Blog Archives

You think Robbie Cano will finish second in the AL MVP voting over Miguel Cabrera? That’s as close as he’ll get to winning it, according to Rob Neyer:

The question isn’t, “Who will win the American League’s Most Valuable Player Award?”

That isn’t remotely the question, because we already know that Josh Hamilton is going to win. If he’s not the the unanimous choice, like Joey Votto, he’ll come very close.

And like Votto, Hamilton will be a fine choice.

The question is, “If not Hamilton, though, then who?”

Would you believe….?

Dig this long, engaging profile of April Bloomfield in the New Yorker.

[Photo Credit: The Lunch Break Chronicles]

It’s been dead for fifteen years, right? I was chatting with a friend a mine a few weeks back, a record head and beat maker, and he assured me that hip hop is alive and well.

This drooling review of Jay Z’s new book by Michiko Kakutani in the Times did nothing to restore my faith, however.

Wonder if Jay writes about this:

Okay, here’s early Jay that was actually slammin.’

George King reports in the New York Post:

Yesterday, general manager Brian Cashman strongly denied the organization has acted that way with its shortstop, captain and all-time hits leader.

“There is nothing baffling about our position,” Cashman said. “We have been very honest and direct with them, not through the press. We feel our offer is appropriate and fair. We appreciate the contributions Derek has made to our organization and we have made it clear to them. Our primary focus is his on-the-field performance the last couple of years in conjunction with his age, and we have some concerns in that area that need to be addressed in a multi-year deal going forward.

“I re-state Derek Jeter is the best shortstop for this franchise as we move forward. The difficulty is finding out what is fair between both sides.”

Also in the Post, Joel Sherman lowers the hammer on DJ:

Derek Jeter’s position when it comes to his contract negotiations appears to be this: I am Derek Jeter, pay me.

It doesn’t matter he has almost no leverage or he is coming off his worst season or the production of shortstops 37 and older in major league history is dismal.

Logic and facts are not supposed to matter. All that is supposed to matter is this: I am Derek Jeter, pay me.

The Yankees have offered Jeter $45 million over three years, which is being portrayed by the shortstop’s increasingly desperate camp as an insult. Except, of course, it is hard to find another organization ready to insult Jeter in similar fashion.

Mo Rivera wants his too.

Your National League MVP: Joey Votto.

One of these days I’m going to cut you into little tiny pieces…

The Times also had a little piece on Esposito’s Pork Sausage store, one of my old haunts when I lived in Brooklyn.

I was in a book store on Friday night and this caught my eye: Denys Wortman’s New York: Portrait of the City in the 30s and 40s.

I’d never heard of Wortman before but I was immediately taken with his work.

Yesterday, the Times ran a long feature about Wortman who is the subject of a show at the Museum of the City of New York through March:

If there is a single constant in the creative world, it is that fame has a nasty habit of disappearing overnight. One prime example is the cartoonist Denys Wortman, who from 1924 to 1954 contributed six drawings a week to The New York World and its successors.

His feature, “Metropolitan Movies,” was admired for its strikingly naturalistic portrayal of daily life in Gotham. Using a single panel and a conversational caption, Mr. Wortman adroitly summoned up an entirely believable world of housewives talking across fire escapes, girls in the subway hashing over last night’s date, and men and women trying to make a buck in diners, offices, music halls and factories — or struggling to keep afloat during the Great Depression. Mr. Wortman’s drawings were also beautifully composed and finely worked, a legacy of his art school years, when he studied alongside future Ashcan school painters like Edward Hopper and George Bellows, and with their guru Robert Henri.

Even then “there was nothing quite like it,” said the cartoonist Jules Feiffer, who enjoyed the drawings as a boy. “His work didn’t seem studied. It was as if you were looking out the window — or my window in the Bronx.” And because it was syndicated nationwide (as “Everyday Movies”), Mr. Wortman’s world spread far beyond the Hudson.

But in 1958, four years after his retirement, Mr. Wortman died of a heart attack. By then cartooning had become character-driven and graphically streamlined (think of Charles M. Schulz’s “Peanuts”) while art was ruled by the Abstract Expressionists. And when The World’s successor The World-Telegram and Sun folded, he was as forgotten as yesterday’s fish wrap.

The book and the show look like a must.

Rest in Peace, Norris Church Mailer, dead at 61.

Mailer was the subject of an excellent profile by Alex Witchel earlier this year.

Larry Rothschild was named as the Yankees new pitching coach.  Ben Kabak has the details. And for more on Rothschild, check out It’s About the Money, Stupid.

Former Yankee Jim Lerityz was acquited–Steve Lombardi’s got the links.

Yeah, there was some more posturing on the Jeter negotiations–from Jeter’s side–but nothing worth noting. And in the Boston Globe, Nick Cafardo reports, “Word is the Yankees are in the $115 million-$120 million range for five years, while the Rangers are determined to match whatever it gets up to. The Nationals are another team aggressive in this hunt.”

Hope most of you have a short work week as the big boid looms on Thursday. We’ll be here.

Am I wrong but wasn’t Terry Collins an incorrigible red ass when he managed the Angels?

Should make for some fun temper tantrums.

Slow weekend round here at the Banter but nice day of NFL action on tap: Jets at 1, Peyton vs. Brady at 4, and the Giants vs the Eagles tonight.

It’s cool and most cloudy here in the Bronx. Short week before Thanksgiving coming up. We should start to see some player movement around or just after the holiday.

In the meantime, hope you have a good one. And yo, remember: Do something nice for yourself…

Or someone you know…

You deserve it. Say Word.

From Jon Heyman via the indefatigable Craig Calcaterra:

The Yankees are busy with Derek Jeter and Cliff Lee, but after that’s all said and done, Mariano Rivera will be tops on their priority list. Jon Heyman reports today that, when they do get to him, they’ll find that he wants a two-year deal, not a one-year deal.

This should not be a problem. I think you pretty much give Mariano Rivera whatever he wants. At least within reason. He earned 2011 by continuing to be awesome in 2010. While, sure, he might fall off a cliff eventually, who has a greater right to ask for an extra year than Mariano Rivera? He’s carried them for 15 years. They can carry him for one if, for some reason, next season is his last effective one.

Agreed. No problems here. Two years sounds beautiful to me.

[Drawing by Ricardo Lopez Ortiz]

Ozark Ike: You gotta keep your eye on the ball. Eye. Ball. Eye-ball. That’s a gag, son. Gag that is.

Frank Bruni on eating in the City of Angels:

Sure, New York also has a bit of everything, or rather a lot of everything. But its crowdedness and competitiveness make it the Everest to L.A.’s Kilimanjaro: you practically need a Sherpa to tackle New York effectively, and you just might lose a digit or limb. L.A. is more reasonably scaled, with the newest, hottest restaurants less likely to book up a solid month in advance. When a friend and I dropped in — at the height of lunch hour, no less — to one of the four branches of Umami Burger, the cult favorite of the city’s ground-beef set, we were seated immediately, in comfy chairs at a big table that could have accommodated four. In contrast, almost any mealtime visit to any location of New York’s Shake Shack involves a significant stretch of time — 20 minutes isn’t exceptional — on a serpentine line. That’s for counter service. At Umami, someone actually waits on you.

The Umami story demonstrates the enterprise and speed with which L.A.’s restaurateurs are tackling trends. When Adam Fleischman, its principal owner, opened the first Umami in Mid-Wilshire in January 2009, he was entering an arena brimming with competitors, each with fanatical adherents. There was Father’s Office, with its unyielding commandment that arugula and caramelized onions should dress every patty. There was 8 oz. Burger Bar, which permitted free will. And there was of course In-N-Out, less restaurant than fast-food franchise but perhaps the earliest architect of the bridge between McDonald’s and self-regarding gourmands.

Fleischman had a hook that sagely took into account the self-consciously erudite posturing of so many food enthusiasts today. ‘‘I wanted to do something with umami,’’ he says, referring to the so-called fifth taste (after sweet, salty, sour and bitter), which is vaguely described as ‘‘savoriness’’ and until recent years wasn’t universally accepted as an actual, definable trait. So each of the burgers at Umami is constructed with an emphasis on ingredients thought to be catalysts for umami. The caramelized onions on the signature burger are seasoned with star anise ‘‘because it’s an umami booster,’’ Fleischman says. The burger is also dressed with sautéed shiitake mushrooms, Parmesan cheese and oven-dried tomatoes, all thought to be umami bombs.

We Love L.A.!

[Photo Credit: Alex Eats World, Signature L.A. Direct]

The Boss is lost on me but that’s just a matter of taste. Still, I regard him as a great musician and songwriter and performer. For the many of you who dig Bruce, check out this post over at Pitchers and Poets.

This is one tune of his that I love:

And here is a 1975 newspaper article on the Boss by our pal John Schulian.

Felix Hernandez is a King after all. Congrats to the 2010 AL Cy Young Award winner.

According to the BBWAA website:

Because of the heightened interest in this award, the list of voters is below, grouped by which pitcher they listed first on their ballot:

Hernandez: Ken Rosenthal, Fox; Amalie Benjamin, Boston Globe; Michael Silverman, Boston Herald; Erik Boland, Newsday; Joe Smith, St. Petersburg Times; Mark Gonzales, Chicago Tribune; Lynn Henning, Detroit News; John Lowe, Detroit Free Press; Sam Mellinger, Kansas City Star; Joe Posnanski, SI.com; Joe Christensen, Minneapolis Star Tribune; John Shipley, St. Paul Pioneer Press; Hirokazu Higuchi, Chunichi Shimbun (LA); Tim Brown, Yahoo Sports; Jorge Ortiz, USA Today; Ray Ratto, At Large (SF/Oakland); Kirby Arnold, Everett Herald; Larry Stone, Seattle Times; Richard Durrett, At Large (Dallas-Fort Worth); Anthony Andro, Fort Worth Star Telegram; Morgan Campbell, Toronto Star.

Price: Mel Antonen, USA Today; Tony Fabrizio, Tampa Tribune; Phil Rogers, Chicago Tribune; Chris Assenheimer. Elyria (OH) Chronicle.

Sabathia: George King, New York Post; Bob Elliott, Toronto Sun; Sheldon Ocker, Akron Beacon Journal.

A friend just got me “Ad Hoc at Home,” by Thomas Keller.

I’m stoaked.

[Photo Credit: Jun-Blog]