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Future Hall of Famer and all-around Nice Guy Jim Thome is profiled by Joe Posnanski this week in SI. Dig in.

It’s been chilly the past few nights here in New York. October baseball is in the air for Yankee fans and I’m here to tell you that it feels good to be so spoiled. For years my sense memory informed me to get anxious in this weather which meant the start of school. Now, it’s been replaced by a luxurious feeling–the Yankees and the playoffs. It is a sensation that I cannot take for granted.

Now that autumn is fast approaching the summer bounty is running dry. No more corn, just a few precious tomatoes left. These here were grown on a rooftop in Manhattan. August is my favorite time of year for food and I’m always sorry to see it go, but take comfort in the fact that it’ll return next year. And when it arrives again, just like when the Yanks make the playoffs, I’ll appreciate every last moment.

The summer before my senior year in high school I got a job as a messenger in a post-production house in Manhattan. Martin Scorsese was editing “The Last Temptation of Christ” in the building. The movie was scheduled to debut at the New York Film Festival in September but there was so much controversy surrounding it, the date was pushed up. So Scorsese and his team of editors worked around the clock to mix the sound. One Saturday, I came into work to sit next to the projector in the machine room and watch. After an hour, Scorsese invited me inside. I was supposed to go visit my grandfather who was recovering from surgery at Lennox Hill, but I stayed in the dark mixing studio all afternoon. I watched and listened.

Scorsese was approachable that summer. He complimented me on my t-shirt collection, talked to me about movies, and one day when I brought my friends in, trying to show off, Scorsese spotted me and said hello,  a huge thrill.

The next summer, I’d graduated high school and Scorsese was shooting a gangster movie called “Wise Guy” (later changed to “Goodfellas). The Dailies–footage from the previous day’s shoot–were transfered to videotape for Robert DeNiro. Whenever I had down time between a run, I snuck into the transfer room and watched take after take of Joe Pesci, Ray Liotta, DeNiro and the gang. I’d never been so anxious to see a movie in my life. A few months later, I was walking past a studio where they were mixing the sound and I heard “Monkey Man,” my favorite Stones song. I stopped dead in my tracks.

Are you kidding me? This is going to be the best movie ever.

I saw “Goodfellas” the day it opened, the first showing, high noon, over on the east side somewhere. Then, I saw it four more times in the theater.

That was 20 years ago. Check out the oral history of the movie featured over at GQ. It’s not great but it gives you some flavor behind the making of the movie that put Scorsese’s career back on the map and practically annoited him as the Dean of American Directors.

Higher Loinik:

[Photograph by Ruth Orkin, NYC: 1947]

…When you’re the Boss.

[Drawing by Larry Roibal]

Big Game James. I’m not buyin’ it, man. There’s only one Big Game James to my way of thinking and he didn’t play baseball.

Hughesie needs a good outing and a win.

Let’s Go Yan-Kees!

[Picture by Bags]

The Threshing Floor (1904), By Diego Rivera

‘Meber this silliness?

This could be a good one. From the New York Times:

[George Bernard] Shaw also formed an enduring friendship with, of all people, Gene Tunney, the world heavyweight champ, some 40 years younger. The two men regularly corresponded and exchanged visits and, together with their wives, even spent a monthlong holiday together in 1929, when Tunney, newly married to Polly Lauder, a Connecticut heiress, was hiding from the press in Brioni, the Adriatic resort.

This friendship, the subject of a new book, “The Prizefighter and the Playwright: Gene Tunney and Bernard Shaw,” by Tunney’s 74-year-old son, Jay, is not a secret, exactly. Shaw and Tunney were proud of their connection and took no pains to hide it. Contemporary sportswriters, who disapproved of Tunney’s bookishness, sometimes made fun of him for associating with such a pointy-head.

Good looking to that tweetin’ fool, Matt B, for pointing out this piece on Martin Scorsese’s favorite gangster movies.

I’m partial to this one, myself:

What’s your favorite food to get from a cart?

Three cheers to Jim Bouton, whose classic book, Ball Four, turns 40 (Jay Jaffe had a great post to mark the event over at the Pinstriped Bible last week).

Last weekend, Bouton was honored by the  Baseball Reliquary in California. According to Tom Hoffarth:

When asked how the title “Ball Four” came into being, Bouton explained Saturday how he and editor Leonard Shecter were at the Lion’s Head Tavern in New York, the famous literary bar near Columbia University, having just turned in the finished product into the publisher:

“We went to have a drink to celebrate this piece of cardboard we had just turned in, and we’re thinking, ‘Now what are we going to call the damn thing?’

“We were talking about the need to have a downbeat title. This isn’t a story about how somebody just won the World Series. It’s about struggling, about difficulty. What’s the toughest thing for a pitcher — a knuckleball pitcher in particular — it’s to get the damn ball over the plate. It’s walking guys ….

“So we’re talking about all this, and there was a lady sitting at the bar. She was very drunk. And she was listening to our conversation. And at some point, she leans over and says, ‘Whyyyyy don’t you caaaaall it Baaaaallllll Foooouuuuurrrrrrr?’

“And we said, ‘nawwwww.’

“Finally we couldn’t come up with anything. And I was walking Shecter back to his hotel before I went home to New Jersey, and then Shecter says, ‘You know, Ball Four isn’t a bad title.’ So we owe it all to this woman at the bar.”

My wife Emily and I have seen most of our friends become parents over the past six or seven years. It’s been painful at times as we don’t have children of our own. But as our friends’ children grow up, any discomfort we’ve experienced has eased.

As childless parents, our cats have become our kids. It might sound corny to some, but for animal lovers it won’t. We adopted our oldest cat, Tashi, a few months before my old man died. I never knew I could love an animal as much as I love her. At night, she’ll crawl up on our bed and sit between our pillows. I press my ear to her belly and listen to her purr. Sometimes, in the middle of the night, I wake up overcome with emotion because I know that one day she’ll die and life will continue without her. It almost makes me sick and I imagine that’s a small variation of the kind of anxiety parents must feel all the time about their kids.

I don’t miss having children now. I enjoy the ones I know. And I cherish every day with my wife and our two cats. I force myself to stop and appreciate the moment–like I do every time Mariano Rivera pitches–because it’s just a moment, and no matter how tightly I hold on to it, time slips through your fingers and nothing lasts forever.

The Yanks have seemingly learned from George Steinbrenner’s mistakes. They invited Joe Torre back to the Stadium before this turned into a George-Yogi stand-off that they would never win. Good for them and for Torre. Nice night for the Boss. Over-the-top, sure. But that’s the Yankee Way.  Still, it was appealing to see Torre and Cashman hug it out. I’m a sucker for a happy ending.

[Photo Credit: Barton Silverman, NY Times]

All season long it’s been Yanks-Rays, Rays-Yanks. Now, the two teams play four games in the Bronx. First place is at stake.

This is what it is all about. And that’s word to Joe Torre.

Never mind the preamble:

Let’s Go Yan-Kees!

[Photo Credit: Joe Conzo Jr]

Smile, it won’t mess up your hair.

There’s a new documentary called Jews and Baseball. Looks promising. My father’s family is Jewish and baseball is the game that we care about. So many sportswriters are Jews, and yeah, there have been a couple of pretty good Jewish players as well.

To celebrate the publication of the 20th edition of The Best American Sports Writing, I sat down with series editor Glenn Stout. Dig our chat.

Bronx Banter: How many pieces do you read each year, and how do you find all the stuff?

Glenn Stout: I can’t answer this any more specifically than to say “many thousands.”  I don’t waste time counting. But understand, a lot of what I read I only read until I say to myself “This is not going to make the book,” so I stop. Suffice to say that I read enough of every submission, and enough of every significant story in every publication I receive, that I don’t stay up nights worrying if I read enough. Almost without even thinking about it anymore, I read a couple hours a day. It’s like feeding the dogs or working out – part of the fabric of the day.

I find things by looking and by being easy to find myself and by trying to make it clear to every writer that he or she is encouraged to submit material. Several hundred magazines and newspapers are sent requests for submissions and/or complimentary subscriptions.  I subscribe to a healthy number of publications myself, a few good friends, like yourself, and even readers, recommend stories to me, and I send out a mass e-mail request to a mailing list I’ve put together over the years. I also read some blogs and check some message boards to see if there are any stories people are talking about. But most importantly, I just keep my eyes open. A story like one by Pam Belluck in the New York Times a few years ago – “How to Catch Fish in Vermont,” wasn’t a submission, and didn’t appear in the sports section of the Times. I stumbled upon Belluck’s story while looking for something else. The same thing happened this year when I found Eric Nusbaum’s story “Death of Pitcher” from his blog, pitchersandpoets.com. I was looking for something for Fenway 1912, my book on the first season of Fenway Park which will come out next year, and I stumbled on his story. There are probably eight or ten stories each year that get sent to the Guest Editor that I “find” accidentally. But they are “on purpose accidental” because I leave myself open to finding them. I’ll steal a magazine from a doctor’s office if there is a story in it that might be good for the book.

BB: Has the process changed at all over the years?

GS: The biggest change is that 20 years ago all my browsing took place in hard copy. I worked at the Boston Public Library then and had access to where the past years’ magazines and newspapers were kept. I’d go in the occasional Saturday and spend the whole day reading. Now, with the internet, coupled with the fact I no longer have direct access to what, until recently, was one of the world’s greatest public libraries, means I spend much more time online. But I don’t think the flow rate of the word river has changed all that much.

BB: Are there certain kinds of stories that are more likely to make it? Magazine profiles, newspaper columns?

GS: I don’t think so, but other people do. I’ve gone back and checked and the stories I set aside each year for further reading break down about 60% – 40% between magazines and other long form formats and newspapers (which includes weeklies and the handful of Sunday supplements still published). Although these days, of course, with so many newspapers cutting space, cutting back, and/or closing, I’ve noticed a drop in submissions from newspapers and their writers, and there are clearly fewer “take-outs” being written. Since it is impossible to browse hundreds of daily newspapers, newspaper writing is probably more dependent on submissions than work from magazines that can send me subscriptions. And I have to say, newspapers and newspaper writers are, for some reason I’ve never been able to figure out, hesitant to make submissions. There are some major, major newspapers that have never responded to a request for material. I can’t consider what I don’t see. And even when papers do make submissions, there have been times we’ve picked a story that the writer submitted and the paper did not. What they submit is often very telling. One very well thought of sports editor at a major paper never sent me material from his staff – but submitted his own very pedestrian work every year.

I’ll admit that longer form pieces probably have a bit of an edge – extra space is a gift to a writer — but that’s also part of the media of putting a book together. Longer form stories hold together better in a book. Obviously, there are some kinds of stories that I personally don’t care for, but in every batch of material I send to the Guest Editor, I always include a few stories that I might not like at all, but understand that someone else might.

BB: There aren’t very many accounts of single games or events. Is that by design? Do you find that the art–and of necessity–of game recaps has been devalued with the rise of technology?

GS: Very few games stories and column – I find – provide the information needed to stand alone a year or more later when the book comes out. Often there just isn’t enough context in the story, and they often depend on a great deal of assumed knowledge. That may be understandable when the story was first written, but can no longer be assumed a year or more later. And some are just plain dated. This isn’t a contest for the writers, but a book for the readers, and if a story doesn’t give the reader enough, or is dated by changing events, it’s not going in the book no matter how well written it might be. And stylistically, few game stories or columns today are written with much real form – there is a lot of radio banter and one-liners masquerading as writing. I’m not sure that technology is the reason for that, but when considering game stories, I think that when the computer allowed writers the freedom to do constant updates and re-writes, and writers became accustomed to doing so, many stopped writing stories that actually told a story.

(more…)

Vampires need not apply.

Serious Eats with the skinny on black garlic:

What is the stuff? It’s simply garlic that’s been left to ferment for about a month until the cloves turn soft, gummy, and black and the papery exterior withers and browns. The details of the process are a trade secret, but involve careful regulation of heat and humidity to keep the garlic aged, rather than, well, rotten. The result is a clove with the sweetness and texture of roasted garlic and a funky, fermented twang reminiscent of molasses and kimchi. The cloves can be eaten raw and have none of the sulfurous bite of unfermented garlic.

The black garlic PR team says you can use it wherever you’d use plain garlic, but those recipes can get a little Mad Lib for my tastes. I prefer it in applications where black garlic’s unique qualities can shine through. It’s great raw or puréed for salads and dips, where raw garlic would overwhelm everything else. Its complex sweetness beats the pants off roasted garlic, making an interesting and time-saving alternative to spreads and mashed dishes.