Daily Archives: November 25, 2008

A Yankee-loving friend of mine reminded me of this great look behind the scenes of the old Stadium, in a March 2008 Times article from Tyler Kepner.

An excerpt:

Canó is only 25, but he felt the tug of history when he visited a storage room beside the Yankees’ batting cage two years ago. He was taken there by Reggie Jackson and Ray Negron, a Yankees adviser who featured the room in his children’s book, “The Boy of Steel.”

The room is used for repairs to the 55,000 or so seats in the stadium. It is cluttered with plastic seatbacks and wrought-iron frames. There are workbenches and boxes, and one of the pillars in the room is splotched with graffiti.

But another pillar is holy ground. Upon it is a rendering by the artist James Fiorentino, who has depicted three Yankees captains — Derek Jeter, Thurman Munson and Lou Gehrig, who is shown weeping.

Negron, who has worked for the Yankees since 1973, said Gehrig’s widow once told him the room was a refuge for her husband when a degenerative nerve disease was ravaging his body. When Gehrig needed privacy, he would retreat to that room. His wife would wait by a side door, just up a ramp beside the old bullpen, and take him home.

…

Nearby is a room with happier memories for a Yankees icon of a later generation. In the late 1970s and 1980s, only two people had keys to the room: the clubhouse manager, Jimmy Esposito; and the star pitcher Ron Guidry. It is where Guidry stored his drum set.

“I played the drums before I pitched to make my wrists strong,” Guidry said. “It was the storage room for when you had a day at the stadium — Hat Day, Bat Day, whatever it was, all the stuff would be in that room. It was a big room, and it made a left, and back there was just excess storage space. So I brought them in, and I usually would play them right before I went to pitch.”

Kepner also narrates a slide show of the old Stadium here.

Enjoy!

The Yankees have a lot of parts that could use some fixin’. The team has decided to focus on the starting rotation despite the many young starting pitching prospects working their way up through the organization. Last week, I largely focused on first base, where the Yankees have a big hole and the free agent market offers the perfect player to fill it. During the 2008 season, two major areas of concern were second base and catcher, but the Yankees have very talented players signed to long-term contracts at each of those positions, both of which are very shallow in terms of the talent available league-wide. Third base is not broken, nor, for the moment is shortstop or the bullpen, but the Yankees’ outfield and designated hitter situation very much is.

Here are the players who started for the Yankees at the three outfield positions and DH last year:

*adjusted for position

Center field was a disaster, the aggregate numbers at the position having been inflated slightly by Johnny Damon’s .294/.378/.529 line in 33 starts there. With Damon helping out in center and DH, the team’s performance in left field dipped below average. Designated hitter was also buoyed by Damon, but even moreso by the outstanding work of Jason Giambi, who has since departed as a free agent, as well as seven strong starts from Alex Rodriguez (.333/.414/.625). Meanwhile, Bobby Abreu, who started all but ten games in right field and kept that position in the black, has also headed off to find perhaps his final fortune as a free agent, leaving right field in the hands of Xavier Nady, whose .268/.320/.474 line as a Yankee was a far more accurate representation of his abilities than the .330/.383/.535 he hit in Pittsburgh over the first four months of the season. Last year, the average right fielder hit .276/.347/.451. Nady’s career line is .280/.335/.458, and he’s a sub-par defender.

Here are the Yankees’ other in-house options in the outfield:

*on Opening Day 2009

The problem with this list is that the Yankees’ best outfielder (setting aside the career year Nady won’t repeat) is their oldest, while their youngest (from among those with major league experience) is their worst. As it stands now, the Yankees have a giant hole in center field, a rapidly aging DH coming off knee surgery who is no longer viable in the field (Matsui), an average-at-best right fielder, and a 35-year-old Johnny Damon in left with little on the way other than Austin Jackson, who just hit .246/.298/.377 in the hitter-friendly Arizona Fall League and has yet to play above Double-A.

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Alessandro Candelaria smells of pipe tobacco, aftershave and perfect bacon. He wears brown shoes and white socks and black pants and a tan overcoat. His sharp-brimmed fedora marks him from another time, but he’s always looking ahead.

He asks a stranger on the subway platform for the time. It’s 6:45 a.m., he’s told.

“Where is that train?” he asks shaking his head. “I hate being late.”

Candelaria rode the 2 train to work for 53 years and now he rides it because old habits are hard to break.

Sometimes he finds a seat, but mostly he stands. He always holds a newspaper, but never reads. He likes to look at faces and remember what it’s like to work and worry and be miserable and alive.

“I never knew how much I enjoyed it,” Candelaria says. “People used to tell me that the climb is half the fun, but it’s really all the fun. I retired and got stuck with a bunch of old people who want to talk about old times.

“I want to talk about new times and this is where they’re happening,” he continues. “I’ll spot a guy reading the paper and ask, ‘What do you think of that damn mayor?’ Or I’ll see a guy in a Yankees hat and ask, ‘How do you think the team is coming together?’

“I’m already excited about baseball season,” Candelaria goes on. “And I want to talk about the young guys: Joba and Cano and Hughes and this kid Mark Melancon that I’ve heard so much about. Sometimes people stare at me like, ‘You probably aren’t even going to make to Opening Day old man.’”

Candelaria winks and smiles and tips his fedora.

“I’ll make it for sure,” he says. “I’ve got a couple of World Series left in me. Never count an old man out, especially one who stays young like me.”

While pondering whether the Yanks can amend A-Rod’s contract to include a “no Madonna/Kabbalah” clause under the auspices of “the Player’s participation in certain other sports may impair or destroy his ability and skill as a baseball player”, I stopped long enough to give you this news:

• Tyler Kepner of the Times spoke with Yanks hitting coach Kevin Long about Robinson Cano and A-Rod.  Long believes A-Rod’s slightly down year was due to personal issues, while Cano has fixed his swing and taken more responsibility for his conditioning.

On A-Rod:

“To say that what he went through in his personal life didn’t affect what he did on the baseball field, I think you’d be hard-pressed for it not to affect anything,” Long said. “But he seems to be moving forward and doing great. He sees his daughters all the time, and he seems to be doing O.K.”

“I can’t even imagine going through a divorce in the middle of a season and trying to compete at the highest level. He was able to do a good job, but there were days last year when you could just tell he had a lot on his mind. He’d be looking through you, and not completely focused like I’d seen him. You try to push that to the side for a couple of hours and do the best you can, but it’s easier said than done.”

On Cano:

Canó also made an important mechanical adjustment, scrapping the open stance he had lapsed into and reducing the movement before his swing. Long said he knew the swing would be in order when he visited Canó for six days during the week of Nov. 9, but he had no idea Canó would be in such good shape.

“He’s got a personal trainer, and he’s probably down to 10 or 11 percent body fat,” Long said. “This kid is focused, he’s determined. I’ve never seen him like this. His arms are cut, his stomach is cut. He’s doing hitting, throwing, agility work — and these workouts at night, I watched them, and they’re grueling. I told him I was so proud of him.”

Canó still needs better knowledge of the strike zone, Long said, and to work deeper counts.

• In a separate article, Kepner wonders if the Yanks have enough offense right now, assuming Cano bounces back and Matsui and Posada are healthy.  Kepner also offers up a projected lineup.
• The A.J. Burnett sweepstakes still appears to have six ticket-holders, according to BaltimoreSun.com.  The six are the Orioles, Yanks, Red Sox, Phillies, Braves and Blue Jays.
• Don’t worry about possibly seeing Odalis Perez in pinstripes next year.  MLBTradeRumors reports that the Yanks were one of three teams to make him an offer, but he’ll most likely sign a multi-year deal with the Nationals.

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Mornin.