I used to commute from New Jersey into the city for my first job. Last Thursday night I stayed out at my family’s house in the suburbs to borrow a car.
On Friday morning, I drove across the George Washington Bridge just as the sun was rising over Washington Heights.
I don’t miss the traffic, but this was a great way to start a day.
It’s Baylor vs. Kentucky and Kansas vs. Carolina. Yanks, too.
Happy Sports.
Coolin’.
Los Knicks are ripe for an off-night. Still, we’ll be root-root-rooting them on tonight as they play the Raptors in Toronto.
[Photo Credit: Al Bello/AP]
“Lanesville,” By Saul Leiter (1958)
You Gots to Chill.
According to this piece by David Waldstein in the New York Times, Freddy Garcia would like to pitch for the Yankees but would consider a trade.
And Bobby V got his panties in a bunch last night. I assume they will be bunched for the rest of the season, especially when the Yankees are involved.
Some bad news. According to a tweet by Jack Curry: “Joba Chamberlain dislocated right ankle yesterday and had surgery last night. Cashman called it a significant injury.”
[Painting of Fab Five Freddy by Jane Dickson]
Chipper Jones said that this year will be his last. Over at SI.com, our man Cliff Corcoran appreciates the future Hall of Famer.
[Photo Credit: Pouya Dianat / AP]
Yanks Sox.
[Picture by Bags]
Here’s Pat Jordan’s piece on Geno Auriemma for Deadspin:
“I don’t coach women,” the coach says. “I coach basketball players.” He tells a story. He was practicing with his team before a game when the opposing team’s female coach came out on the floor. “I’m telling my players how to play man-to-man defense. The other coach says: ‘You can’t say that. It’s person-to-person defense.’ I said, ‘You’re shittin’ me.’ She says, ‘But it’s women playing it.’ I say: ‘Yeah, but it’s man-to-man. They’re just pawns, without gender. I’m a gender-neutral coach.'”
…Geno became a women’s coach by accident. He was 21, without a job. A friend asked him to help out coaching a girls’ high school team. Geno said, “Girls! No way.” Then he thought about it. “I realized it could be pretty cool,” he tells me. “So I gave it a shot. The girls listened to me. They appreciated what I taught them.” His high school job led to an assistant coaching job on the University of Virginia’s women’s team, which led, in 1985, to an interview for the head job at UConn. By then, Geno had decided that he “liked coaching women. But I didn’t view it as coaching women. I was just coaching the game the way it should be played.
When I ask him why UConn hired him, he says: “I have no fucking idea. They wanted a woman. But nobody wanted the job. UConn had had only one winning season in its history. The facilities were lousy, there was no money, the pay was $29,000 a year, but I didn’t give a shit. I wanted to coach. So I lied to them. I told them I’m gonna do this, and this, and this, and they believed me. So I took the job. I figured I’d win a few games then after four years I’d go someplace good, men or women, as long as I could coach on a high level.” Those plans never materialized. His teams became very good, very quickly, and then, as he puts it, “a funny thing happened. After those first winning seasons, nobody called. Nobody gave a shit because I was a guy. The women’s teams didn’t want a guy, and the men’s teams figured if I was coaching women, how good could I be?”
He smiles, the big smile of a guy who’s got the last laugh. “Now nobody wants me because I’m making too much fucking money.”
“463,” By Saul Leiter (1956)
“The tendency among spoilsport sportswriters is to make it all so so elegiac and bittersweet—to like us to see our own lives (easier for men, of course) in these [minor leaguers’] prospects; to make it all a gooey-nostalgic allegory for trying and failing while still young, an emblem for rum life lived well instead of just being an emblem for itself—is baloney and I’m not wrong about it. Believe me, I don’t see myself in those boys’ lives. They’re not my vicars, and I don’t fantasize—at least not about them. I go to the game to quit thinking about my life, to sit and stare at a pleasant field I know on which is played a game I also know by players whose lives, wives, drug and betting habits, childhood tragedies, and religious infatuations I don’t know and don’t want to. I’m just there to watch, to be pleased, maybe even thrilled, but not, God help me, to take moral instruction.”
Richard Ford, “A Minors Affair” [excerpt] (Harper’s, September 1992)
Thanks to the excellent site, It’s a Long Season, for the picture of Buster and the quote.
Dig this tasty-looking recipe for lemon, chicken and orzo soup over at the winning site Tartelette.
