game 5.”

And what could I say to that? Other than I hope they prove him wrong.

[Photo Credit: Rob Carr/Getty Images]

Couple of Game 4’s today in the ALDS. I say the Tigers force a Game 5 and the Red Sox finish off the Rays.

Hope I’m wrong, of course, on both counts.

Never mind those nerves:

Let’s Go Base-Ball!

[Image Credit: Churchman73; Mike Sudal/WSJ]

There are 23 large iron lamps affixed to the ceiling. The tints of neon light they throw down into the indoor batting cage, a concrete room tucked deep into the guts of Yankee Stadium, vary according to when they were last smashed out by errant balls and replaced. Under these lights, largely out of sight, Bam Bam (or “Sir Bam Bam” – but we’ll get to that later) is at the pinnacle of the game that promised much, disappointed more, and then came through for him after all. Across the street, the much brighter lights under which he and all that he was supposed to be receded and then disappeared have been leveled, along with the rest of the old Yankee Stadium.

From up close, the blunt crack of a Major Leaguer striking a ball with a bat – even on a tee – will startle almost anyone every single time. Not Bam Bam. He doesn’t even flinch anymore. He watches, and then places yet another ball onto the batting tee for his latest charge to smack into the netting that encases them both.

It has been 24 years since he first arrived at Yankee Stadium; 20 since the Yankees pawned their phenom off to Japan. This is his first time back, the culmination of one of the most interesting journeys in baseball, a bridge from the place baseball was to where it seems headed. His family is in town from Curacao on one of the last days of a season long since lost, with another loss a full seven hours away. But Bam Bam, who wore World Series championship rings on both his middle fingers before changing into a pair of San Francisco Giants shorts and a T-shirt, is mending the mechanical defect in the swing of a 27-year-old backup catcher five at-bats – one hit – into his first big-league call-up.

That’s the beginning of Leander Schaerlaeckens’ fine portrait of Hensley “Bam Bam” Meulens. Head on over the SB Nation Longform and dig the rest of it.

The Dodgers are the first team to advance to the championship series. Over at ESPN, Howard Bryant has a long piece on the rebuilding of a once-proud franchise:

For Johnson, being in the ownership circle is new in baseball, but not new personally. Johnson sold both his equity stakes in Starbucks Coffee and in the Lakers at least in part to finance joining Guggenheim’s bid. Internally, Johnson did not want to be patronized, the athlete, especially the African-American athlete, who lends his name to a venture and then has little say in its operation. In one of his first meetings with Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, Johnson convinced the chain to remake its food menu at the Harlem restaurants because while the African-American clientele would purchase coffee like any other consumer, “Black people,” Johnson told Schultz, “don’t eat scones.” It was a small but shrewd example of the different lens Johnson brought to the table.

“I want to show these athletes and entertainers that we can be owners,” Johnson said. “Now, going in with Stan and Mark and Todd has been a great experience, but I want them to respect me, too. And the way you get that respect is to write a check. And not to say they wouldn’t if I didn’t, but the real respect comes from when you’ve got skin in the game. And that’s what it’s been for all my partnerships. Howard Schultz [said] if I didn’t write the check, he wasn’t going to do that deal with Starbucks. Go down the line. [Late Lakers owner] Dr. [Jerry] Buss told me, ‘Hey, I love you like a son, but you have to write a check.’

“When you have to write a $50 million check, you have to say, ‘OK, is the investment going to pay off? Is it the right move? Is it the right decision?’ ” Johnson said. “To me, your name is not enough. And I’ll say it because first of all I think that fans react different. The players act different. The players when they’re alone are saying, ‘What? Magic wrote a check?’ So they understand that, and it’s also different for me because I want to make sure I make it right, make sure it goes the way of our strategy. I want to be part of the strategy. I want to be a part of everything. I’ve never not written a check. I want to be invested in the deal. I want everyone to look at me as a real owner and not just some guy who put his name on it.”

Rainy Monday in New York but today gives four playoff games. A’s and the Tigers up first. Then Pirates, Cards. Tonight gives the Rays trying to extend their season and later, the Dodgers try to move on to the NLCS.

Have at it, folks.

Let’s Go Base-ball.

[Photo Credit:  Jared Wickerham/Getty Images North America]

If you don’t follow It’s a Long Season, no better time to start than now.

[Photo Credit:  Justin K. Aller/Getty Images North America]

Four games today on Funski Friday.

Have at it.

Let’s Go Base-ball!

[Photo Via: It’s a Long Season]

Belated, but not forgotten, here’s your comedy for the week:

Ah, 2004, when the Yanks decided not to sign Carlos Beltran. It was a move we talked about over and again in this space. And so yesterday, there was Beltran, still playing well, hitting a home run against AJ Burnett, who is still doing his thing.  Burnett was a mess in Game 1 of the NLDS and while I felt bad for him and the Pirates fans I also felt relieved that he was someone else’s headache.

[Photo Credit: Elsa/Getty Images North America]

The National League plays today. Cards vs. the Pirates, Braves vs. the Dodgers.

Enjoy it, y’all and:

Let’s Go Base-ball!

[Painting by Aleksander Balos]

I’ll be rooting for the winner of tonight’s game vs. Boston so in one way I don’t care who wins. Ideally, whichever team matches up better against the Sox, right? But Hell, I’m pulling for the Indians. Nineteen-forty-eight? C’mon. Gotta go for the Dream.

[Photo Via: Seconds from Disaster]

I’m quoted a few times in Richard Sandomir’s article about the YES network’s declining ratings this season:

As a corporate progeny of the team, YES needs spectacular, star-driven winning as its business rationale. Fans have come to expect the same.

This season might have stripped YES’s Yankees viewership to its core viewers, without casual and fair-weather fans.

“It’s like the N.B.A. after Michael Jordan,” said Alex Belth, the founder of the Bronx Banter blog. He added: “There is an apathy that takes place when a team is so successful for so long. And this coincides with the end of the Jeter-Rivera era.”

Not to rub it in or nothing but it sure was nice to see ol’ Russell Martin hit two homers last night wasn’t it?

[Photo Via: The Redhead Riter]

It’s the Pirates hosting the Reds. I like Cincy, they are a fun team but my heart is with the Pirates.

Everyone loves the Pirates, so says our pal Emma.

Never mind tomorrow:

Let’s Go Buc-cos!

[Photo Credit: TS Flynn]

As in Anybody But Boston. That’s the playoff motto round here where we hate cause we love and we love to hate.

Tonight gives the Rays in Texas.

Let’s Go Base-ball!

[Photo Credit: Tom Szczerbowski/Getty Images North America via It’s a Long Season]

Hey look, it’s Brian Fucking McCann.

Don’t walk, strut or stand,

Just run to first as fast as you can.

And don’t you dare clap your hands,

Says Brian Fucking McCann.

If you have a rhyme, please leave it in the comments.

PS:  He should still sign with the Yankees. They have no sense of humor either.

Excerpted from From Black Sox to Three-Peats: A Century of Chicago’s Best Sports Writing (University of Chicago Press), edited by Ron Rapoport and featuring stories from the Chicago Tribune, the Chicago Sun-Times, the Chicago Daily News, and the Chicago Defender, among other papers.

Today gives John Schulian’s column from the Sept. 24, 1983, Sun-Times.

“Summer’s End Recalls Memory of a Faded Dream”

By John Schulian

Up ahead, you could see a full moon sandwiched by thick, wet clouds. Beneath them glowed the lights of Chicago, turning the soggy heavens red-orange and proving that this ribbon of highway actually led somewhere.

Another country radio station faded into oblivion inside the car, so you pressed a button and came across the White Sox, summer’s golden children at play on a night made for antifreeze.

Their presence should have been a comfort at 70 miles an hour, just as it had been since they used June as their launching pad to glory. But now the Sox were bidding adieu to their regular season at home. They weren’t going to return to Comiskey Park until October’s playoffs, and the thought left you feeling as empty as a farewell at a train station. Summer was over.

All you could do about it was punch another button on the car’s radio, punch another button and hope you would hear the Police singing “Every Breath You Take.” For that was the song that provided the background music for the last three months, lingering in your mind whether you were mowing the lawn or trying to describe the cosmic significance of the infield fly rule. The melody haunted you, the lyrics left you wondering about the residue of your own tilling and threshing. And, like a lot of other things this summer, that hadn’t happened for a while.

Maybe you have to go back as far as the days before baseball finally defeated you, days of keg parties and a curveball pitcher who lay down next to a stereo speaker filled with the Rolling Stones’ voices and begged his kid brother to turn the music louder. The season was over by then and the unraked diamonds had started turning hard under the fading sun. Every morning, the chill sunk a little deeper and lasted a little longer, and you began to realize how impossible it is to hang on to summer and all the things it represents.

No team you played on would ever be the same, no chance for a professional contract ever as good, no friendships ever so unencumbered. And that was what mattered to a catcher with a strong arm and a weak bat, a kid who hid inside a game and thought it would always sustain him.

Even on the night he graduated from high school, he tried to flee what scared him most for the safety that the Salt Lake Bees provided. But before he got to his $1.50 seat, before he even got out of the auditorium where he had received his diploma, there was lipstick on his cheek and a pretty girl saying, “Now you can go.”

Funny how long a kiss can last. Ask the man who got it now and he will tell you that summers should have such staying power. For he would think about it from time to time, smile and wonder about the girl who didn’t dance off into that happy night before she had made sure he was remembered. And when it came time for the 20th reunion this summer, when he flew back to the place that used to be home, he wondered if she would remember her own kindness. He looked for her and found only a mutual friend with bad news: “She’s very sick. I understand it’s terminal.”

What do you do then? Do you write a letter, or do you pray? Do you retreat into the silence that has become your comfortable enemy, or do you hope that the next knock on your door brings a smiling face and laughter that tinkles like chimes in an ocean breeze? Do you see your own life reduced to what the poet Yeats called “day’s vanity and night’s remorse,” or do you borrow from Tom T. Hall, the hillbilly songwriter, and tell someone dear, “You love everybody but you”?

The questions pile up, but there are never enough answers to clear them all away. Ten years ago, you couldn’t have imagined such a predicament. You knew everything then—knew it and said you knew it and expected the world to know you knew it. Perhaps it is only age that brings stupidity.

Summer certainly suggested as much. Whether you were gazing out at Lake Michigan or laboring over your prose, your mind kept drifting away from the business at hand. For too many hours, neither the splendor of Floyd Bannister’s left arm nor the foot in Dallas Green’s mouth held the appeal of life’s complexities. It was time to consider what you had let get away from you, and how, and why. The process was as unsettling as the gray taking over your beard and the lines growing deeper around your eyes.

“I don’t know,” you kept saying. “I just don’t know.” It was an all-purpose reply for a summer that raised new questions almost daily. It could also, however, be tiresome. “This is the place for you,” a friend said, passing a senior citizens’ center. And you couldn’t keep from laughing. You feigned anger, too. But down deep, you thanked God there was someone who cared enough to remind you that the sun always comes up in the morning.

It shows its face later and later now, though. You can’t ignore that. The leaves on the trees have already started to turn, and even if the White Sox go on to win the World Series, there won’t be many more trips to Comiskey Park. The days are growing short, and more and more you cling to the brightness that Ron Kittle, the rookie free spirit, brings to them. “Here’s my bat,” he said to a team trainer after two hitless nights. “Take its temperature.” What a pleasure to find someone who knows where to get answers.

But when they aren’t to your questions, the answers are only for enjoyment, not enlightenment. They serve the same function summer did this year as you spun your wheels for week after week, searching for something you hesitate to define and eventually heading back to the garage empty-handed. The answers made you forget the storm front, but by the time you got home it was starting to rain again.

John Schulian was a sports columnist for the Chicago Daily News, the Chicago Sun-Times, and the Philadelphia Daily News before moving to Hollywood, where he wrote for a number of television shows and was the co-creator of Xena: Warrior Princess. His work has been collected in several books, including Sometimes They Even Shook Your Hand: Portraits of Champions Who Walked Among Us. With George Kimball, he edited At the Fights: American Writers on Boxing for the Library of America. 

[Photo Credit: Sarah Elston and Paolo Di Lucente via MPD]