Monthly Archives: October 2008

Two, Three, Break.

Claudia La Rocco had a great profile in The Sunday Times on a dance troupe called the Subway Entertainment Crew.  They can usually be found on either the 4 of 5 trains:

All are strong improvisers — you have to be when your stage is a narrow, moving, crowded metal box, likely to jolt at any moment and packed with obstacles like poles, strollers and passengers disinclined to cede their ground. Mistakes regularly morph into new moves. ”All we need is three feet of space,” the men announce before each show. They aren’t lying.

Backed by a boombox, they maintain a commentary, flirting (“Ladies, if your man can’t do that, leave him. Leave him now!”), cracking wise (“Ladies, you can smile; it won’t mess up your hair”) and egging one another on during solos — anything to keep the energy up. They winningly encourage contributions. (“The best nation is donation. The best city is generosity.”) It isn’t a hard sell; riders, initially jaded or wary of being within striking distance, grow wide eyed with delight. Pocket change, 5’s, 10’s and even 20’s fly into the performers’ baseball caps and duffel bags. “Christmastime is the paid-est time ever,” Mr. Steele said. Tourists give generously; a Japanese man once handed Dante Steele a $100 bill.

The entire piece, which is accompanied by a slide show, is well worth checking out.

You’ve got to hand it to the Worldwide Leader.  They sure know how to stockpile talent–writers like William Nack, Chris Jones, Howard Bryant, and Wright Thompson, to name just a few.  How about J.R. Moehringer, the award-winning journalist and author of the terrific memoir The Tender Bar?  Moehringer wrote a fairwell to Shea Stadium recently–I missed it completely until I was browsing around ESPN’s site over the weekend–and it is first-rate, like most everything he writes:

We loved the Mets because we felt like born losers. Though we were in just the first inning of our lives, we were already down four runs, with a weak bullpen and no bench. Sons of single mothers, living on food stamps, attending so-so schools, wearing ill-fitting clothes, we faced a future that seemed sure to include a heavy dose of failure, ignorance and want. The Mets, therefore, were more than our home team. The Mets were proof that losers could be lovable. Better yet, they were proof that losers could shock the world and win.

And Shea Stadium, 12 miles from where McGraw and I played Wiffle ball every day, was sacred ground. It was our home away from home, especially when we had no homes of our own. Our mothers struggled to make rent, and when they couldn’t make it, which was often, we’d move in with our grandparents, in a house so overcrowded with cousins and aunts and uncles that McGraw and I sometimes slept in the same bed. From such chaos, inner and outer, Shea provided needed, frequent escape.

It says something about our childhoods that Shea — surrounded by vacant lots, chop shops and strip bars — was one of the few places where we felt safe. Four feet tall, dangerously naive, we’d take the train to the stadium, alone, at night. The memory makes me shudder. We carried little more than 10 bucks and standing orders from an old-timer in our hometown, a guy who supplied all the paper products to Shea: Go into the bathrooms, pull out the towels and toilet paper, and throw it all on the floor — so the stadium will have to order more from me next week.

These were our people.

If you haven’t seen the latest editon of The Best American Sports Writing (edited by Nack), the volume is worth picking up for Moehringer’s non-profile profile of USC coach Pete Carroll alone.

The Dodgers got back into the NLCS in more ways than one last night, first by refusing to be bullied by Philly’s aggresive pitching tactics, and more importantly by coming away with a win. L.A. looks to tied the series tonight.

I caught Game Two last Friday night with Jay Jaffe.  His best call of the evening?  Blake DeWitt is a dead-ringer for our own Cliff Corcoran.  It really is a pretty good call, man.

The Rays pulled out their must-win game in extra-innings last night. Now, the Dodgers arrive home down 0-2 in the NLCS facing not just one, but a pair of must-win games. With Cole Hamels lurking as the Phillies’ Game 5 starter, the Dodgers simply cannot afford to lose either tonight or Monday and give Hamels a chance to pitch Philadelphia into the World Series Wednesday night. Fortunately for the Dodgers, tonight’s pitching matchup is in their favor. . . .

Read the rest on SI.com.

By Bruce Markusen

My father first took me to Yankee Stadium in 1973 when I was all of eight years old. I didn’t realize it until just before the Stadium finale last month—when I finally looked up the game on Retrosheet—that it was actually the final night game in the history of the old Yankee Stadium. More specifically, it was the night of September 28th, a Friday night, with the Yankees playing host to the venerable Detroit Tigers. Like the Yankees, the Tigers were playing out the string that fall, but they carried a royal bearing as the defending American League East champions.

As I recall, we had seats somewhere down the left field line; I think they may have been in the reserved section. Man, I loved that Stadium, from its landmark facade, to the wonderful way the upper deck framed the ballpark, to the fading green color of the seats. It was both a stadium and a time machine. Though my father and I had an unobstructed view, some fans near us were positioned right behind one of the old Stadium’s columns, which must have completely blocked their vantage point. (Some people call them posts or pillars, but we always referred to them as columns.) Those old columns, while they looked regal on TV or from a long distance, and gave the place the classic feel of a Roman coliseum, were just about the only drawback to that terrific old ballpark.

Aside from those ever-present columns, I’ll always remember that game first and foremost for the fact that Woodie Fryman started for the Tigers. (For some reason, my father and I talked about Fryman a lot that night. He was a pretty good left-hander, a so-so starter for the Tigers who eventually became a very serviceable reliever for the Expos.) Fryman gave up all four Yankee runs over six innings, despite having pitched a shutout through the first five frames. The Yankees’ early offensive ineptitude against Fryman shouldn’t have been surprising considering that Celerino Sanchez batted fifth in manager Ralph Houk’s lineup. I haven’t bothered to do the research, but that might have been the only time that Sanchez batted fifth in anyone’s lineup.

It should have been the last time, too.

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Dear Rays,

Thank you for doing your best to make this a series.  Course it won’t really be a series until Boston trails but it is a start.  Now, it’s up to the Dodgers to get back into it at home against the Phils later today.

With Jon Lester looming in Game 3 as the ALCS is set to move up to Fenway, tonight’s Game 2 at the Trop is a must-win for the Rays. Unfortunately, Scott Kazmir hasn’t been sharp since May. My preview of tonight’s game is up over on SI.com.

More fun from the Yankee front office… 

Hank Steinbrenner sure does give good quote.  Here’s the lastest, via George King:

"There is one very important point here," Steinbrenner told The Post during an exclusive half-hour session. "The most important thing to remember is this: If you didn’t get it from me or my brother [Hal], it doesn’t mean [anything]. I don’t care about some piss-ant employee. If you don’t get it from me or Hal, it’s meaningless. I have a lot of things [in Tampa] and Hal is in New York, which is good."

…One area Steinbrenner has drifted away from is dealing with the media. Too many people had his cell-phone number, so he changed it. Media criticism took its toll, and there have been whispers that others in the organization nudged him toward not being so outgoing.

"I said that if you treat me fair and honest, I would treat you fair and honest," Steinbrenner said. "Those days are over. I told Hal, if you live by the press, you die by the press. I didn’t live by my own words."

Mum’s the woid from here on out, eh?

By Maggie Barra

The big deal over the end of the Yankee Stadium is over and before long we’ll be seeing pictures of the Stadium being torn apart. But I don’t want to see those images because I want to keep my memories alive.

The first time I remember going to Yankee stadium is one of my earliest childhood memories. I can’t recall every detail, but I vividly remember the first time I looked out on the field. I was six; I know that because I got to leave my first grade class early. My father was already there, my mother and I joined him.

I remember being perplexed by the slanted ramps that seemed to never merge and were separated by black vertical bars. I remember the dark blue paint next to white everywhere and knowing that they were the Yankee colors. I followed about two feet behind my mother. The game had already started, and most of the people were in their seats. There was a small square doorway resembling a miniature tunnel; the walls were navy again with a hint of shine that felt sticky and reminded me of rubber, especially against the unremarkable concrete floor.

There was a slight upward climb past the door. My mother’s high heels clacked as she hurried, then suddenly she stopped at the edge, seeming to stand in the open with no roof over her. I came up behind her and saw it for the first time. Before I noticed the actual stadium, a deafening roar arose from all around me and a lit up sign announced "Home Run!" I had heard of a home run before, but wasn’t sure what it meant, but I knew from the crowd’s reaction that it was good.

As I stood there, I felt a little breathless as I managed to take in this very large, wonderful place. I noticed the green grass with a crisscross pattern, the white letter-looking sign behind home plate, the endless supply of people surrounding the field except for the spaces with no seats, and at the back, a black area underneath the scoreboard. The net behind the plate expanded like a spider web.

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It’s almost like a flashback watching these Red Sox.  They really are like the Yankee teams of the ’90s–they just find a way to win.  The Rays had their chances last night–bases loaded in the first, first and third no out in the seventh, first and second nobody out in the eighth–but the Sox set them down.  Need a double play ball, bingo, you got it.  Need a hitter to swing 3-0 and pop out, boom, it’s done.

And the Sox take Game 1, 2-0.  Nice, tidy, efficient.  Somebody is going to have to beat the defending World Champs, cause they sure don’t beat themselves.

The only uniform number the Tampa Bay Devil Rays have retired is Wade Boggs’ 12. Boggs’ 26, meanwhile, remains unretired (though also unused) in Boston. Here are a few other sartorial notes about this year’s LCS participants:

Nine major league clubs featured pinstripes on their home uniforms this year, but after the Yankees, whose use of the pinstripes dates back to 1915, the Phillies are the major league team with the longest uninterrupted use of pinstripes on their home uniform. The Phillies adopted the original version of their current home duds in 1950, the year the Whiz Kids got swept by the Yankees in the World Series. They had one major redesign that stretched from 1970 to 1991, but still featured pinstripes at home, then switched back to an updated version of the Wiz Kids uniform. The alternate home unis which the Phils wore in Game 1 of the NLDS are a variation on the the home duds they wore from 1946 to 1949.

Similarly, the Red Sox and Dodgers have been models of sartorial consistency. The design of the Red Sox’s home uniforms dates back to 1933 and, save for some variations striping and piping, the only significant change it has experienced since then was a six-year flirtation with pullover v-necks in the ’70s. As for the Dodgers, save for the addition, removal, and restoration of names on the back and the swapping out of the “B” on their caps for an interlocking “LA,” their home uniforms have remained unchanged since they introduced the red number on the front in 1952, while the distinctive Dodgers script dates back to 1938. Also, their current road uniforms are a variation on the road flannels they wore for their first 13 years in Los Angeles.

The Rays, of course, have brand new uniforms this year along with a brand new color scheme and their sort-of-new name. I think they could beat the Sox in six in the ALCS that starts tonight, but it’s more likely that the series will go to a seventh game, which means the Sox will win because they’ll have Jon Lester on the mound for Game 7. My preview of today’s games is up on SI.com

By Kat O’Brien

Unlike many of you, my first experience at Yankee Stadium was recent. I grew up in the Midwest, never came to New York until 1999, and didn’t get the chance to go to a game at Yankee Stadium until the 2004 playoffs. Yes, those playoffs that Yankee fans would love to forget and fervently wished had never happened and had never let the Red Sox get back in the World Series.

Because my in-person experiences at Yankee Stadium are all within the past five years, what stands out most are the larger-than-life events that have been held there. To me, that’s the way it should be, since Yankee Stadium has held big events since its inception. Along with playing host to so many World Series games, people remember great boxing matches held there by the likes of Muhammad Ali and Joe Louis; Notre Dame’s “Win for the Gipper” over Army; and several Papal visits. Mostly, though, it’s all about baseball.

I remember in 2001, watching on TV as baseball resumed at Yankee Stadium after 9/11. I remember vividly the attempted return to normalcy amid tremendous emotion. I was not yet covering baseball, so I could root for teams. I had never been a Yankees fan, had followed the Cardinals growing up, but I wanted the Yankees to win the World Series that year. That sentiment isn’t unique in any way, but I felt like maybe something good could happen there to make New Yorkers smile after tragedy.

Then I remember the playoffs and the in-season series against the Red Sox, which always feel like postseason games. I covered that American League Division Series in which the Yankees beat the Twins (Alex Rodriguez’s first playoff series in pinstripes) and the American League Championship Series where the Red Sox broke the Yankees’ hearts. The crowds were so into those games that it was a huge thrill just to be in attendance – even when some of the games ended so late that deadlines were a mess.

And finally, I remember the All-Star Game this year. The Yankees did a tremendous job of bringing back greats from the past few decades of All-Star Games. And the spectacle was a perfect sendoff for the Stadium, a celebration of all the great baseball that has been played at Yankee Stadium for so many years. Having the Yankees’ own World Series greats, from Yogi Berra to Reggie Jackson to Derek Jeter to Mariano Rivera; there made it oh-so-memorable. I believe most of us thought, even at midseason, that there would eventually be a sendoff in the playoffs. That wasn’t to be, but I’m sure Yankees fans will always remember the All-Star Game as an emblem of the greatness that has been Yankee Stadium over the years.

I enjoyed my last few trips to the Stadium, peeking in as the 4 train rolled up to the 161st Street Subway. To me, seeing the Stadium before it’s open to fans always feels like you’re stealing a glimpse.

Kat O’Brien is the Yankee beat writer for Newsday.

The Yankees finished 2008 with an 89-73 record and missed the playoffs for the first time since 1993, leading many to wonder what went wrong. There was a sense of uncertainty surrounding this team going back to last November and December, when amid the fallout of another ALDS loss, the managerial situation, specifically how the team handled Joe Torre’s contract, mushroomed to a PR disaster. Anyone stepping into that mess, whether it was Joe Girardi, Don Mattingly, Larry Bowa, would have felt squeezed. Throw in the A-Rod contract situation and the World Series drama with Scott Boras, Andy Pettitte’s vacillating between retiring and returning before signing the $16 million deal and being named in the Mitchell Report and Hank Steinbrenner’s impersonation of his father, and it was an offseason to forget.

On the field, the Yankees did what they’ve done each of the last four years: dug themselves a big hole with a slow start. While they valiantly tried to extricate themselves, they just did not have the horses to climb over a handful of teams to play October baseball in Yankee Stadium II’s curtain call. In short, as a team, the Yankees were incomplete. There were some debilitating injuries — losing Jorge Posada and Chien-Ming Wang for the last 3 ½ months were crushers, to be sure. But overall, the maladies that plagued the Yankees for the better part of the last three or four seasons caught up with them. Age, poor situational hitting, and erratic pitching and defense were recurring ills. During down times, those holes were gaping. Alex Rodriguez, despite the six-week absence in April and May, could not and did not carry the offense as he did a year ago. With 32 HR, 103 RBI and 104 runs scored, he had a down year — for him. According to Baseball Prospectus, A-Rod posted below league-average numbers in RBI situations (he drove in 15.1% of runners during RBI situations overall, and a conversion rate of just 33.7% with runners on third), and in at-bats where the double play was in effect, his 15.3 GIDP percentage was the fourth-highest among MLB third basemen.

A-Rod wasn’t the only one under fire Robinson Cano got the big contract and regressed. Melky Cabrera proved what scouts have said for the better part of two years — he’s a fourth outfielder at best. Phil Hughes and Ian Kennedy, the two supposed stalwarts of the Yankees’ future starting rotation, bombed. The bullpen was a mess. Even Mariano Rivera was not immune to the scrutiny: his numbers in save situations.

And unlike the Red Sox, who were able to infuse their lineup with youngsters like Jed Lowrie, who has made Julio Lugo expendable, the Yankees had little in the minors to fill the holes.

How did the numerous media outlets treat the Yankees? Relentlessly until they figured out that the Yankees would miss the playoffs and they were a non-story.

As usual, all the action around the Bronx made for interesting reading and viewing, which brings us to the 2008 Yankee Pankies, which cover the good, the bad, and the ugly of the Yankees’ on-field play and the media’s coverage of it.

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You might find this shocking, but Joe Torre’s big brother doesn’t exactly think the world of Hank Steinbrenner.  Go figure that.

Sadly the Royals and Yankees will be watching from home, but the Phillies and Dodgers are set to square off in the NLCS for the fourth time since 1977 (and first since 1983). I think the Dodgers will take this in six games, their two loses coming the games started by Cole Hamels. My preview of Game 1, which pits Hamels against impending free agent Derek Lowe, is up on SI.com.

By Marty Appel

As the days of Yankee Stadium wound down in September, there was a lot of talk about the majesty and perfection of the original, 1923-73 ballpark, and talk of how the remodeled park (1976-2008) paled in comparison.

I worked in both ballparks. Let me tell you, when the new one opened in 1976, nobody talked in disappointing terms. The feeling was that the new had captured the grandeur of the old, while adding the touches that made it more fan friendly, not to mention safer. The old place, after all, was no longer structurally sound and needed repair.

What has been largely forgotten over time is the horrible obstructed view seats in the original park, with so many steel poles extending through each deck, causing horrible sight lines. In addition, there were no escalators, the rest rooms were antiquated, the place was developing a seedy quality, and it wasn’t attractive to fans. Barely a million a year were trekking up to the Bronx.

It’s like the nostalgia for Ebbets Field. Few remember how narrow and uncomfortable the seats were. Your knees bounced off your chest. It was a terrible place to see a game.

The new place opened to generally rave reviews, and two million came to see it in year one. It was the first time an American League team had drawn that many people in a quarter century. Baseball was beginning to find its sea legs in the mid ’70s after a decade of lost ground to the NFL. An exciting ’75 World Series set the table. A Yankee pennant in a new Yankee Stadium in 1976 really set baseball into its modern marketing era.

The introduction of luxury suites, a modern marvel scoreboard, and hey – unobstructed views from every seat – turned Yankee Stadium into a fan delight. On top of that, the team began to shine with star after star. They won ten pennants in the new Stadium, and although they won zero between 1982-1996, the team was always competitive, always had star power, and became worthy of Broadway show prices.

Munson and Jackson were followed by Winfield and Mattingly, and they were followed by Jeter and Williams and O’Neill and Rivera. With skilled role players, the roster was finely crafted to produce not only championships clubs – but also a likeable Yankee team – a new concept to a sports culture used to either loving or hating the Yankees.

To me, the only regret about the modernization was that it eliminated the ability to have Yankee Stadium declared a landmark, and to keep the concrete walls standing. I welcome the new stadium. No one ever expected the team to draw four million a year, and they just plain outgrew the current one.

But it would have been nice to see the concrete shell, the one that goes back to 1923, find a way of remaining, no matter what will ultimately come to be on the land itself.

Marty Appel attended his first Yankee Stadium game in 1956, and worked for the team from 1968-92, first in PR and then as TV producer. He now runs Marty Appel Public Relations and is the author of the forthcoming biography, MUNSON: The Life and Death of a Yankee Captain (Doubleday).

The headline on the back cover of the Daily News today reads:

Torre & Manny’s succes in L.A. turns into…YANKS’ WORST NIGHTMARE

They’ve got to sell papers, I get it, but the only nightmare I can see is the Red Sox winning the World Serious again (and even that’s not enough to keep me up at night). I don’t think the Yankees would have made the playoffs if Torre had stuck around, do you? Which is not to say that I don’t hope he wins it all with the Dodgers–the story is just too good to pass up (though I’d rather see Tampa to win it all at this pernt). I would smile from ear-to-ear if Torre wins a Serious in Hollywood.

Of course Manny is the superstar getting the most ink right now, deservedly so. In this week’s Sports Illustrated, Tom Verducci’s article on the Manny and the Dodgers has some good nuggets on Manny’s brilliance on the field.

Dig:

In the signature at bat of the series, in Game 1, Ramirez swung flat-footed at a wicked shoe-top-high 0-and-2 curveball from reliever Sean Marshall and blasted it 420 feet into the Wrigley Field bleachers.

“Just sick,” teammate Greg Maddux says. “Even we look at Manny and go, ‘That’s just on another level.’ It’s like watching Tiger Woods hit an eight-iron a thousand feet in the air and knocking it stiff. Normal people just don’t do that. Guys like Tiger and Manny are out there in a class by themselves.”

…Says L.A. general manager Ned Colletti, “Normally, as a pitcher gets strikes on a hitter, the hitter becomes more and more defensive. But with Manny it’s different. It’s like the more pitches he sees, the more he knows about what the pitcher is doing and where the pitcher wants to go, and the odds swing more to his favor. And the pitcher knows that.

“I’ve been around Maddux, [Barry] Bonds and Manny. Those three guys are the smartest baseball players I’ve ever seen. They’re in a class by themselves. They see and understand the game at a higher level than everybody else. The game slows down for them. It’s like they see everything in a frame-by-frame sequence. It’s different from everybody else.”

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By Joe Sheehan

My set of Yankee Stadium memories is different than those of most fans my age. In 1989, I started college at the University of Southern California, finishing in the spring of 1994. After a brief stint back east, I moved back to the Los Angeles area in January of 1995, where I lived until the spring of 2007.

I missed the dynasty. I missed Mystique and Aura. I missed Charlie Hayes by the tarp and Wade Boggs on a horse and 125 wins in ’98 and four titles in five years. I missed all of it. When I left, we were a national joke, the team that fired managers every few months, the one that traded away all its good young players and never made the playoffs. When I came back, we were the team for which making the playoffs wasn’t good enough.

This is my first full year in New York City since 1988, and to celebrate, the Yankees are missing October for the first time since 1994 and closing down Yankee Stadium. It’s enough to make a guy think about moving back to L.A.

I don’t have a single memory of cold October nights spent cheering Derek Jeter, Bernie Williams or Mariano Rivera. I never saw a dogpile on the pitchers’ mound, never watched a victory lap, never hugged a stranger as my favorite team in sports won a championship. All of my Yankee Stadium memories come from a different era, the 1980s, when New York was a Mets town and seasons ended in September. I went to dozens of games a season back when you could decide at 6:45 to head to the Stadium, grab a gypsy cab from Inwood for six bucks, buy a seat in Main Reserved for $12 and be in it by first pitch at 7:30.

Even that was an expensive night. Tickets were always available, it seemed. I was the kid who loved baseball, so whenever my parents’ friends had extras, the tickets ended up in my lap. I’d get a call at 3 p.m. to drop by a local bar and pick them up, and be at the game that night. Looking back, I took it for granted-who knew there’d be a time when Yankee tickets would be a commodity, bartered and sold like gold bricks?-and looking back, I wonder if I wasn’t just a little bit lucky to grow up in the last era when a lower-middle-class kid could get to 20 or more Yankee games a summer.

The night games were fun, but when I think about the Stadium, the sun is shining on a weekday afternoon and it feels a little bit like stealing. That was my thing; weekday day games. They’re a lot more common than they used to be, but growing up, there’d be a handful each season, and I’d try and get tickets for them when single-game ducats went on sale. For each, I’d strike out around 10:30 a.m. on the M100 to the Bx13, getting there before Gate 6 opened, then rushing to the right-field wall, glove on hand, hoping to catch a ball during batting practice. If you got there right when they opened the gates, you’d catch a little bit of Yankees BP, but mostly, it was the visitors. I would stand up against the wall, beg opposing pitchers playing long toss for baseballs, hold my breath when Fred Lynn or Matt Nokes or Kent Hrbek came to the plate, and never, ever, come away with a baseball.

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A planned concert in early November at Yankee Stadium has been cancelled, according to this item by Mark Feinsand in the Daily News.

Man, it was nice to see Bernie there wasn’t it?

With no games to preview today, I’ve got a piece up on SI.com summarizing five things I took away from the ALDS. The first of them Yankee fans new already: Jon Lester, who was 2-0 with a 1.19 ERA in three starts against the Bombers this year, is the Red Sox’s new ace.