Daily Archives: April 22, 2010

So Phil Hughes took a no-hitter into the eighth inning last night. How can this afternoon’s starter match that? Well, CC Sabathia has already taken a no-no into the eighth this season, getting two outs further than Hughes did last night, so he’ll have to come up with a new trick. Completing the Yankees second straight sweep and extending their winning streak to seven games would be sufficient.

CC needed just 73 pitches to get through six innings while striking out nine Rangers (and walking none) his last time out, and over his last two starts he’s allowed just one run on four hits and two walks while striking out 14 in 13 2/3 innings. He’ll face crafty 26-year-old lefty Dallas Braden this afternoon. Braden has shown improvement in each of his last two big-league campaigns and has been sharp in the early going, starting 2010 with three quality starts, all leading to Oakland wins. He faced the Yankees just once last year and was torched in the Bronx (seven runs on ten hits and six walks in 5 2/3 IP). A week later, an infected rash on his foot ended his season.

Nick Swisher returns to the lineup this afternoon while Curtis Granderson yeilds to Marcus Thames against the lefty Braden. Brett Gardner is in center. Francisco Cervelli catches the day game after the night game. After Cano, the lineup is Swisher, Thames, Cervelli, Gardner.

Couple with Light, By Nathan Oliveira (2003)

Step correct.

“The smell of good bread baking, like the sound of lightly flowing water, is indescribable in its evocation of innocence and delight.”
M. F. K. Fisher

Sullivan Street Bakery. Pure goodness.

[Image from Serious Eats]

Sandhogs…

Last fall, FLYP ran a terrific profile about these fascinating professionals. On a side note, I just read that FLYP is shutting down. Too bad, especially with iPad generation upon us.

In the early Sixties, Newsday’s sports section was arguably the best in New York. This was when Jack Mann was the editor and George Vecsey, Steve Jacobson, and Bob Waters were some of his star writers. Stan Isaacs was there too. The next wave of talent included Joe Gergen and Joe Donnelly. Tony Kornheiser started there, and the great Bill Nack joined the sports department from the city desk. Later still, Tom Verducci came out of the Newsday sports department.

There is a new tradition at Newsday, which is only available on-line via subscription, as James Dolan puts his stamp on how things are run.

Dig this piece of investigative reporting from The New York Observer:

Newsday has a new policy for its sports page. The paper’s editors have told their writers there has to be a new, softer tone. They don’t want loaded words. They don’t want name-calling. They don’t want stories to be unnecessarily harsh.

In interviews with several staffers at the newspaper, the policy was explained to Newsday’s sports reporters and columnists around the beginning of the year. Here are the early results: Stories have been killed because they didn’t adhere to the new policy. One columnist left the paper in response. Reporters, both within the sports department and in the Newsday newsroom, are suspicious of the motives behind it. Depending on whom you talk to, the edict has either created a more informed and balanced paper, or it has left the faint air of censorship hanging inside the paper’s Melville headquarters. “Anyone reading our sports coverage this year will see that it has been tough and fair, thorough and award-winning,” emailed Newsday editor Debby Krenek in a written statement sent by a spokeswoman.

“It’s rank censorship,” said a current Newsday sports reporter. “You can’t tell journalists that there are things to avoid and call it anything but censorship.”

Jack Mann is rolling over in his grave.

I remember watching Phil Hughes’ great, painfully cut-short start against Texas three years ago*, and thinking it was the most depressing 10-1 Yankees win I’d ever seen. Last night’s game was not nearly such a bummer: Hughes pitched the best game of his career, took his no-hitter into the eighth and was finally derailed by a comebacker bouncing off his glove, not by a key muscle making an unhappy popping noise. The Yankees won 3-1, and the Phenom/Phranchise nicknames would seem to be back in business.

Hughes walked Daric Barton on four pitches in the first inning, but put away the next 20 A’s he faced, 10 by strikeout, a career high. He got himself all the way into the eight inning with no hits and barely any drama – none of those dazzling close plays that Sabathia got in his no-hit innings of a few weeks ago. Everything was moving in exactly the way you’d want it to move, and while I don’t think his fastball topped 92 or 93 mph, that’s evidently plenty fast enough.

The Yankees scraped a pair of runs together in the fourth, when Alex Rodriguez tripled, and made it look like such a good idea that Robinson Cano decided to do the same immediately afterwards, later scoring on Posada’s groundout. Meanwhile, Hughes was being ostentatiously ignored in the dugout until the eighth, where with his pitch count still quite low and mostly made of strikes, he promptly allowed a hit to Eric Chavez. Well, kind of – the ball hit off Hughes’ arm and glove, and while he wasn’t hurt (PHEW… hey, can that be Hughes’ new nickname?), he also couldn’t find the ball for a few very long seconds. He regained his composure but as he reached 100 pitches with several runners on base, Girardi brought in Joba Chamberlain; one run scored before the Yanks could turn the game over to Mariano, who made things slightly more interesting that was strictly necessary in the ninth but, as usual, remained in control.

Pre-Mo, the Yankees got an ultimately unneeded but reassuring insurance run when Brett Gardner dunked a single into left to score Curtis Granderson (who, in case you were wondering, has been adjusting just fine to NYC off the field, too). Ken Singleton had just been saying, as Gardner faced a 3-1 count, “one more ball out of the zone and Jeter will come to the plate,” and I was thinking, hey, there is a chance Gardner will actually get a hit, you know. (I watched the Mets-Cubs game earlier in the evening and let me tell you, there is nothing like it to make you appreciate the Yankees’ lineup. The Cubs happened to win tonight with plenty of offense, but then they were facing Oliver Perez, and Lou Piniella still spent most of the game looking like he was watching someone strangle a koala… or, perhaps, like he would like to strangle a koala himself).

Anyway, as much as we all wanted to see a little history, it seems ridiculous to call this game disappointing. Hughes’ no-hitter interruptus didn’t bother me much, because it was just beautiful to see him pitch so well… and then to be available again in five days.

Now excuse while I go knock on all the wood within a mile radius.

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*Holy crap, was that really three years ago?