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You know, it was a drag of a loss, but not dispiriting. 3-1 was the final, spoiling a good outing by Big Mike.

Sure, there was a dumb-looking miscommunication between Brett Gardner and Garrett Jones that led to a run–man, the Yanks have specialized in some of these Mack Sennett miscues this season–but really, they got out-pitched and lost a close game is all. No disgrace there. And it was an entertaining series if you can forgive the awkward chemistry between the YES announcers, Ryan Ruocco and John Flaherty. This was the D-List Yankee announcing team but kudos to YES for trying out some young blood. Ruocco is young but informed, attentive, and not without personality. Was he trying too hard at times? Maybe, but that’s not the worst sin. I got the feeling that his partner, John Flaherty wasn’t impressed. The former big leaguer busted Ruocco’s chops about a “Peace!” home run call on Saturday, but his teasing wasn’t funny, and I thought Ruocco’s call was fine. Let him play around a little, you know? Flaherty is the wrong man–aesthetically, at least–to pair with a young guy like Ruocco because Flaherty, while he is proficient, is not generous, often sour, and lacks a sense of humor. I don’t find him to be good company. Ruocco strained when he gave the needle back to Flaherty. They tried to swing a generation-gap Odd Couple thing but it didn’t click.

I was prepared not to like Ruocco and while he doesn’t have a great voice, he was much better than I expected. Be nice to see him with Cone, Singleton or Leiter next time out.

Anyhow, onward to Anaheim.

Picture by Bags

Hey guys. I’m out and aboutski so I apologize for not recapping yesterday’s win. Tanaka wasn’t too good again but the bullpen picked him up and so did the offense. After six early runs, they looked flat during the middle innings, but a pair of late hits–one by Mark Teixeira, the other by Chase Headley–put the game away and gave the Yanks a 9-6 win.

Today, we’re hoping that Michael Pineda can finally right himself. Should be interesting to see how he does against this Monster Mash, Swing-from-the-heels lineup.

Brett Gardner CF

Chase Headley 3B

Alex Rodriguez DH

Mark Teixeira 1B

Brian McCann C

Garrett Jones LF

Chris Young RF

Didi Gregorius SS

Stephen Drew 2B

Never mind nuthin’:

Let’s Go Yank-ees!

Let’s see if our man Masahiro can rebound from that beating he took last time out.

Brett Gardner CF
Chris Young LF
Mark Teixeira 1B
Alex Rodriguez DH
Brian McCann C
Carlos Beltran RF
Chase Headley 3B
Didi Gregorius SS
Jose Pirela 2B

Never mind Nolan:

Let’s Go Yank-ees!

[Photo Via: Flowers of Boredom]

Nathan Eovaldi was the shit last night, composed, aggressive, effective, the bullpen was sharp and Chris Young’s 3-run home run was all the offense our boys needed to win the game, 3-2.

Picture by Bags

The Big Huh?, Mr. Choose-Your-Own-Adventure, the Texas native, Nathan Eovaldi is on the hill tonight.

Brett Gardner CF
Chase Headley 3B
Mark Teixeira 1B
Brian McCann C
Carlos Beltran DH
Garrett Jones RF
Chris Young LF
Didi Gregorius SS
Stephen Drew 2B

Never mind the fix in’s:

Let’s Go Yank-ees!

Picture by Bags

I only caught the last couple of innings and boy Dallas Keuchel was as good as he is silly-looking.

Final Score: Astros 4, Yanks zip. 

The Yanks are in Houston for a four-game series against the too-legit-to-quit Astros.

I’m curious to see these guys.

Never mind the humidity:

Let’s Go Yank-ees!

[Photo Credit: William Eggleston]

Keep your feet on the ground.

“Davis House” by Edward Hopper (1926)

Forget Paris, if you’re in Boulder, Colorado this summer, you’ve got to hunt around and try some of my man’s pretzels. Or pretzel breads. He sells them all around town–and yeah, he’s been a Banterite for years now. Follow him on Twitter. You can even get at me if you know you’ll be in that neck of the woods and I’ll find out who sells his goods.

In the meantime, feast your eyes on this.

Can I get an Amen?

Ivan Nova, welcome back.

The Score Truck delivered, clobbering Cole Hamels and the Phillies to the tune of 10-2.

Picture by Bags

It’s the return on Ivan Nova as the Yanks look to stop sucking. At the very least, they’re looking to avoid being swept.

Welcome back, Hoss, no pressure.

Yanks have a tough assignment this afternoon in Cole Hamels.

Brett Gardner CF
Chase Headley 3B
Alex Rodriguez DH
Mark Teixeira 1B
Carlos Beltran RF
Chris Young LF
John Ryan Murphy C
Didi Gregorius SS
Jose Pirela 2B

Nice to see Tex back too.

Never mind this losing:

Let’s Go Yank-ees!

Picture by Eric Branco.

Writing for The Independent, here’s Martin Scorsese on Carol Reed’s classic, The Third Man:

About four months ago, I screened a beautiful 35mm print of the picture for my daughter and her friends. “Why do we keep watching this?” I suppose it’s [Joseph] Cotten and [Alida] Valli – that’s the emotional core of the picture. For instance, the scene where Holly Martins (Cotten) finally goes to her apartment. He’s a little drunk, and he tells her he loves her and he knows he doesn’t have a chance. That’s when she says, “The cat only liked Harry.” So that leads right into the great revelation of Harry Lime in the doorway with the cat – which is iconic. But it’s more than that – it’s one of the great epiphanies in movies: the cat turning the corner and nestling itself on those wing-tip shoes, and then Harry Lime being revealed when the light is turned on in the doorway and it shines in his face.

Remember Walker Percy’s great novel The Moviegoer? He refers to that moment in such a beautiful, special way. It became a moment internationally, a shared experience for a vast audience seeing that film. It’s not just a dramatic revelation – there’s something about Orson Welles’ smile at that point that shifts everything to another level, and it sustains no matter how many times you see it. Welles comes into the picture about halfway through. That’s the first time you actually see him, after you’ve spent so much time picturing him in your mind because everyone has been talking about him and thinking about him. So that might be the best revelation – or the best reveal, as they say – in all of cinema.

S’long, Holly.

Man at work. Seen on 231st Street in the Bronx.

How’d they get my name and number?

[Photo Credit Anthony Gerace via MPD]

David Lebovitz visits the Le Creuset factory. This is just an incredibly dope post.

Et tu, Dellin?

Another tough night for a Yankee starter, and an even rougher one for the Yankees’ closer as the Phillies beat the Yanks again, 11-6. Dellin Betances had given up one run all season. Last night he gave up four.

Alex Rodriguez had a couple of hits, including a solo home run, but with runners on second and third, one man out in the bottom of the sixth, he could not drive a run home. Brian McCann followed and grounded out to end the inning and that was the last real threat posed by the Bombers (Brett Gardner hit another dinger too because that’s, apparently, what Brett Gardner does).

So this is what it is–another losing streak. Today won’t get any easier despite the return of Ivan Nova as Cole Hamels is pitching for the Phils.

We can only hope, true to form, that this losing streak will be followed by a winning streak.

Picture by Bags

Brett Gardner CF

Chase Headley 3B

Alex Rodriguez DH

Brian McCann C

Carlos Beltran RF

Garrett Jones 1B

Chris Young LF

Didi Gregorius SS

Jose Pirela 2B

It’s CC and get your head-out-of-your-ass boys.

Never mind last night:

Let’s Go Yank-ees!

Picture by Bags

Chica Who? Chica Boo.

Photo Via Back Then.

Over at The New York Review of Books, check out this essay by Mark Strand on Edward Hopper:

Recent major exhibitions in London, Paris, Rome, and Madrid testify to the universality of his appeal. It couldn’t be just the way New York looked in the first half of the twentieth century or the dated look of hotel rooms, of people in offices, staring blankly or dreamily into space, that accounts for such interest. Something lifts the paintings beyond the representational registers of realism into the suggestive, quasi-mystical realm of meditation. Moments of the real world, the one we all experience, seem mysteriously taken out of time. The way the world glimpsed in passing from a train, say, or a car, will reveal a piece of a narrative whose completion we may or may not attempt, but whose suggestiveness will move us, making us conscious of the fragmentary, even fugitive nature of our own lives. This may account for the emotional weight that so many Hopper paintings possess. And why we lapse lazily into triteness when trying to explain their particular power. Again and again, words like “loneliness” or “alienation” are used to describe the emotional character of his paintings.

My own encounters with this elusive element in Hopper’s work began when I would commute from Croton-on-Hudson to New York each Saturday to take a children’s art class in one of those buildings on the south side of Washington Square that were eventually torn down to make room for NYU’s law school. This was in 1947. Just a year after Hopper painted Approaching a City (1946), I would look out from the train window onto the rows of tenements whose windows I could look into and try to imagine what living in one of those apartments would be like. And then at 99th Street we would enter the tunnel that would take us to Grand Central. It was thrilling to suddenly go underground, travel in the dark, and be delivered to the masses of people milling about in the cavernous terminal. Years later, when I saw Approaching a City for the first time, I instantly recalled those trips into Manhattan and have ever since. And Hopper, for me, has always been associated with New York, a New York glimpsed in passing, sweetened with nostalgia, a city lodged in memory.