Blog Archives

The on-again, off-again Yankees are in off-again mode.

Last night, Nathan Eovaldi gave up 8 runs in the first inning and that was that. The final was 12-2. Man, oh, man, it was ugly.

Always did like that David Phelps though I’ll be rooting against him tonight. Course, he’s pitching against the dude he was traded for. How odd is that?

Brett Gardner CF

Didi Gregorius SS

Mark Texieria 1B

Brian McCann C

Chase Headley 3B

Carlos Beltran RF

Chris Young LF

Brendan Ryan 2B

Never mind the fish:

Let’s Go Yank-ees!

Good Lord, yes.

This New York Minute is brought to you by the great Charles Simic. 

Painting by David Larson Evans.

Jazz Wax, thank you, once again. 

Picture via Jeremiah’s Vanishing New York. 

The Yanks were down 2-1 with a man on and two men out in the 9th inning when Alex Rodriguez came to the plate as a pinch-hitter. And he got a standing ovation. I’m not sure he’s ever been received so warmly at Yankee Stadium. It was like being in some kind of alternate universe for a moment. The love didn’t translate into a hit–he popped out to right field to end the game, just missed, too–but the drama was there. Even as an old man, Rodriguez is boffo.

Tough loss for the Yanks and Masahiro Tanaka who pitched a good game–and a Sergio Santos did a sweet job in relief getting out of a bases-loaded, nobody out jam in the 8th.

Picture by Bags

Yanks have an odd week–play two against the Marlins in Miami, then two against the Marlins in New York.

Tonight gives Tanaka and a close-up look at Mr. Stanton.

Brett Gardner LF

Chase Headley 3B

Brian McCann C

Mark Teixeira 1B

Garrett Jones RF

Stephen Drew 2B

Didi Gregorius SS

Mason Williams CF

Masahiro Tanaka RHP

Never mind the view:

Let’s Go Yank-ees!

Picture by Zachary Ayotte via Lover of Beauty. 

Call me. 

Dear Ira,

Gluten is good.

Love,

Phyllis.

I walked past Alice Tully Hall on Saturday and just had to take a picture, man.

The latest reprint over at the Beast is a rich piece of ’60’s pop culture criticism from the inimitable Seymour Krim. All about Jack Kerouac:

As an Outsider, then, French Canadian, Catholic (“I am a Canuck, I could not speak English till I was 5 or 6, at 16 I spoke with a halting accent and was a big blue baby in school though varsity basketball later and if not for that no one would have noticed I could cope in any way with the world and would have been put in the madhouse for some kind of inadequacy…”), but with the features and build of an all-American prototype growing up in a solid New England manufacturing town, much of Kerouac’s early life seems to have gone into fantasy and daydreams which he acted out. (“At the age of 11 I wrote whole little novels in nickel notebooks, also magazines in imitation of Liberty Magazine and kept extensive horse racing newspapers going.”) He invented complicated games for himself, using the Outsider’s solitude to create a world—many worlds, actually—modeled on the “real” one but extending it far beyond the dull-normal capacities of the other Lowell boys his own age. Games, daydreams, dreams themselves—his Book of Dreams (1961) is unique in our generation’s written expression—fantasies and imaginative speculations are rife throughout all of Kerouac’s grownup works; and the references all hearken back to his Lowell boyhood, to the characteristically American small-city details (Lowell had a population of 100,000 or less during Kerouac’s childhood), and to what we can unblushingly call the American Idea, which the young Jack cultivated as only a yearning and physically vigorous dreamer can.

That is, as a Stranger, a first-generation American who couldn’t speak the tongue until he was in knee pants, the history and raw beauty of the U.S. legend was more crucially important to his imagination than it was to the comparatively well-adjusted runny-noses who took their cokes and movies for granted and fatly basked in the taken-for-granted American customs and consumer goods that young Kerouac made into interior theatricals. It is impossible to forget that behind the 43-year-old Kerouac of today lies a wild total involvement in this country’s folkways, history, small talk, visual delights, music and literature—especially the latter; Twain, Emily Dickinson, Melville, Sherwood Anderson, Whitman, Emerson, Hemingway, Saroyan, Thomas Wolfe, they were all gobbled up or at least tasted by him before his teens were over (along with a biography of Jack London that made him want to be an “adventurer”); he identified with his newfound literary fathers and grandfathers and apparently read omnivorously. As you’ll see, this kind of immersion in the literature of his kinsmen—plunged into with the grateful passion that only the children of immigrants understand—was a necessity before he broke loose stylistically; he had to have sure knowledge and control of his medium after a long apprenticeship in order to chuck so much extraneous tradition in the basket when he finally found his own voice and risked its total rhythm and sound.

All-in effort from the Yanks today, especially the bullpen and Mr. John Ryan Murphy who came through with a couple of big hits as the Yanks beat the O’s, 5-3 to avoid being swept. Baltimore is hot but the Yanks did a nice job to get the “w” today.

Exhale.

[Photo Credit: Joel Zimmer]

Hey Guys,

How about not sucking today?

Brett Gardner LF

Chase Headley 3B

Alex Rodriguez DH

Mark Teixeira 1B

Garrett Jones RF

Stephen Drew 2B

Didi Gregorius SS

John Ryan Murphy C

Adam Warren’s on the hill.

Never mind the losing:

Let’s Go Yank-ees!
Mason Williams CF

Picture by Bags

Win a little, loss a little: That’s what our pal Hank Waddles said this season is going to be like and after winning seven in a row that Yanks have now dropped three straight. Stupid fielding, weak pitching did the trick last night as the O’s beat the Yanks 9-4. The less said about this one the better.

Oh, but I have to share this tweet from another old pal, Emma Span: “A-Rod hits home run #666. Somewhere in Wisconsin, blood spontaneously appears on Bud Selig’s ceiling in the shape of a pentagram.”

You can’t fake funny and boy, oh, boy, Emmma’s still got it.

C.C.’s on the hill tonight in Baltimore.

Let’s hope he puts together a solid outing and the boys score him plenty of runs.

Brett Gardner LF

Chase Headley 3B

Alex Rodriguez DH

Mark Teixeira 1B

Brian McCann C

Carlos Beltran RF

Didi Gregorius SS

Stephen Drew 2B

Mason Williams CF

Never mind last night:

Let’s Go Yank-ees!

[Photo Credit: Knut Egil Wang]

Maseo homered in his second big league at bat last night and you just have to love that. Harder to love was the beating Big Mike took and boy did he get whupped as the Orioles sailed to a 11-3 win. Alex and Tex had a couple of hits each–and Rodriguez is now 5 away from 3,000–otherwise there’s not much to talk about.

They are at it again tonight. Let’s hope the results are better.

Big Mike’s on the hill tonight in Baltimore.

Brett Gardner LF

Chase Headley 3B

Alex Rodriguez DH

Mark Teixeira 1B

Brian McCann C

Carlos Beltran RF

Didi Gregorius SS

Stephen Drew 2B

Mason Williams CF

Mase! Never mind the nerves:

Let’s Go Yank-ees!

[Photo via @orioles/twitter h/t @jessespector]

Alexandra gives new potatoes with green harissa. 

Bim Bam Boom

[Painting by Meghan Howland via This Isn’t Happiness]