[Picture by Bags]

It rained early this morning. It was still dark out when I heard the rain drops smack off the air conditioner in my bedroom. Later, when I walked to work the streets were wet and the sky was dark. Still warm but less so. The whole scene was welcome.

Picture by Bags.

Ah, the inviting right field porch at the new new Yankee Stadium. Good for what ails ya if you are a slumping left-handed hitter. Just axe Mark Teixeira whose line drive cleared the wall last night, good for a grand slam. Cheap or not it counted for four runs and although the Indians would tie the game, big hits by Brett Gardner and Travis Hafner gave the Yanks a 7-4 lead and that’s how it ended when Mariano Rivera got Nick Swisher to fly out to left field to end the game.

Final Score: Yanks 7, Indians 4.

Hits! Runs!

Exhale.

[Photo Credit: Reuters; Bags]

Brilliant in the warm sun, cool in the shadows. This picture by our man Bags speaks to what it’s like in New York today.

The Diamondbacks? In April? Oh, very well.

Brett Gardner CF
Robinson Cano 2B
Kevin Youkils 3B
Travis Hafner DH
Vernon Wells LF
Ichiro Suzuki RF
Eduardo Nunez SS
Lyle Overbay 1B
Chris Stewart C

Never mind the weirdness:

Let’s Go Yank-ees!

[Photo Credit: Bags]

Nothing better than magic hour in the city, especially when it’s warm out. I was reminded of how much I enjoy those precious moments when I saw this picture by our man Bags.

Picture by Bags.

There’s a slightly surreal quality to a subway station during the day when the light from outside falls inside–through a grate, or in this picture by our man Bags, through the stairwell.

Grand Central’s many secrets.

[Picture by Bags]

Sunlight counts. It really helps, no matter how cold it is.

[Picture by Bags]

Give thanks because our friend Bags is capturing New York in a beautiful way these days…

… and nights.

Picture by Bags.

Over at ESPN, here’s Jeff MacGregor on Derek Jeter:

Jeter is our sphinx, as fixed and inscrutable as those marble lions in front of the New York Public Library.

Eighteen seasons, 3,304 hits. Who knows how many starlets. Captain Intangibles in the City of the Damned. To reasonable people from anywhere else, New York is crazy, a bughouse — an asylum, a hive, a slice of 99-cent pizza falling on a pair of $1,600 shoes. It’s bike messengers and violinists, grime and Champagne. It’s a Babel, a bad dream, a siren, a grinding of the teeth. It’s that smell. It’s horse carts and nightclubs and town cars and bridges. It’s Trump and Jay-Z, The Times and the Post, three-card monte and the stock exchange. It’s a Korean bodega in a Greek neighborhood run by 4 guys from Yemen. It’s what America used to be before focus groups got hold of it.

But New York makes sense to New Yorkers. Our cops and firefighters all look and sound like cops and firefighters, and the daily parade up and down the avenue of our actors and junkies and account executives is straight out of central casting. The ballplayers all look like ballplayers and first among them is Derek Jeter. As much a part of the mind’s skyline as the Flatiron or the Waldorf; as much a part of the tri-state subconscious as every car commercial they’ve ever bounced off your skull. Even if you hate baseball, he’s as permanent an impermanence as most New Yorkers can imagine.

The only question is for how long?

[Photo Credit: Bags]

Don’t worry…’bout a thing.

[Photo Credit: Bags]

The stillness of New York at the end of the summer.

And a passage from E.B. White’s Here is New York:

“There are roughly three New Yorks. There is, first, the New York of the man or woman who was born here, who takes the city for granted and accepts its size and its turbulence as natural and inevitable. Second, there is the New York of the commuter — the city that is devoured by locusts each day and spat out each night. Third, there is the New York of the person who was born somewhere else and came to New York in quest of something…Commuters give the city its tidal restlessness; natives give it solidity and continuity; but the settlers give it passion. ”

Picture by Bags. 

It’s dead in town this week. August dead in New York City is a beautiful thing. Only a few days left.  Summer is almost over.

Enjoy it while it lasts.

[Pictures by Bags]

Love and Happiness Loop (Monty Alexander)

[Photo Credit: Bags]

Bartolo Colon, you’re up. Who will be next?

[Picture by Bags]

What’s the last book you bought on the street? I can’t remember myself, but I know I picked something up this spring. My cousin found a copy of Pauline Kael’s State of the Art on a brownstone stoop near his home in Brooklyn earlier this year and sent it to me. Twenty minutes after he found it a thunder storm hit. Book would have been ruined. I’m glad it’s got a good home here in the Bronx.

[Picture by Bags]

Yanks and Angels this afternoon at the Stadium. It’s still hot and muggy. Fab Five Freddy’s on the hill and I suspect the ball will be flyin’ over the fences.

Derek Jeter SS
Curtis Granderson CF
Alex Rodriguez DH
Robinson Cano 2B
Mark Teixeira 1B
Nick Swisher RF
Raul Ibanez LF
Eric Chavez 3B
Chris Stewart C

Never mind last night’s win, how ’bout another?

Let’s Go Yank-ees!

[Picture by Bags]