Daily Archives: August 4, 2009

The Yankees play a handful of games each year like this one, a brisk National League-style pitcher’s duel. The kind of game where both starting pitchers are on, the umpire has a liberal strike-zone, and the line drives find leather. It helps when Roy Halladay is pitching. He gave up a lead-off single to Jorge Posada in the seventh and still managed to get through the inning in six pitches and less than four minutes. It was twenty to nine. The game hit a speed-bump late when relief pitchers and base-runners, nerves and a little schvitzin’ took over. They still finished in a managable  two hours and thirty-five minutes.

Andy Pettitte had a crisp breaking ball and six strikeouts. He also was lucky. Derek Jeter snagged two line drives and Marco Scutaro lined-out twice to Alex Rodriguez. Melky Cabrera made a fine running catch to rob Vernon Wells of an extra base hit in the seventh. Pettitte was talking to himself, I saw him mouth “four-seamer” twice and had flashbacks to Game Six of the 2001 World Serious when he tipped his pitches. 

The veteran got himself into trouble in the fourth loading the bases with one out,  Yanks ahead 2-0. Alex Rios lined out to Eric Hinske for the second out and Aaron Hill scored (Hinske’s throw…well, at least he hit the cut-off man…on a bounce). But Pettitte re-grouped and hummed along until he gave up a bloop double and then a walk with two out in the seventh.Phil Hughes entered the game with a 0.95 ERA in twenty relief appearences, and John Blazed a couple of heaters past Jose Bautista him, then put his head to bed with a pretty uncle Charlie.

The Yanks scored twice against Halladay in the first inning and then he resumed his official duties as the Hit-Nazi (“No hits for you!”). Johnny Damon singled and scored on Rodriguez’s double to the gap in right-center field. They got a break when Halladay muffed a weak-feed from Kevin Millar, and Matsui reached on an error. Rodriguez rounded third and Halladay made a good throw to the plate, beating him. But Rodriguez slid into the catcher’s glove and knocked the ball free.

The Yanks had another shot a couole of innings later. First and third and Matsui got a hold of one. Rios and Vernon Wells converged in right center and at the last moment, Wells made a basket catch on the warning track, a few feet away from the electronic scoreboard on the outfield wall. After that, Halladay was a mother. Until the top of the eighth when Damon (18) and Mark Teixeira (27) hit back-to-back homers with two men out. I yelled and scared my wife. Moe Green, the kitten, a bona fide scaredy cat, took off. The older cat, nappin’ on the job, opened one eye, saw I was acting crazy and went back to sleep. I flexed and yelled some more and my wife told me to calm down. I overruled her and carried on.

(more…)

The Yanks are in Toronto for two-game series with Roy Halladay starting tonight. That screams “split,” but you know the Yankees are glad they’re facing Halladay in Toronto tonight because it means they won’t be facing him as a Red Sock over the weekend. The Jays didn’t trade Halladay, but they did make one big deadline deal, while the Yankees made a smaller one, both with the Cincinnati Reds.

The Jays got younger and cheaper by trading Scott Rolen (34 and due $11 million in 2010) for fellow third-baseman Edwin Encarnacion (26 and due $4.75 million next year), relief pitcher Josh Roenicke, and minor league righty Zachary Stewart. The trade was made at Rolen’s request and blows a giant hole in the Blue Jays’ infield defense, as Rolen was a former Gold Glover who could still pick it at the hot corner, while Encarnacion is the worst defensive third baseman in baseball.

Like new Seattle Mariner Ian Snell, Encarnacion is a “change of scenery” pick-up, a player who had long been in the doghouse of his former team, the Reds, and whose performance the Blue Jays are hoping was suffering as a result. Prior to joining the Blue Jays on Friday, Encarnacion was having his worst major league season (.209/.333/.374 in just 43 games, the latter due to a fractured wrist suffered in late April).

Roenicke, a 27-year-old righty (as of today) and the nephew of former Yankee Gary, has seen only incidental major league action over the last two seasons, but has been dominant in Triple-A over the same period (2.55 ERA, 10.1 K/9, 3.75 K/BB, just two homers allowed in 67 innings). He throws in the upper 90s and could become Toronto’s closer in short order and for the foreseeable future. He’s in the Toronto pen now. Stewart was a third-round pick in last year’s draft out of Texas Tech. He was a college closer, but started seven games each in High-A and Double-A this year with excellent results only to return to relief in Triple-A. It’s unclear what the Jays plan to do with him just yet, but while he may not be a future star, he’s a good addition to their system.

The Yankees picked up the man who replaced Encarnacion at third the day that the latter hit the DL, utility man Jerry Hairston Jr. It’s difficult to remember now, but Hairston began his career as the Orioles’ second baseman, and there was a brief period during which it wasn’t clear whether the Orioles were going to commit to him or to Brian Roberts at the keystone. The O’s ultimately made the right choice, turning Hairston into a utility man in his age-28 season of 2004, then sending him to the Cubs that winter with current Cubs second-sacker Mike Fontenot for Sammy Sosa.

Thus began Hairston’s career as an itinerant utility man, spending a year and a half each with the Cubs, Rangers, and Reds while playing ever position but pitcher and catcher. That ability to bounce around the diamond saved Hairston’s major league career as he hit just .253/.324/.358 through his age-31 season in 2007. Then last year he had that fluke year that it seems every bench player is entitled to at some point in his career, hitting .326/.384/.487 for the Reds while playing, in order, short, left, center, right, second, and third. He made $500,000 that year, but the impressed Reds re-signed him for $2 million only to watch him return to his previous level of production (.254/.305/.397).

Hairston joins the Yankees as a strong defensive outfielder, solid defensive middle-infielder, poor defensive third baseman, inexperience first baseman (less than one full game), and a right-handed bat unlikely to out-hit Cody Ransom (career: .233/.321/.401). For that, the Yankees gave up 20-year-old A-ball catcher Chase Weems. Though only in his second pro season, Weems has yet to start hitting and was buried in a suddenly catching-rich system. No loss there, but Hairston doesn’t really represent a gain either.

Andy Pettitte starts for the Yankees tonight. In three starts since the All-Star break, Andy has posted a 2.70 ERA and struck out 23 against just 3 walks and one homer in 20 innings, but has gone 0-1 with the Yankees losing two of those starts. Facing Halladay tonight, he’s staring another hard-luck loss in the face. Here’s hoping we get the compelling pitchers duel that promises.

Home Run Hinske starts in right tonight against his former team and bats ninth. The rest of the Yankee lineup has the usual suspects in the usual places.

(more…)

Just wondering if David Ortiz has gotten to the bottom of anything yet. While Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and Alex Rodriguez were front page news for weeks because of their involvement with PEDs, Ortiz, after the initial news cycle, seems to be getting a pass. Are people just fed-up with it all? What gives?

There is a long interview with Gay Talese in the new edition of The Paris Review. This caught my attention:

INTERVIEWER: Are you equally interested in everyone you meet?

TALESE: One of the key facts of my life is that I was raised not in the home, but in a store. My father had been an apprentice to his cousin, a famous tailor in Paris who had movie stars and leading politicians as clients. My father left Paris in 1920 on a ship to Philadelphia. He hated Philadelphia and developed a respiratory problem, and someone suggested he move to the seashore. In Ocean City, New Jersey, he bought an old store on Asbury Avenue, the main business street, and he opened the Talese Town Shop. On one side of the store he set up a tailor shop. On the other side my mother, who had grown up in an Italian American neighborhood in Park Slope, Brooklyn, opened a dress shop. Above the store my parents had an apartment.
       The tailor business never really worked out. The craftsmen were fine, but there weren’t quite enough people in Ocean City who wanted to pay for handmade suits. So my mother became the wage earner. All the money we made was because of my mother selling dresses. She was successful because she had a way of getting women to talk about themselves. Her customers were, for the most part, large women, women who did not go to the beach in the summertime. My mother would give them clothes to try on that made them look better than they thought they had any right to look. She wasn’t a hustler. She made her sales because they trusted her and liked her, and she liked them back. I was there a lot—folding the dress boxes, dusting the counters, doing chores—and I learned a lot about the town by eavesdropping. These women, telling my mother their private stories, gave me an idea of a larger world.

…INTERVIEWER:  When did you realize that you had talent?

TALESE: Never. All I have is intense curiosity. I have a great deal of interest in other people and, just as importantly, I have the patience to be around them.

Talese has been one of my inspirations because he’s always been fascinated by the characters on the margins, and because of his unyiedling curiosity. I am a great fan of his journalism, particularly during his glory days at Esquire in the Sixites.

Earlier this year, Jonathan Van Meter wrote an excellent profile of Talese and his wife Nan, the celebrated book editor, in New York magazine. Talese does not come across as being sympathetic, but the piece provides a sharp look at his career, which imploded during and after the writing of “Thy Neighbor’s Wife,” a book that became Talese’s “Apocalypse Now.”

Talese has a new book coming out about his marriage. I have no idea if it will be worth reading; I thought his last effort, “A Writer’s Life,” was meandering and dull.

If you are not familiar with Talese’s work, here is a selection of his essays, including Looking for Hemingway, a takedown of George Plimpton and his Paris Review crew, and perhaps Talese’s most celebrated story, Frank Sinatra Has a Cold.

I went to Citifield last night and watched the Mets score five runs against Dan Haren and still lose.

“Whadda ya expect,” a fat guy in the Don Zimmer mold told me on the subway ride home. “These guys are a bunch of mo-mo’s. How are you gunna win with mo-mo’s?”

I had no words for him.

But I did learn that Joyce Randolph, who played “Trixie” on “The Honeymooners,” is Tim Redding’s great aunt.

Go figure that.