Blog Archives

This is it, the 2011 season comes down to one last game.

Let’s Go Base-ball!

[Photo Credit: via Running Amuck]

John and Suzyn Waldman will be back calling Yankee games on the radio next year.

[Photo Credit: N.Y. Daily News]

And you can put that on my momma, exclamation point, quotation, comma.

[Photo Credit: ATrak]

Left panel “Three Studies for Self-Portrait,” By Francis Bacon (1974)

If you’ve never been to this spot, well, what the hell are you waiting for?

Sasha Frere-Jones has a nice piece about the new Tom Waits record this week in The New Yorker:

“If you break open a song, you’ll find the eggs of other songs,” he told me. “Misunderstandings are really kind of an epidemic and acceptable. I think it’s about one thing, but someone else will say, ‘That song is kind of a rhino in hot pants on a burnt rocking horse with a lariat shouting, “Repent, repent!” ’ I think that’s great.”

…In the past thirty years, Waits, as a songwriter, has tried to retain a sense of craft while finding musical settings that take his compositions out of some nostalgic tar pit. On “Bad as Me,” he sounds like someone who knows the history of pop and uses only the bits he needs to make the hybrid creature that will carry him to safety. “I’m always looking for sounds that are pleasing at the time,” he told me. “The sound of a helicopter is really annoying until you’re drowning, and it’s there to rescue you. Then it sounds like music.”

I love the part about sounds changing their meaning. Wonderful.

It’s cold today, not autumn chilly but the start of winter cold. Last day of what has been an enjoyable baseball season and I am sorry to see it end.

I saw these guys on Broadway when I got out of the subway, walked over and felt the ground shake beneath me. A good feeling, watching men work, the ground vibrating.

Early in Game 6 Nelson Cruz caught a fly ball for an out. But he stabbed at it and he looked like a clumsy kid not a big leaguer. But nobody ever said that being good means looking good. Last night’s game was unsightly in many ways, fielding errors, poor relief pitching, but it was dramatic and entertaining when it wasn’t infuriating. The Rangers were one strike away from winning their first Whirled Serious, twice. The Cards finally won it on game-ending home run by the man who dropped an easy pop-up a few hours earlier. Pain and joy and Game 7.

Happy?

[Photo Credit:  Jamie Squire/Getty Images]

The Rangers are one win away from their first championship while the Cardinals need to win in order to force a seventh and deciding game.

Let’s Go Base-ball!

Check this out: The History of How We Follow Baseball (The Atlantic).

Where else but Retronaut?

Man Ray

Here’s another favorite from our man with the new CD:

Dig this amazingness from Kottke, a most dope site.

History of the typewriter recited by Michael Winslow from SansGil—Gil Cocker on Vimeo.

And then, there’s this:

Class is in session.

The Yanks are working on a contract proposal for C.C. Sabathia: New York Times.

Robbie Cano’s agent wants contract redone: New York Post.

Brian Cashman is close to signing a new deal: New York Daily News.

Eric Chavez would consider returning to the Yanks in 2012: Jerry Crasnick via River Ave Blues.

Since Game 6 is cancelled tonight, you’ll have time to check out this long piece on Howie Spira by Luke O’Brien over at Deadspin:

Howie recognized opportunity when it arrived in 1981, from the San Diego Padres. Dave Winfield was a four-time All-Star, a two-time Gold Glove winner, and one of the best athletes on the planet—drafted out of college in 1973 by pro teams in three sports. Howie had introduced himself to Winfield a year earlier when the Padres were in town to play the Mets. A few months later, the Yankees inked the outfielder to the richest contract in baseball—$23 million over 10 years—and Howie started in with the blandishments.

“I was focused on Dave like a horse with blinders,” he said. “He was going to be the wealthiest, most powerful ballplayer, and I made up my mind that that was the place for me.”

Howie sent a dozen long-stemmed roses to the secretary at Winfield’s charity. The flowers were Howie’s calling card. When he played at journalism, he sent roses to almost every girl who worked for the Mets. Hit on most of them, too. Winfield’s secretary agreed to go on a date. “We had dinner,” Howie said. “And she was the dinner.”

A Short Story

By Ben Belth

“Take him, Joey. Take him!” Glenn said. It was late in the day and late in the season. Import Corner wasn’t going to the championship game for the first time since he started coaching Little League five years earlier, and Glenn was frustrated.

It was the top of the final frame, the score was 0-0 and Joey, his star pitcher, was throwing a perfect game. It should have been exciting but like everything this season, it felt like a grind.

When Glenn started coaching, baseball was easy. He had an eye for talent and kept his team stocked with good players. Three years in a row, he won the championship on autopilot. During the tryouts for his fourth season, just when he started to get bored with the whole Little League thing, he spotted Joey, a pint-sized boy with big eyes and sure hands. Joey could handle the bat enough to bunt and would crouch down and you couldn’t pitch to him. When he got on, he could run the bases like crazy. He was the ideal leadoff man. Glenn took him with the first pick and aimed for the championship again.

They won it again that year, and Joey was the coup of the league, the only rookie that went to the traveling All-Star team. He walked a ton, stole bases, and was fine with sitting on the older kids’ laps for the crowded post-game car rides for ice cream. He was easy. Glenn would watch him play, holler “Take him, Joey,” and it was like activating their secret plan.

But this season was different. Glenn’s daughter Sara joined the team, one of only two girls in the whole league. That wasn’t easy. She made it even tougher by being the best player on the team. And Joey didn’t want to work walks or bunt any longer, he wanted to hit home runs. Never abandon a good thing, Glenn warned him but Joey didn’t listen and suffered. They all suffered. No matter how much encouragement Glenn heaped on him, Joey couldn’t hit. And without Joey on base, the team didn’t win. No matter how many doubles Sara hit that year, it wasn’t enough.

Their final game was against Fire Department, the first place team. Joey warmed up on the mound knowing there’d be no championship game for him, no All-Star team selection. He was in his final year of Little League and who knows what happened after that. He’d let everyone down by thinking he could be more of a player than he actually was.

Then he brought a perfect game through 5 and 2/3 innings.

It was the top of the sixth, two out. Fire Department was at bat. Will, a free-swinging lefty, came to bat. “Take him, Joey, Take him.” Glenn snapped, trying the old refrain again.

Will swung and missed at the first two pitches. He stepped out, took a sign from his coach and dug back in. He took the next three pitches, all balls, never lifting the bat from his shoulder.

“Take him, Joey.” Glenn tried again, but it came out sounding more like a scolding. Joey made the next one close but the ump called ball four and Will ran down to first. “Swing the bat, you putz.” Glenn said as he trotted out to the mound. He put a firm hand on Joey’s cap.

“Guess you can relieve me now,” Joey said.

Glenn shook his head. “The game is still yours. Just throw strikes.”

Dave was next, Fire Department’s best hitter. After he swung through the first pitch, the next was in the dirt and rolled away from the catcher. Will jogged down to second without a throw.

“Christ,” Glenn said, “Forget the runner, Joey, make the pitch. Take him.”

Dave hit the next one into center field and Will scored standing up. It didn’t seem to matter when Dave was thrown out at third. The perfect game, no hitter, and shut out were all gone.

Import Corner dragged themselves into the dugout and hung their heads. The 8th and 9th hitter went quickly and Joey came up with no one on. Sara was on deck so they still had a shot. Glenn gave Joey the bunt sign and Joey nodded. But the bunt attempts went foul, so with two strikes, Glenn let him swing-away. Joey crouched as low as he could and the next three pitches were high and the kids in the dugout started cheering.

The pitcher adjusted and threw one right down the plate. Joey closed his eyes, swung and hit the ball. He opened his eyes in time to see it heading towards the hole between third and short. He took-off for first but the ball arrived just before him. Joey heard the ump call him out, but didn’t stop running. He ran into foul territory, flung his helmet against the fence, and yelled as loud as he could. The parents in the bleachers quietly moved away and his teammates kept their distance.

“Hey take it easy. Jesus.” Glenn said, coming  over, “Settle down. You gave it your best. Right? No one tries harder, Joey.”

“I can’t freakin’ hit.” Joey said.

There wasn’t much Glenn could say. But after a long silence he tried anyway. “You played for me for two years,” he said. “We won a championship last year. You came one out from throwing a perfect game.”

He gave the boy a stiff hug. “A perfect game.”

They walked back to the rest of the team. That was when Glenn decided to send Joey to the All-Star team. He’d break the news to Sara over dinner. He knew she could handle the disappointment. Not everyone could.

[Photo Credit: Mike Reinhold.com]

There is a wonderful profile of our man Pete Dexter by Ellis E. Conklin in today’s Villiage Voice:

Of his writing regimen, Dexter says: “It’s work. You’re pulling stuff out, like I did with Spooner, that doesn’t want to come out. The only time I really enjoyed the process was writing Spooner. I didn’t want it to end.”

For Dexter, the most essential quality a novelist must possess is the ability to entertain his or her readers. “There’s nothing more important than that.”

It’s a good mystery that most entertains Dexter. In Philly, Dexter became a regular at the Whodunit bookstore, where he first met Tex Cobb. He likes Mike Connelly’s stuff (“He knows what’s he’s doing”), and Scott Turow (“He always aims high. You can see him really trying”), and just about anything by Elmore Leonard.

Among more traditional novelists, Dexter admires Padgett Powell, Thomas McGuane, Tom Wolfe, and Jim Harrison. But it is friend and author Richard Russo (Nobody’s Fool, Mohawk, The Risk Pool, Straight Man, Empire Falls) who is Dexter’s absolute favorite.

“I got a call from The New York Times some time back, asking me what the best novel of the last, I forget, 25 or 50 years was,” Dexter recalls. “And I told him it was Straight Man,” Russo’s poignant 1997 novel about a wisecracking professor trying to navigate his way through a highly dysfunctional English department at a central Pennsylvania university.

Dexter’s respect for Russo is mutual. In an e-mail, Russo writes: “Pete Dexter has always been a writer after my own heart: sly, yet deeply honest, full of twisted wit and spirit. He wears both his prodigious talent and knowledge of the human heart ever so lightly, as if they’re hardly worth mentioning, a mere parlor trick, and not the stuff of which great art is made.”

Dexter has this wonderful ability to get to the heart of something without hitting directly on the head. He creeps up on the outside, or up from beneath, in a way that is surprising. He’s a huge talent but he doesn’t let his talent that get the better of him. His prose is restrained without being forced. And he doesn’t coast. Writing is not easy for him, every sentence, every word, is worked over until it’s right. Steve Lopez, the accomplished columnist, said that Dexter is “the guy who makes you want to give it up, sell shoes, take up heavy drinking, or just shoot yourself.” And that’s true. But he also makes me want to try harder.

“He’s some kind of genius,” Richard Ben Cramer told me recently. “He’s just ferocious.”

More NYC goodness from Vivian Maier (via Retronaut):

“The Gulf Stream,” By Winslow Homer (1899)

I remember looking at this picture as a boy. I wondered how the man on the boat could appear calm, sharks around him, a storm in the distance. The picture, which is part of the permanent collection at the MET, didn’t make me anxious so much as me aware that death is unavoidable. I tried to think what I would do in that situation. And I admired the resolve or the acceptance of the man on the boat.