Daily Archives: March 2, 2009

The Yankees and Astros played to a 5-5 tie this afternoon, with the Yankees jumping all over Mike Hampton in the early going.

Lineup:

L – Johnny Damon (LF)
S – Melky Cabrera (CF)
S – Nick Swisher (RF)
S – Jorge Posada (DH)
R – Cody Ransom (SS)
R – Jose Molina (C)
L – Juan Miranda (1B)
R – Angel Berroa (R)
R – Doug Bernier (3B)

Subs: Justin Leone (1B), Kevin Russo (2B), Ramiro Peña (SS), Eduardo Nuñez (3B), P.J. Pilittere (C), Colin Curtis (RF), Austin Jackson (LF-CF), Tod Linden (LF), Kyle Anson (DH)

Pitchers: Chien-Ming Wang, Brett Tomko, Anthony Claggett, Wilkin De La Rosa, George Kontos, Steven Jackson

Opposition: All but two of the Astros’ starters.

Big Hits:

Angel Berroa (2-for-3) hit a solo homer off Russ Ortiz and doubled off Hampton. Melky Cabrera (2-for 3) tripled off Hampton (and the glove of center fielder Michael Bourn) and later added an RBI single.

Who Pitched Well:

Chien-Ming Wang, in his first action since breaking his foot against, coincidentally, the Astros on June 15, threw two scoreless frames allowing just two singles. That said, four of his six outs came in the air and one of them would have been a double if not for a nice running play by Nick Swisher. Wilkin De La Rosa recovered from his rocky first outing to pitch a scoreless seventh, allowing only a single.

Who Didn’t:

George Kontos allowed three runs on three hits and a walk while only managing to get one out in the eighth.

Battles:

Melky Cabrera finally threw his hat into the ring in the center-field battle with a pair of RBI hits, one of them a triple. He had gone 1-for-8 without an RBI or a run scored in his previous three games. Cody Ransom went 0-for-3 with a strikeout and a double play. He entered camp with the utility infield job in his pocket, but he’s going to have to perk up to keep it there as he’s now 2-for-12, both hits singles, while Angel Berroa is 4-for-7 with a double and a homer. Nick Swisher walked and scored in three trips and made a running catch on a would-be double in the right-field corner. Brett Tomko only gave up one run on a walk and a Carlos Lee double, which would put him in the lead for the long-relief job unless Phil Coke is also being considered as a long-relief candidate, which he should be. Steven Jackson didn’t allow a run of his own, but seems to have let a few inherited men score after taking over for Kontos in the eighth. Jackson allowed three singles in 1 2/3 innings.

Ouchies:

Jorge Posada delivered an RBI single in three at-bats as the starting DH, so I guess his shoulder’s feeling better. Chien-Ming Wang reported no discomfort in his foot after throwing two innings and considers it a non-issue at this point.

More:

My laptop didn’t show up today, so my intended liveblog of the game against the USA tomorrow is listed as doubtful.

Over at The New Yorker, Roger Angell weighs in on the Joe Torre book.  Angell is impressed with the book and he misses Torre:

Floods of media will turn out at Yankee Stadium on April 16th for Opening Day (against the Indians), the official début of the new $1.3 billion park, built largely at taxpayer expense, and also the unveiling of the Yankees’ two brand-new starting pitchers, C. C. Sabathia and A. J. Burnett, signed for a combined two hundred and forty-three million dollars, and a new first baseman, Mark Teixeira, who comes with a hundred-and-eighty-million-dollar price tag. They will be closely watched, but probably not as much as Alex Rodriguez, whose recent admission that he used steroids while with the Rangers in the 2001 to 2003 seasons has dominated the Yankee news in spring training, as it will through much of the summer. Fans and sports columnists and op-edists and bloggers will ceaselessly debate his future as a potential Hall of Famer, when and if he surpasses the lifetime seven hundred and sixty-two homers struck by the tainted Barry Bonds, who is about to go on federal trial in California for perjury. Also on trial, so to speak, will be the new Stadium’s attendance figures in this era of economic anxiety, and renewals on those new corporate luxury boxes (grand luxe, perhaps, at a half million dollars and up per season). When the races begin, the Yanks will have to win in the unforgiving new baseball arena created by the luxury-tax impost on top team payrolls, which has produced fourteen different names in the World Series in the past nine years, and eight different winners, and will make it hard on dynasties, however famous, in the years ahead.

Joe Torre won’t be there, and, come to think of it, he’s better off where he is, away in the wrong time zone. He’s a cinch for the Hall of Fame—as a manager, not a player—whenever he’s ready to retire, and he’s already in the Grownups Hall of Fame, which has a few more members than the one in Cooperstown but tougher admission standards.

Today’s news is powered by a pitch from The Mick:

• Two of the Baby Bombers got nicked in the Yanks Grapefruit League game on Sunday:

Yankees catching prospect Jesus Montero left Sunday’s Grapefruit League exhibition against the Reds after suffering a strained right groin. …

Yankees manager Joe Girardi said that Montero had been examined by trainer Gene Monahan and that the 19-year-old backstop would miss at least a few games.

Earlier in the contest, Yankees right-hander Jonathan Albaladejo was also forced to exit after being struck in the left calf by a batted ball.

Albaladejo was working in the bottom of the third inning, when Cincinnati’s Jeff Keppinger hit a hard shot up the middle and off the pitcher into center field. …

• Mike Vaccaro of the Post profiles Mariano Rivera:

“People come and people go,” Derek Jeter said the other day, smiling, shaking his head, “and then you have Mo, who isn’t going anywhere.”

The smile thinned a bit.

“Who’d better not be going anywhere,” he said. …

It is Mariano Rivera. It is the ninth inning. It is, as his arm can attest, as often as not a few outs in the eighth inning, too. It is 482 saves in 542 lifetime opportunities, an 88.9-percent success rate that the record books insist is just fourth, all-time, among all relievers with at least 200 save opportunities. …

Especially because last year may have been Rivera’s finest, 39 saves in 40 chances, a 1.40 ERA, all of that at age 38, with more than 800 appearances and close to a thousand innings already on his right arm, elbow, shoulder and rotator cuff.

“I like the idea of being consistent, of being slow and steady and reliable,” Rivera says. “I like that I’m an element of the team the other guys can count on being ready to do my job. That’s what I do. That’s why I’m here.”

(more…)

A few weeks ago I went to see an old friend who was apartment-sitting on the upper west side.  Before I left, I cheked out what was on the bookshelves.  It was as if they hadn’t bought a book in years, but many standard titles from the Eighties were there: “House,” by Tracy Kidder, “Edie,” by George Plimpton, and of course, “Growing Up,” by Russell Baker.

One book that wasn’t there, but very well could have been, was “The Collected Stories of John Cheever,” a book that I noticed at my grandparents’ apartment as a kid because of the reddish orange cover. 

There was a long piece in the Sunday magazine yesterday by Charles McGrath on Cheever, who lived one town over from where my mother lives in Westchester.  Interesting to see how a reputation changes over time.   

The Times has a wonderful page of articles devoted to Cheever.  Check it out, if you like that sort of thing.