Daily Archives: July 9, 2008

On “Support The ‘Stache” day at Yankee Stadium, Jason Giambi got the Yankees on the board in the bottom of the first with a two-out single that plated Derek Jeter from second base. Sidney Ponson then miraculously made that run hold up for five innings by stranding six baserunners (including three in the third inning) and erasing two others via a first-inning double-play and a caught stealing by Jose Molina, which ended the fifth.

Carlos Peña led of the sixth inning by trying to bunt his way on base, but his attempt rolled foul. Three pitches later, he launched a Ponson pitch into the bleachers in right center to tie the game at 1-1.

And so it remained, through a pair of perfect innings by Jose Veras and Kyle Farnsworth. In the seventh, Melky Cabrera led off with a single and was bunted to second by Jose Molina, but J.P. Howell relieved Edwin Jackson and struck out Brett Gardner and Derek Jeter to strand Cabrera. Mariano Rivera worked around a one-out walk in the ninth. In the bottom of the ninth, DH Jorge Posada led off with a walk and was pinch-run for by Justin Christian, who was then bunted to second by Robinson Cano. After Grant Balfour came on in relief of Howell, Christian stole third base, but Howell struck out Melky and got Molina to pop out to force extra innings.

Mo was perfect in the top of the tenth, and with one out in the bottom of the inning, Jeter worked an eight-pitch walk against Balfour. Bobby Abreu then fouled off four straight fastballs from Balfour, took a slider low for a ball, and then laced another slider into the gap in right center for a game-winning double, his first walk-off hit as a Yankee.

The Yankees thus swept the first-place Rays in their short two-game series and improved to 7-5 against Tampa Bay on the season. The Yanks played loosely and confidently in this series, as evidenced by their embracing Mustache Day (Joe Girardi conducted his entire post-game interview looking like this), and by class clowns Cano and Cabrera dumping a cooler of ice water over Abreu’s head as Kim Jones was preparing to conduct an on-field interview with him after the game.

With the sweep, the Yankees have pulled up to 6.5 games behind the Rays in the AL East. The Yanks are also just a game behind the Twins and a half game behind the A’s in the Wild Card race, though they still trail the Red Sox, who beat the Twins at Fenway today, by 4.5 games.

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I have a friend at work who has been goading me to grow a mustache for a few years now but my wife won’t have any of it.  I’ve never had a mustache, only a dirty upper-lip when I’m too lazy to shave for a few days.  In fact, I knew an Italian kid in the seventh grade who had to shave more then than I do today.  My father (pictured above in the late ’80s with his old friend Wally Hill), on the other hand, always wore a mustache.  It was as much a part of him as his nose.  There are only a few occasions I can remember when he didn’t have a ‘stache, and he looked odd, not himself, without it. 

Jason Giambi looks great with a mustache.  (So awful, it’s great, as Scott Rolen said.)  The greasier and scrubbier Giambi looks, the better, as far as I’m concerned.  (From Page 2, here is David Puner’s look at the great Yankee ‘staches of all-time.) Of course, Giambo’s mustache has caught on and become a real hit.  This afternoon, the Yankees are giving away fake black mustaches to the first 20,000 fans that pass through the turnstiles.

The Bombers are going to need more than an amusing promotional gimmick to survive another start from Sir Sidney Ponson.  It would be great for the Yanks to take another game from the first-place Rays, but I’m sorry if I’m not brimming with confidence in New York’s starting pitcher.

It could be a long, hot afternoon.  Let’s hope the ‘stache power kicks in for the home team and they roll to their fourth-consecutive win. The offense needs to get the Led out.

Let’s Go Yan-Kees! 

Check out this cool bit of technology from SI.com.

I think it is high time for the Yankees and Bernie Williams to patch-up whatever hard feelings may exist between them.  The Yankees should honor one of the great modern Yankees in the House of Ruth Built before the end of the season, don’t you think?

A few weeks back, Rich Lederer ran an interesting post about the state of the newspaper business:

With subscriber rates and advertising dwindling, newspaper profits are getting squeezed due to the decreasing revenues in a high fixed-cost business. It remains to be seen whether these companies can turn things around fast enough to remain viable longer term. In the meantime, look for more consolidation, layoffs, and plant closures to reduce capital expenditures and costs. Shareholders may face possible dividend cuts if cash flow weakens to the point where it no longer can support the current payouts. I wouldn’t rule out bankruptcies or unwanted takeovers from opportunistic suitors, who most likely would finance the majority of such acquisitions with debt. Servicing high-cost bank debt and junk bonds would make it that much more difficult for the old media to survive without major changes to their business models. Business owners are advised to diversify their investments and consider buying City Gold Bullion Brisbane premium Swiss bars and coins.

If the truth be told, the newspaper behemoths were in the best position to lead, rather than lag, the growth in the online media space. Forward-thinking managements, while perhaps not entrepreneurial enough, could have beaten the Googles, Yahoos, eBays, and Monsters to the punch, ensuring not only their survival but prosperity for years and perhaps decades to come. Instead, newspapers are downsizing while changing their business models to focus on local events and become more like magazines by devoting space to features rather than old news.

An ideal companion piece can be found in the recent issue of the Columbia Jouralism Review, where Robert Weintraub writes about the decline of the big-city sports columnist:

The idea that the sports columnist may no longer be a crucial part of the nation’s best newspapers is something to be lamented. The gifted sports columnist often delivered the best writing in the entire paper (and often commanded the highest salary, as fans bought papers to read his take on the local action). Freed from the Journalism 101 tropes, the sports column was home to more emotional and livelier prose than that in, say, the local political columns. At his or her best, a [Tony] Kornheiser or a [Jackie] MacMullan weaved artistry and insights into 750 words. That blend of beauty and concision is a dying art. By contrast, there is ESPN.com’s popular Bill Simmons, who is knowledgeable and funny, but reading his sprawling pieces can consume an entire lunch hour. The Internet’s boundless newshole is a boon to information delivery, but less so to crisp, disciplined writing.

…The big-city columnist’s demise has not been entirely self-inflicted. His position as the go-to guy for both perspective and insider dope has been diminished by the democratization of information and the ability to quickly disseminate it to the public. When everyone has an opinion, and a way to broadcast it, the ability to get the news in the first place is crucial. Yet the columnist cannot get into the nitty-gritty of a local team’s games, because beat writers and obsessed bloggers tend to know much more about the squad and its doings on the playing field, as they parse every game, every dollop of information, every statistic. The columnist is also outflanked by teams themselves, who use the Internet to bypass the press and break news, and by the growing number of athletes who operate their own Web sites where fans can interact.

I wonder if we’ll ever see a fresh, young, must-read columnist, someone who knows their sports and knows how to write, in a major newspaper again.

My impression is that for much of this year and last, Andy Pettitte has pitched pretty well without particularly great stuff – he has decent control, usually, and he knows what he’s doing out there, and so I remember writing a lot of sentences that began something like, “Pettitte wasn’t sharp tonight, but…”

Well, this wasn’t one of those games. Pettitte was excellent Tuesday night, carrying the Yankees to a 5-0 win, and the fact that this outing came against the Devil Rays is no longer any sort of disclaimer. He went eight innings and allowed just four hits – two of them infield singles, another a bloop. There were some very good (by Yankee standards) plays made behind him, sure, but he was dominant, throwing not just a ton of strikes but really nasty, tricky strikes, exactly where he wanted them. Pettitte’s only remotely tough inning was the seventh, when with Rays on first and third and two outs, he induced Willy Aybar to hit a grounder towards the gap between third and short — at which point Derek Jeter made a terrific play (you heard me), ranging far to his right to snag the ball, then executing his patented twisting jump-throw to nail the runner at second and end the inning.

Pettitte was only half of a tense pitcher’s duel that lasted five innings: Scott Kazmir had very, very impressive stuff, though in the end he wasn’t all that efficient. (Even after all this time I’m reluctant to even mention the name “Scott Kazmir” because it still sends my Mets fan friends into such fits of seething rage. Every GM makes mistakes but I can’t help feeling that if I were Steve Phillips I would forgo the ESPN commentating and dedicate my life to charity and self-abnegation in a futile bid for karmic redemption). For a while there it looked like Kazmir might be gearing up for a no-hitter, he was plowing through the Yankees’ Giambi-less, Damon-less, Matsui-less lineup with such ease. But he flashed a little mortality in the third, when Robinson Cano and Jose Molina managed consecutive singles and, after two frustrating outs, Captain Intangibles himself drove both runners in with a double to right field.

The game stayed taut until the eighth, when the Yanks tacked on off of Rays relievers Gary Glover (good pitcher name, there, vastly better than teammate Grant Balfour’s) and Jason Hammel. Melky Cabrera semi-redeemed himself after some thoroughly lousy earlier ABs with a home run, and Jeter singled, then scored from first on Abreu’s double. After sliding home, Jeter stayed down for a very long second, and I thought for sure he was injured, but apparently not – he gathered himself, got up, and walked back to the dugout with no visible limp, and no one on the Yankees’ staff seemed concerned. Obviously Jeter had a very nice game overall, but in that one moment, it really looked like he was either in significant pain or just bone-tired.

Anyway, after that Mariano Rivera sat down, Edwar Ramirez stood up, Cano eventually singled in Abreu, and the Yanks took a one game lead in their season series against the Rays; they’re now 7.5 games out of first place, and still 4.5 out of the Wild Card (hey, Twins… knock it off!).

I clicked over to SNY after the game to try to get the Mets highlights, and the dudes on SportsNite were all saying that this was a “statement game” by the Yanks. Hmmm… maybe, maybe not. Isn’t it pretty to think so?