Daily Archives: May 26, 2009

The Bombers get back to their more normal chapeaus, and A-Rod seeks to continue his resurrection . . . consider this the official game thread.

Yankees/Rangers (Chamberlain/Millwood)

I caught the highlights of the Cards-Brewers game yesterday. Fitting that it came a day before the 50th anniversary of the famous Harvey Haddix near pefecto.

Gerald Eskenazi covered the game and he wrote about his experience in the Times over the weekend.

I remember reading about this game when I was a kid and I still find it heartbreaking, don’t you?

David Chang is a big deal New York chef. He owns four restaurants in the east village. Last year he was profiled in the New Yorker:

He never set out to become a famous person. He just wanted to see if he could open a noodle bar. Now he finds that he’s a public figure, criticized and praised—but mostly praised—by people he’s never met. “Getting these awards freaks me out—the last thing I want is a Michelin star—because I know I’m not the best,” he says. When he thinks about the cooks he worked with at Craft and Café Boulud and how they were so much more skilled than he, and had put in more years than he had, and yet here he was getting all these prizes and all this attention, he feels himself starting to panic. Sometimes he tries to comfort himself thinking about all the bands he loves that made great music even though they were terrible musicians, but somehow it’s not the same. “I feel like I’m losing my ability to understand reality,” he says, “like when someone loses their hearing, they can still speak English, but their speech eventually becomes distorted because they can’t hear themselves. I don’t want to be this crazy. It’s tiring. I just want some mental clarity. But I don’t like that I’m becoming more self-aware of all my problems. It doesn’t make me feel better—I just feel unease almost all the time. I’m a total head case right now, I cannot keep this up. All I want to do is f***ing move to Idaho and ski and fish and read books. All I want to do is run away and stop.”

There are several mother figures in his life who worry about his health and try to persuade him to run away and stop: Ruth Reichl, the editor of Gourmet; Dana Cowin, the editor of Food & Wine; Alice Waters, the founder of Chez Panisse. “I never thought that I’d be able to be, like, friends with Alice Waters,” he says. “And for her to actually care about me—that is so weird. I think Ruth told her that I had shingles, and that’s when Alice had an intervention at lunch. She was like, ‘You’re not doing anything more, no more, no more!’ ” Then, there are the older-brother chef figures who know he’s not going to stop but who tell him to calm down. Andrew Carmellini bought him yoga lessons. “It was just when Momofuku started to really roll,” Carmellini says, “and I was, like, ‘Dude, I’m telling you from personal experience, you need to chill out.’ ” Mario Batali, who has opened seven restaurants in New York, three in Las Vegas, and two in L.A., while hosting two programs on the Food Network and appearing regularly on “Iron Chef,” comes into Noodle Bar a fair amount and gives Chang counsel. “Mario’s big thing to me is ‘Dave, would you f***ing be happy?’ ” Chang says. “He loves it. He loves life. I want to love life as much as Mario loves life.” He sighs. “It’s not that I’m not happy; I’m just fearful for the future,” he says. “I’m fearful that everything’s gonna be taken away. Fear is a driving force for most of the things that I do. I don’t know if that’s healthy.”

I was downtown over the weekend and stopped into Momofuku Bakery and had the famous pork buns. $9 for two pork buns.

If you can restrain yourself you can eat one in four bites. I ate the first one in five and savored the second in six. At about a dollar a bite it’s so worth it. You can also order the pork buns with a deep fried, slow poached egg.

Believe it. These pork buns are the Truth, man.

Then I had a slice of Arnold Palmer cake. That’s a cake made like the drink–lemonade and iced tea.  It was wild. The desserts are playful and crazy. They used to have Lucky Charms ice cream. I saw Sour Patch kids ice cream, and Atomic Hot Ball ice cream while I was there. Could be hectic but could be amazing. They also sell specialized milk and butter.

Here’s a piece with good pictures.

Today’s news is powered by birthday boy Lenny Kravitz, who turns 45 today:

• Bruney back on the DL:

Yankees reliever Brian Bruney again experienced discomfort in his right elbow on Monday and will be placed on the 15-day disabled list.

Bruney, who was activated on May 19 after being on the DL since April 25 because of a strained flexor muscle in the elbow, played catch on Monday at Rangers Ballpark in Arlington, one day after a 35- to 45-pitch session in New York during which the right-hander experienced elbow pain.

“I’m pretty disappointed,” Bruney said. “Nobody likes to go on the DL. It is what it is. I’ve got to find out what the problem is and at least get it diagnosed. I think there is something that we’re missing. Maybe some different tests will show what I’ve got going on.”

• The manager isn’t quite pleased with the lack of communication from Bruney:

“I just think he wasn’t totally forthright in how he was feeling,” Girardi said. “We’ve had many talks with him over the last couple of weeks about how you have to tell us exactly what’s going on. It could be that by rushing himself back, he’s never given himself the amount of time he’s needed.”

Bruney felt some discomfort in spring training. Then he started the season brilliantly, retiring 22 consecutive hitters in one stretch. On April 21, he felt uncomfortable in a game against Oakland and told Girardi – with whom he has a very good relationship – that he needed a day off.

That day turned into almost a month. Bruney went on the disabled list and continued to feel something in his elbow when he played catch. Gradually, he said, the feeling went away, and he worked a rehab game, then pitched May 19 against the Orioles. Now he is hurting again.

Bruney said he had no regrets about coming back last week. He felt fine in the bullpen and fine in the game, he said, and his first round of tests showed no damage.

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Phil Hughes likes pitching in Arlington, Texas. Hughes made his second major league start in Arlington on May 1, 2007 and threw 6 1/3 hitless innings before tearing his left hamstring and being forced to leave the game. Yesterday, he returned to Arlington to pitch a Memorial Day matinee and once again dominated a powerful Rangers’ lineup.

The Yankees spotted Hughes two runs in the top of the first on doubles by Derek Jeter (taking a half-day off at DH) and Mark Teixeira and infield singles by Johnny Damon and Alex Rodriguez. Hughes responded with a 1-2-3 bottom of the inning. If there was a turning point in the game, which ended in an 11-1 Yankee route, it came in the bottom of the second. Nelson Cruz led off with a first-pitch double, after which Hughes hit Hank Blalock with a 1-1- pitch to put two men on with none out. Hughes then fell behind Marlon Byrd 3-0, but rallied to strike him out on a generous call on a fastball low and away. He followed that by striking out Chris Davis and Taylor Teagarden on curveballs to strand both runners. The Yankees responded in the top of the third by pushing across four more runs against Texas starter Matt Harrison (the key hits being doubles by Damon and Rodriguez and a two-RBI triple by Robinson Cano). That was the ball game.

Hughes got through the bottom of the third on seven pitches, stranded a lead-off double in the fourth, needing just nine tosses in that frame, and pitched around another double in the fifth. The only walk he issued was to Michael Young leading off the sixth, but Young never got past first base. Hughes got through the seventh on just nine pitches, striking out Chris Davis on three of them, and needed just nine more to  work a 1-2-3 eighth.

Hughes had shown considerable improvement in his previous two games, proving he could work out of jams against the Twins, then correcting his problematic strikeout-to-walk ratio against the Orioles. The only things he had left to fix were his inefficiency with his pitches and his tendency to give up home runs. Neither was a problem yesterday, as he held the Rangers scoreless for eight frames needing just 101 pitches to do it. His final line: 8 IP, 3 H, 0 R, 1 BB, 6 K.

Over his last two starts, Hughes has struck out 15 in 13 innings against just two walks, and he’s now been legitimately dominant twice in six starts since being recalled. After featuring his fastball against the Orioles his last time out, he rode the effectiveness of his curveball yesterday. He has done everything the Yankees could ask for in terms of learning on the job and making strides toward being the pitcher the team has long hoped he’d be. Though no official announcement has been made, it now seems that Hughes’ rotation spot is his to lose and Chien-Ming Wang will hang out in the bullpen until a spot opens up or he shows the Yankees that he’s completely over his early-season struggles, which he has yet to do. Hughes will have to continue to build on his success, stay healthy, and eventually may have to deal with innings-limit concerns (his career high was 146 in 2006, he threw just 110 1/3 in 2007 and a mere 69 2/3 last year), but thus far he’s shown himself to be up to the challenge.

After Hughes’ strong eighth-inning yesterday, Joe Girardi extended his hand to the young right-hander to offer him congratulations for a job well done. Hughes looked at his manager’s hand and grimaced. He didn’t want to come out of the game, though he relented after some quick cajoling from the skipper.

Alfredo Aceves pitched the ninth, giving up a solo home run to Nelson Cruz, but nothing more. As for all those Yankee runs, four of them were driven in by Alex Rodriguez, who went 5-for-5 with a pair of doubles, raising his average 70 points in the process. Nick Swisher drove in three on a groundout, a single, and a sac fly. Collectively, the Yankees picked up 19 hits, beating up on both Harrison and long reliever Kris Benson. With the win, the Yankees slipped past the Blue Jays into second place in the AL East, one game behind the Red Sox.

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