Daily Archives: September 16, 2008

Last night, Andy Pettitte had one bad inning, the bullpen couldn’t hold the line, the offense couldn’t break through, and the Yankees lost 6-2. Sing me a new song.

Over the last 14 years, Jeter has helped fill those empty seats behind him.

As early as tomorrow this game will be remembered for just one reason. In the bottom of the first inning, Derek Jeter hit a hard grounder to third base on the first pitch he saw from White Sox starter Gavin Floyd. Sox third baseman Juan Uribe was playing in and dropped to one knee in an attempt to backhand the ball. Instead it shot through his legs. Jeter was awarded a hit, which pushed him past Lou Gehrig as the man with the most hits in the history of Yankee Stadium. It looked like an error to me, but Jeter made that irrelevant with a single in the fifth.

I mocked the attention lavished on Jeter for passing Babe Ruth for second on the Yankees’ all-time hit list, and YES’s coverage of last night’s hit and the hits leading up to it–particularly Michael Kay’s call of the hit (“Hit or error? Error or history?”)–was every bit as over-the-top if not moreso, but I actually think this record is pretty nifty. For one thing, it’s an actual record. For another, as Kay histrionically pointed out on the broadcast, it’s a record that can’t be broken. Sure, Gehrig had far fewer at-bats at the old Yankee Stadium than Jeter has had in the remodeled one, but there’s a purity and an absoluteness to “the most ever” that even applies to Barry Bonds.

Best of all, this is a record that honors not just the man who broke it, but the Stadium in which it was achieved. Yankee Stadium will go dark for good six days from now, but though there will never again be a meaningful game played in the old yard, and the Yankees as an organization have completely punted the opportunity to do something special for the final season of baseball’s most significant ballpark, Jeter was able to give us one last piece of history, and a private kind of history at that. For all of the great performances, accomplishments, and players who have graced the field on the southwest corner of 161st and River Ave over the past 86 years, the player who got more hits on that piece of real estate than anyone else ever has or ever will is Derek Jeter. I think that’s pretty cool.

There are six games left at Yankee Stadium including tonight’s. Last night Alfredo Aceves was the story. Tomorrow night it will be Phil Hughes, but tonight, with Andy Pettitte pitching what amounts to a warm-up for the Stadium’s finale on Sunday, there is nothing else. Yes the White Sox are in a tight race for the AL Central. Yes, Robinson Cano is back in the lineup after his disciplinary benching. Yes, Brett Gardner is finally getting another look in center field and making his fourth-straight start there tonight, but with the Yankees on the brink of elimination (nine games out with 12 left to play), I think we’re finally at the point tonight at which the Stadium will become the primary focus.

The Yankees have a record of 4,128-2,429 at Yankee stadium. That’s a .630 winning percentage. They have to win four of these last six games to avoid dropping below .630. That’s utterly meaningless, but maybe it’s something for them to play for. For a variety of reasons, I’m going to find these last six games very hard to watch, and the six season-concluding road games that follow them will be even harder.

By Scott Raab

I was born and bred in Cleveland, Ohio, and I’ve loathed the New York Yankees and everything they stand for — arrogance, entitlement, and money-worship — for as long as I can recall. Even past the point where I realized that I myself was a smug, spoiled, money-grubbing New York-area-dwelling media hack, I hated the hulking, brutish Yankees.

Yankee Stadium? I’d rather pass a gallstone than put a single penny in any Steinbrenner’s pocket. Sure, I’d been there a few times, those memories frosted over by decades of heavy self-medication. My highlight House-That-Blah-Blah-Built memory was watching on TV when last year’s Tribe clinched the LDS at Yankee Stadium. In that storied house. With Bayonne Joe Borowski, no less, on the hill. Sweet almost beyond words, and I cried like a baby to see the dogpile at the end, then went upstairs to wake up my nine-year old son and start spreading the news.

He hates the Yankees, too. But like me, he loves baseball, so last Sunday we went to see a ballgame, and to pay homage. Because you can love baseball and hate the Yankees, but you can’t walk into Yankee Stadium with a hard heart — not if you’re a baseball fan. We weren’t paying homage to the pinstripes or our bile; we were there to honor 85 years of history, eat some hot dogs, and unwind at a beautiful, battered ballyard.

Who knows what a kid remembers? Hell, I seem to remember admiring Mickey Mantle once upon a time. My boy loved every minute. And so did I. It was hot, brutally hot, so we had to suck it up and buy a couple of Yankees caps — $50 that will surely help sign Grady Sizemore one sorry day — and the upper-deck concession stands ran out of ice by the sixth inning, and yeah, the Yankees won. No problem. A-Rod belted a grand slam, Cano got yanked for dogging it, and Jeter tied Lou Gehrig’s record for hits at Yankee Stadium: great ballgame. Great game.

We gave away the caps on the subway home, but I’ll hold on to the day for a long time — and to old, doomed Yankee Stadium. I don’t know about redemption, and like Woody Allen, old Clevelanders don’t mellow — we ripen and rot. I had an epiphany once: In real life, there ain’t no epiphanies. I don’t want miracles, much less expect ’em. I took my son to see the Yankees play at Yankee Stadium. That’s close enough for me.

Scott Raab is a writer for Esquire magazine.

Joe Pos has a good one: Derek Jeter v Pete Rose. This is Pos at his finest.

And thanks to Pete Abe, here’s a link to a story on Joba Chamberlain’s mother.

[Editor’s Note: I love reading long interviews and during the first few years here at Bronx Banter was able to conduct a series of them myself. For a number of reasons I wasn’t able to keep doing them. So I’m happy to present the following, a Q&A with veteran baseball author Harvey Frommer, that was done by Hank Waddles, who is no stranger to indepth interviews.]

Bronx Banter Interview

By Hank Waddles

From the moment the Yankees broke ground on the new Stadium across the street from the current park, an entire industry has been growing around the public’s need to remember the House that Ruth Built. Already you can buy vials of dirt, limited edition lithographs, and pictures with facsimile autographs. I’m certain that in the months to come we’ll be offered bricks, rivets, and splinters from the bleachers, assuming we’re willing to take out a second mortgage in order to pay for it all. One of the finest products out there, though, is a visually stunning book by Harvey Frommer, Remembering Yankee Stadium: An Oral and Narrative History of "The House That Ruth Built". Filled with beautiful photographs that span the Stadium’s history, the book tells the story of the past eighty-five years one decade at a time, relying heavily on the voices of the players, writers, and fans who took the field, reported from the press box, and walked through the turnstiles each afternoon from April to October. Last week the author was kind enough to chat with me about the book. Enjoy…

Bronx Banter: There has been a flood of products over the past year relating to the closure of Yankee Stadium. Why was this project important to you personally?

Harvey Frommer: I think mine is the definitive book. I’m positioned by experience, by temperament, and by track record to do this, which I think blows away all the others. I’m not the only one to say this. The reviews I’ve gotten plus the people who’ve seen it really agree with me. Some of the other products were very quick commercial attempts to capitalize on the closure of Yankee Stadium and the creation of the new one. The bulk of them, in fact all of them, came out in the spring. Mine just came out September 1, 2008, so in a way it’s like the last shall be the first. I’m very happy with what I’ve done. I’ve written eight other Yankee-oriented books, I’ve done hundreds of article on the Yankees, and I wrote for Yankees Magazine for eighteen years. It seems like an immodest answer to your question, but I didn’t intend it to be.

BB: That’s okay, that’s what I was looking for.

HF: I don’t like to trash the opposition. They’re all good people, but I’m proud of what I do.

BB: Good. It’s certainly a beautiful book, and I’ve enjoyed it since I received it. I went to my first game at the Stadium when I was seven years old in 1977. When was your first game? Do you remember much from it?

HF: Believe it or not, people ask me what are some of my favorite Yankee Stadium memories and what was my first game there, but I would have not been a very good interview for the book. But I found some great people to interview. Mine basically blurs through the various decades. My great thought or feel about Yankee Stadium is having the honor of Bob Shepperd doing the introduction to the book. The voice of Bob Shepperd has always stayed with me when I’ve been at the Stadium and when I haven’t been at the Stadium. So if you want to single out a theme or a moment, I guess it’s not the traditional response to that question, but it would be hearing him announce different Yankee players through the generations. I guess I probably started going to the Stadium in the 50s, and he began in 1951. I don’t think I began that early, but maybe I did. But his voice ringing down through the decades — and now he’s 97 and he’s not that well – I think that typifies my experience and, I guess, millions of others in terms of Yankee Stadium. Reggie Jackson allegedly calls him "the voice of God," but I call him the Voice of the Yankees. I’m giving you odd answers to good questions…

BB: That’s okay. Whenever I talk to authors I think I most look forward to asking about their research and writing process, and that’s especially true with your book. When did you start this project?

HF: I think the project was started a decade ago. I’ve always had a certain thing for Yankee Stadium. The physical job of doing it was when I got a contract that was about two years in the working. I teach oral history and also sports journalism at Dartmouth College, and some of those skills that I try to put into my students were definitely used in this particular book. I’d like to put it on the record that the New York Yankees did not cooperate with me at all. In fact, they locked me out from any access at the ballpark, to their clips, to their photographs, and to the players they could control because they were doing the official book, and mine was the unofficial book. They did me a favor, because I had really more of a challenge on my hands. The challenge resulted in my getting all kinds of interesting personalities into the book. I got a guy who was a hundred years old named Bill Werber, who was with the Yankees for about a month in 1927. I got Bob Shepperd to write the introduction. I got people who have been long time fans who had great, great stories to tell. I got a guy like [Duke] Sims, who the other books would not have thought of interviewing, who hit the last home run at the old Yankee Stadium back in ’73 just before the refurbishment began. He didn’t even realize he had hit the last home run. So the process really was made more difficult but made more challenging, and anybody who knows me knows I like a challenge.

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