I sat down and read the piece last night, and my only beef was that it felt too short, too rushed. I wanted to read his unwritten digression about the new Yankee Stadium and his deeper thoughts about CC Sabathia; when exactly are we going to get those from a guy whose output is down to these annual summaries? I realize that print is his medium and that the pressures of the industry restrict his space, but why not produce a double-length piece for the web that we can, as Alex did, print out and read at our leisure? Seems like an opportunity missed for a guy who’s got all too few innings left.

speaking of pictures, the smile on sugar ray’s face in the top photo of the ‘pound for pound’ post, reminds me of Cano.

Happy Turkey Day!

hope all is well and that you’ll stick around! : )

And happy Thanksgiving everyone: who the fuck do you think yous all are?

Made my heart to skip and me to feel my grandfather was standing next to me again.

From Angell’s article: “[Lee] throws with an elegant flail, hiding the ball behind his hip or knee and producing it from behind his left shoulder, already in full delivery. His finish brings his left leg up astern like a semaphore, while his arm swings back across his waist.”

And then he hunts his memory to recollect the same motion in another pitcher:

“I thought about Dizzy Dean or Lon (the Arkansas Hummingbird) Warneke, but they were righties. Then I remembered Hal Newhouser…”

And he goes on to talk about who he talked to that agreed with him.

This kind of narrative connection of his personal baseball experience connecting two players playing 57 years (or so) years apart, is a lot of fun for me to read. Maybe because I’m not the historian of the game that you are, William.

I agree with those who see no ‘better in my day’ tinge to Angell, only a remembering other days. I think he loves the game, period, and looks very closely, still, at micro-moments, signatures that help us see it better. Some people have a hot button for any hint of a ‘wiser head’ or ‘the long view’ – feeling it is dissing them, or current players, or claiming hierarchical preeminence. Me, I’m happy to listen to a wiser head if I think they ARE one … and Angell is, for me, many times over. The internet, talk radio, the blogosphere as a subset are all about ‘everyone’s equal, all opinions have validity’ … it isn’t so, in the realm of ideas. Informed opinions mean more than from-the-hip shots. (This is a general statement, not aimed at anyone at all.) There is also an element online of ‘he ain’t so big!’ where people like to take a shot at a star just to … show they can, that they aren’t intimidated.

The ‘long funk’? I think one needs to have a very narrow perspective not to see it, in the wake of Bonds, Clemens, congress. I’d offer an irony … that it seems to be the Yankees winning that is helping move the sport out, if Angell’s right?

William, for what it is worth, the elegiac tone has ALWAYS been part of baseball. The entire ‘you could look it up!’ ethos is predicated on it. ‘You shoulda seen Koufax in his prime!’ Does that automatically diss CC Sabathia? And, indeed, if we want to get scientific, odds are VERY good the best today are in better shape, better trained (more sober) than most of the best of yesterday. It doesn’t matter. The game is built around myths and legends. Angell’s a link to some of them.

Angell has been around the game a long time and at his age, time is flying by and so when he says baseball is coming out of a funk, i think he is entitled to speak about baseball time in increments of decades. Congressional hearings on steroids and confessions by the great hitters in the game did funk things up. And noise (though perhaps not the problem) does now seem largely behind us.

There’s a lot to love in the piece even though I might change a couple things, but I wouldn’t change any of his jabs at bloggers or his criticism and acceptance of Arod. I love the connection he made between Cliff Lee and the tigers pitcher whose name I don’t recall but will now have to look up. I love his prediction that neither Matsui nor Damon will come back despite the playoff contributions that he goes far to honor as special despite having covered 50+ years of access. I enjoy that he reinforces that this world serious was special and that the players are special in a historic way. How can you not appreciate that?