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Somewhere there’s heaven.

[Photo Via: Zeroing]

The Yankees weren’t hitting much but Phil Hughes was cruising through the Twins’ line-up. The Orioles had lost to the Blue Jays by the time Russell Martin hit a lead off home run in the seventh inning giving the Yanks a 3-1 lead. It was difficult not to start thinking ahead, calculating, fantasizing, but that was the last moment of pleasure for the Yankees on this night.

Hughes had a low pitch count but loaded the bases in the bottom of the inning. Still, he got two men out before he was pulled in place of Boone Logan despite having handled the batter Denard Span all night. Logan threw the first pitch in the dirt. It got away from Martin and a run scored. Span then dumped a fly ball into center, good for a double and Joe Mauer followed that with a single and just like that, the Twins were ahead 5-3. Logan’s sliders were flat and that, as they say, was that.

Well, almost. Andruw Jones, who hasn’t had a hit since Christ was a Cowboy, cranked a solo home run with two outs in the ninth. But Jayson Nix whiffed to end the game, end of report, good night.

Final Score: Twins 5, Yanks 4.

You want to nominate this one for worst loss of the year, go right ahead. Other games have been more brutal but given the circumstances, a chance to take a two-and-a-half game lead on the Orioles, and this one really smarts.

The Orioles have the day off tomorrow. It’ll be CC to try and push the Yankees’ lead to two. If they lose, it’s down to one game with seven left.

[Featured Image Via It’s a Long Season]

There are nine games left in the season and nothing is resolved. The Yanks could win the AL East or they could miss the playoffs entirely.

It’s one-day-at-a-time and today gives Phil Hughes.

Never mind the  prognosticating: Let’s Go Yank-ees!

[Photo Credit: C.F. B.]

Over at Retronaut, dig Eric Staller’s Light Paintings.

Cool piece in the Times by Dave Waldstein on Ichiro:

During a game for the Orix Blue Wave in Japan in 1999, Ichiro Suzuki struck out and returned to the dugout unusually frustrated. In a fit of anger, he destroyed his black Mizuno bat. Embarrassed, Suzuki wrote a letter of apology to the craftsman who had made his bats by hand from Tamo wood, grown on the Japanese island of Hokkaido. Such was the respect that Suzuki felt for the process that created the bats, which he wielded with such skill.

Today, after a decade in the major leagues, Suzuki still displays that same reverence on a daily basis, caring for his bats like Stradivarius violins. While most players dump their bats in cylindrical canvas bags when they are not using them, Suzuki neatly stacks his best eight bats inside a shockproof, moisture-free black case that he keeps close by his locker at home and on the road.

“He dresses like a rock star and he carries his bats around in a case like a rock musician with a guitar,” Yankees pitcher Boone Logan said. “It fits his style perfectly.”

[Photo Credit: N.Y. Daily News]

Dig Chris Jones’ profile of Teller in the latest issue of Esquire.

Teller is sixty-four years old; he has been a full-time magician since 1975, but he first began performing magic tricks when he was five and had nearly died. The only child of Philadelphia artists Joe and Irene Teller, he had contracted a viral infection that blossomed into a heart ailment called myocarditis. After a long stay in the hospital, he had to spend more time recuperating at home. Luckily there was a relatively new marvel called TV to occupy him, and he watched Howdy Doody, from which he ordered the Howdy Doody Magic Kit. It included a trick with a box and two lids. When Teller opened the box on one side and showed its contents to his indulgent parents, there were six tiny Mars bars; after he’d theatrically rattled it and spun it so that he could open the opposite lid, there were only three. “This is an absolute miracle I can do with my own hands,” he says today in the present tense, as though no time has passed.

Because Teller performs almost entirely without speaking, his voice, strong and certain, comes as a surprise. He speaks in prose, in long, languid paragraphs peppered with literary and historical references. (He once taught high school Latin; dissatisfied with the prescribed textbook, he wrote his own.) But his round face, particularly his eyes and mouth, continue to do much of the talking for him. He is capable of great expression with just a turn of his lips, and his eyes are big and shining. They are also quick to brim with tears. “I’m more apt to cry at something beautiful than at something sad,” he says.

My twin sister and I spotted Teller on the Metro North train to Manhattan in the late ’80s (I think he lived in Irvington at the time). He was sitting behind us and we introduced ourselves–we’d loved him in Long Gone–and he was a great guy. We talked for the rest of the trip and then walked him to the theater where he was performing.

[Photo Credit: Carlos Serrao…and here’s more on Teller.]

Head on over to SB Nation and check out the debut of Longform, their site devoted to long form writing.

First up is R. D. Rosen’s story on Al Rosen. Nicely done.

What’s your favorite cut of French Fry? I like ’em all though I’m not crazy about Waffle Fries.

Here’s where you can get some good fries in America.

[Photo’s Via: Add a Spoonful of Sugar]

From the Jock magazine archives here’s a good interview:

Odd Couple: Bill Bradley and Calvin HIll

Enjoy.

Over at Grantland, Charlie Pierce lights into the NFL:

ere’s what I think should happen. At the end of this farcical exercise in corporate avarice, and whenever he has determined that his ego has been sufficiently fluffed and his power sufficiently recognized throughout the land, commissioner Roger Goodell should take his entire 2012 salary and split every dime of it up among the players in the National Football League, because they are the ones he’s putting at risk and they are the only ones keeping the NFL from descending into a form of opéra bouffe that would embarrass roller derby. Sunday night, the New England Patriots and the Baltimore Ravens played a preposterously good football game, which the Ravens won, 31-30, on a walk-off field goal by rookie Justin Tucker, in a preposterous context that ended with New England coach Bill Belichick trying to grab the arm of an official as the ref ran off the field.

“I’m not going to comment on that,” Belichick said afterward. “You saw the game. What did we get, 30 penalties called in that game?”

Oh, yeah, the play that ended last night’s game was even worse.

It’s Toozday. Fug it, let’s dance.

[Image Via: How to Be a Retronaut]

“House of Atlas,” By Grace Weston (via This Isn’t Happiness)

Yeah, the Twins aren’t all that but they’re enough to have swept a double-header from the Tigers yesterday. No sleeping allowed.

It’s old man Andy in his second start since returning from the disabled list.

Never mind the standings: Let’s Go Yank-ees!

[Photo Credit: TS Flynn via It’s a Long Season]

Head on over to Deadspin and check out Alan Siegel’s funny story about Sparky Lyle and the birth of  entrance music for closers:

“The organization probably wasn’t ready for a rock song,” [Marty] Appel said. One of his friends was the son of David Carey, a studio musician who’d toured with Frank Sinatra. Appel described a typical Lyle entrance to the elder Carey and asked for advice. Carey recommended Sir Edgar Elgar’s “Pomp and Circumstance.”

The graduation march—known to ’80s and ’90s WWF fans as dearly departed “Macho Man” Randy Savage’s theme—was the kind of triumphant accompaniment Appel was looking for. And so, 40 years ago, the era of entrance music began.

When Yankees manager Ralph Houk signaled to the bullpen late in games, Appel would use binoculars to determine who was getting into the Datsun. Then, from the press box, he’d call organist Toby Wright’s direct phone line. If Appel said, “It’s Lyle,” Wright would slowly begin playing “Pomp and Circumstance.”

“As soon as the car pulled through the gate, the place started to get it,” Appel said. “It worked almost from day one.”

Over at SB Nation, Jim Baker offers up this alternative guide to baseball movies.

Monday Sing-a-Long with the Stones.

[Photo Credit: Michel Feugeas]

Check out Alan Wolfson’s incredible sculptures.

David Carr had a good feature on Neil Young yesterday in the New York Times Magazine.

“Writing is very convenient, has a low expense and is a great way to pass the time,” he says in “Waging Heavy Peace.” “I highly recommend it to any old rocker who is out of cash and doesn’t know what to do next.”

He decided to do it sober after talking with his doctor about a brain that had endured many youthful pharmaceutical adventures, in addition to epilepsy and an aneurysm. For someone who smoked pot the way others smoke cigarettes, the change has not been without its challenges, as he explains in his book: “The straighter I am, the more alert I am, the less I know myself and the harder it is to recognize myself. I need a little grounding in something and I am looking for it everywhere.”

Sitting at Alice’s Restaurant on Skyline Boulevard near the end of the day, he elaborated: “I did it for 40 years,” he said. “Now I want to see what it’s like to not do it. It’s just a different perspective.”

Drunk or sober, he can be a hippie with a mean streak. He broke off a tour with Stephen Stills without warning and sent him a telegram — “Funny how some things that start spontaneously end that way. Eat a peach, Neil.”

For more, click here.

Serious about breakfast.

Photo by Edward Steichen from Camera Obscura Magazine via This Isn’t Happiness.