Daily Archives: August 21, 2008

Sir Sidney had nothing and was torched by the Blue Jays’ hitters tonight and they weren’t done. They had 21 hits in all and the score was 14-3 when the fireworks was over.

Yanks face Doc Halladay tonight in Toronto. A formidable task for sure. But who knows? Stranger things have happened. Maybe they get him on an “off” night. Maybe Sir Sidney Ponson has another good outing. Maybe pigs will fly.

Either way, Let’s Go Yan-Kees.

The Red Sox are clearly the third most popular team in New York these days. Ten years ago you’d rarely see someone wearing a Red Sox hat, and when you did, it was hard not to have some grudging admiration for the brave soul. Now that the Red Sox are a success the bandwagon is full and Sox fans can rock their gear without shame. They are a dime a dozen. This trend will eventually pass but not anytime soon.

And so long as the New York Times owns a piece so the Red Sox we’ll continue to see features in the sports page like Jack Curry’s piece on Jed Lowrie. Curry has been with the Sox in Baltimore the past couple of days.

Why would the Times assign their lead baseball feature writer to follow Boston? They aren’t playing the Yankees until next week. Because at the Times, the Sox matter almost as much as the Yankees or the Mets.

It’s a sorry state of affairs but that’s the way it is.

Meanwhile, in more regional affairs, Tyler Kepner has a nice post over at Bats, and asks the question: Should the Yankees re-sign Bobby Abreu?

Steven Goldman, writing in the New York Sun, thinks 2009 might be more of the same, or worse, for the Yanks. His suggestion? Bust ’em up, baby:

With next year’s pitching staff likely to be at least as unsettled as the current edition, the Yankees are in a difficult spot. If baseball teams don’t decide when to rebuild, the gods of baseball tend to decide for them. There’s a penalty to holding on too long, to having the issue forced: Your team might turn into the Baltimore Orioles (in the Yankees’ case, Jeter standing in for the aging Cal Ripken). Hence, the Yankees should be broken up now, by Brian Cashman, with the veterans sent out of town by August 31 for the best offers available.

That’d be a bold move. Doubt it’ll happen though.

Over at Baseball Intellect, Alex Eisenberg takes a look at Joba Chamberlain’s mechanics. 

Fun, thought-provoking stuff.  Excellent job by Eisenberg.

I was downtown last night near Washington Square Park, crossing Fifth avenue, when I saw a black kid on a skateboard gliding up the street.  He was listening to music and singing loudly.  I smiled and thought, man, I really don’t get around downtown much anymore.  You just don’t see people uptown expressing themselves with such theatricality–here I am, hear me, love me or screw off, I don’t care. 

I couldn’t make out what he was singing until I heard, "I live by the river."

Ah-ha. That made me smile even more.  Wouldn’t have pegged him for a Clash fan.

I got caught up working late last night and didn’t catch a single pitch of the Yankee game. By the time I got home, shortly before ten, it was over.  I turned on Baseball Tonight and waited for the score to appear on the crawl.  Wouldn’t you know it, the Yankee-Toronto game was the last of the AL scores to appear.  While I waited I felt sure that the Yankees had won and for a few moments I thought about sure things.  Mariano Rivera is as sure as you get, though he’s not perfect of course.  The Yankees themselves have been a sure thing for a long time too.  That isn’t the case this year, sure-things don’t last forever, but the fact that you can have them, even for a little while, is something to savor.  

Still, the longer it took to get to the score the more I started thinking, maybe they lost again.

But they didn’t.  Andy Pettitte pitched a nice ball game and Derek Jeter had three hits, including a two-run dinger as the Yanks beat the Jays, 5-1.  His batting average is up to .298.  The Yankee captain is also two hits shy of 2,500 for his career.  Even though he’s shown signs of decline this year, unless Jeter gets hurt or starts to deteriorate rapidly, he’s virtually a sure thing to reach 3,000.  If all goes well he could reach the milestone in three more seasons. 

Pretty cool, huh?