Blog Archives

An American Master…

Interesting piece on Duke Ellington’s music and race in America by Claudia Roth Pierpont in The New Yorker:

What did he feel about—what did he contribute to—the mire of American race relations during the last century? Harvey G. Cohen’s “Duke Ellington’s America” (Chicago; $40) attempts to get under the skin of this apparently most imperturbable of men, and the results, if hardly conclusive, are fascinating. One of Ellington’s few confidantes, his sister, Ruth, believed that he concealed himself under “veil upon veil upon veil,” and Cohen is not the first Ellingtonian to treasure the smallest telltale sign of his subject’s human susceptibilities. There is, for example, an uncharacteristically angry letter to a white business associate with whom Ellington wished to break (which is nevertheless signed “with great respect,” and turns out not to have been sent). Cohen’s extremely intelligent and formidably documented book—a welcome change from much that has been published about Ellington—is not a standard biography; Ellington’s personal life and sexual mores are officially beyond its scope. Nor is it a critical work, since it contains no musical analysis and not a great deal of musical description. Cohen’s long hours in the Smithsonian’s huge trove of Ellington papers were devoted to the business records and the scrapbooks, and, as his title suggests, he has broad social issues on his mind. Even Ellington’s professional life is examined in circumscribed areas, almost all of which touch at some point upon race. The question is whether, sooner or later, everything did.

Early in the book, Cohen quotes Ellington’s longtime collaborator Billy Strayhorn objecting to a movie project about Ellington that Strayhorn was told would have a racial theme. “I don’t think it should be racial because I don’t think he’s racial,” Strayhorn protested. “He is an individual.” But Strayhorn concluded, in a line of thinking that seems emblematic of the era and of the personalities involved, “You don’t have to say the darn thing.” Cohen keeps Ellington’s individuality firmly in sight, while detailing such targeted subjects as his relationship with Mills, the white man who has been lauded for launching Ellington’s career and—both before and after they split, in 1939—accused of exploitation; Ellington’s travels with his band in the harshly segregated South of the nineteen-thirties and forties; the overt, if often forgotten, racial programs of much of his music; and his sometimes contentious relationship with the civil-rights movement of the nineteen-fifties and sixties.

A different set of subjects—Ellington’s musical development, his band members, even his women—might have yielded something closer to the post-racial portrait for which Strayhorn argued, a portrait more in accord with the high personal horizon on which Ellington’s sights were set. But “the darn thing” will not go away, and race remains unsurprisingly essential to the story of America’s first widely recognized black artist, and of what he had to say.

You can order “Duke Ellington’s America“, here.

Early beat today, from the more bounce to ounce department:

Sébastien Tellier – Look from Record Makers on Vimeo.

Look lively and Happy Monday.

Drag of a loss yesterday as the Yanks gear-up for two, two-game series against the Rays and Red Sox this week. Still, it’s not nearly as bad as it is in Flushing. The Mets were swept by the Marlins over the weekend and are now in last place. In the Post, Mike Vaccaro writes: The Manager Must Go:

You know whom Manuel sounds like when he constantly praises his team for not quitting? He sounds like Rich Kotite. Absent anything resembling a representative Jets team back in the day, Kotite made playing hard sound like a sacrament rather than a job requirement. It is of little consequence that the Mets play hard more often than not; they also lose more often than not.

It has taken them exactly 16 days to go from a game ahead in first place to six behind, in last place, and as depressing as that may be to Mets fans it is also indicative of just how quickly a baseball season can turn. The season is still salvageable, the wild card winner in the National League still projects to somewhere in the high 80s or low 90s in wins. But at some point you have to prove that an eight-game winning streak in April isn’t the best you’ve got.

Rich Kotite? That’s cold, man.

Chalk this one up to the Go Figure Department. Serge Mitre pitches well, David Robertson does the job even if he still can’t throw strikes consistently. The Twins hit the ball hard but have little to show for it. Meanwhile, Randy Winn drives in two with a triple and the Yanks hold a 3-1 lead in the eighth. But Joba can’t get out of the inning, and loads the bases. With two out, Mariano comes in and falls behind 3-0 to Jim Thome (the second pitch was close, a pitch Mo usually gets, but was off the plate). Throws a strike, Thome fouls off two pitches and then takes ball four to force home a run.

Jason Kubel is next and he slaps Mo’s second pitch into the seats in right for a grand slam.

Silence. Kick a hole in the speaker, pull the plug, then…jet.

Improbable, maybe. Bound to happen? Yeah. Just a reminder that winning games is hard even for the best of ’em. First two runs Mo have given up all year.

So in the bottom of the ninth, Winn singles up the middle and then Ramiro Pena pokes a base hit to right against Minnesota’s closer, Jon Rauch. Derek Jeter’s next and takes two huge cuts and the crowd is into it again. Tying man at the plate. Couple more foul balls and Rauch screws him into the ground on a curve ball in the dirt. Jeter can’t hold up, one out. Next, Gardner whiffs on three pitches. Finally, Mark Teixeira takes two strikes, looks at a couple of balls, swings late and barely manages to foul a pitch down the first base line, and then looks at strike three–a tailing fastball that hits the inside corner–as the Twins salvage the last game of the series, 6-3.

Only real drag is that the Rays won again so the Yanks drop another game out of first.

Can’t win ’em all.

[Photo Credit: Bags and Al Bello/Getty Images]

You got to figure the Twins are going to beat the Yankees one of these days. Just the law of nature, right? So why not today when the Yanks send Serge Mitre to the mound? We’ll see if they can do it. In the meantime we’ll be root-root-rootin’ for the Yanks to complete the sweep. Lovely spring day for it.

Go git ’em Serge and…

Let’s Go Yan-Kees.

[Picture by Bags]

Tasty Cherce: Homemade Pop Tarts.

Yes, please.

Picture and recipe from the Smitten Kitchen (via Saveur).

And then there’s this guy…

Good thing the Score Truck showed up last night what with a revitalized Francisco Liriano going for the Twins this afternoon.

Andy Pettitte returns for the Yanks. Looks like a beautiful day for it. The wife and I will be in the house.

[Photo Credit: Bags]

For Mr. Barra:

By Allen Barra

It’s a shame that Robin Evan Roberts couldn’t have picked a more fortunate day to die. His passing on May 6 Thursday was lost in the media swirl surrounding the arrest of former New York Giants linebacker Lawrence Taylor on rape charges and the speculation over whether Lebron James would be playing next season in Cleveland or New York. Before his memory fades entirely, a few things about his life and career should be remarked on.

Roberts pitched in relative obscurity for most of his 19 big league seasons, and his death at age 83 was relegated to the status of second-tier news. Now, after some reflection, we can put his career in perspective: he was baseball’s greatest pitcher since World War II and one of the most important men in baseball history.

He was also scandalously unappreciated. In 1960 the Associated Press conducted a survey of “164 Top-Flight Sportswriters” and “76 Nationally-Known Public Figures” to determine “The All-Star Team of the Past Decade.” Roberts didn’t make the team. He finished second to the Yankees’ Allie Reynolds. Allie had a fine career, but he was only great after coming to the Yankees in 1947. He won 131 games over the next eight seasons, and that was pitching for the New York Yankees, who won six World Series over that span.

Pitching in seven seasons from 1948-1954, Robin Roberts won 137 games, and that was while pitching for the Philadelphia Phillies, who won one National League pennant in that time. For most of those season, the Phillies were the worst team in their league, or at least would have been if it hadn’t been for Robin Roberts. From 1952-1954, Roberts won 74 games and lead his league in victories each year. (He also lead the league in 1955.)

Three decades after the AP’s poll, I talked to Bob Broeg of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, who had voted for Reynolds over Roberts, and asked him why. He told me that he had voted for Reynolds mainly because he had beat Roberts in Game Two of the 1950 World Series (2-1 in 10 innings on a Joe DiMaggio home run.)

In 1976 Roberts was elected into the Baseball Hall of Fame in his fourth year of eligibility. Whitey Ford, practically his exact contemporary, retired a year after Roberts and was elected in 1974 in his second year of eligibility. Mr. Ford, an undeniably great pitcher, won 236 games in his career, 50 fewer than Roberts. Needless to say, Mr. Ford pitched for the Yankees.

Rich Ashburn, the only other Phillies player of note during the 1950s and later a popular sportscaster in Philadelphia, once asked me rhetorically, “With all due respect to Whitey, if he had pitched for the Phillies and Robin had pitched for the Yankees, who do you think would have made it to the Hall of Fame first?”

The Yankees, always the Yankees. After Roberts was passed over in the 1974 HOF voting, novelist James Michener wrote in the New York Times, “If he [Roberts] had pitched for the Yankees, he would have won 350 games.” I wrote pretty much the same thing in my 2004 book, Brushbacks and Knockdowns, except I projected 340, which would have made Roberts one of the seven winningest pitchers in baseball since 1901 and one of the four winningest since 1945.

But James Michener and I were both wrong. If Roberts had pitched for the Yankees, he would never have won that many games. For the best team in baseball, the Casey Stengel era Yankees had very few 20 game winners; Stengel seldom went with a regular rotation and often held his best pitchers out for important games. (There was also a rumor that the Yankees front office liked to limit the win totals of their starters so they could hold their salaries down.)

If, however, Roberts had pitched for the Brooklyn Dodgers of his era, that would have been a different matter. “Robin Roberts on the mound,” says Roger Kahn, author of the definitive book on the Brooklyn Dodgers, The Boys of Summer, “Forget it. Backed by Jackie Robinson, Pee Wee Reese, Roy Campanella, Gil Hodges? Put Robin Roberts on those Dodgers teams and they’d have been the New York Yankees.”

Not that Roberts had anything to be embarassed about. He won more than 20 games six times, including going 28-7 in 1952 for a Phillies team that played under .500 ball when he wasn’t on the mound. He lead the National League for five consecutive seasons in innings pitched and complete games. And, amazingly, he is only in the record book now for allowing the most home runs (505) of any pitcher and for having the lowest batting average (.167) of anyone with more than 1500 at-bats.

His greatest contribution to baseball, though, came off the field in 1966 when he helped recruit a former economist for the steelworkers union named Marvin Miller as executive director of the players union. “I don’t think any former ballplayer,” says Mr. Miller, “with the possible exception of Jackie Robinson, had the respect and gratitude of more players.”

In the end, Roberts had no regrets. He once told me, “I had a tremendous career, and I pitched for a whole decade in front of some great fans.” Surely he is the only player in baseball history to accuse the Phillies fans of the era of being great. “Let me tell you,” Mr. Ashburn said. “The Phillies fans in that time were the booingest bunch in the major leagues. But they never booed Robin Roberts.”

Allen Barra’s latest book, Rickwood Field: A Century in America’s Oldest Ballpark (Norton), will be published  in June.

Ted Berg chats with Kid Gleeman:

In case you haven’t heard, salt is bad. Harumph. Still, Heinz is changing their ketchup recipe to include less salt. 

Will that mean less flavor? We’ll find out this summer.

[Photo Credit: Bright Lights Dim Beauty of Chicago]

LeBron James had a poor series against the Celtics and a disappointing game last night as he turned the ball over nine times. The Cavs lost, their season is over. Think Alex Rodriguez is over-analyzed? What’s-Wrong-With-LeBron just bumped you out of the top spot, Papi.

James did record a triple double. Guy I know called it “hollow” this morning. How 19 rebounds are hollow I don’t know but James didn’t shoot the ball well and played tight (and he could well be injured).

Anyhow, the loss puts the LeBron-to-the-Knicks-Hype Machine at center stage round these parts. It might be a longshot, but it sure would be great to have a star like James playing in the Garden every night, wouldn’t it?

Every so often, you run into a kindred spirit, a guy you aren’t envious of, just proud to know. Todd Drew was like that, and so is Josh Wilker (pictured above on the left with his brother Ian). When I first read Josh’s work at Cardboard Gods, I was thrilled. He had a strong voice, wonderful sensitivity, an unassuming sense of humor, and the courage to dig deep, way below the surface. I’d want to belong to the kind of club that would have a misfit like that as a member. And I’m not alone. Josh’s long-awaited memoir, The Cardboard Gods: An All-American Tale Told Through Baseball Cards, has generated some great buzz and strong reviews. Josh hits the Big Apple tonight–he’ll be at the Nike Store in Soho from 7:30 to 9:30. He’s here through early next week and we’re happy to have him.

I got a chance to chat with Josh recently and here is our conversation. Enjoy.

Bronx Banter: Dude, first thing, what were your favorite kinds of packs to get when you were a kid? The single pack? Remember those triple packs that would be clear packaging with three little sets side-by-side?

Josh Wilker: I’m a single wax pack guy. The clear packaging ruined some essential part of the fun for me, since you could see the top and the bottom card in the stack. It was better that it was a total mystery.

BB: Bro, how deep does your nerdiness run? Do you carry a card around with you in your wallet?

JW: I don’t, but I usually have a card that I’m working up an essay on in the pocket of the nap sack that I lug to and from work. And a couple summers ago when I came to New York to–among other things–go to Shea Stadium for the last time, I made a point of carrying an Ed Kranepool in my pocket every day of the trip.

BB: Nice. Do you ever feel any attraction to modern baseball cards?

JW: I just wrote a piece for GQ.com, of all places, considering my unstudliness, on the 2010 Topps cards. I bought a couple packs for the piece, and got a charge out of it, and though the cards mostly left me cold for being too slick, I admired the high quality of them. The photos and the back of the card text is light years advanced beyond the rudimentary nature of the 1970s cards, which may be why the new cards leave me cold. There’s no homely humanity in them.

BB: Can you at all relate to the generation of kids who bought cards for what they might be worth one day, instead of being important for more personal reasons, or just cause they were the things to have, trade and flip?

JW: I can relate, I guess. I mean, when I was a kid, I fantasized that one day my Butch Hobson and Frank Tanana cards would be worth millions, so it’s not like the idea of the cards being “investments” was completely foreign to me. I was just too lazy to actually pursue that angle. I did feel like things were taking a wrong turn when I noticed, in the late 1980s, that the cards my younger cousin was collecting were going immediately into protective plastic. You have to be able to touch the cards, otherwise what’s the point?

BB: When you started the Cardboard Gods blog did you have it in your mind to write a book? Or did that develop later?

JW: My first intention was to play around and to keep writing and to maybe connect with some readers. I’d been working on a novel for several years previous to starting the blog, and I wasn’t able to sell it, and I was wary of signing on for another several years of solitary toil only to have the end product of the work end up at the bottom of a drawer. But I also thought it could be a book, too, from very early on. It was not unlike the first time I saw my future wife: a feeling like, “Hm, I think there might be something here.” I held off for quite awhile on trying to start shaping the material into a book, a tendency that has in the past had a way of crushing the life out things before they have a chance to grow. Instead I just tried to keep having fun and churning out material. After a while, I knew I had enough stuff for a book, if I could ever pull it all together into something coherent.

(more…)

The Bronx Bomber Score Truck caught a flat somewhere between Saturday and Detroit. Yanks look to Phil Hughes to keep rolling this evening. Expect the bats to wake up too.

Welp, the Yanks got a good performance out of Javier Vazquez who gave up two runs on five hits and a couple of walks over seven innings. Only trouble, Rick Porcello was even better, throwing a good sinker, and shutting the Yanks out over seven. The Yanks had four hits for the game. 

It was scoreless until the sixth, when the Tigers collected four singles (Jackson, Damon, Cabrera, Boesch) good enough for all the scoring they’d need.

The game moved briskly (two hours and fifteen minutes, wait, this was a Yankees game?) and the Yanks had a couple of chances early–Ramino Pena stranded runners to end the second and fourth; Alex Rodriguez was robbed of an RBI extra base hit in the third. But pitching was the thing, zip, zip.

At least Vazquez was good. One bad inning that’s all, and it was far from a disaster. Still, hard to pick-up a win when your team gets blanked. The Yanks have now dropped three-straight.

Game One, Final Score: Tigers 2, Yanks 0.

[Photo Credit: Leon Halip/Getty Images]

I’ll take Jav-full as Javier Vazquez looks to have a good outing today in the first of two against the Tigers.

Go git ’em, Hoss, and Let’s Go Yan-Kees!

It’s a soup is good food day.

[Photo Credit: Lisa’s Kitchen]

Times Two…

The Big Bopper…

Alfredo Aceves is headed for the DL; prospect Juan Miranda is headed for the Motor City.

The first game is set to start shortly after 1:00 pm. Game Two is just after 7. Javy and then Hughes vs Porcello and Bonderman.

[Photo Credit: Kathy Willens/AP via River Ave. Blues]

Update: Looks like I linked too soon. Greg Golson is back up, not Miranda.

In the Times, Ben Shpigel writes about Mariano Rivera, who has not pitched in nine games:

Manager Joe Girardi saw no need to insert him into any of the three blowouts in Boston over the weekend, and the Yankees never led in their 5-4 loss Monday.

“I wouldn’t imagine we’d go much longer, but these weather conditions aren’t the most conducive to a guy that had a little irritation in his oblique,” Girardi said. “I don’t consider that to be a problem, but if he’s coming in just to get some work and it’s going to be 42 degrees, I’m not sure I want to do that.”