Daily Archives: July 6, 2010

I was thinking about the two impressive starting pitchers being featured tonight in Oakland, but this being Oakland, up popped the image of the Tooz:

Good ol’, Oakland.

Let’s Go Yan-Kees!

Since July 4th was Louis Armstrong’s birthday (and even if it wasn’t his official birthday, play along), let’s dedicate the rest of the week’s beats to him. Here’s one of Woody’s favorites:

I’m writing to you today from the afterlife, but please do not be alarmed. I am asking for your kindest assistance in a noble venture. It is completely on the up-and-up, and my minions are beyond questioning regarding their decency and motives. They have taken my good name and ascribed it to a cancer research foundation.  Not only have they done that, but they’ve endeavored to undertake a fundraising walkathon in that hallowed house of our National Pastime, Yankee Stadium.

Yes, on the same field that the smoothly dashing Derek Jeter and genial yet lethal Mariano Rivera ply their trade, many feet will trod on August 15th.  They will saunter and/or gallop through the corridors of the seating areas, and end their 5K jaunt on the warning track of the Stadium.  And you, dear reader, can join in this aerobic activity.

What’s that you say?  You can’t make the event?  Your “ambulatoryness” lost its “ness”?  You can’t afford the entry fee?  Well, I am sad to hear of that, and I can’t help but think of the opportunity you are missing, but let me offer you yet another way to help my enterprise.

Unbeknownst to you readers still of this mortal coil, they do have the Internet in Heaven (I hear they have it in Hell too, but there its dial-up).  One of my favorite sites for sportswriting is the portal through which I am communicating right now, Bronx Banter.  It just so happens that Diane Firstman, an erudite Banter columnist and long-legged lass, who can probably circle the bases in a mere 64 paces or so, is already registered for the event, and is looking for supporters.

Being of the feminine persuasion, and therefore lack some of the proper, how should we say, “equipment” to play this wondrous game of baseball, this may be the only way dear Diane will ever make it onto the dirt at Yankee Stadium (unless she tumbles out of the stands in a futile attempt to corral an $8.00 foul ball, but of course that would require a seat in those “Legends” sections, which would seem to imply that the sittee could BUY hundreds of those same $8.00 baseballs and not risk getting tossed out of the Stadium by that delightful Yankee Stadium gestapo, but I digress).  It would touch my weary soul if you would pledge a few dollars towards her participation in this event.

If you’ve read this far, I thank you.  If you’ve decided to participate by joining this walkathon/run, I thank you.  If you’ve decided to participate by supporting Ms. Firstman, I thank you.  If you HAVEN’T read this far, then there must be some alternate reality existing within this portal, and I suggest you log off and go outside and throw a ball around.

Sincerely, Damon Runyon’s ethereal presence . . .

Man, an ice-cold, air-conditioned movie theater sounds like the place to be today as the temperature hits 100 in the Big Apple.

From There’s No Business Like Show Business:

How do you follow that? Well, never one to be upstaged…

Yo, where you at?

[Photo Credit: Mamrie’s Weblog]

Jeremiah Moss, who runs the most excellent blog, Vanishing New York, has a piece in the Times about the location of Edward Hopper’s famous painting, “Nighthawks.”  Moss dug through archival photographs and microfilm to pinpoint the exact spot only to discover that the scene Hopper painted didn’t entirely exist in the first place:

Back home, I dug through my bookshelves and unearthed Gail Levin’s “Edward Hopper: An Intimate Biography.” The book is autographed by the author — I had gone to hear Ms. Levin read in a bookshop that is now gone — and dated from a time when I was still new to the city and knew it largely, romantically, as a sprawling Hopper painting filled with golden, melancholy light. In the book, Ms. Levin reported that an interviewer wrote that the diner was “based partly on an all-night coffee stand Hopper saw on Greenwich Avenue … ‘only more so,’” and that Hopper himself said: “I simplified the scene a great deal and made the restaurant bigger. Unconsciously, probably, I was painting the loneliness of a large city.”

Partly. More so. Simplified. The hidden truth became clearer. The diner began to fade. And then I saw it — on every triangular corner, in the candy shop’s cornice and the newsstand’s advertisement for 5-cent cigars, in the bakery’s curved window and the liquor store’s ghostly wedge, in the dark bricks that loom in the background of every Village street.

Over the past years, I’ve watched bakeries, luncheonettes, cobbler shops and much more come tumbling down at an alarming rate, making space for condos and office towers. Now the discovery that the “Nighthawks” diner never existed, except as a collage inside Hopper’s imagination, feels like yet another terrible demolition, though no bricks have fallen.

I’ve come to appreciate Moss’ blog–it’s a regular stop for me–but I don’t share his disappointment here because I think an artist’s natural inclination is to combine his (or her) imagination with what they see in real life. Once it becomes a picture, on the canvas, it has its own rules, and isn’t meant to be a document like a photograph. And this picture gets at one of Hopper’s most compelling (and enduring) themes–“the lonliness of the big city.”

 When I look at the painting, actually, my eye always goes across the street to the empty store front on the left-hand side of the canvas, the triangle-shape of green in the middle window above that store. I love how it gives balance to the scene inside the diner. It is an empty space but sturdy and sure.

What I don’t know from professional hoops is more than somewhat. Still, as a casual fan, I just don’t see the Knicks’ splashy signing of Amare Stoudemire as anything but a prelude to more disappointment at the Garden. Maybe I’m jaded by all these years of Dolan depression. Amare strikes me as the guy you’d ideally want to be the third-best player on your team, not the guy you build around. He is a stud, he is a good player but he also feels like Plan B.

I’m curious to know just how much better he is than David Lee (he’s better for sure, don’t get me wrong). Anyhow, unless he lures a couple of more stars to town–preferably a point guard–this could be the start of something familiar. To be fair, it is too soon to judge this signing. I just hope it is the start of something…better, for the Knicks and their fans, and not just another re-run. It’s still early…

Am I crazy? Am I mising something?

Photo by Associated Press

Believe it or not, I was in Oakland on Monday morning. A family road trip for the Fourth of July weekend had us driving back and forth across the San Mateo and Bay Bridges all weekend long, and Monday found us on the east side of the bay as we started our trip home. Much has been made recently about rule changes that have made it more difficult for teams travelling across the country, and the Yankees certainly faced an uphill battle after playing in the Bronx on Sunday afternoon, flying to Oakland on Sunday night, and squaring off against the A’s on Monday night, but I’ll ask that you not feel sorry for them.

I’m guessing that during their seven-hour trek from Yankee Stadium to their hotel in Oakland, their journey was a bit softer than mine. While they were lounging in luxury, watching DVDs and flagging down cocktail waitresses on a chartered flight, I was battling holiday traffic, oppressive heat, outrageously filthy gas station restrooms, and three fussy children. At the end of my journey I knew I’d have to watch the game and file a game report, all without the help of greenies or amphetamines.

But I digress. The Yankee hitters, perhaps suffering from jet lag, weren’t overly impressive. They got on the board in the second inning when Nick Swisher doubled, Curtis Granderson tripled, and Francisco Cervelli singled — all with two outs — to jump out to an early 2-0 lead, and Mark Teixeira added an insurance run with his 14th home run in the sixth. That was pretty much it, but it was enough.

Javier Vazquez was on the mound on Monday night and continued his resurgence, throwing 110 pitches over seven strong innings while allowing only only three hits, two walks, and a single run. His only struggle came in the third inning, as Chad Pennington tripled with one out and then scored on a Coco Crisp sacrifice fly. He worked around a walk and a single in the fourth, allowed a walk to start the fifth, but then retired the next nine batters in a row to finish his night. Joba Chamberlain and Mariano Rivera took care of the final six hitters, and the deed was done. Yankees 3, A’s 1.