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[Painting by Leah Giberson]

And some games are comfortable to sleep through. This was one of them. It was a hot spring day in New York and the crowd at Yankee Stadium was sedate. Late afternoon game. Phil Hughes had his best performance of the season. He gave up one run–a beautiful line drive homer by Mike Carp–and pitched into the eighth inning. He was relieved by Boone Logan after giving up an infield single and bloop base hit to left field. Hughes allowed six hits, walked a batter, struck out four, and was never in any real trouble.

Hector Noesi pitched well, too. Had one tough inning, the second, where the Yanks scored four runs, two coming on a home run to right field by Jayson Nix. Raul Ibanez hit a long homer to center field in the fourth and that was all the scoring the Yanks would need though Robinson Cano added an RBI single in the eighth. Derek Jeter added a couple more hits and is now tied with the great Tony Gwynn on the all-hit hits list. The old goat even stole a base.

Yup, there was little tension in this one until the top of the ninth when Carp hit a ball off the top of the wall in right with a runner on first. The umps reviewed the play and awarded Carp second base instead of giving him a homer and one run scored. Logan struck out the next two hitters to end it.

A soft breeze cooled things down as afternoon turned to evening. It was an ideal game to nap through, occasionally opening one-eye to see what was what, the announcers’ voices humming in the background. Only thing that was missing was a hammock. But we’ll take the win.

Final Score: Yanks 6, Mariners 2.

[Photo Credit: Paintings by Gerald Schlosser and Quint Buchholz]

Late Saturday afternoon game at the Stadium. It’s a beaut out there.

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

Chet:

[Photo Via: The Absolute Best Photography]

Jesus Montero returned to the Bronx tonight and greeted his former team with a solo home run. It was nice to see Montero, surely bittersweet for some of his biggest supporters, and cool to see him hurt the Yankees in a way that didn’t hurt too much.

Hiroki Kuroda got into trouble and worked out of trouble for seven innings. He was unspectacular but delivered a tough, veteran performance. Oh yeah, he out-pitched Felix Hernandez. The crushing blow was a three run homer from Raul Ibanez who has hit for power so far this season. Andruw Jones added a pinch-hit, two run homer as the Yanks beat the Mariners, 6-2.

P.S. Robbie Cano went 4-4 and is now batting .308; Alex Rodriguez had two hits and is hitting .297. The slow starters are starting to heat up.

[Photo Via:Elevated Encouragement, Zero, Frank Franklin II/AP]

Hiroki vs. Felix Hernandez.

Jeter SS
Granderson CF
Cano 2B
Rodriguez 3B
Teixeira 1B
Swisher RF
Ibanez LF
Chavez DH
Martin C

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

[Photo Credit: An English Girl in New York]

Over at Verb Plow, Glenn Stout has a thoughtful take on the Art vs. Science approach to appreciating baseball:

There is a war in baseball that rarely comes up on the field of play yet rages in the stands, the press box, in print and online 365 days a year.

On one side of this battle are those that consider baseball a science and believe that numbers tell us more about the game than any other approach. On the other side are those that consider the game an art and hold that baseball is an activity far too complicated and discreet to be contained in a series of calculations.

Neither side speaks much to the other, and when they do those discussions usually degenerate into a series of playground taunts between straw men, Science eschewing the Art crowd as ignorant louts and esthetes blind to logic, and Art denigrating the practitioners of Science as socially stunted denizens of their parent’s basements.

I delicately wandered into this battle a few weeks ago when, in responding to a Facebook discussion Charlie Pierce was involved in on the merits of Mike Cameron versus Dwight Evans I quipped that “Baseball is an art not a science.” Moments later the esteemed Joe Posnanski and a few others gently reprimanded me, one wagging his finger and writing “They don’t keep score at the ballet, Glenn.” Of course I realized the question was not as simple as either comment decreed, so rather than throw dirt bombs back and forth over the back fence I decided to step back, analyze the structure of the disagreement and try to determine if that tells us anything about the veracity of either approach.

[Photo Credit: Fecal Face]

Check out this story by Jessica Bennett on the New York Times morgue over at Storyboard.

[Photo Via: The Five]

Hey Sal, how come you got no pictures of no brothers on the wall here?

Down at Arturo’s, pride still matters.

[Picture by Bags]

Nice.

[Paintings by Paul W Ruiz]

Dig Amy Bloomfield’s lemon caper dressing over at Food 52.

[Photo Credit: James Ransom]

I’ve been fly since America had thirteen states.

[Photo Credit: Adam Dedman]

The good folks at Deadspin have this excerpt from Frank Deford’s new memoir. It concerns Granny Rice.

Have at it.

Hooray for Hollywood! A Certain Cinema is the bomb.

Here’s a priceless routine from Lenny Bruce when he was in his prime.

Lima,Ohio

[Photo Credit: Shook Photos]

And that goes for David Price, too.

Bad news for Brett Gardner who will have another MRI.

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

Never mind last night’s loss: Let’s Go Yank-ees!

[Painting by Paul Lempa]

I know I’ve brought the Gookie up before but it’s worth mentioning again.

From “Harpo Speaks!”:

The man who first inspired me to become an actor was a guy called Gookie. Gookie had nothing to do with the theatre. He rolled cigars in the window of a cigar store on Lexington Avenue.

This was the store with card games and bookmaking in the back room, the nearest thing to a social club in our neighborhood. It was Frenchie’s home away from home and, along with the poolroom, Chico’s too. Since gambling was never the obsession with me that it was with Chico, I didn’t spend much time in the back room. Where I had the most fun was on the street, in front of the store.

Gookie worked at a low table, facing the Avenue through the window. He was a lumpy little man with a complexion like the leaves he used for cigar wrappers, as if he’d turned that color from overexposure to tobacco. He always wore a dirty, striped shirt without a collar, and leather cuffs and elastic armbands. Whether he was at his table in the window or running errands for the cardplayers, Gookie was forever grunting and muttering to himself. He never smiled.

Gookie was funny enough to look at when he wasn’t working, but when he got up to full speed rolling cigars he was something to see. It was a marvel how fast his stubby fingers could move. And when he got going good he was completely lost in his work, so absorbed that he had no idea what a comic face he was making. His tongue lolled out in a fat roll, his cheeks puffed out, and his eyes popped out and crossed themselves.

I used to stand there and practice imitating Gookie’s look for fifteen, twenty minutes at a time, using the window glass as a mirror. He was too hypnotized by his own work to notice me. Then one day I decided I had him down perfect–tongue, cheeks, eyes, the whole bit.

I rapped on the window. When he looked up I yelled, “Gookie! Gookie!” and made the face. It must have been pretty good because he got sore as hell and began shaking his fist and cursing at me. I threw him the face again. I stuck my thumbs in my ears and waggled my fingers, and this really got him. Gookie barreled out of the store and chased me down the Avenue. It wasn’t hard to outrun such a pudgy little guy. But I’ll give Gookie credit. He never gave up on trying to catch me whenever I did the face through the window.

It got to be a regular show. Sometimes the guy behind the cigar store counter would tip off the cardplayers that I was giving Gookie the works out front. When they watched the performance from the back-room door and he heard them laughing, Gookie would get madder than ever.

For the first time, at the age of twelve, I had a reputation. Even Chico began to respect me. Chico liked to show me off when somebody new turned up in the poolroom. He would tell the stranger, “Shake hands with my brother here. He’s the smartest kid in the neighborhood.” When the guy put out his hand I’d throw him a Gookie. It always broke up the poolroom.

I didn’t know it, but I was becoming an actor. A character was being born in front of the cigar-store window, the character who was eventually to take me a long ways from the streets of the East side.

Over the years, in every comedy act or movie I ever worked in, I’ve “thrown a Gookie” at least once. It wasn’t always planned, especially in our early vaudeville days. If we felt the audience slipping away, fidgeting and scraping their feet through our jokes, Groucho or Chico would whisper in panic, “Ssssssssssst! Throw me a Gookie!” The fact that it seldom failed to get a laugh is quite a tribute to the original possessor of the face.

The little cigar roller was possibly the best straight man I ever had. He was certainly the straightest straight man. If Gookie had broken up or even smiled just once, my first act would have been a flop and the rest of my life might not have been much to write a book about.

Pass the mustard. This one is too much fun.

I once worked with a post-production coordinator whose husband did the sound for this movie. They didn’t use stock sound effects libraries back then. The screech of the train at the end came from the shower curtain dragged closed in the sound man’s bathroom. Also, you know the woman hostage on the train with the two kids? Her daughter babysat for my twin sister and me when we lived at 875 West End Avenue.

[Photo Credi: The Lively Morgue]

This place is mad expensive but it’s fun to check out next time you’re in Curry Hill. Seriously.

[Photo Credit: Robyn Lee]