Daily Archives: December 11, 2009

Here’s a couple of goodies for those of you who dig Golden Era Hip-Hop.

First, is MTV’s Yo! MTV Raps page (kudos to Cliff for hipping me to it):

Bada:

Bing:

Secondly, here is an SI.com bonus piece by a guy named Benjamin Wallace on the rise, and apparent fall, of Pete Nash, aka Pete Nice:

Nash sits in a café in lower Manhattan. At 42 he wears cuffed khaki pants and a short-sleeved button-down cotton shirt. He lives in a rental home in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., with his wife and young son, and he has driven a sensible Honda SUV to this meeting. Since his moment of fame as a rapper for Def Jam Records, Nash has achieved a markedly different kind of renown — among hard-core baseball memorabilia collectors who wouldn’t know Def Jam from Def Leppard. Over the past two decades Nash has become known as the most prolific source of the rarest old-school material, especially from the 19th century.

But on this afternoon in late July the tough-guy rapper turned baseball historian is mired in a widening scandal over the holiest relics of America’s pastime. Nash recently lost a lawsuit against a leading memorabilia auctioneer in which he admitted to fraud, and, according to sources, the FBI is investigating whether he sold forged memorabilia. (Nash declined to comment on the investigation.)

Even so, he retains some of the old Prime Minister’s swagger, seemingly confident that he has turned the tables on his antagonist. He riffles through a fat case stuffed with files of evidence he says he has compiled, and tells stories about innocently buying memorabilia that turned out not to be authentic. “In the baseball field, you have to question pretty much every single thing that’s out there,” he says. “It’s like the Wild West.”

As he sits in the café talking, his car is ticketed. The next day a judge in New Jersey will issue a bench warrant for his arrest for repeatedly ignoring court orders.

Long before his unlikely rise to fame as a white rapper, Peter Nash was obsessed with the history of baseball. MC Serch, also of 3rd Bass, recalls the first time he visited the home of Nash’s parents on Long Island, in the late 1980s. “Here was this 20-year-old kid,” Serch says, “and he had all this stuff: three-fingered mitts and Ty Cobb baseball cards. It was his passion, more than I think emceeing was his passion.”

If you had told me during the World Series that the Yankees could have Curtis Granderson without having to surrender any of these four players—Jesus Montero, Joba Chamberlain, Phil Hughes, or Zach McAllister—I would have asked for the signup sheet right then and there. So when I heard that the Yankees had acquired the Tigers’ center fielder for a package of Austin “Ajax” Jackson, Phil Coke, and Ian Kennedy, I was thrilled with Brian Cashman’s latest trade. When it comes to making trades for position players, Cashman is very good; just look at last winter’s deal for Nick Swisher and that long-ago swap that brought Alex Rodriguez to town.

Granderson makes the Yankees younger in the outfield and potentially improves their defensive play at two positions. If Granderson plays center field—and he should in my book—his speed gives him an advantage over Melky Cabrera. Granderson can outrun his mistakes, something that the slower Cabrera has a tougher time doing. I’ve heard all of the talk about how Granderson played a poor center field in September. Given that he’s still only 28, I doubt that he’s suddenly lost his defensive abilities. More likely, fatigue may have been a factor, along with the very real possibility that he fell into a defensive slump. Fielding slumps can and do happen, just like a few years ago when A-Rod had such difficulty throwing and fielding that ESPN had him pegged for DH duties.

With Granderson in center, the Yankees would be able to slide Cabrera to left field, where he would be a huge upgrade over Johnny Damon. An outfield of Cabrera/Granderson/Swisher greatly improves the outfield defense, which was one of the few weaknesses on the world championship team.

In terms of character, Granderson is a slam dunk. People in nearby Oneonta remember his season as a member of the minor league Tigers; they continue to laud him as gentlemanly, cooperative, and community-minded, all traits that have carried over to his time in Detroit. Extraordinarily popular in the Motor City, Granderson should have no trouble blending into a cohesive clubhouse that already has pillars like Derek Jeter, CC Sabathia, and Mariano Rivera.

Aside from his late-season defensive foibles, the biggest criticism of Granderson has to do with his inability to hit left-handed pitching. This is a legitimate point that needs to be brought up, but it has been wildly overstated. Exactly who has all this left-handed pitching that is supposed to shut down Granderson? A look at the American League East, where the Yankees will play approximately half of their games, reveals a right-handed landscape. The Red Sox have one left-handed starter in Jon Lester; he’s one of the best in the game, but the rest of the rotation is right-handed. Like the Red Sox, Tampa Bay has one left-handed starter in David Price. The Orioles also have one lefty in rookie Brian Matusz. The Blue Jays are the only divisional rival with two southpaw starters: Ricky Romero and Brett Cecil. That makes for a grand total of five left-handers among the 20 projected starters within the division. And for those interested in the composition of the division’s closers, currently only J.P. Howell of the Rays is left-handed…

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I crossed Broadway in the middle of 13th and 14th street last night, moving from the west side of the street to the east. I had the light, and as I looked to my left, I saw that the street was clear of any vehicles. I love the fleeting sense of room that you find in New York as traffic sits at a red light. It doesn’t last long, less than a minute I’m sure. At first it feels empty and then slowly, the momentum builds up again and then whoosh, the action is back.

But for a brief moment, the buzz of cars and buses and trucks and bikes, comes to a halt, and there is nothing but space. Freedom and space. It is something so routine in daily life here in New York that I often don’t register it, but even subconsciously, it feels like a small treat.

I went to Forbidden Planet to pick up some Christmas gifts–original Star Wars action figures–for my nephews and then, with some time to kill before I met a friend for dinner, went to the Strand to browse. I haven’t been reading much baseball literature these days, but I found myself in the basement anyway, looking at the sports books. And guess what? There on the shelves, near the Roger Angell books and Allen Barra’s Yogi Berra biography were two copies of the book I wrote about Curt Flood. And they weren’t even dirt cheap at ten bucks a pop.

Well, to me, this is a milestone of sorts because I’ve been introduced to so many great books through used book stores. I know it is a backward thing to wish for–most writers hope to be on the best-seller list, and belive me, I’m no exception–but still, it was a satisfying moment.

I don’t think back on the Flood book much these days. It was something I did and now it seems like it all happened a long time ago. I’m proud of it, of course, but it’s not something I identify with too tough. I did it, it’s out there in the world, and now, I’m on to the next thing. But to see it sitting there on the shelves I’ve patrolled all these years, well, that was as sweet a Christmas gift as I could ever ask for.

And so it was that at the Winter Meetings, Brian Cashman satisfied two of his major offseason priorities: settling the left field/center field question by acquiring Curtis Granderson in the three-team, seven-player swap with the Tigers and Diamondbacks. On the surface, it looks like the Tigers win this trade in a landslide, getting two young lefty relievers, a hard-throwing righty starter, and a major-league ready outfielder all while shedding $25.75 million in salary over the next three seasons.

The coverage was fairly bland, as it can tend to be when hammering out details of a trade. There were subtle nuances, though. For example, the Post, in my surfing, was the only outlet to cite that the Diamondbacks entered the fray a few weeks ago when Cashman balked at not including Joba Chamberlain or Phil Hughes in the deal for Granderson (maybe this gives a hint regarding their 2010 status?). ESPN claimed Buster Olney broke the story. How do we know? Jon Heyman tweeted the components of the deal yesterday, and Alex Belth dutifully posted them here.

A couple of items and intimations that appeared everywhere:

• Granderson’s 2009 decreased OBP and OPS, his strikeout total (141) and average against left-handed pitchers (.183), plus poor home/road splits somehow signaled a decline when he’s in his prime at age 29. Joe Posnanski took those stats and put them in context with Granderson’s career numbers against lefties, adding that he faced tough lefties in the AL Central (Sabathia and Santana), and playing 81 games a year at an unfriendly ballpark for left-handed hitters. Cliff Corcoran took a more analytical turn on a similar premise in this space.
• Granderson’s personality is perfect for New York.
• Now the Yankees can more easily make a decision on Johnny Damon or Hideki Matsui. Thursday morning, the Yankees were reportedly negotiating with Johnny Damon’s representatives, but in the evening, George King of the Post submitted a story, complete with quotes from Cashman, refuting the earlier reports.
• The questions as to which Granderson the Yankees will get: the 2008 version that emerged into a perennial 20-20-20-20 threat or the 2009 item that frustrated fans with inconsistent offense and defense, despite the “plus” numbers aggregated in various fielding metric data. And then there is this item, which was not mentioned in the first wave of coverage but could appear within the next couple of days: a NY Times column from William C. Rhoden touting the importance of this acquisition from a cultural standpoint, highlighting the fact that Granderson could bring African-American fans to the Bronx and carry that torch/example set by Derek Jeter. The caveat: with CC Sabathia on the team also, and with him being there first, this may be a non-issue.Most of what was printed centered on the Yankees’ piece to the deal, which was Granderson. Looking deeper, though, I noticed more attention paid to what the Yankees were able to maintain — Chamberlain, Hughes, and Jesus Montero — than what they gave up.

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