Monthly Archives: July 2011

Louis had skills. These are his collages.

Here’s a long piece on the new Muppets movie. 

Phil Hughes was not great Sunday. There were liners that found gaps, but more that found gloves. He did not dominate. But he was good. And we haven’t seen good since last October in the first round clincher versus Minnesota. So welcome back, Phil, please stick around for the rest of the season.

Brett Gardner led off the game with a hit while Derek Jeter got the day off. I think Jeter has looked fine since he came off the DL, but watching Gardner perform so well up there sure was easy on the eyes. I have friends who are offended that Jeter is still leading off. I’m not at that point, but the Yankee machine might run a little better by flipping the two. At least against righties. Gardner was on base four times and even his out was ripped to short.

Behind Gardner and his three hits, the Yankees rapped out eight more and built four rallies. Each time they rallied, they scored. Whether it was Russell Martin, Robbie Cano, Curtis Granderson or Nick Swisher, there was a key hit or sacrifice fly at the right time to keep the scoreboard flashing. They never broke the game open, but they kept pushing the lead until it was safe.

And with Phil Hughes on the mound, there was really no way to be sure exactly how big the lead needed to be. But Hughes was right and seven runs were more than enough as the Yanks won 7-2. He looked like a big leaguer again. The pitches weren’t blowing people away, but they didn’t look like they were on a tee either. And I was especially encouraged by the break on his curve ball. A baby-step, sure, but aren’t a baby’s steps the hardest to come by?

Two games ago I wrote about the gloomy dome. But when the roof is open on a sunny day after an easy Yankee win, it’s not so bad.

Now head over to the women’s World Cup final. The USA squandered several first half chances and Japan will punish them on the counter attack eventually. The US deserves a goal, and if they score first, they should win.

Phil Hughes looks to show us something this afternoon.

Derek Jeter has the day off.

Brett Gardner LF

Curtis Granderson CF

Mark Teixeira DH

Robinson Cano 2B

Nick Swisher RF

Jorge Posada 1B

Russell Martin C

Eduardo Nunez SS

Ramiro Pena 3B

Never mind the heat:

Let’s Go Yank-ees!

[Photo Credit: the most talented, Joel Zimmer]

Mornin’.

[Photo Credit: Peter Stray]

C.C., a run on three hits and eight Ks in eight innings. Mo shuts the door in the 9th. End of losing streak.

Final Score: Yanks 4, Blue Jays 1.

[Photo Credit: Abelimages/Getty Images]

Yup, it’s the Big Fella. Let’s hope the losing streak stops today.

Let’s Go Yank-ees!

One of the nicer outgrowths of Robinson Cano winning the Home Run Derby was the attention given to his designated pitcher, his own father. I suspect that a lot of non-Yankee fans did not know that Cano is a second generation major leaguer, but now they realize that his dad, Jose Cano, did have a major league career–albeit a brief one. And they should know that it was Jose who made the respectful decision to name his son after Hall of Famer and civil rights pioneer Jackie Robinson.

Jose Cano was originally signed by the Yankees in 1980, but was released that summer after making three rough appearances in the Sally League. The tall, thin right-hander then signed with the Braves–on two different occasions–only to be released each time. After signing with the Astros’ organization, he finally made it to the big leagues in 1989, nearly a full decade after beginning his pro career.

Cano did not put up good numbers with the Astros; he had a 5.09 ERA in six career appearances over one fragmented season. But here’s an oddity. In his last appearance, coming on September 30, Cano actually pitched a complete game, allowing only two runs in a 9-2 win over Scott Scudder in the Reds. Now Cano wasn‘t exactly facing the “Big Red Machine“ that day. The Reds, who were playing out the string, featured only one good hitter that day, a fellow named Paul O’Neill. The rest of the lineup showcased people like Herm Winningham, Luis Quinones, onetime Yankee Joe Oliver (who batted fifth!), Rolando Roomes, and a shortstop named Jeff Richardson.

Still, Cano pitched very well that day. How many players throw complete game efforts in their final major league appearance? Well, it turns out that Cano is the only one in history to have achieved that strange feat. Cano, who saved his best pitching for last, then left the Astros’ organization to sign a contract to play in the relative obscurity of the Taiwanese League.

Well, he’s no longer obscure. With a big assist from his son, Jose Cano is now a household name in baseball circles…

***

I’m not normally a fan of Deadspin, but Eric Nusbaum contributed an interesting article there the other day in which he rated the 100 worst players in major league history. Some of the entries were funny (Johnnie LeMaster once wore the word “BOO” on the back of his jersey) and others were downright revealing (did you know that Mark Lemongello once kidnapped his cousin, singer Peter Lemongello?).

Yet, I do have objections to the inclusions of two former Yankees on the list: Billy Martin and Curt Blefary. “Billy the Kid” and “Clank” were hardly stars, but they were useful players who could contribute to winning teams. Martin was a good defensive second baseman who could fill in at short and third. He also elevated his game enormously in the postseason; he batted .500 with two home runs in the 1953 World Series, and .333 over five World Series combined. Those are hardly the accomplishments of one of the game’s worst players.

In regards to Blefary, I’ve long been a fan of his and feel a need to defend the late journeyman. While it’s true that he was a terrible defender at several positions, he also had some power, drew a lot of walks, and gave teams flexibility with his ability to catch, play first base, or the outfield. At the very least, as a left-handed hitting backup catcher, Blefary provided value in a limited role. Once again, that hardly qualifies him as one of baseball’s worst.

The bottom line is this: there have been hundreds of players far worse than either Martin or Blefary. Those two simply don’t belong on the Deadspin list…

***

I love living in Cooperstown, in part because on any given day, just about any former major leaguer can show up. You never know whom you might meet in the Hall of Fame, or on Main Street. Already this summer, ex-big leaguers like Luis Gonzalez, Glenn Beckert, both Jose Cruz, Jr. and Jose Cruz, Sr. (who briefly played for the Yankees), and former Met Gene Walter have visited the Hall of Fame. One of the most recent to land in Cooperstown is Mike McCormick, who last week toured the museum with his daughter and her family. McCormick pitched briefly for the Yankees, making a handful of appearances in 1970 before finishing up his career the following summer with the Royals.

McCormick’s prime seasons came with San Francisco in the sixties. It’s easy to forget that McCormick once won the Cy Young Award. In 1967, he moved up from being the Giants’ No. 3 starter behind Juan Marichal and Gaylord Perry to being the staff ace. Pitching 262 innings, McCormick led the league with 22 wins, pitched 14 complete games, and posted a 2.85 ERA. He was clearly the best pitcher in the league–and fully deserving of the honor of the Cy Young. Still, he is one of the least known winners of the award, a relative no-name compared to the likes of Seaver, Guidry, Gooden, Maddux, Clemens, and Johnson. McCormick lacked the staying power of other Cy Young winners, largely because of injuries.

Still, McCormick won 134 games during a highly respectable career. He has been retired since 1971, but had never visited Cooperstown until now. “It’s the first time that I’ve been to the Baseball Hall of Fame, and shame on me,” McCormick told Hall of Fame researcher Bill Francis. “It’s an incredible place. I would tell everybody that has an opportunity that this is the place to come.”

Amen, brother. I’m surprised that even more retired players don’t come to Cooperstown. After all, they receive free admission to the Museum, along with a behind-the-scenes tour of the Hall of Fame, if they want it. For the 72-year-old McCormick, it was an experience that was almost as thrilling as winning that Cy Young.

Bruce Markusen’s The Team That Changed Baseball was recently quoted in Sports Illustrated.

The best argument for me against an unbalanced schedule is 19 games versus the Blue Jays. I find the dome gloomy and ugly. The team bores the heck out of me, and they beat the Yankees too often for my tastes. At least they have Jose Bautista and his improbable career arc is fun to watch and to try to make sense of. Except he’s injured. So when the Yanks lost to the Jays tonight 7-1, there were no redeeming features whatsoever.

The really bad news is that to start the second half, the Blue Jays have roughed up two of the bright spots of the first half. And since we have had our doubts about both of those guys, let’s hope this isn’t the beginning of a turbulent course correction.

Freddy Garcia appeared to have good stuff. The fork ball was tumbling out of his hand and his off-speed stuff looked to have good downward action. Lots of swings and misses. Watching the Jays break the tie in the fourth on two beautiful doubles by Snider and Encarnacion, it would be hard to pin the runs on the pitcher. He made his pitch, got the location, speed and break he wanted, but both hitters managed to sweep the barrels of the bats down and out of the zone and right into the pitches’ paths.

Crack, crack. That was all the Jays needed, though Garcia surrendered four more runs. The Jays plated three in the fifth on one hit as Garcia backed up a lead-off double with three walks. If the Yankees had not emptied the bullpen in the previous game, would Girardi have made a move there? I think he would have. The Yankees weren’t hitting thanks to a good outing from flame thrower Brandon Morrow, but at 3-1 or 4-1, they had the puncher’s chance. Whatever – the punch never came.

Thursday’s loss wasn’t hard to take because those freakish early runs were so strange. It was clearly an “inning from Hell” and the bats showed up and scored seven runs, and even made it interesting for half an inning. Tonight was just a drubbing in every aspect. The Blue Jays were chewing sweeter gum and sucking on saltier sunflower seeds. Their water was wetter.

In the bottom of the seventh Russell Martin took a foul ball off the face mask really hard. Yankee fans tuning in for these last two games thought, “Right there with you Russell.”

CC Sabathia and Phil Hughes for a series spilt? Stranger things have happened, but I won’t be able to visualize Hughes having a good game until he has one.

Photo by John Frisch

Derek Jeter SS
Curtis Granderson CF
Mark Teixeira 1B
Robinson Cano 2B
Nick Swisher RF
Jorge Posada DH
Russell Martin C
Brett Gardner LF
Eduardo Nunez 3B

Never mind the hangover:

Let’s Go Yank-ees!

Richard Phillips

Allen Barra on James Rodney Richard:

You’ve heard stories about how great J.R. Richard was at his best, and they are all true. What the stories don’t tell you is how thrilling it was to watch him on the mound on a good day. He was the scariest pitcher I’ve ever seen. He was 6’-8 ½”, and his three-quarters side arm fastball sometimes made it to 100 mph. Imagine a right-handed Randy Johnson with 30 more pounds of muscle, and you’ll get some idea of how terrifying he was.

I don’t think he was a great pitcher—great in the sense of being the best in the league for a couple of seasons—and it’s true that he had an advantage when pitching in the Astrodome, the best hitter’s park in the game back then. But midway through the 1980 season, Sports Illustrated’s William Nack called him “the best right-hander in baseball,” and that was probably true.

By 1980, at the age of 30, he was certainly on the verge of greatness. From 1976-1979 he won 74 games, completing 62 of them and averaging 260 strikeouts per season. He had over 300 strikeouts in both 1978 and 1979. As he got older, he seemed to be getting better and smarter, with a change that startled some hitters. (Of course, when you consistently throw everything, including your slider, in the high 90s, a changeup is going to be even more devastating.)

Serious Eats learns you how to grill pizza.

Over at Egotripland, Prince Paul offers his 10 favorite sample flips.

Listen n loin.

Spotted on his way to the grocery store.

I love New York.

Fresh direct from Soul Sides.

You are welcome.

The Yankees had won their first game coming out of the All-Star break nine years in a row, but that major-league-record streak came to an end in a stunningly bad loss to the Toronto Blue Jays on Thursday night. Both manager and players looked more rusted than rested after the three-day hiatus as Joe Girardi seemed to be employing his bullpen as if he were pulling names out of Billy Martin’s hat, and his players were equally guilty as they committed three errors and a balk, all of which led to a total of SEVEN unearned runs. How did I hate this game? Let me count the ways.

1. The game was essentially over after the first inning, but that inning could have been dramatically different. With one out, Eric Thames hit a diving line drive to left field. Brett Gardner took a run at it, but clearly couldn’t decide whether to go for the catch or back off and play it for a single. His hesitation cost him dearly, as the ball skipped past him and Thames ended up on second base with a double. (Quick aside: isn’t it time for Gardner to get a Gold Glove? I’m just sayin’.) Bartolo Colón was on the mound, and he struggled. He walked José Bautista, but then followed that up with an Adam Lind groundout, and two were out with two on. Aaron Hill then rapped a solid single to center and it was 2-0 Jays, and Travis Snider followed with a ground ball single two batters later for a 3-0 lead, but those were really the only runs that should’ve scored in the inning. (Again, if Gardner had played Thames’s drive correctly, the game would’ve been scoreless.) But the inning continued. J.P. Arencibia hit pounded a grounder to Eduardo Núñez at third, but Núñez let it bounce off his thigh for an error, and the bases were loaded. Next Rajai Davis dribbled a meek little ground ball just to the left of the mound, but Colón had no play and a run scored. In case you missed that, Yunel Escobar came up next and dribbled a meek little ground ball just to the left of the  mound, but Colón had no play and another run scored. That Escobar ball was so eerily similar to the Davis ball that both Colón and Girardi were caught with wry smiles of disbelief. There were no smiles, however, after Thames came up with his second double of the inning, a ringing ground-rule version hit directly over Curtis Granderson’s head in center field. It was 7-0. The game certainly appeared over, and Colón’s night was definitely over.
2. But why did Girardi pull Colón? The only hope for the Yankees was that a long-man might come in and hold the Jays down for the rest of the game so that the Score Truck could chip away at the lead over the next eight innings. That long-man would be Hector Noesi, but since he certainly wasn’t ready yet, Girardi chose Luís Ayala, even though Ayala has typically been used in higher leverage situations much later in the game. (Ayala, of course, added to the mockery of the opening inning by allowing the eighth run to score on a balk.) Unless there were injury concerns (Colón had had to race to first for a putout in addition to fielding those two dribblers), Colón should’ve finished the inning, and Noesi should’ve started the second.
3. It really bothers me when the Yankees tease me into thinking that they’re going to make a comeback. This one started with an Andruw Jones solo home run in the third. 9-1. A few batters later Curtis Granderson rifled a backhand to the baseline that had so much top spin that it actually bounded over the head of Thames in right field for a triple that scored two. 9-3. Granderson would score almost immediately on a routine ground out from Mark Teixeira. 9-4.
4. Meanwhile, young Noesi was cruising along, keeping the Jays complacent. In the top of the sixth, things got interesting. With two runners on, Jones launched his second home run of the game, and suddenly it was 9-7. Now, of course, two things became clear. One, if the first inning hadn’t been so atrocious, the Yankees would have been in the lead; and two, if Girardi hadn’t burned up Ayala, he could have come in for the sixth, Boone Logan the seventh, All-Star David Robertson the eighth, and Mariano Rivera in the ninth. The Yankees would score a few runs, and we’d all have been happy.
5. But none of that happened. Girardi brought Logan in with one out and two on in the sixth. Logan would get one out, but then he’d yield a single which scored two, taking all the wind out of the sails. 11-7.
6. This is when I lifted my flat screen above my head and fired it through the sliding glass door, so I’m not entirely sure that all this actually happened. Remember when Darko Milicic was known as the Human Victory Cigar? Well, Girardi has found his Human White Flag, and his name is Sergio Mitre. HWF would allow two runs in the seventh (one charged to Logan) and then cough up three more in the eighth (one courtesy of a Jeter error partially caused by Girardi’s shrewd decision to pull the infield in down by seven runs because an eight run deficit in the ninth would’ve seemed insurmountable.) Final score: Blue Jays 16, Yankees 7.

Yanks in Toronto for a long weekend.  Cliff has the preview.

The Bombers have reportedly signed J.C. Romero to a minor league deal. Greg Golson was called up from Triple A.

Derek Jeter SS
Curtis Granderson CF
Mark Teixeira 1B
Robinson Cano 2B
Nick Swisher RF
Russell Martin C
Andruw Jones DH
Eduardo Nunez 3B
Brett Gardner LF

Never mind the spiel:

Let’s Go Yank-ees.

[Picture by Bags]

Here’s a fun vintage movie poster site.

I’m afraid of heights but have always wanted to take a ride in one of these. Took this picture yesterday up in the Bronx.