Blog Archives

Peter Gammons is just the latest in a long line of baseball writers who believes that Marvin Miller deserves a place in Cooperstown.

John Harper has a piece in the Daily News about Robinson Cano:

“If ever we had to count on Robinson Cano,” hitting coach Kevin Long said Tuesday, “it’s this year. That’s not a pressure statement, because I think he’s ready.

“He’s already a big part of our offense, but now we want him to be one of the elite guys in our lineup, where a pitcher says, ‘Man, I do not want to see this guy up here right now.'”

…”We chart chase percentages for each of our hitters, and Robby chased 11% of pitches out of the strike zone, which was the highest on the team. Most guys are around 5 or 6%. And Robby’s chases go up with runners in scoring position.”

If Cano has a good season, if he improves with runners on base, the Yanks sure are going to be tough. Meanwhile, over at Bats, Ben Shpigel writes about Cano’s fielding.

And with Mean Streets on the brain, here’s one of the great entrances in movie history.

Stones, Scorsese, DeNiro, ’nuff said:

Ancient Sound, by Paul Klee (1925)

If I could only have one Italian cookbook, this’d be my cherce:

So you can make things like this:

According to a tweet by Joel Sherman, former New York Times baseball writer, Jack Curry has been hired by YES to be an analyst/columnist. Kudos to YES for landing the respected Curry.

A few years ago I spent a lot of time at main branch of the New York public library on 42nd street and 5th Avenue. You know, the Big One, with the lions out front. I hit the microfilm room, looking for great old sports writing in the archives of the New York Herald Tribune, the New York Post, Sport and Inside Sports. Then I thought about The National Sports Daily, Frank DeFord’s classic, if short-lived newspaper.

My pal John Schulian suggested that I look up Dave Smith, a reference librarian who had been profiled in the New York Times. Schulian was and is a great fan of good writing and he told me that Johnette Howard, Peter Richmond and Charles Pierce, amongst others, became stars writing bonus pieces for The National. One of their editors was Rob Fleder, a man who cares deeply about good writing himself, who later had a great stint at Sports Illustrated.

So I met Dave Smith and he was a mensch. A guy who loves to help writers. He showed me his desk–lined with copies of books that he’d contributed to in some way or another. Dude gave me a copy of a book about people who write obituraries called The Dead Beat, by Marilyn Johnson, who, it just so happens, is married to Rob Fleder.

Small world, right? That’s how it goes, man. Especially in a library.

Johnson’s new book, This Book is Overdue! How Librarians and Cybrarians can Save us All, features Smith, who, unfortunately, officially retired last summer, though he still helps writers. Like her first book, this one is written in a breezy prose style that is compulsively readable. Johnson is a sharp reporter and her enthusiasm is contagious. Oh, and she is also very funny. Johnson adores librarians in all their various attitudes because, they are essential in making society work:

Librarians’ values are as sound as Girl Scouts’: truth, free speech, and universal literacy. And, like Scouts, they posses a quality that I think makes librarians invaluable and indispensable: they want to help. They want to help us. They want to be of service. And they’re not trying to sell us anything.

This book examines a wide-range of librarian culture–from old school dudes like Smith–to the younger generation of librarians who’ve fully embraced the digital world. I had no idea about how much libraries have changed over the past twenty years, but of course they had. Fortunately, Johnson has written a winning account of the scene.

So…I’ve got an extra copy of This Book is Overdue! for the best library story you’ve got (you can leave it in the comments section below or shoot me an e-mail):

In the meantime, dig this excerpt from the book:

There are thousands of buildings lining the canyons of Manhattan, some more ornate than others; but I never saw one with a lobby floor like that at 260 Madison. Smith signed in with the guard and was barreling toward the elevator, but I lingered over the art beneath my feet: the two-dimensional globe in brass and Mediterranean blue, the Greek border. Decorating the hall upstairs, by the library, were eight display cases with little brass sculptures of dogs. Through the big glass double doors, a giant oil painting of a purebred something gazed prayerfully toward a beam of light; there was a guard or butler sitting at an ornate reception desk. Smith shambled past without a glance and we headed left through more doors and into the library of an English hunting lodge—anyway, that was the effect, a sense of gleaming order and privilege.

Behind the greeting desk, on which lay an old-fashioned guest book, glass cases displayed massive loving cups, including an oversized one for Pekingese; behind it, a photo of the cup with a Pekingese nestling inside. Presiding over one of the long tables was a glass case containing the skeleton of a midsized dog, and in the winter light streaming in the window he seemed to be looking down his bony jaw at the sole patron, a gentleman studying an old book of pedigrees. The skeleton was not that of any old dog, but of Belgrave Joe, a celebrity dog that died in 1888. We were in a shrine to The Dog, the dog of literature, journalism, and art; the dog of history; its purebred expression; its idealized state. There was no evidence of any wet, muddy, smelly, or mangy mongrels.

New York is full of these gems, little libraries and archives that capture a slice of the past and, in a disorderly and even chaotic world, organize the knowledge and art of, say, Louis Armstrong, or botanical gardens, or pornography (the Museum of Sex includes an unbelievable collection of pornography painstakingly collected and cataloged over the years by a Library of Congress librarian). The New York Society Library, a subscription library nestled in an Upper East Side townhouse, has a sweeping staircase and a beautiful old room for its old card catalog (“The members would never let me give this away,” its head librarian says). The fabulous Morgan Library and Museum, with its illuminated manuscripts and Rembrandt etchings, is three blocks down Madison. And … not complaining, but … here we were in the American Kennel Club Library.

The dog librarian was in her late fifties, with neatly cut graying hair and rimless glasses, a jeweled pin of a Scotty on her red boiled wool jacket. Barbara Kolb used to work in public relations for Good Housekeeping and Macy’s, but she never felt she fit in. She would go off to find some information she needed, and find all this other stuff, too. “I was always getting sidetracked.”

In thirteen years here, Kolb had organized the library, modernized its online catalog, and linked it to WorldCat, in between serving the information needs of the American Kennel Club and its magazine and stray members of the general public who wander in and ask about labradoodles or the Westminster Dog Show. Her kingdom is comprised of 18,000 volumes, more or less, some of them rare and irreplaceable, in seventeen languages—two thousand years of writing about dogs, including the only complete set of English Kennel Club magazine in the United States. Other libraries can be ruthless when it comes to their space, but “what’s a great policy in one library can be a horrible policy in another. People say, ‘Let’s weed the stacks!’ For the public library, maybe, but not for a research library.” Recently, Kolb had been collecting old children’s literature about dogs. “I’ve found some very good and rare dog books on eBay,” she said. “I keep my mouth shut and very quietly buy books for the library.” She showed me The Dog’s Dinner Party, the old tale of an eighteenth-century eccentric, an earl who habitually dined with his twelve dogs, assigning them each a footman who served them on silver plates. “You can get some bargains on eBay!”

I could live here, I thought. I could study dogs and help this lovely dog librarian …

“Come back anytime,” she said as I tore myself away, “though we’re crazy the week of the dog show!”

If you want to catch Johnson in person–and yeah, she’s worth the trip–she’ll be at the Barnes and Noble on 82nd street and Broadway tomorrow night at 7 pm.

Peep, don’t sleep.

The Strand, Kevin McGoff

I went to school and painted with this kid. Really dig his new stuff.

Dig this smokin’ groove. Sounds like something out of Mean Streets:

It was getting late, well past lunch, and I still hadn’t eaten anything. The sun was out yesterday but it was cold. I got off the subway on 231st street and walked due west to the barber shop. On the way, I passed Sam’s Pizza, a hole-in-the-wall in Kingsbridge.

I’m not a pizza groupie but I probably eat it as a stand-by more than any other street food. Sometimes, it’s just the perfect food–enough to satiate your hunger but not enough to make you full. I walked into the place and that New York City pizza smell enveloped me (who knows, maybe you get the same smell in Philly too). I can’t explain what the smell is exactly, but I know it when I smell it–it is the scent that immediately authenticates a pizzeria in this city.

Iniside, the place was small with no-frills. The front window was big, and opened during the summer; a gumball machine rested on the counter as you walked in. A kid was standing at the counter eating a slice and a thin but strong-looking man worked behind it. The soda fountain had an “Out of Order” sign on it. There were a few tables in the back, the walls covered in fake wood. An old Coca Cola sign hung on the back wall.

I ordered a slice. Three short, round-faced, Spanish kids came in and each ordered a slice too. A fat woman and her daughter ordered a pie. The pizza man moved deliberately. He smiled and had some charming words for the women. Otherwise he was, if not sullen, blank.

The slice was good, thin at the tip and then doughy–but not too doughy–at the crust. I soaked the grease with cheese, garlic powder and hot pepper flakes. Before I finished it I ordered another one. The pizza man was making a fresh pie. He clapped his hands clean of flower, took my bill with the tips of his fingers, and gave me change. I asked him if he always worked alone. He said that he did.

“Wow, that’s a lot of work, bro.”

“I got no choice,” he said without self-pity, just resignation.

I ate the second slice. The kid next to me ate too and didn’t say anything. The three Spanish kids stood in the back, talking softly. The mother and her daughter waited in silence. It was warm. My stomach felt warm too, which was comforting because the wind cut through me when I walked out of the door.

[photo credit: dM: nyc]

Cakes, by Wayne Thiebaud (1963)

Dig this killer koolness:

One of the least compelling Hot Stove dramas in recent memory has come to a close. According to a report, Johnny Damon has signed a one-year deal with the Tigers.

Ballet Dancer Standing, by Edgar Degas (1886-90)

Baltimore Museum of Art

I caught a link to the following article on Baseball Think Factory.

According to Brian Cashman, the Baltimore Orioles are a sleeping giant:

“I remember a few years back when Tampa Bay was perennially losing. Everyone in the industry was following them and saw all their young talent brewing and slowly getting refined. You don’t know, because prospects are suspects until they declare themselves at the Major League level.

“Andy is doing the same thing. Everybody kind of sees the collection of talent. Players with big tools and high ceiling. When you are athletic and have those kinds of tools, when it all comes together, it comes fast.

“The Orioles are a team that has closed the gap, without a doubt. And Andy is showing the patience. I think their fan base will be very, very pleased. All the sudden, before they know it, they’ll have that foundation in place. They just haven’t seen it pop yet at the Major League level.

As much as I feared and loathed the Orioles when they were good, it has been depressing to see them for the past decade. Be cool to see them improve. It’s only right.

The Times Magazine has a good photo slide show of Jeff Bridges in the latest issue. Bridges, unless something goes horribly wrong, is going to win the Academy Award for Best Actor this year. What goes into an Oscar campaign? Mark Harris provides the unsavory answers in this profile for New York magazine.

The Milkmaid, 1657-58

First:

Flipped:

For dumb nice doughnuts, you must go downtown to this spot. I’m not kidding, they are ridiculously tasty.

Check out Futility Infielder for more on this treasure: