Monthly Archives: July 2010

Inception is the “It” movie of the summer but I don’t have much interest in seeing it. Which isn’t to say I won’t, but it’s not the kind of movie that gets me excited–complicated science fiction mystery, dreams within dreams…M’eh. Just makes me shrug my shoulders.

Hey, when is Leo DiCaprio ever going to make a comedy?

Still, I’ve heard some wonderful things about Inception–that it contains some stunning material. I’ve also heard that it isn’t all that after all. Which pretty much sums up the critical reaction. Strong in both directions.

Here’s a piece in the Times that covers the range of opinions…and dig Roger Ebert’s take as well.

Over at SI.com, Joe Sheehan thinks the Angels did a great job getting Dan Haren:

Striking out of the blue, Angels GM Tony Reagins completed a trade that not only makes his team better over the next 10 weeks, but better over the next three seasons. By acquiring Dan Haren from the Diamondbacks without giving up any top prospects, Reagins set a high bar for his fellow GMs in the runup to the trade deadline, buying low on one of the game’s top starting pitchers.

…Based on their underlying skills, Haren should allow about 20-23 fewer runs down the stretch than Saunders would have, while also taking a handful of innings away from the bullpen. At the standard estimate of 10 runs gained or saved equalling one win, he makes the Angels two wins better. Essentially, this trade matches what the Rangers did in adding Cliff Lee; and in a race that could well be decided on the season’s final weekend, adding two to three wins is a huge improvement.

The Yanks are still in the market for bullpen help as well as a hitter to come off the bench.

Phil Hughes gave up three runs on a couple of homers through five innings today but had a lead when the skies opened-up thanks in part to two dingers off the bat of Curtis Granderson. It started pouring by me in the north west corner of the Bronx before it hit the Stadium. The tops of the trees whipped around in a frenzy and I had half a mind to go outside and run around just cause. You know, little kid stuff. Then the old man in me sighed, thought better of it, and sat my ass right back down.

Pretty soon the tarp came on the field at the Stadium and it wasn’t until two hours later that play resumed. The Yanks rolled from there. The only blip came when Joba Chamberlain walked the lead off runner in the eighth and then gave up a two-run homer. But the Yanks piled it on late and ran away with it. One scary moment in the eighth when Alex Rodriguez got plunked on the forearm and had to leave the game.

Fortunately, he was okay, didn’t need to go for x-rays and is expected to play tomorrow. The bum didn’t hit a homer. Stuck on 599. Only got two hits and three RBI. Loser. Jeter had three hits, Teixeira had two, and so did Robinson Cano, who got the 1,000th base hit of his career.

Final Score: Yanks 12, Royals 6.

The Rays won but the Sox lost. Yanks stay three ahead of Tampa and are now eight ahead of Boston. And we prepare for the week ahead and go to sleep the heppiest of kets.

[Photo Credit: Al Bello/Getty Images]

Earlier in the week, Sean O’Sullivan handed the Yankees’ their ass while pitching for the Angels. Since, O’Sullivan has been traded to the Royals, and he’s on the hill again today. No offense to Mr. O’Sullivan, but I sure would expect the Bombers to come out a-sluggin’ this afternoon. Phil Hughes is on the hill for the Yanks, and it would be nice to see him have a good, strong, outing, now wouldn’t it?

Stay cool, cheer hard, eat well, and Let’s Go Yan-Kees!

[Picture by Bags]

The Good Reverend…

Before the Grits…

It started ugly for Serge Mitre today, deep counts, base hits, boiling-hot afternoon, and by the time he left the game, seven runs were on the board for the Royals, which proved to be enough to hold-off the Yanks, 7-4. Jose Guillen crushed a home run into the second deck in left field. Can’t recall seeing one hit up there in the new park yet, man, it was a shot.

Mark Teixeira continued his hot hitting–even the balls he hits foul are ripped these days–with two dingers but made the final out of the game. It was a tough play, two men on base, Teixeira the tying run, Alex Rodriguez, sitting on career homer #599 on deck. Replays showed that Teixeira just beat out an infield hit, but it was a close play and he was called out. Tough way to end the game, but Teixeira didn’t argue.

The Yanks can still win the series tomorrow.

Hose off, people. Grab something cool, get a nice beverage, and we’ll see youse in the morning.

[Photo By Nick Laham/Getty Images]

Africa hot. Dog Day Afternoon hot. Hotter n July hot.

Don’t forget to drink plenty of fluids and let’s go Yan-Kees!

Here’s Vic Ziegel, from the introduction to his collection Sunday Punch: Raspberries, Strawberries, Steinbrenner & Tysons–a Famed Sports Columnist Takes His Best Shot at Sports’ Big Shots:

Many of the pieces contained here were written in the press boxes, very close to deadline, with the stranger next to me typing a lot quicker. When sportswriters describe other sportswriters, good is high praise, quick is the ultimate. (The two words, quikc and good, make the work sound almost lewd. Me? I never got it for free and I never will.) The deadline is the problem, the enemy. It is there, at the same time, every night. You stand still and it comes closer. You can’t fake it out because it doesn’t move. It grows shorter and towers over you. It doesn’t understand that you want a better word than fast to describe a baserunner. Very fast is very bad. Fleet is out. Swift, nimble, speedy. No, no, no. Fast is starting to look better. There’s coffee spilled on my notes, you know in your heart that the press lounge has run out of beer, and now the stranger is on the telephone telling someone named Sweetie that he’s on the way.

On those days I write in the Daily News‘ sports department, and the ax of a deadline isn’t about to drop immediately, when you might think I have words enough and time, it suddenly becomes important to play chicken with the blade. So I shmooze with the guys in the office, go downstairs for another cup of cardboard coffee, call home, anybody’s home, until I have finally arrived at the moment I dread: the sports editor standing over me and saying, “Where is it?” (This is what you answer, kids. You say five minutes. And not to worry. If you miss once, nothing happens. If you miss too many times, they make you sports editor.)

And here’s John Schulian remembering his friend.

It was Vic Ziegel who once began a story with these immortal words: “The game is never over until the last man is out, the New York Post learned late last night.” If I had a nickel for every baseball writer who has paraphrased or just plain stolen that sentence, I might be able to afford a box seat at a Yankee game.

But those 19 words, no matter how often they appeared in one form or another under someone else’s byline, would always belong to Vic. He took a cliché and, with one deft addition, told his readers that he had written about a game, not the end of the world. Better still, he was setting the stage for a story filled with fun and whimsy. It would also be wise and free of self-importance, because those were trademarks of Vic’s work, too. Most of all, though, his story was going to make people laugh.

Making people laugh was what Vic did best until he died the other day, at 72, and turned my smile, and the smiles of everybody else that knew him, upside down. At the old Dorothy Schiff Post, he tickled funny bones by writing a sports advice column he called “Dear Flabby.” When Red Smith invited him to go to the horse races in some exotic, Ali-inspired locale -– oh, did Vic love the horses -– the next thing he knew, Red had written a column featuring a character named “Bet a Million” Ziegel.

And then there was a story that never made print, the one Vic told on himself about his turn as a hockey writer. The old one had left the Post, and when the new one couldn’t start for a couple of weeks, Vic volunteered the fill in even though hockey left him cold. Somehow he survived. He was such a team guy, in fact, that he even escorted the new man to the first game he covered. Soon after the puck was dropped, the new man began waxing rhapsodic about the action in the crease.

“The crease?” Vic Ziegel, hockey expert, said. “What’s the crease?”

As the story comes back to me, I can hear him laughing. Not loudly -– there was nothing loud about him -– but with the joy he got from telling a funny story well. And if he was the punch line, so what? We’re all punch lines at one point or another in our lives.

He and I might have qualified in that regard when we wrote for P.M. papers–Vic the Post, me the Chicago Daily News–and still struggled to make our deadlines. It was funny for everybody except us and the desk men who were waiting to slap headlines on our copy as dawn came creeping. For all I know, that was how our friendship was born: We were the last two guys in the pressroom. The only thing I can tell you for sure, though, is that we met at the Muhammad Ali-Alfredo Evangelista fight outside Washington, D.C., in 1977, and we became friends, just like that.

It was one more stunning development in the year and a half or so that saw me go from cityside reporter in Baltimore to sportswriter at the Washington Post to columnist in Chicago. Here was Vic, whose work in the New York Post had been making me laugh since the first time I picked up the paper, in 1968, and he was giving me his phone number and calling me “pal” and treating me as if I belonged in the kind of company he kept in Manhattan. He had worked with Leonard Shecter, Larry Merchant, Pete Hamill, and Murray Kempton, and I’d read in the Village Voice that he hung out at the ultimate writers’ bar, the Lion’s Head. Now he was my friend — how cool was that?

There was a grace and good-heartedness about Vic that never wavered throughout the 33 years I knew him. He took me to the Lion’s Head for my first visit, and made a point of introducing me to Hamill and Joel Oppenheimer and Joe Flaherty, towering figures in the pecking order in my head.

When I was married and my wife and I visited New York, Vic and his wife, the pluperfect Roberta, hosted a brunch in our honor at their apartment, and who should show up but Wilfred Sheed, another writing hero. Vic knew the Italian restaurants I should eat at, and the movies I should see (especially if they were film noir), and the old jazz I should be aware of, by Bix Beiderbecke and Jellyroll Morton. I’m partial to country music myself, but one rainy night Vic picked me up to go to dinner and then abruptly pulled his car to a stop on a side street so I could listen to what he thought was the perfect blending of our sensibilities: Jimmie Rodgers, the Singing Brakeman, backed by Louis Armstrong. If a goy from Salt Lake City may say such a thing, he was the ultimate mensch.

There are people who knew Vic longer than I did, and there are people who knew him better, but I consider myself lucky to have spent the time I did reading him and hanging out with him. The last time was after last year’s Breeders’ Cup at Santa Anita. He stayed for a couple of days in the room where I keep my crime novels and a jukebox that I’m ashamed to say has only one jazz CD on it, Miles Davis’ “Kind of Blue.” He had aged and he seemed less sure of himself physically, but if he had been diagnosed with the cancer that ultimately killed him, he never breathed a word of it. He wanted to talk, to laugh, to eat, and when I suggested that we watch The Friends of Eddie Coyle, he was up for that, too. He took the sofa, I took the easy chair, and we were both sound asleep before we got 20 minutes into the movie. It’s what old guys do. Then they say goodbye and hope they’ll see each other again.

When Vic was back in New York, he told me about the health problems that had begun to dog him, though still with no mention of cancer. But I’m not sure I ever told him about the anthology of boxing writing that George Kimball, another old friend, and I are putting together. I should have, because he’s in the book with a blissfully funny story he wrote for Inside Sports 30 years ago about the devoutly unfunny Roberto Duran. The story opens with Vic’s description of two chinchillas, Ralph and Steve, who live in a window cage in New York’s fur district. Now nobody will ever open another boxing story with chinchillas named Ralph and Steve, damn it.

[Photo Credit: NY Daily News, Corbis]

Sitting on 599 home runs, Alex Rodriguez drew a walk from Brian Bannister to load the bases in the bottom of the first inning of Friday night’s game against the Royals at Yankee Stadium. Robinson Cano followed by lacing a high fastball into the left-field gap for a bases-clearing double, and Jorge Posada followed with a double into the right-field corner that plated Cano for Posada’s 1,000th career run batted in. Posada is the 11th catcher (and third Yankee catcher after Bill Dickey and Yogi Berra) to reach the 1,000 RBI mark. Of the men ahead of him Lance Parrish (1,070) and Ted Simmons (second to Berra with 1,389) are the only eligible players not in the Hall of Fame.

Posada’s milestone was the only one reached in Friday night’s game, which was effectively over once the Yankees took that 4-0 lead in the first. A.J. Burnett held the Royals scoreless through five innings before an hour and 25-minute rain delay with two outs in the bottom of the fifth ended his, and Bannister’s, evening.

Brett Gardner singled home a pair of runs off reliever Victor Marte in the sixth. Posada picked up RBI 1,001 with a single off lefty Dusty Hughes in the seventh. Only then did the Royals get off the schnide with doubles by the just-activated Rick Ankiel and Yuniesky Betancourt to start the eighth against Chad Gaudin, who had already pitched 2 1/3 scoreless innings by that point. Gaudin finished that frame without further damage and Jonathan Albaladejo worked a perfect ninth, striking out two to wrap up the 7-1 Yankee win.

As for Rodriguez, after his first-inning walk, he reached on an infield single in the third, struck out looking in the fifth, and singled in the seventh. With two out in the bottom of the eighth, Dusty Hughes walked Mark Teixeira on four pitches, giving Rodriguez one more chance at number 600, but Rodriguez hit a broken-bat grounder to third on the first pitch. Next up: Saturday’s starter Kyle Davies, who gave up Rodriguez’s 500th home run at the old Stadium in the bottom of the first inning on Saturday, August 4, 2007.

It’s hot and damp in New York. AJ Burnett goes for the Yanks tonight and all eyes are on the $82 million knucklehead. With Serge Mitre throwing tomorrow afternoon, it behooves Mr. Burnett to not only pitch well, but deep into the game. Otherwise, he g’wan here it but good, Bronx Cheer Style.

Man-up, tough guy, and let’s go Yan-kees!

(p.s. I don’t think I’m going out on a limb here when I tell you that I think Alex Rodriguez will hit career dinger 600 and more this weekend.)

[Picture by Bags]

Unfortunately, it sometimes takes death to resurrect the memories of retired managers and players. Such is the case with Ralph Houk, who won two world championships with the Yankees, but became a forgotten man during the George Steinbrenner Era and faded further into the distance with the success of Joe Torre. The underrated Houk, who died on Wednesday at the age of 90, deserves credit for being a patient, players-first manager who worked well in developing younger players.

Houk’s first three seasons as a manager seemingly had him ticketed for a place in the Hall of Fame. Right off the bat, he led the Yankees to world championships in 1961 and ‘62, before falling short of a third consecutive title in the 1963 World Series against the Dodgers. If Houk had guided just one other team to a world championship, whether with the Yankees, Tigers, or Red Sox, I believe we’d be celebrating him today as a resident of Cooperstown. But that third title never came. In fact, Houk never again finished first in the regular season, either a pennant or a division title, and never made it back to the World Series. His Yankee teams from his second tenure in New York simply weren’t good enough, his Tigers teams were mired in rebuilding mode after the glory years of Kaline and Cash, and his Red Sox lacked the requisite pitching to win in the early 1980s. There simply is no guarantee, no birthright, when it comes to winning it all.

As it was, two world championships put Houk in elite territory. He is one of a handful of managers with two titles who remain on the outside looking in when it comes to Cooperstown; the others are Bill Carrigan, Tom Kelly, Danny Murtaugh, and three current managers, Terry Francona, Cito Gaston, and Tony LaRussa, who are not yet eligible for the Hall of Fame. That’s pretty good company. Murtaugh deserves to be in the Hall, LaRussa will be one day, and strong arguments can be made for Francona and Gaston. One can be made for Houk, too.

(more…)

Neptune and Triton, By Gianlorenzo Bernini (1620)

First:

Flipped:

I just happened to be downtown last night, looking for a quick bite, when I realized I was near the Milk Bar. So I stopped in–it was crowded–and ordered the pork buns. A $9 treat. I stood there and savored every bite, knowing I shouldn’t eat too fast, knowing they’d be gone all too soon. But I couldn’t help myself.

And it was worth it.

[Photo Credit: Momfuku for 2]

Two years ago, I had dinner with Vic Ziegel at Liebmann’s Deli in the Bronx. We’d been introduced through some mutual friends and I wanted to chat with him about his career and the history of sports writing. He was funny in that skeptical, weathered manner you’d expect from a career newspaperman. I asked him who he thought were the best sports writers and he told me that on any given night any number of guys were the best. “We all had nights when we were the greatest.”

When I asked him who were the most literary sports writers  he looked at me like I had six heads. “There is no such thing as a literary sports writer. Not when you are working on deadline, even if I spent most of my time working for an afternoon paper.” Vic wasn’t a journalist. He was a newspaperman. No pretensions.

I just got word that Vic has passed away. Man, this is tough news for the New York sports writing community. His sense of humor and sharp eye for detail will be missed.

In the meantime, read this wonderful piece by Vic about the joys of being a sportswriter:

When I covered baseball for the New York Post, the real New York Post, it was especially important that I finish in good time. Before the bars closed. The Lion’s Head was my bar of choice. If I got there at a decent hour, there was a great chance that Len Shecter, my friend, my idol, would be at the corner of the bar. He was the champ, tough, outrageous, funny, shrewd, fearless, acerbic, but don’t get me started. I wanted to write like Lenny – as they say in TV, the same but different – and on my best nights I came close.

He covered the Yankees when they won the pennant twice a year. When their clubhouse was colder than Greenland. Mickey Mantle was probably the main perp. It was no easy thing to be tough, outrageous, shrewd, etc. Lenny always got there. A few minutes after he left the baseball beat, Mantle told him, for his ears only, “I always thought you had a lot of guts.”

Lenny did a lousy thing to those nights at the Lion’s Head. He died. To this day, when I write a line I like, I tell my friend, “I did good, Lenny.”

My condolences go out to Vic’s family.

Unbearably hot.

Lena Olin and Daniel Day Lewis in The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

In case you don’t already know, a site called MLB Trade Rumors is the spot to go if you are interested in the latest tweets, posts and pieces from around baseball. These guys do a tremendous job of assembling information, they are top-notch. Course the Yanks are in on everyone, or maybe no one at all.

He wouldn’t come cheap, but Dan Haren, anyone?

Hard-hit baseballs swarmed Yankee Stadium tonight like those godawful midges in Cleveland. So many interesting plays developed within the barrage of base hits and the mad dashing of base runners. If you had the ear of a young, eager baseball fan during tonight’s contest, you could really fill it up with all that transpired. An inside-the-park home run. A potential run disallowed by a prior base out. Another runner cut down at home plate by a phantom tag. A vintage Posada brain fart so perplexing and inexplicable that it stubbornly defies analysis. The 599th home run of an epic career. A successfully executed running-swinging bunt. Nooks and crannies for baseball fans of all kinds. Except those that like to, you know, see a pitcher get somebody out.

When is five runs in six innings a disappointment? When the pitcher is Bruce Chen or Aaron Sele. This game had to be a laugher. I thought for a second, maybe I’m jinxing it by acknowledging how ridiculously lopsided this match-up is. But if CC Sabathia isn’t a sure thing against Bruce Chen and the Royals, then just go ahead and throw everything out the window.

Of course, CC was far from a sure thing. He was batting practice. I’ve seen CC get roughed up before, but not like this. Not against such awful hitters. And not so consistently. He was bad in the first, second, fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh. To his credit, he dug down and kept battling. And in an eventful game of Yankee gift swap, where each team was eager to forfeit runs and re-gift them later in the game, the Yanks found the laugher I hoped was in there all along and won 10-4.

(more…)

The Royals have had just one winning season (props, Tony Peña) since 1994, so it’s easy to write them off as a bad team. They are a bad team, and they’re not getting better, but they’re not remarkably bad the way they used to be. Sandwiched around that 83-win season in 2003 were four 100-loss campaigns. In the four years since then, the Royals winning percentage hasn’t dipped below .400 and if the standings stay the way they are, 2010 will be the third straight season in which they finish above last place in their division. Those are pathetically low standards, yes, but they’re also a reminder that, while the Royals are bad, they’re not awful.

Better yet, K.C. has played nearly .500 ball since Ned Yost replaced Trey Hillman as manager on May 14. That’s a little more than two months of break-even baseball, which is a big deal for this ballclub. The Royals went 9-4 under Yost over the remainder of May, then outscored their opponents in June (though they were still just 13-14 on the month).

Things have cooled off a bit in July. The Royals are again just a game under .500 for the month (7-8), but they’ve been outscored by 37 runs, a bigger run deficit in 15 games than they had in 23 games while going 9-14 under Hillman in April. Chalk that one up to three lop-sided losses (11-0 to the Angels, 15-5 to the White Sox, and 13-1 to the Blue Jays) all three coming in games started by Anthony Lerew, who will face Phil Hughes on Sunday.

Playing the Royals is an advantage in and of itself, but the Yankees luck out by facing them for four games yet avoiding defending Cy Young award winner Zack Greinke. Instead the Yankees will face, in order, Bruce Chen, Brian Bannister, Kyle Davies, and Lerew. That Yost has been able to keep this team around .500 with those guys making up 80 percent of the rotation is both startling and a sign that the Royals likely won’t keep it up, at least not without getting an effective Gil Meche back from the disabled list (he started a rehab assignment on Wednesday).

Indeed, only the Pirates and Orioles have a lower rotation ERA than the Royals’ 5.12. The same is true with Baseball Prospectus’s win-expectancy based SNLVAR, only the Bucs and O’s have had worse rotations by that measure. The Kansas City bullpen is closer to average thanks to lock-down closer Joakim Soria, ex-Ranger Robinson Tejada, and, get this, ex-Yankee Kyle Farnsworth and Kanekoa Texeira, the reliever acquired by the Yankees in the Nick Swisher trade then lost to the Mariners as a Rule 5 pick in December. Farnsworth has allowed just two home runs in 41 innings this year and is walking just 2.2 men per nine innings. Texeira, who was plucked off waivers in June, has walked just 1.6 men per nine as a Royal and boasts a 2.38 ERA in 22 2/3 innings for Kansas City.

I’m not about to go yearning for Farnsworth’s return, but it’s a bit galling to see those two helping the Royals’ bullpen to a performance not far  removed, and in fact slightly superior, to that of the Yankees’ pen. The Yankees have a slight edge in ERA, 4.22 to 4.26, but the Royals’ pen has contributed nearly 40 more innings, which increases their advantage over the Yankees in the cumulative win-expectancy-based WXRL.

As for the offense, it’s probably enough to point out that this lineup makes the 34-year-old Scott Podsednik look valuable, and that their worst hitter, 36-year-old catcher Jason Kendall, is not only replacing one All-Star catcher (John Buck) and another who was more deserving of that honor (Miguel Olivo), but is hitting second. First baseman Billy Butler, 24, is the featured hitter, but his power is still a bit lacking (.467 slugging). Center fielder David DeJesus, now 30, is having his finest season, but with only an option remaining on his contract, is a top candidate to be traded. DH Jose Guillen, a 34-year-old in his walk year, is also trade bait. Can’t miss prospect Alex Gordon is back in the minors, but raking at Triple-A. Then again, he’s 26 already, and after Butler, the youngest man in the major league lineup is 28. That’s not encouraging for a team that’s theoretically rebuilding.

Tonight CC Sabatha faces Bruce Chen, the well traveled Chinese-Panamanian lefty who was a top prospect last century and is now with his tenth major league club at the age of 33. Chen flirted with a perfect game on July 3, but otherwise has been decidedly average and prone to short, though not disastrous outings. Since joining the rotation on May 30, he has made nine starts, posted a 4.28 ERA and averaged about 5 1/3 innings per start. He last faced the Yankees in 2006 (two starts plus two relief appearances for the Orioles).

Sabathia looked a little rusty in his last start, though he was actually starting on normal rest having started the two games on either side of the Yankees’ four-day All-Star break. He still gave the Yanks seven solid innings in an eventual win. In his last nine starts, he has gone 8-0 with a 2.03 ERA and just two home runs allowed.

Marcus Thames starts at DH against the lefty Chen and bats seventh ahead of Curtis Granderson. Everyone else is in their usual place. Meanwhile, the suddenly very busy (and depressing) Yankee uniform has added another element, a black arm-band in memory of Ralph Houk, who passed away on Wednesday. I can’t remember the Yankees ever wearing three memorial objects on their uniform at once, though they’ve also never work a memorial patch before doing so for George Steinbrenner and Bob Sheppard this month (previously they had stuck to arm bands or retired numbers on the sleeve).

(more…)

From Smitten Kitchen, here goes a fine-looking recipe for peach-blueberry cobbler.

Mmmm, cobbler.