Daily Archives: September 17, 2008

The Yanks looked like they were sleepwalking through the first portion of the game last night, playing like they had a late movie to catch.  Phil Hughes threw a ton of pitches early and didn’t last long but Phil Coke and the Yankee pen held the White Sox scoreless and the Yankee bats rallied, good enough for a 5-1 win.  Alex Rodriguez whiffed in his first two at bats and was booed.  He truly looked awful.  But he walked and scored the tying run on a two-out RBI single by Xavier Nady and later added a solo homer to right, a chip shot, good enough for his 35th of the year and a little bit of history.

Melky Cabrera started for the first time since early August, grounded into a double play and botched a bunt.  At that pernt, the Yanks were still looking lifeless and all I could think about was the following ham-handed machismo spiel. 

(Warning: a torrent of dirty words to follow.)

Oh, have I got your attention now?

Mornin!

Phil Hughes is back on the hill for the Yanks tonight for the first time in a long time.  Be nice to see him have a solid outing.  And it’d be cool to see the Yanks pad their stats some, huh?  C’mon boys, give us a lil something, something.  We ain’t askin much.

Let’s Go Yank-ees.

Over at New York magazine, Will Leitch offers us five things that went kerflooey this year for the Yanks. Here are two of ’em:

Derek! Jeter! It hardly seems fair to dump on Mr. November, the one constant the team has, but Jeter has had his worst season in a decade. He has come on a bit in the last month or so, and he’s hardly in danger of losing his job, but not even his most passionate fans can excuse his defensive liabilities anymore, and he was never able to carry the team anyway. At 34, he has clearly entered his decline. Will we see him at first base in a couple of years?

…Mr. Ciccone. Once again, Alex Rodriguez has had a perfectly serviceable year. He leads the American League in slugging percentage, he’s in the top ten in RBIs, and actually has a chance at the AL home-run title. But if you’ve been to Yankee Stadium over the last month, you’ve heard what fans in the Bronx think about those stats. A-Rod’s re-signing with the Yankees over the off-season was a panic move on the part of both parties; it didn’t eradicate A-Rod’s trouble hitting with runners in scoring position, his aloof, tone-deaf interaction with fans, or his creepy overeagerness. As long as the Yankees keep failing to win World Series, A-Rod, unfairly, is going to be the target of ire. And needless to say, that’s not going to make matters easier for him. The situation is not destined to end well…and then there’s the next nine years. Something needs to change, and it’s hard to imagine A-Rod suddenly turning over a new leaf.

As much as I like Rodriguez I have to agree with Leitch, it is hard to see things ending well for him in New York. Of course, it’ll also be fascinating to see how Jeter ages too.

My brother and I went to our last game at Yankee Stadium together last night. It was a fitting way to go out, being there with my bro, who is simply one of the best men I know. We sat way up in the right field upper deck, just above the top of the right field foul pole. There was a big turnout, of course, but it seemed like many of the fans were there for the event of being there more than for the game itself. And who can blame them? Sometime during the middle innings I turned to my brother and said, “Jeez, when was the last time we saw a truly meaningless game here?” And not meaningless because they had already made the playoffs, meaningless because they were completely out of the running.

We saw tourists of all shapes and sizes, American, European, Asian, there for their last look. Which has been the case all season long. In a sense, every game at the Stadium has been The Final Game of Yankee Stadium for a good portion of the crowd. The crowd sat on their hands for the most part as the Yanks didn’t give us much to yell about.

Still, there were some highlights, as minor as they may seem. The cracker jack and peanut vendors in our section overthrew their targets on three occasions, good for a laugh. After the White Sox finished taking BP, the only sounds over the P.A. from 6:30 to 6:40 came from the organist who played the following medley–“Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” “All My Loving,” “Isn’t She Lovely?” and “Yankee Doodle Dandy,”–as the grounds crew removed the batting cage and the various protective screens, dragging them across the long field, and then began to rake the infield dirt.

“I love watching them rake the dirt,” my brother said and it occured to me that the image of the crew making a field beautiful is a hypnotic and soothing one that should be captured on film.

The singular event of the night came in the bottom of the first inning when Derek Jeter singled to set the all-time Yankee Stadium hit record. As the crowd cheered for several minutes, little white flashes blipped around the park, and the sun set behind the Stadium. From where we sat, you could see the almost surreal sunset, something out of a movie. The sun setting on Yankee Stadium, Jeter getting a final rousing cheer. It was too corny to be true but there it was.

My favorite part of the game came several innings later. With the bases loaded and two out, Jason Giambi faced a full count and the crowd started to roar. Our view of third base was blocked so it was difficult to see Jeter, who was on second, or Johnny Damon on third, but we had a great angle of Alex Rodriguez taking a lead off of first and then sprinting to second as Gavin Floyd delivered the ball home. What we noticed was how fast Rodriguez is, what a powerful, fluid runner. Floyd was so deliberate in his delivery, Rodriguez was just a few strides away from second by the time the pitch left Floyd’s hand. Giambi fouled off one pitch, then another, and another. I wondered if Giambi walked would Rodriguez be picked off at second for rounding the base too far? Another foul. Each time, Rodriguez and Jeter stopped their sprint and returned to their respective base. Each time, they looked slower. This went on until Giambi finally struck out on the sixth offering with a full count. With the inning over, Rodriguez stood with his hands on his hips around the shortstop area as if he had just run a marathon. All that anticipation and athletic effort, all that running, for nothing.

It summed up the entire season. Sometimes, things just don’t work out. By the seventh inning, the fans began to leave. The game slowed down in the final two frames as the Yankee pen did not work quickly. Nobody much paid attention to the game. Even though the place was half-full, it sounded quiet. But it wasn’t a depressing feeling. It was nostalgic. It brought us back to our childhood, all those years in the Eighties where we attended games like this with the Yanks out of contention, playing out the string. Of course, there were even fewer fans back then. But it didn’t matter that the game was lousy. It just mattered that we were there, at the Stadium, for one last time, enjoying each other’s company, taking pleasure in the small details, feeling fortunate to watch a game in the place we’ve watched more games than any other stadium.

By Allen Barra

My father took me to Yankee Stadium for the first time in 1961. It was a game scarcely anyone remembers – I do remember Arnold Hano mentioning it in, I think, the Willie Mays book he wrote in the Sport magazine series, or perhaps it was the special Mickey Mantle-Willie Mays issue that Sport magazine did in the spring of 1962.It was a charity game played between the Yankees and the San Francisco Giants, and it was Willie Mays’s return to New York after three seasons.

I’ll never forget my first look at Yankee Stadium: it seemed like the inside of New York City. And I’ll never forget the crescendo that built up when Mays stepped out of the dugout and into the on-deck circle. Mantle, batting left-handed, hit a home run that day. (I could follow the arc of the ball perfectly as we were seated in a box seat on the third base line.) But Mays won the game with a single that drove in two runs.

One of the most vivid memories of my life was the afternoon of Monday, September 30, 1963, when my father came home from work – we were living in Old Bridge, New jersey, and my father and al our neighbors commuted effortlessly to Manhattan – and held up two tickets for the opening game of the 1963 World Series. I never though to ask how he got them, though I think he said something years later about it being a business friend he met at Toots Shor’s saloon.

1963 was one of the few years I didn’t root for the Yankees; I was so excited about Sandy Koufax that I was ready to begin studying the Kabbalah. If you don’t remember what the World Series was like back then in the days before prime time then it’s hard to describe. It seemed to be on everywhere you went – TVs blaring out open windows, car radios at full blast, people walking the street and riding buses listening to transistor radios. I was told by my friend Jane Levy that the Koufax Series — 1963, 1965 and 1966 – were the highest rated ever. I’m not surprised.

Our view was perfect, a box seat along the first base line. In the first inning, Whitey Ford struck to the first two Dodgers and took a tapper back to the mound for the third out. I recall my father saying “Well, Koufax is going to have to go some to top that.” He did, of course, striking out the first five Yankees on route to a 5-2 victory.

I have on other strong recollection of Yankee history in the early sixties. My father knew a Westchester cop who was later indicted for taking huge amounts of money in the “Prince of the City” scandal. On New Year’s Eve eve, he asked us if we wanted to join him and his son, a Fordham student, at the 1962 NFL Championship game between the Green Bay Packers and New York Giants. All I can recall is that it was the coldest day I could have imagined, and bundled up inside a hooded parka, I had my first shot of brandy from the cop’s silver flask.

No, actually, as I write this a few other things come back to me: the way Green Bay’s fullback Jim Taylor and Giants linebacker Sam Huff kicked bit and gouged each other and had to be separated after each play, and the way some of the punts would hit a wall of wind and flutter down to the concrete-like turf. The Packers’ punter, Mac McGee, I think it was, had one blocked for the Giants only touchdown.

Oddly, I did not feel that I was in the same stadium I had been in just two months earlier watching the Yankees and Giants play in the World Series. (My only memory of that game was how hyped everyone was about Mantle and Mays playing against each other.) I do not now recollect if I actually heard this or read about it afterwards: someone yelled out when Mantle came out to bay, “Hey Mickey, we came to se who is the best, you or Willie. Now we’re wondering who’s the worst.” Mantle popped up. As he walked back to the dugout, the man yelled, “Hey, Mantle, you win.”

Bob Costas told me that he was also at the game and saw the same play from the same angle; we must have been seated right near each other.

For the life of me, I can’t now recall whether you could see the Polo Grounds from the bleachers at Yankee Stadium or Yankee Stadium from the bleachers at the Polo Grounds.

In 1996, when the Yankees beat the Braves in the World Series, Allen St. John and I were out on the field. How this came about, I do not now recall — perhaps credentialed writers were allowed out on the field after games then. Someone in the dugout popped the first bottle of champagne, and the cork landed near us; Allen scooped it up and handed it to me. It now resides in a glass trophy case in my house.

Allen Barra writes about sports and culture for the Wall Street Journal and the Village Voice. His latest book, “Yogi Berra: Eternal Yankee” will be published by W.W. Norton next spring.