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As Grady Seasons said in “The Color of Money”: It’s like a nightmare, isn’t it? It just keeps getting worse and worse.

The Yanks lost nine-in-a-row to the Rays in Tampa coming into this afternoon’s game and had to deal with David Price. The Rays’ ace was on his game too, throwing his fastball in the upper 90s and breaking off a nasty slider and change-up to boot.

Now, whadda ya gunna do with that?

Not much. The Yanks didn’t put a runner on base until the fourth (a walk by Curtis Granderson), get their first hit until the fifth (and that runner was erased on an inning-ending double play), or put a run on the board until the seventh (a solo home run by Mark Teixeira). The score was tied, 1-1, on the strength of a good start by David Phelps.

After Teixeira’s homer, Alex Rodriguez doubled and with one out, Nick Swisher walked. Andruw Jones was at the plate when Rodriguez took off for third. The catcher stepped back and his hand knocked into the home plate umpire’s mask and the call came to do it over, a head-scratcher for sure. Jones flew out to right field and Rodriguez stole third with Russell Martin batting but was stranded there when Martin grounded out to short.

And that’s how it’s been for the Yanks in Tampa. Double-down on that, in fact, because Carlos Pena hit a long two-run home run against reliever Boone Logan in the bottom of the seventh. I would have taken more time to appreciate what an impressive shot it was if I hadn’t been so pissed off watching it sail into the seats.

That put the Rays up, 3-1 and well, this Fourth of July party looked to be another dud for the Yankees.

Relief came in the form of an old friend, however, one Kyle Fransworth who walked the bases loaded in the eighth inning. He did strike out Derek Jeter but the bases were juiced for Rodriguez. Now, I’m sure there was some joking going on for Yankee fans watching at home. And those jokes turned to groans when Rodriguez swung through a 2-1 fastball around his shoulders. The count went full and Rodriguez took a slider off the outside corner for ball four and an RBI. It was a close pitch but it was a ball.

That knocked Farnsworth out of the game and narrowed Tampa’s lead to 3-2. Jake McGee, a lefty, replaced him and got ahead of Robinson Cano. Made him looked silly on one swing. But on the 2-2 pitch, a fastball, low and over the plate, Cano delivered a hard-hit ball up the middle, good for a base hit and a couple of RBI and the Yanks were ahead. He was right on the pitch and nailed it.

Never mind that they reloaded the bases two more times (Martin, who is in the depths off a miserable slump, flew out to end the eighth; Cano hit a bullet line drive to deep center to end the top of the ninth), David Robertson worked around a two out walk in the eighth and Rafael Soriano pitched a clean ninth to give the Yanks a satisfying 4-3 win.

Reason to cheer. The Boss would be happy.

[Photo Credit: Al Messerschmidt/Getty Images; Mike Carlson/AP]

So the Yanks have lost nine straight in Tampa and today David Price will try to make it ten. David Phelps gets the start for the Yanks. I suspect he’ll give them some good innings.

Up to the batters to score some runs.

Two tough loses so far in Florida. Here’s hoping the Yanks “Win one for the Boss”–the ol’ birthday boy.

Derek Jeter SS
Curtis Granderson CF
Mark Teixeira 1B
Alex Rodriguez DH
Robinson Cano 2B
Nick Swisher RF
Andruw Jones LF
Russell Martin C
Jayson Nix 3B

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

Happy Fourth Everyone.

[Images via: This Isn’t Happiness; Retrogasm]

What else?

“American Flag,” By Jasper Johns (1954-55)

Our man Ted Berg brings it in the latest edition of “The Sandwich Show”:

Happy Birfday.

As Jon mentioned in his recap of last night’s game, the Rays find a way to bust Yankee chops.

Let’s hope that ain’t the case tonight. Ivan Nova’s on the hill.

Derek Jeter SS
Curtis Granderson CF
Alex Rodriguez 3B
Robinson Cano 2B
Nick Swisher RF
Raul Ibanez DH
Eric Chavez 1B
Russell Martin C
Dewayne Wise LF

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

[Photo Credit: John Black]

Here’s another bowling story. This one, by the late Jeff Felshman, is a keeper, a funny and understated gem:

Only the dead don’t bowl. Everybody’s tried it, anybody can do it, nobody wants to see it. Would you pay to watch bowling? Of course not. Not if the match featured the greatest bowlers of all time. Who are the greatest bowlers of all time? Who knows? As a spectator sport, bowling isn’t much. Most bowlers don’t pay much attention to their own game much less anyone else’s, especially after a couple of beers. That’s the downside of bowling’s great accessibility: even when you’re good at it, nobody cares.

Most of the bowlers at Timber Lanes the first Saturday in June don’t watch; most of them can’t see. It’s the last day before the summer break for the blind bowling league from the Chicago Braille Center. They won’t be getting together again until the middle of August. By then they should know if they’ve repeated as national champions of the American Blind Bowling Association. The results from this year’s tournement (which was held over Memorial Day weekend in Atlanta, and drew about 700 bowlers from 170 blind bowling leagues) won’t be tabulated until August. The league secretary, Virginia Okada, doesn’t think Chicago Braille Center won this year; but until they hear otherwise they’re still the national champs.

A sign on the door says Timber Lanes welcomes seeing eye dogs, but no one brought the dog today. The group is large enough as it is, about 40 being a crowd in the small bowling alley on Irving Park Road. There’s someone here from practically every American group–that’s–black, white, Spanish, American Indian, Asian, old, young, middle-aged. Usually in America when people try to put together such a broad-based racial and ethnic coalition they fail, but the blind bowlers not only can’t see much difference they have a common cause: they’re all trying to stay out of the gutter.

Somehow, it didn’t make The Best American Sports Writing. Glenn Stout has more.

[Photo Credit: Xaxor]

Couple of stories on Joba Chamberlain:

Harvey Araton in the Times.

Daniel Barbaris in the Wall Street Journal.

[Photo Credit: N.Y. Post]

Serious Eats offers 57 receipes for your Fourth of July Party.

[Photo Credit: J. Kenji Lopez-Alt and Josh Bousel]

Check out this site: Old New York Stories.

[Photo Credit: Mark Kalan]

“McSorley’s Bar,” By John Sloan (1912)

There’s a major George Bellows retrospective at the National Gallery in Washington D.C. through early October.

Might be worth a road trip.

Take it easy, baby. Cal’s here to make everything groovy.

[Photo Credit: Schone Seele]

The Yanks look to end the first half on an up-note this week. They’ve got three in Tampa and then four this weekend in Boston. Won’t be easy.

Fab Five Freddy goes tonight against a struggling Rays team. Be interesting to see what he’s got to offer as a starting pitcher after a poor start to his season and a long time buried in the bullpen.

In the meantime, Corey Wade was optioned today to make room on the roster for Philadelphia whipping boy, Chad Qualls.

How about an appearance from the Yankee Score Truck?

Derek Jeter DH
Curtis Granderson CF
Mark Teixeira 1B
Alex Rodriguez 3B
Robinson Cano 2B
Nick Swisher RF
Andruw Jones LF
Jayson Nix SS
Chris Stewart C

Never mind letting up now: Let’s Go Yank-ees!

From D Magazine comes a bowling story by Michael J. Mooney.

Since we’re talking literature, check out this recent piece on James Joyce by Louis Menand in the New Yorker.

Even better, dig these rare illustrations Henri Matisse did for a 1935 edition of “Ulysses.”

“Interior with a Book,” By Richard Diebenkorn (1959)

I’ve talked about Bucatini All’Amatriciana many times before. It’s my go-to meal, a signature dish in Rome (or just outside of Rome). It’s simple: bacon (or, in Rome, Guanciale), onions, hot pepper flakes, olive oil and tomatoes. Served with bucatini, the long pasta with a hole in the middle.

There are many variations on this theme and just as many arguments about the proper way to make the dish. Marcella Hazen doesn’t use olive oil, she uses butter and vegetable oil. Some people add garlic. Lydia Bastianich cooks the onions in pasta water first and once they are softened she adds the oil. Everyone is convinced their way is the correct way.

Anyhow, here are two more versions to fool around with.

One, from a Portland Chef named Rachel Grossman (via Saveur). It is certainly more involved than the traditional method, has far more ingredients. Curious to give it a try to see why she goes in that direction.

And here’s another–which I’ve tried and recommend–from New York chef (co-owner of Dell’Anima and L’Artusi) Gabe Thompson.

[Photo Credit: Todd Coleman]

Summer in New York is sweet because the town thins out some. People go on vacation, or at least they often vamoose for the weekend. The trains are less crowded cause kids are out of school.  The Farmer’s market has incredible fruit and veggies.

There’s plenty of flesh to enjoy.

So long as the power doesn’t go out–thank the heavens for ice cubes and air conditioning–life is good.

[Photo Via Bags and the most incredible, This Isn’t Happiness]

Adapted from his foreword to a new Modern Library Edition, here’s John Jeremiah Sullivan on William Faulkner’s masterpiece, “Absalom, Absalom!”:

A poll of well over a hundred writers and critics, taken a few years back by Oxford American magazine, named William Faulkner’s “Absalom, Absalom!” the “greatest Southern novel ever written,” by a decisive margin — and the poll was conducted while looking back on a century in which a disproportionate number of the best American books were Southern — so to say that this novel requires no introduction is just to speak plainly.

Of course, it’s the kind of book a person would put first in a poll like that. You can feel reasonably confident, in voting for it, that nobody quite fathoms it enough to question its achievement. Self-consciously ambitious and structurally complex (unintelligible, a subset of not unsophisticated readers has always maintained), “Absalom, Absalom!” partakes of what the critic Irving Howe called “a fearful impressiveness,” the sort that “comes when a writer has driven his vision to an extreme.” It may represent the closest American literature came to producing an analog for “Ulysses,” which influenced it deeply — each in its way is a provincial Modernist novel about a young man trying to awaken from history — and like “Ulysses,” it lives as a book more praised than read, or more esteemed than enjoyed.

But good writers don’t look for impressedness in their readers — it’s at best another layer of distortion — and “greatness” can leave a book isolated in much the way it can a human being. (Surely a reason so many have turned away from “Ulysses” over the last near-hundred years is that they can’t read it without a suffocating sense of each word’s cultural importance and their duty to respond, a shame in that case, given how often Joyce was trying to be amusing.) A good writer wants from us — or has no right to ask more than — intelligence, good faith and time. A legitimate question to ask is, What happens with “Absalom, Absalom!” if we set aside its laurels and apply those things instead? What has Faulkner left us?

I have never read the book, though I’ve started it a few times and have read four other novels by Faulkner. This article has me curious to try again.

[Painting by Steven Sullivan]