Blog Archives

Serious Eats ‘splains Sun Tea (forget the sun).

[Photo Credit: Kutlu]

There used to be a cop that stood on the corner of 103rd Street and West End Avenue when I was a kid. Early 1970s. His name was Wallace. He had a nightstick. We stopped and said hello to him every time we saw him. He always had a smile and it never dawned on me that cops were just cops, men without names, because of Wallace.

[Photo Credit: Dick Leonhardt]

King Felix Hernandez worked out of trouble repeatedly last night as great pitchers often do. Fourth inning, Curtis Granderson and Alex Rodriguez singled and Robinson Cano got ahead 2-0 then fouled off fastball, slider, curve, change-up before popping up for the first out. Mark Teixeira walked but Raul Ibanez whiffed and Eric Chavez flied out. And that’s how it went.

But I’ve buried the lead. The story of the night is not that the Yankees lost it’s that Hernandez hit Rodriguez in the hand on a 3-2 change up–a 90 mph change-up at that–in the eighth inning and the news is not good: a non-displaced fracture. While the Yankees believe that Hernandez hit Rodriguez–or Derek Jeter or Ichiro, intentionally–Rodriguez will not play for the next 6-8 weeks.

“We lost Mo. We lost Andy and now we have lost Al,’’ Jeter told the New York Post. “We will see how good we are. It will be a challenge.’’

“It’s very unfortunate, a big loss. Alex was swinging the bat well,’’ Mark Teixeira added.

The hope is that he’ll recover with enough time to get his swing back before the playoffs. He couldn’t do it last year with a different injury. Either way, it’s a major drag. He goes out 128 hits away from 3,000; 63 RBI from 2,000.

He’s in decline but he’s never stopped playing hard and this year he stole bases and played smart. Another substantial injury for the Yanks to overcome. They can make it, of course, but even as an old man, Rodriguez makes the team better.

[Photo Credit: Kevin P. Casey/AP]

The Yanks face one of the best tonight in “King” Felix Hernandez. They’ll counter with the former Mariner, Fab Five Freddy Garcia.

The intrepid Chad Jennings has the notes of the day.

Derek Jeter SS
Curtis Granderson CF
Alex Rodriguez 3B
Robinson Cano 2B
Mark Teixeira 1B
Raul Ibanez LF
Eric Chavez DH
Ichiro Suzuki RF
Chris Stewart C

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

Rest in Peace, Frank Pierson.

“At each level you reach, you have to tear up what you have done before, which cost an enormous amount of psychological and emotional energy. That makes the process of screenwriting very, very difficult. And I don’t know any screenplay that I have ever worked on where I did not go through ten to twelve or sometimes sixteen drafts before I showed it to anybody.”

[Quote via The Poor Dancing Girl She Won’t Dance Again]

I went to pick up a package at Todd-AO studios on 54th Street once many years ago and the clerk told me it wasn’t ready, said “there must be some kind of misconfusion.”

Which is something like Brian Cashman said today about Mariano Rivera on Jim Duquette’s show. Via Hardball Talk.

[Photo Credit: N.J. com]

Here’s a piece by Connor Orr in the Star-Ledger on Sparky Lyle.

Of course there’s another side to this and it is understandable that not everyone is pleased with Ichiro in pinstripes.

Check this out from Oyl in Tokyo.

Baseball and the city via Ephemeral New York.

[Photo Credit: New York Times]

Smitten Kitchen gives us peach pie. And I, for one, am not only thankful but hungry.

[Photo Via Shaolinchild]

Some summer lovin’ from Hilo Chen.

Some players fill their uniforms better than others and few guys look as neat and purposeful as Ichiro has in his garb. He’s a superhero–though we’ll leave it to Jon and other experts to tell us which one–trim and sharp: a cool motherfucker. Kind of guy makes me want to pick up a pen and draw. Yet the first thing I noticed when I saw him wearing a Yankee costume last night was how much he’s aged. Lot of grays on the hair, the face with deep lines and I could imagine what he’d look as a old man.

He bowed to the crowd at Safeco field in his first at bat–the pitcher, Kevin Millwood, graciously stepped off the mound to allow for the moment–and then singled to center field. Stole second too.

He was stranded at third and that was the only time he’d reach base but still, the game was one to remember–seeing Ichiro play his first game for the Yankees against the Mariners in Seattle.

Mark Teixeira had three hits and Alex Rodriguez had a couple of extra base hits–double and a solo home run–but the star was  Hiroki Kuroda who allowed a run on three hits and a walk over seven innings of work (he struck out nine). Sure, the Mariners can’t score, but the Yanks needed a win. Robertson and Soriano pitched took care of the eighth and ninth as the Yanks won, 4-1.

Last night, we wondered here in the comments section which veteran pick-up Ichiro will most resemble: Lance Berkman, Pudge Rodriguez, Straw, Rock Raines, Chili Davis? Does he have anything left? Is he an upgrade over Dwayne Wise? As our pal Matt Blankmon noted, Ichiro is certainly good for TV. He may be well past his prime but we’ll be eager to watch him, especially in the field. Thoughts of him nodding–even bowing?–to the bleacher creatures fill my head. Then watching him gun down a runner trying to take an extra base.

Yeah, the optimist in me is looking forward to this, a proud old DC character plopped into a winning Marvel Universe.

[Photo Credit:  Lindsey Wasson/seattlepi.com; Elaine Thompson /AP]

I leave the Internet for a few hours and the Yanks trade for Ichiro. Hey Now.

Sure, he’s not a great player anymore, he’s probably not even that good, but he’s headed for the Hall of Fame and he gives the Yanks a quality outfield now, doesn’t he? Dwayne Wise, who played well as a back-up, has been designated assignment.

Oh, and Ichiro will be in the lineup tonight against the Mariners in Seattle.

Whoa.

Derek Jeter SS
Curtis Granderson CF
Alex Rodriguez 3B
Robinson Cano 2B
Mark Teixeira 1B
Raul Ibanez DH
Andruw Jones LF
Ichiro Suzuki RF
Russell Martin C

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

Chad Jennings has the notes from a misbegotten weekend in Oakland.

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

Via Kottke check out this bit of Mile Davisness over at Noise Made Me Do It.

David Remnick has a long profile on Bruce Springsteen in the New Yorker:

Early this year, Springsteen was leading rehearsals for a world tour at Fort Monmouth, an Army base that was shut down last year; it had been an outpost since the First World War of military communications and intelligence, and once employed Julius Rosenberg and thousands of militarized carrier pigeons. The twelve-hundred-acre property is now a ghost town inhabited only by steel dummies meant to scare off the ubiquitous Canada geese that squirt a carpet of green across middle Jersey. Driving to the far end of the base, I reached an unlovely theatre that Springsteen and Jon Landau, his longtime manager, had rented for the rehearsals. Springsteen had performed for officers’ children at the
Fort Monmouth “teen club” (dancing, no liquor) with the Castiles, forty-seven years earlier.

The atmosphere inside was purposeful but easygoing. Musicians stood onstage noodling on their instruments with the languid air of outfielders warming up in the sun. Max Weinberg, the band’s volcanic drummer, wore the sort of generous jeans favored by dads at weekend barbecues. Steve Van Zandt, Springsteen’s childhood friend and guitarist-wingman, keeps up a brutal schedule as an actor and a d.j., and he seemed weary, his eyes drooping under a piratical purple head scarf. The bass player Garry Tal-lent, the organist Charlie Giordano, and the pianist Roy Bittan horsed around on a roller-rink tune while they waited. The guitarist Nils Lofgren was on the phone, trying to figure out flights to get back to his home, in Scottsdale, for the weekend.

Springsteen arrived and greeted everyone with a quick hello and his distinctive cackle. He is five-nine and walks with a rolling rodeo gait. When he takes in something new—a visitor, a thought, a passing car in the distance—his eyes narrow, as if in hard light, and his lower jaw protrudes a bit. His hairline is receding, and, if one had to guess, he has, over the years, in the face of high-def scrutiny and the fight against time, enjoined the expensive attentions of cosmetic and dental practitioners. He remains dispiritingly handsome, preposterously fit. (“He has practically the same waist size as when I met him, when we were fifteen,” says Steve Van Zandt, who does not.) Some of this has to do with his abstemious inclinations; Van Zandt says Springsteen is “the only guy I know—I think the only guy I know at all—who never did drugs.” He’s followed more or less the same exercise regimen for thirty years: he runs on a treadmill and, with a trainer, works out with weights. It has paid off. His muscle tone approximates a fresh tennis ball. And yet, with the tour a month away, he laughed at the idea that he was ready. “I’m not remotely close,” he said, slumping into a chair twenty rows back from the stage.

He don’t celebrate Sunday on a Saturday night no more…

[Photo Credit: Summer Sun Goddess-s]

Over at Capital New York, check out this documentary about the final days of Bleecker Bob’s.

Sigh.