Daily Archives: April 1, 2010

The Yankees beat the Blue Jays 5-2 thanks to the healthy return of Mark Teixeira, who took a pitch off his left elbow Monday night, but they have some concerns about the health of their catchers, particularly their backups.

Lineup:

L – Curtis Granderson (CF)
L – Nick Johnson (DH)
S – Mark Teixeira (1B)
R – P.J. Pilittere (C)
L – Robinson Cano (2B)
S – Nick Swisher (RF)
R – Marcus Thames (LF)
S – Ramiro Peña (SS)
S – Marcos Vechionacci (3B)

Subs: Juan Miranda (1B), Kevin Russo (2B), Walter Ibarra (SS), Jose Gil (C), Daniel Brewer (RF), Brett Gardner (CF), Randy Winn (LF), Mitch Abeita (DH)

Pitchers (IP): A.J. Burnett (4 2/3), Royce Ring (1/3), Chan Ho Park (1), David Robertson (1), Joba Chamberlain (1), Lance Pendleton (1)

Big Hits: Doubles by Curtis Granderson (2-for-3), Mark Teixeira (2-for-4, and again quietly raking in camp to a .341/.408/.591 tune leading the remaining campers in slugging), and Ramiro Peña (1-for-3). Robinson Cano had two singles and a sac fly in three trips. Nick Swisher singled twice in three at-bats.

Who Pitched Well: All of the relievers. Royce Ring struck out the only man he faced, lefty slugger Adam Lind, swinging. Minor league call-up Lance Pendleton struck out two in a perfect ninth. Chan Ho Park struck out one in a perfect sixth and now has eight strikeouts against no hits, no walks and just four hits in seven spring innings. Joba Chamberlain worked around a walk, striking out two in a hitless eighth. David Robertson worked around a single for a scoreless seventh, though he struck out no one and uncorked a wild pitch.

Who Didn’t: A.J. Burnett scattered two runs, but allowed seven baserunners (two walks, two singles, two doubles, and a Jose Bautista solo homer) in just 4 2/3 innings while striking out only two. Then again, Joe Girardi said Burnett looked better than he had all spring. Given his 5.12 spring ERA, that’s entirely possible. He did have his curve working and mixed in his changeup, neither of which were the case in his previous start.

Ouchies: Obviously Mark Teixeira (eblow) is fine. Francisco Cervelli and Mike Rivera both have sore hamstrings. Cervelli had an MRI and was diagnosed with a Grade 1 strain that will keep him out of action for the remainder of camp. The Yankees still hope Cervelli can open the season with the team, but if he can’t, the Yankees may have to reach further down the depth chart for a catcher, though Rivera is expected to test out his leg in Friday’s game. Adding to the backstop angst, Jorge Posada was scratched from Thursday’s game due to a sore neck (thus Pilittere batting clean-up). It seems Posada just slept in a bad position. The Yankees expect him to play on Friday. Alfredo Aceves (back) is scheduled to pitch on Friday and is also hoping to avoid extended spring training or a DL stay.

Other: Joe Girardi made it official, Curtis Granderson will be the starting center fielder, playing even against lefties, at least until/unless he continues to struggle against them. Brett Gardner will be the starting left fielder but, like last year, will have to produce to keep his job. I think the Yankees’ best arrangement would have been to put Gardner in center because I believe he is the superior fielder, but I understand Girardi’s thinking that he doesn’t want Granderson to have to change positions if Gardner loses his job. I can’t decide if I agree with it, but I understand it. In a way it seems as if he’s expecting Gardner to fail, but by that same token, why not expect the best from your big new acquisition (that he can be a superlative defender in center and hit lefties). Let Granderson show he can’t cut it before you limit his value by moving him to left and platooning him. I just hope Girardi’s willing to make those moves should it become clear that they’re necessary. I’m sure I’ll be revisiting this in a few months no matter which way things fall.

Ocean Park #122 By Richard Diebenkorn, 1980; painting; oil and charcoal on canvas, 100 in. x 80 5/8 in. (254 cm x 204.79 cm)

So I’m out here in Albetoikey, New Mexico for a few days visiting family with the wife. It’s like being on the light side of the moon, man. I hope to have a couple of good meals, and although the famous Hatch Green Chiles are out-of-season, my sister-in-law has plenty on hand–she freezes them every fall–and I’m all about trying them because heads from New Mexico are crackheads for their Green Chiles, B.

There’s a fun new book for Yankee fans of a certain age called Yankees By the Numbers: A Complete Team History of the Bronx Bombers by Uniform Number, by Bill Gutman. Most of the player essays are accompanied by a picture of their baseball card. Plenty of memory lane names there–Dirt Tidrow, Bobby Meacham, Claudell Washington, Oscar Gamble–to go with the usual Legends, Ruth, Gehrig, Joe D, the Mick, Reggie, Jeter.

Reggie’s 1978 Topps card. My favorite card ever.

Dig it.

Dig this long, thoughtful piece on John Cheever by Edmond White in April 8 edition of the New York Review of Books:

Howard Moss, the poetry editor of The New Yorker, once said that fiction should be a combination of fairy tale and newspaper report. Cheever is sometimes discussed as a sociologist of the suburbs, but in fact a gold dust of fantasy touches everything he writes. In one of his best stories, “The Country Husband” (the story that made Hemingway wake up his wife in the middle of the night so that he could read it out loud to her), a man named Francis Weed survives a plane crash and hurries overland to his Dutch colonial house in Shady Hill. His children are squabbling, his wife preoccupied, and no one seems capable of registering his near brush with death. Francis falls in love with the baby-sitter; his wife threatens to leave him not because of his adulterous yearnings (which she doesn’t know about) but because he’s inconsiderate and has jeopardized their social standing by insulting the doyenne of Shady Hill. Francis sees a psychiatrist—and the whole suburban pastoral ends with the mysterious, irrelevant, but transfiguring lines: “Then it is dark; it is a night where kings in golden suits ride elephants over the mountains.”

…Cheever, who was immensely likable, met and befriended many of the leading writers and artists of the day, became quite close to E.E. Cummings, and even had a guilt-ridden affair with the usually heterosexual photographer Walker Evans. Yaddo became his favorite retreat, an important refuge during the Depression, and the director, Elizabeth Ames, invited him back many times. In 1941 Cheever married Mary Winternitz, whose father had been the dean of Yale Medical School and whose grandfather, Thomas A. Watson, had been a coinventor of the telephone. Cheever, working hard to support a wife, began to publish in the “slicks” such as Harper’s Bazaar, Collier’s, and Mademoiselle. In 1942 he enlisted in the army and tested low-normal on the government IQ test. In 1942 he published his first short-story collection, The Way Some People Live, which wasn’t very good but may have saved his life since it impressed a major in the army who was also an MGM executive. He withdrew Cheever from his unit, which suffered terrible casualties in Europe in the last months of the war. Cheever was transferred as a writer to the former Paramount studios in Astoria, Queens.

After the war he began his twenty-year struggle to produce his first novel, which would finally take shape as The Wapshot Chronicle. In the meanwhile he supported his growing family by writing many, many stories for The New Yorker. Although people today revere The New Yorker, in the past it was something of a liability; I can remember in the 1950s how dismissive it was to call something a “typical New Yorker story,” by which people meant something slight, stylish, and vapid.

Our own Emma Span is part of Gelf Magazine’s Varsity Letters series tonight. If you are around, troop over to Dumbo and check, check her out. As you know, we think the world of her because she’s one-of-a-kind. And funny…In the meantime, dig the interview she did for Gelf:

Gelf Magazine: Many of us have our own generalizations about Yankees fans and Mets fans. You mention that your father accused you at a young age of having an inner Mets fan inside you, even though you grew up a Yankees fan. What are these most predominant generalizations, and how true do you find them to be? Are there a lot of Mets fans trapped in Yankees fans’ bodies, and vice versa?

Emma Span: For the most part, those generalizations are a myth. With millions of Yankees fans and millions of Mets fans, they obviously aren’t all the same. That said, I think people do take on certain influences. It’s easier for Yankees fans to be a little arrogant because they’ve had so much success. The team itself also has a kind of pompous arrogance about its history: the greatest sports franchise ever, blah, blah, blah. I think the generalizations, though, are mostly bullshit. I do ask in the book, however, that if you grow up as a kid watching Mariano Rivera as your closer, if that has a slightly different effect on your personality and your outlook on life than if you grew up watching Armando Benitez. I think somehow it might.

Gelf Magazine: I think an interesting litmus test, at least for the nature of the Mets fan, was, who they would choose to cheer for in the Yankees-Phillies World Series last year? What does it say? Who are the Mets fans cheering for the Phillies and who are the Mets fans cheering for the Yankees?

Emma Span: There was a serious debate about it. Mets fans actually got pissed because they couldn’t believe that certain people would support the Phillies or that certain people would support the Yankees. Obviously they weren’t really supporting either team, but when you watch the World Series, it’s always more fun to have one team you’re rooting for. I think a slight majority—and this is based just on personal observation—but I saw a slight majority pulling for the Phillies. You know, because Mets fans live amongst Yankees fans and deal with them constantly, and the depth of anger against the Yankees is really pretty serious—obviously with the understanding that it’s just a game and most Mets fans have at least one Yankees fan in the family, but still there’s a serious anger there.

You’ve already seen the three Bronx Banter Breakdowns Alex and I shot with River Avenue Blues’ Ben Kabak, and I’ll have more to say about the Yankees and Red Sox in my preview of the season opening series this weekend, but if you want even more, here are a few other places that I’ve offered my take on what the coming season holds for the Yankees and the rest of the league:

• Patrick Sullivan interviewed me for Baseball Analysts’ Yankees “Stakeholders” preview.
• I also participated in the New York Times‘ Bats blog’s Yankee preview roundtable with Kabak and former SNY.tv cohort Steve Lombardi of Was Watching. Part one ran yesterday, part two is up today.
• Finally, my picks for the six divisions, wild cards, pennants, MVPs, Cy Youngs, and Rookies of the Year are up on SI.com along with those of the other SI.com “experts.”

Yankee fans upset with my pick for the AL East should be sure to check my picks for the AL pennant and World Series. Meanwhile, I stick my neck out in the NL Central due to a belief that the Cardinals don’t have the depth to survive the regression likely to be experienced by their two aces.

This update is powered by Dick Enberg, who is leaving the NCAA Final Four coverage for good, but joining the Padres broadcast team:

• Our own Cliff Corcoran is part of trio of bloggers asked by the Times to assess the 2010 Yankees

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