Daily Archives: April 8, 2009

The Yankees look to rebound from a disappointing Opening Day tonight against the Orioles and veteran Japanese right-hander Koji Uehara. Uehara is making his major league debut tonight, but he already has some history with the Yankees’ two Asian players. When Uehara joined the Yomiuri Giants as a 24-year-old rookie in 1999, Hideki Matsui was already established as the Giants hitting star. Matsui is just six months older than Uehara, and the two were teammates for four seasons and remain friends. Their time together climaxed in 2002, when Matsui won his third Central League MVP award, Uehara won his second Sawamura Award, and the Giants won their twentieth Japan Series championship. Matsui joined the Yankees the next year, and the Giants haven’t won a championship since.

In 2004, Uehara pitched for the Japanese Olympic team in Athens. When Japan faced Chinese Taipei, the starting pitchers were Uehara and Chien-Ming Wang, then a Yankee prospect who had just made his Triple-A debut. Uehara and Wang matched each other into the seventh. Uehara gave up a three-run home run to the Dodgers’ Chin-Feng Chen in the third. Wang blew the lead by allowing Japan to tie the game in the sixth. Ultimately, the game was decided by the bullpens as Japan won 4-3 with a run off the Rockies’ Tsao Chin-Hui in the bottom of the ninth. Current Dodger Hiroki Kuroda got the win.

Uehara also pitched for Japan in the 2006 World Baseball Classic and was the starting pitcher in Japan’s game against the USA. Derek Jeter went 1-for-3 in that game. Alex Rodriguez went 2-for-5. Johnny Damon struck out in a pinch-hit at-bat, I assume after Uehara came out of the game.

So, Uehara isn’t a complete unknown to the Yankees, at least not to Jeter and Matsui. The scouting report on the 34-year-old righty is that he’s a finesse pitcher with outstanding control. His fastball tops out in the low 90s, but he compliments it with a cutter, slider, splitter, and forkball. In his ten seasons with the Giants, he walked an incredibly low 1.20 men per nine innings and had an equally impressive 6.68 K/BB ratio. He has, however, suffered from some leg injuries and spent 2007 as the Giants’ closer in part to stay healthy. Last year, he made just 12 starts against 14 relief appearances and posted a 3.81 ERA in just 89 2/3 innings, though his peripherals remained outstanding.

The most famous walk Uehara issued came in his rookie season of 1999. Matsui and Venezuelan slugger Roberto Petagine were neck-and-neck in the Central League’s home-run race that year. With Matsui a home run behind the gaijin late in the season, Uehara was ordered by to intentionally walk Petagine in a game against Petagine’s Yakult Swallows. The Swallows had been walking Matsui all game, but Uehara wanted to pitch to Petagine and broke down in tears upon carrying out his orders. It was all for naught, as Petagine out-lasted Matsui, 44 homers to 42. In 2003, Petagine joined the Giants as Matsui’s replacement.

Getting back to tonight, while Uehara brings some interesting history to the mound, my eyes will be on Chein-Ming Wang, who is making his first regular season start since breaking his foot while running the bases in Houston on June 15 of last year. Wang had an inconsistent spring, posting a 4.15 ERA, a 1.34 WHIP, and most alarmingly, allowing three home runs (he allowed four in 15 starts last year). In his last start of the spring, in the first game ever played in the new Yankee Stadium, he gave up four runs in five innings and didn’t get a ground-ball out until the third inning. Wang’s foot is not my concern. What concerns me is the rust on his arm and his mechanics, as well as the fact that, when he hit the DL last year, his numbers revealed career-highs in ERA (4.07), walk-rate (3.3 BB/9), and WHIP (1.32). None of those figures is alarming, they were combined with a career-high strikeout rate (5.1 K/9), and Wang is no longer being relied on to be the Yankees’ ace, but after an eight-month layoff from mid-June to mid-February, he has something to prove this month.

The Yankee line-up is the same as Monday’s. The Orioles have moved Luke Scott to DH and replaced him in left field with Felix Pie, putting Ty Wigginton on the bench.

In other news, Dan Giese was claimed off waivers by the A’s.

I have a cousin who wants to be Jewish in the worst way. She is funny and bright and beautiful (her father, born Irish Catholic, married my aunt) and she calls herself Jew “ish.” Heavy on the “ish.” Sometimes I feel more “ish” than a bonafide Jew. My mother was raised Catholic, went to school with the nuns, and reluctantly “converted” to Judiasm under relentless pressure from my father’s parents. Mom all but renounced her conversion, if not technically, then at least in spirit, so I have never for a moment considered her a Jew in any way, shape or form. Her conversion said more about my father’s unwillingness to stand up to his parents than it did about his own religious convictions.

My father, of course, considered himself Jewish even though he didn’t believe in God, even if he only attended Synagogue twice a year, on the high holidays, to pay respects to his parents. He also considered his children Jewish though we had no formal religious training. The thought that we would consider ourselves only half-Jewish was something he laughed at. “Half-Jewish means Jewish,” he once told me. I didn’t have a barmitzvah, neither did my sister or my brother. I am not religious at all, and the extent of my participation in Judiasm is going to a Chanukah party and one sedsr every year. They have significance as family gatherings more than anything else. I have memorized the songs from Passover, they are hard-wired into my consciousness, in the same way I remember nursey rhymes. I don’t know what the words mean, I just know the melodies and what words sound appealing and funny.  The songs are soulful and fill me with warmth and sadness.

The seders weren’t always unpleasent, though negotiating the Afikomen payment with my uncle Georgie was nothing short of terrifying. “So what makes you think you deserve money for this little piece of Afikomen?”

Dag, I don’t know, dude, can I just sit down before I wet myself, please?

Since I’ve been an adult, the seders have always been increasingly informal, with the non-Jews in the family starting to out-number the Jews. They are loud and lively.  I like the chaotic commotion and I love the fresh horseradish, which I pile onto pieces of matzoh until my nose is running and my eyes are red.

And what’s not to like about supressed laughter? That’s the best kind, isn’t it?  Trying to remain serious as my father read through the Haggadah was always fun, and now his absence is almost palpable.

Still, the story, of the Jews flight from Eygpt, is one that can be applied to the current state of the world, but I have never found a strong connection to it. I don’t feel comfortable wearing a yarmulke or talking about God. I can’t read the four questions in Hebrew.

I asked my brother the other day if he feels Jewish. And he said, “Depends on the company.” Around Jews, it is hard to feel Jewish because there is so much about the rituals that we never experienced. But around Goyim, yeah, sometimes it is easy to feel Jewish.

More than anything I feel like a New Yorker. I can identify with the New York Jewish life. I am an American–and never felt so strongly about that as I did on my recent trip to Belgium–but my nationality is New Yorker. And after all, Lenny Bruce said if you are a New Yorker, you are a Jew. I would add, Dominican, Irish, Italian, Black, Mexican, Cuban, you name it, under that umbrella. The beauty of being a New Yorker is that you can be a little bit of everything and altogether yourself.

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• Joel Sherman sounds the klaxons over game #1 of 162:

Now a few sentences about perspective. Sabathia began horrendously last year, going 0-3 with a 13.50 ERA in his first four starts and recovered to have arguably his best season. Teixeira annually is an April dud and then steadily builds toward superb final results.

But we all know the terms of engagement here. Sabathia was the highest-paid free-agent pitcher of the offseason and Teixeira the highest-paid position player. In a down economic climate, the Yanks invested $341 million on just those two. They are not going to feel bad about those decisions at 0-1. However, no one wants to make a bad first impression as a Yankee because the hole is always a little deeper, so deep that many never truly escape.

[My take: As long as they keep Hank Steinbrenner sedated and muzzled, everything will work itself out.]

• Will Carroll writes of any CC Sabathia injury concerns:

It was just last year, in Cleveland, when Sabathia began the season poorly, but by the end of the year, no one was talking about those first few outings. People seemed more confused than worried about his Opening Day start for the Yankees, with Sabathia showing no dominance, some command problems, and spending his half-inning on the bench with a heating pad on his side. The heating pad had many concerned, though in the few shots I saw, it was being held in different areas along his ribcage, and Sabathia’s explanation that he was “keeping warm” does make some sense. “Precautionary” would make even more sense, because it’s important to remember that Sabathia has a history of oblique strains, injuring himself at the start of the season in both 2005 and 2006. With the combination of game results, his history, and the provocative image, this bears watching. I do think that there was something throwing off his release point; it could be any one of a million factors, including not being able to get his core loose.

• PeteAbe provides the minor league rosters for all levels.  Here is the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre roster:

CLASS AAA SCRANTON/WILKES-BARRE YANKEES
Manager: Dave Miley
Coaches: Scott Aldred (P), Butch Wynegar (H), Aaron Ledesma
Pitchers: Alfredo Aceves, Anthony Claggett, J.B. Cox, Dan Geise, Phil Hughes, Kei Igawa, Steven Jackson, Jason Johnson, Ian Kennedy, Zach Kroenke, Mark Melancon, Dave Robertson, Brett Tomko, Brett
Catchers: Kevin Cash, P.J. Pilittere, Chris Stewart.
Infielders: Doug Bernier, Eric Duncan, Justin Leone, Juan Miranda, Kevin Russo.
Outfielders: Shelley Duncan, Austin Jackson, Todd Linden, John Rodriguez.

• Some of the Yankees managed to get a tour of The White House.
• Just in case you were wondering which company was the “Official Paint” of the Yankees, CNBC lists all the major sponsors for the 2009 season.

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