Blog Archives

Today through Friday, “The Lady Eve” will be shown at the Museum of Modern Art at 1:30 p.m.

Man, how I wish I could play hooky and catch it on the big screen. It features one of the classic seduction scenes of all time.

The great Bob Dylan turned 70 yesterday.

Here’s some Bob tracks, suggested by Matt B:

[Photograph by Barry Feinstein, 1965]

On the subway this morning the conductor said, after each stop,  “Stand clear and watch the closing doors.”

Then: “Okay, here we go.” Here we go. He made it sound fun and exciting, as if we were strapping in for a roller coaster ride. Like we were all in it together. Bound for something good.

I thought that as cool, especially on such a beautiful morning. It’s been raining for weeks here and you put up with weather like that because–well, because you have no cherce. But for all those dreary days you get one like this. Picture perfect. Like this:

Sing it, Mick:

[Painting I did of model, Santa Monica, 1997–gouache on paper]

Enough of this love-makin’ whadda ya say we win!

Let’s Go Yank-ees!

All the Yankees do is hit home runs. This is a good problem, no? Jay Jaffe talks turkey over at PB:

The real, underlying problem is that the Yankees aren’t hitting particularly well with runners in scoring position. Their .245/.334/.431 line in such instances actually ranks fourth in the league in OPS and sOPS+; they’re 15 percent better than league average in this regard. They’ve accomplished this despite ranking just seventh in batting average with RISP, and 13th — second to last! — in BABIP (.258, 24 points below average) with RISP, because they’re second in isolated power, and third in unintentional walk rate under such circumstances.

Now as we know, balls in play aren’t entirely under control of either the batter or the hitter, though on a year-to-year basis, they correlate better for the latter. The Yankees hit .300 on balls in play last year, fifth in the league and five points above league average; they were at .292 with RISP, one point above average. With a virtually identical cast of main characters this year, they’re hitting .274 on balls in play, 12th in the league and 11 points below average, and 24 points below average with RISP. Yet the Yankee offense is still the AL’s strongest; in fact, they’re stronger relative to the league than last year. The Yanks are scoring 0.96 runs per game (or 22 percent) more than average in 2011, compared to 0.85 runs per game (or 19 percent) more than average in 2010. Yet because a small handful of hits haven’t dropped in as they normally would — and because they’re allowing more runs relative to the league than last year (from 0.14 below average to 0.02 below average) — they’re suddenly too reliant upon the home run.

It’s true that without the home runs, the Yankees would be in worse shape. This is akin to saying that without legs, your ability to outrun a ravenous cheetah would suffer somewhat. The home runs have allowed the Yankees to overcome the days when their offense is otherwise kept at bay. Fourteen times this season, the Yankees have collected at least three hits in a game with runners in scoring position. During those games, they’ve hit .310/.440/.551, averaged 8.14 runs, and hit 1.93 homers en route to an 11-3 record. Meanwhile, they’ve failed to collect a hit with runners in scoring position in 11 games, batting a Posada-esque .187/.311/.363, averaged 2.81 runs and 1.36 homers. They’ve gone 5-6 in those games, which is pretty impressive when you consider that teams scoring exactly three runs have won 36.1 percent of the time this year, and those scoring exactly two runs have won 21.8 percent of the time. Extrapolating from those two figures, a team scoring 2.8 per game should win 33.2 percent of the time, so the Yankees are about 1.3 wins better than average on that score.

[Image via Keep Cool But Care]

Grew up with this book, the French version, my mother’s copy.

Jose Bautista is not clean-cut or especially likable. He’s got an attitude, he wears a black hat, and man does he wear it well. Good for him. Not every star should be polished or cute.

Over at SI.com, Joe Sheehan explains why Bautista is anything but a one-year wonder:

Bautista isn’t Bonds. He’s Joe Hardy. He’s Roy Hobbs. He’s come out of, if not nowhere, a shadowy past we don’t completely understand — “the Pirates,” as they’re known — to do something completely unprecedented in baseball history. Players have made leaps before, as the great sluggers of the 1990s did. Players have come into the league and played at Bautista’s level, as Thomas and Albert Pujols did. Players have even had one completely insane season, like Bautista’s 2010, then regressed to a lower level of performance.
For someone to be a non-entity through six seasons and 2,000 plate appearances, then become the most dangerous hitter in baseball? We have no precedent for that, which is why I spent the winter — from November in Phoenix to March in print — insisting that he couldn’t repeat his ’10 season. This is watching Babe Ruth throw a shutout in 1918 and knowing he’d become the all-time leading home-run hitter, or watching the Boston Braves get swept in a July 4 doubleheader and seeing the 1914 world championship team forming. Jose Bautista couldn’t have gotten arrested two years ago, and now he’s the biggest story in baseball. Forget analysis, breakdowns, your favorite team, your fantasy team, who said what about whom back in January. When Jose Bautista comes to the plate, people stop and they watch. He’s making the 2011 season for baseball fans.

Serious Eats offers some farmers’ market tips.

Some of what I’ve been reading…

“Figure on a Porch,” By Richard Diebenkorn (1959)

Last Sunday, there was a long piece in the Times about Paddy Chayefsky’s process writing the screenplay for “Network”:

Thirty-five years later, “Network” remains an incendiary if influential film, and its screenplay is still admired as much for its predictive accuracy as for its vehemence: a relentless sense of purpose that is even more palpable in the files Chayefsky left behind upon his death in 1981.

These papers were acquired by the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts in 2001 but not examined much after their cataloging in the library’s Billy Rose Theater Division was completed in 2006. The rarely seen documents on “Network” speak loudly for their absent author, documenting the angst and animus that consumed him on this highly personal project.

Working in an era of paper, pencils and typewriters, Chayefsky seemingly committed to print every observation and self-criticism that he thought of. His “Network” archives provide a road map of the paths taken and not taken in its narrative, but they also reveal a visceral rawness that is scarce in today’s age of digital files and screenwriting by committee. They tell the story of an author’s struggles to determine what he wanted to say about a medium that would do anything for an audience’s attention.

Worth checking out.

[Pictures by Michael Rougier and Terry O’Neill]

Rat-a-tat-tat:

A good friend of mine is a stinkin’ Red Sox fan of the worst variety. He’s a converted fan. And it’s all the more galling because he grew up in Jersey and remains a huge Knicks and Jets fan. Hates the Celtics, hates the Pats. But loves the Red Sox. Has a bottle of Schilling Chardonnay in his office. It’s enough to make you sick.

He went to college in Boston and was miserable, not in Boston but with his life. So he started going to Fenway and showing up at that park and caring about the Sox gave him a sense of purpose, saved him when he needed saving.

Part of me still thinks his taste in inexcusable–and I’ll never tire of giving him hell about it– but sometimes we don’t pick our teams with much thought or logic. They find us or we find them.

Anyhow, this particular friend turns 40 today and I’d like to take this moment to wish a happy birthday to his stinkin’ ass.

[Photograph by Erica McDonald]

When I was in high school I started seeing a shrink. She lived on west 86th street in the same building Stanley Kubrick and I.B. Singer once called home. Her name was Miriam and she looked like she could have been Elaine Kaufman’s sister.

My father knew Elaine when she managed a restaurant called Portofino down in the village. He followed her when she opened her own place on the Upper East Side. He was a regular at Elaine’s in early days, before he got a job at ABC and migrated down to Herb Evans and then the Ginger Man over by Lincoln Center in ’68-’69. Dad took my aunt and cousin Donny to Elaine’s and soon they were going on their own. Last year, Donny told me that the first time he ever ate Pesto was at Elaine’s.

Her place was famous, as famous as any bar in New York since Toots Shor’s. Famous as a hangout for writers and scene makers. It stopped being hip by the late ’70s but coasted on its reputation for many years after that. And Elaine was at the center of it all, loving and profane, a true New York character.

Last December, Elaine died. On Thursday, her old place closes for good. I’d say it was the end of an era, but really the joint died when she did.

How about a toast?

Oh, yeah, big Bartolo Colon and the Yanks got thumped by the Jays, 7-3.

Yanks-Jays tonight in the BX.

Cliff has the Preview, we do the cheerin’:

Let’s Go Score Truck!

[Picture by Craig Robinson]

This is what I imagine Derek Jeter will look like one day.

It’s the eyes.

THIS TRAIN GOES ONLY SO FAR

By John Schulian

I wouldn’t cross paths with McGurk again until I was out of grad school and holding an Army draft notice. By then, his promise to keep an eye on me didn’t matter. I was fully aware of the fact that I wasn’t good enough for pro ball. But that doesn’t mean I stopped loving the game. Of I hadn’t love it anymore, it wouldn’t have hurt so much to make the first truly difficult decision of my life. I was a sophomore at Utah and we were working out in the fieldhouse, an old barn with worse lighting than an abandoned coalmine. It seemed like every day I’d wind up catching this left-handed maniac who eventually signed with the Giants. He had a great fastball, a wicked curve, and absolutely no control. While his pitches bounced off my chest and shins, I started looking at my future in a different light.

In the fall quarter, for the first time in my life, I’d done really well in school. Something like three A’s and a B. And it felt good. Better still, I was starting to think I might want to be a newspaper reporter. But if I played baseball, I was going to miss classes and not have as much time to concentrate on my writing as I needed, and, really, for what? For the chance to sit in the bullpen when the wind was turning Laramie, Wyoming to ice? For the chance to do that for one season and maybe two before I got a decent shot at starting? Baseball wasn’t my future anymore. My brain was, for better or worse. Whatever the future held for me, I knew I wasn’t going to stay in Salt Lake. I needed to get the best grades I could so I could use them as my ticket to ride. So I walked away from my baseball scholarship. Nothing dramatic. No pleas for me to stay. The team would get along fine without me. I cried a lot of tears that nobody ever saw, but I knew I’d done the right thing. And I graduated Phi Beta Kappa, which is something I’ve never made a lot of noise about, mainly because I’ve never fit my idea of what a Phi Beta Kappa should be. A Phi Beta Kappa should be legitimately smart, a true intellectual. I’m just the guy Pete Radulovich turned into a catcher.

I thought that was the end of me and baseball. But come summer Utah Power & Light’s amateur team called and offered me a chance to play. I promptly went out and had the worst year of my life. I’m not sure I hit .250. But they asked me back the next year, when the team added two terrific players from BYU, one of whom happened to be a catcher. I wasn’t sure why UP&L needed me, but I hung around, doing a little catching and wondering if I was wasting time. And then one night I whacked a pinch-hit double over the left fielder’s head, and everything changed. They made a place for me in the lineup, sometimes catching, sometimes at third, but mostly in the outfield because our other catcher’s idea of playing there was to wait until he saw where a fly ball landed before he went after it. I led the team in hitting and he was right behind me.

The next year was even better. I caught full-time and my friend Steve Radulovich, Pete’s son, who’d been drafted by the Yankees and Cincinnati but never signed, played first base. We had a lot of good college players and a couple of former minor leaguers on the team, plus a curve-baller from Utah who went 8-0. We won our league and the state amateur championship, and I hit .397, best year I ever had, even if Radulovich out-hit me by 70 points. (It’s almost embarrassing to remember this stuff, but I do.) One of the guys I played with—we called him Starchy—still says I was the craziest SOB he ever saw, and he’s probably right. After doing nothing but study in school, I had a lot of steam to let off. I hardnosed our pitchers, bitched incessantly at umpires, challenged a lot of opponents who could have kicked my ass, and swore like a stevedore if I hit a weak ground ball. I’ve still got the trophy they gave me as the team’s most valuable player. But the story I want to leave you with has nothing to do with that.

We had a pitcher, one of those kids who’d been a monster all the way through high school and then hurt his arm. I could have caught his best fastball barehanded. But one night he’s throwing a beautiful game — it might even have been three innings of no-hit ball–and he calls me to the mound. Our manager, a big guy with the face of a baby bird, trots out immediately.

“What’s the problem?” our manager says.

“I’m tired,” the pitcher says.

Our manager looks at him for a beat, then slaps him on the back and says, “John will tell you when you’re tired.”

Click here for more “From Ali to Xena.”

[Painting by Dane Tilghman]

For years Woody played his clarinet every Monday night at Michael’s. Missed the Academy Awards when “Annie Hall” won Best Picture because he was there instead.

How I pined to go when I was a teenager. But I never made it.  It was such a New York thing.

Anyone ever see him play there?

[Picture by François-Marie Banier]

Thai Heaven in Queens.

Took the trek last Friday night and it was as good as ever.