Blog Archives

Over at Deadspin our pal Eric Nusbaum has a good piece on a game called Out of the Park Baseball:

The summer after my freshman year of college, I told somebody’s mother that I wouldn’t be attending her son’s funeral. I remember the moment, if not the conversation, with great clarity. I was working in my dad’s shop, filling orders for spare bike rack parts, when my phone rang. My hands were sticky with glue from the ancient packing-tape dispenser.

Here are some things I didn’t tell her: I never met your son. We only talked on the phone once or twice. He had my number in the first place because we played at being general managers in the same imaginary baseball league. When Chris and I did speak, it was about lineup exports.

Here is something I don’t remember if I told her: I’m so sorry.
I was 18. Chris, sick as he was, could not have been much older. I panicked. Our friendship was too convoluted and trivial to explain in the moment. Who was I to waste the time of a mother as she slogged dutifully from A through Z in her dead son’s contact list when I didn’t even know what her dead son looked like? But there was also another thing that was harder to admit: Chris’s death turned something fake into something real.

Last night I sat in a barber’s chair in the Bronx. The rain had stopped. There was one customer in the place, the sound of an electric razor buzzing filled the room. So did the voice of one of the barbers. He sat in his chair, feet propped and talked into his cell phone.

My barber smiled and looked at me in the mirror. Maybe he thought I understood Spanish better than I do but I didn’t need to know what was being said to understand he was arguing with a woman.

“His girlfriend?” I said?

“Maybe,” my barber said. “Maybe her boyfriend.”

We both grinned.

While the buzzing and the arguing continued to the right of me, I heard Vin Scully’s voice coming from the television set to the left of me. The Dodgers and Phillies were in extra innings and the game was on the MLB Network. Vin sounded tired. So did the crowd. I remembered The Simpsons episode when Homer goes to a game and doesn’t drink: “I never knew baseball was so boring.”

But it was boring in a soothing way. Soon, the buzzing stopped and so did the arguing. The room felt still in that heightened way of quiet that occurs sometimes just before you fall into a deep sleep. The only sound was Vin’s voice. I felt calm and happy.

[Photo Credit: Flick River]

[Picture Via Live. Laugh. Love]

[Photo Credit: Summer Sleep, By Irving Penn, 1949]

I like sweets but I crave salad.

[Photo Credit: Chef-ru]

Robert Creamer died yesterday. He was one of the old school Sports Illustrated writers. Later, he was an editor at the magazine, as well as the author of major biographies on Babe Ruth and Casey Stengel. Creamer was also featured in Ken Burns’ Baseball documentary.

Read this piece on Creamer by Jack McCallum. (The Times doesn’t have an obit posted yet.)

Just last week, I ran across a letter Creamer once wrote to the New York Times concerning John Lardner:

Admirers of fine writing about sports consider John Lardner to be at least the equal and possibly the superior of such masters of the craft as Red Smith and W. C. Heinz. If he had lived longer, there is little doubt that he would have produced more excellent work, but what John Lardner achieved was certainly what his vast talent promised.

Amen, to that.

Dig this 2002 article by David Margolick on a gang of baseball writers–including Lawrence Ritter, Ray Robinson and Creamer–that got together every month to schmooze.

Here’s a sampling of Creamer’s work from SI:

On Ty Cobb;  Yogi; Mickey Mantle; Roger Maris; Al Lopez; Avery Brundage; the greatest Yankee team ever;  autograph hounds; and the unbarnacled truth.

Check out the big excerpt SI ran from his Ruth biography. And while we’re at it, how about another?

Finally, here is a terrific 1964 profile on Vin Scully, “The Transistor Kid.”

Rest in Peace.

[Photo Credit: Georgia Fowler]

Before the storm hit town and cut today’s game short–called after seven–Hiroki Kuroda didn’t allow a run and that was good enough to give the Yanks a three-game sweep over the Blue Jays.

6-0 was the final and the Bombers will enjoy their flight out west.

[Photo Credit: Dhani Jones]

Still summer, still Johnny Blazin’ hot out there. Thunderstorms expected this afternoon on getaway day for the Yanks and Jays. The Bombers head out to the west coast after the game.

1. Jeter DH
2. Swisher RF
3. Teixeira 1B
4. Rodriguez 3B
5. Cano 2B
6. Jones LF
7. Nix SS
8. Martin C
9. Wise CF

Never mind coasting: Let’s Go Yank-ees!

[Image by Zach McCaffree via This Isn’t Happiness]

From the Atlantic...

R. Crumb by Drew Friedman.

Via Laughing Squid, dig this sampling from Drew Friedman’s Legends of Comics Portraits.

More summertime goodness from Nicole Franzen: maple and lime roasted peaches.

Keep it together…

[Photo Credit: Ralph Gibson]

Sure is nice to have C.C. back, isn’t it?

Yanks 6, Jays 1.

Andruw Jones had the big hit, a three-run homer. He’s got 12 dingers on the year, 432 for his career. Let me ask you this? Is Jones a Hall of Famer? I know that voters don’t tend to like players who have a long fade to black but Jones was a brilliant defensive player for what, ten years, right? I don’t think he’ll get in but I think he’s probably got a case.

Another question. Rank the following players as Hall of Fame candidates: Jones, Jim Edmonds, Johnny Damon and Bernie Williams.

[Photo Credit: Excess]

The return of the Big Fella.

1. Jeter SS
2. Granderson CF
3. Teixeira 1B
4. A-Rod DH
5. Cano 2B
6. Swisher RF
7. Jones LF
8. Nix 3B
9. Stewart C

Give it up for C.C. y’all and…Let’s Go Yank-ees!

[Photo Via SI.com]

Thinking of our pal–and my brother’s college suite mate–Will Teez. Here is the story. Here is the site.

[Photo Credit: Carla Zanoni]

Last night I saw two adorable girls on the bus. They wore orange sandals, had orange flowers in their hair and drank some kind of orange drink. They held their plastic cups with both hands. I kept waiting for one of them to spill their drink. Sticky orange disaster on the BX7. Ah, summer.

At least there’s a breeze out in Cony Island. Swell day for ice cream, huh?

Picture by Bags.

Nicole Franzen gives us peach blueberry cobbler. Oh, hell yes.

Collage by Jens Ullrich.

I like my pockets fat not flat.

[Photo Via: The Adults]

Bob Ryan retired last night. A veteran newspaperman, he distinguished himself covering basketball. Here’s a book he co-wrote with Terry Pluto that is worth reading; here’s another, about minor league baseball that’s solid, too.

Ryan loves baseball–his final column (subscription required) is about Kevin Youkilis. He’s also one of the few TV talking heads who is funny, smart, but doesn’t take himself too seriously.

He’s had a fine career. Salute.

[Photo Credit: Yoon S. Byun/Boston Globe]