Monthly Archives: October 2015

Royals are in Toronto this week. Gotta figure the Jays are going to make some noise and, at the very least, get this series to return to K.C.

Here’s hoping I’m wrong about that because the sooner the Jays are defeated, the better.

Really strong story by N.R. Kleinfeld in the Times: 

They found him in the living room, crumpled up on the mottled carpet. The police did. Sniffing a fetid odor, a neighbor had called 911. The apartment was in north-central Queens, in an unassertive building on 79th Street in Jackson Heights.

The apartment belonged to a George Bell. He lived alone. Thus the presumption was that the corpse also belonged to George Bell. It was a plausible supposition, but it remained just that, for the puffy body on the floor was decomposed and unrecognizable. Clearly the man had not died on July 12, the Saturday last year when he was discovered, nor the day before nor the day before that. He had lain there for a while, nothing to announce his departure to the world, while the hyperkinetic city around him hurried on with its business.

Neighbors had last seen him six days earlier, a Sunday. On Thursday, there was a break in his routine. The car he always kept out front and moved from one side of the street to the other to obey parking rules sat on the wrong side. A ticket was wedged beneath the wiper. The woman next door called Mr. Bell. His phone rang and rang.

[Photo Credit: Josh Haner/The New York Times]

Man, the Metsies pitching has been tough. And what about Daniel Murphy doing his Mr. October routine?

Matt Harvey delivered for the Mets last night as they took a 1-0 lead over the Cubs in the NLCS. I like David Price fine but wasn’t sorry to see a 3-0 lead go down the drain as the Royals rallied to beat the Jays. K.C. reminds me of the ’90s Yankee teams. Yeah, they can hit homers but mostly, they’ll nickel-and-dime you to death–a walk, a single, a double, a steal. Make a mistake against them and usually you’ll pay.

It’s cold in New York and tonight will be football weather at Citi Field.

In the meantime, enjoy the afternoon.

Painting by Richard Diebenkorn.

Royals and Jays already underway, the pale, late afternoon October light setting the tempo and nature of the game.

Mets, Cubs tonight. Should be good.

Let’s Go Base-ball!

Picture by Bags

Royals host the Big Bad Blue Jays, baseball’s answer to the old Detroit Pistons in their assumptive arrogance. Everyone loves a bad guy so this series could be fun. Hope the Royals can pull it off. My feeling is that if anyone is going to stop the Jays they are going to come from the National League.

Never mind the bullies:

Let’s Go Ro-Yals!

Picture by Bags

I say I want to root for the Mets. It feels right. They are from New York and so many of my friends and family root for them. Then I watch them play and part of me, constitutionally, just can’t do it. It’s like kissing your sister. It’s just not natural. And so part of me was rooting for them to fail last night, I’ll admit it. Then, during the last 3 innings of the game I texted with 5 different Met fans and that was the difference–I rooted for the Mets because I was rooting for them, my friends.

And, as I’ve mentioned before, this is a particularly agreeable Mets team.

So, congrats to them and their fans.

[Photo Credit: AP/Lenny Ignelz]

Winner of the Mets-Dodgers game will face the Cubs in the NLCS.

Never mind the view:

Let’s Go Base-ball!

[Photo Credit: Linda Posnick]

Oh, hey, did you hear that yesterday’s game in Toronto was “epic”? Maybe you heard it was “insane” or “stunning” or–“historic.” Literally. Literally epically historic.

Or, if you are Elvis Andrus–such a nice kid–horrible.

The Jays beat the Rangers thanks to a miserable half-inning of fielding by the visitors and a long, loud home run by Jose Bautista. Bad guys wear blue and I don’t recall a team in the last decade that I’ve enjoyed disliking this much (Red Sox don’t count).

The Royals beat the Astros and now the two best teams in the AL–who almost scrapped earlier this year–will face each other in the ALCS.

Picture by Kilian Eng. 

Couple of Game 5’s in the AL today; first, the Jays will beat the Rangers to advance to the ALCS and next the Astros try to upset the Royals in K.C.

I want nothing more than the Jays to lose but Jays vs. Royals does have a ring to it, doesn’t it?

Never mind the prognostications:

Let’s Go Base-ball!

Picture by Bags

Cubs, Cards followed by Mets, Dodgers.

Figure the Cards will win and the Mets too.

Never mind the foliage:

Let’s Go Base-ball!

Picture by Bags

Hey Now.

Toot toot, ah-beep beep.

Picture Via: Retrogasm.

“Mz 231. Miss Blanche” by Kurt Schwitters (1923)

From my pal Kevin Baker:

That is, our past. Not only the refusal of white people to live with people of colour, but their conviction, running back through the history of the US, that any black space is not legitimate – that whatever black people own can and should be expropriated by whites, if they so desire it. During the second world war, this idea of white primacy sparked one of the worst race riots in American history, after white people insisted not only that Detroit’s federal housing built for war workers be segregated, but that all of it be turned over to white residents.

The riot was no anomaly. During the first world war, in 1917, another white-on-black race riot all but annihilated the black community of East St Louis, Illinois. A few years later, armed white mobs (backed by local law officers) razed to the ground the all-black Florida towns of Ocoee and Rosewood, and the prosperous black Greenwood section of Tulsa, Oklahoma. Scores of black people were killed in these onslaughts. Greenwood was burned to the ground as airplanes dropped incendiaries on the neighbourhood. Some 10,000 African Americans were left homeless.

These flourishing black communities were erased not only from physical existence, but also from living memory. Bodies were hidden, accounts censored and the survivors scattered or intimidated into silence. To this day, we don’t know exactly what happened, or how many people died.

One of the most vibrant communities in black America vanished just across the street from where I lived almost all of my adult life. Until a few years ago, I had no idea it had ever been there. Soon after I graduated from college in 1980 – at almost the exact time the federal government joined a lawsuit by the National Association of Coloured People (NAACP) against the city of Yonkers – three friends and I moved into an apartment on West 99th Street on Manhattan’s Upper West Side.

[Photo Credit: Damon Winter/The New York Times]

Anything going on in baseball tonight?

[Photo Credit: AP]

Man, what a turn that game took last night when Bartolo Colon came in the game, Howie Kendrick hit the ball hard, Daniel Murphy made a nice stab, and Chase Utley flattened Ruben Tejada, breaking the shortstop’s leg. And that was the for starters. When the smoke cleared, everything that could, did go wrong for the Mets as the Dodgers evened the series at one.

If this year’s NLDS series needed more juice–Cubs, Cards is so loaded–it’s got it for Game 3 tomorrow night in Queens with Matt Harvey going for the Mets. I say he shoves it up the Dodgers’ ass and I actually think the Mets will win the series. You know, Citified still needs to lose its October cherry. I think it’s primed to happen this week. I’d like to see Kershaw get another shot at it but my gut says the Mets find a way to win it at home.

The ALDS moves to Texas for Game 3. First, Royals are in Houston, later the Jays hope to save their season in Arlington.

Don’t really care who wins the first game–though, I’d like to see the Royals win the series; there’s nothing that I’ll root for more this fall than to see Texas win one more game against the Toronto. Hard to imagine the big, brash Jays going out quietly. They were already pissed in Game 2. I bet they romp tonight.

Anyhow, never mind the brisket:

Let’s Go Base-ball!

The Mets won Game 1 of the NLDS in L.A. last night and David Wright had one of the big hits.

Tonight, the visitor’s have Thor on the bump against Greinke the Great–both with the flowing blond locks and tremendous stuff.

Figure the Mets will win again but one never knows…

(Nice job by the Cubs evening their series vs. the Cards earlier.)

Never mind the sunset:

Let’s Go Base-ball!

Four games today, first one starts at 12:30:

Rangers vs. Jays

Astros vs. Royals

Cubs vs. Cardinals

Mets vs. Dodgers

Should be fun.

Let’s Go Base-ball!

Photo Credit: Anna Bauer via MPD

Double time.

Picture by Bags