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Can you name all four members of the New York Sack Exchange?

This one comes from our pal Larry Roibal. Dig…

Foist:

His Way:

Interesting essay on boredom in the Times Book Review:

As a general state of mind, boredom is morally suspect, threatening to shine its dull light back on the person who invokes it. “The only horrible thing in the world is ­ennui,” Oscar Wilde once wrote, suggesting that boredom doesn’t feel much better in French. “That is the one sin for which there is no forgiveness.”

And yet boredom is woven into the very fabric of the literary enterprise. We read, and write, in large part to avoid it. At the same time, few experiences carry more risk of active boredom than picking up a book. Boring people can, paradoxically, prove interesting. As they prattle on, you step back mentally and start to catalog the irritating timbre of the offending voice, the reliance on cliché, the almost comic repetitiousness — in short, you begin constructing a story. But a boring book, especially a boring novel, is just boring. A library is an enormous repository of information, entertainment, the best that has been thought and said. It is also probably the densest concentration of potential boredom on earth.

Home Sweet Home.

Never gets old, does it?

Our man Cliff takes a look at the Felix Hernandez extension over at SI.com:

Save for brief a bit of elbow tightness in mid-2007 and fluky sprained ankle in 2008, Hernandez has shown no signs of fragility in his first five major league seasons, but any long-term pitching contract carries a significant injury risk, no matter what the pitcher’s previous medical history might be. Pitching is an extremely unnatural act that places enormous stress and strain on two major joints filled with delicate ligaments, muscles, and connective tissues. Even the healthiest pitcher’s arm can go pop at any time. Hernandez has proven to be durable thus far, but that has resulted in a lot of innings pitched at a very young age. Because young men’s bodies are still completing the growing and maturing process in their early twenties, any pitcher under 25 is automatically an elevated injury risk. That’s why an increasing number of teams have come to enforce pitch and innings limits on their young starters.

Hernandez was so good so young that he made his major league debut at 19 and has already thrown 905 major league innings at age 23, 820 2/3 of them over the last four seasons. The M’s did well to keep Hernandez below 200 innings pitched in his first two full major league seasons, and he topped out at 200 2/3 innings in his third season, but his breakout 2009 season saw him throw 238 2/3 innings, which is a ton for a 23 year old. The M’s have also been smart about Hernandez’s pitch counts, as he’s thrown 120 or more pitches in a major league game just once, that coming in his penultimate start of 2009, though, again, his pitches per start have increased annually over the last three seasons, reaching 107 in 2009.

Meanwhile, it appears as if the Mets have traded for Gary Mathews, Jr.  Okay…

First:

Famous:

Were you read to as a kid? And I don’t mean when you were three or four, but when you were seven, eight and nine? I have cousins who were read to by their parents–from Watership Down to Dickens–until they were at least ten, possibly older. I always thought that was cool; what an easy way to read by just listening! But it also encouraged their own reading because as far as I know these cousins are all avid readers as adults.

I thought about reading to children on the subway this morning when a mother came on the train with her son, who must have been six or seven, and started reading aloud. She was an older mom, in her Fifties, and she read from one of the Frank L Baum Oz books. The boy was distracted. I could see the pupils of his eyes quickly darting, like a gliched cursor on a computer screen, as he looked out of the window at a passing station.

I was distracted too. I didn’t want to hear the mother reading and wondered what does the subway etiquette manual say about this one? But not for long. So I put on my headphones and shuffled my i-pod. Talk Like Sex, an old pornographic and sexist record with a tight beat by Kool G Rap came on. I watched the mother read and listened to G Rap and smiled at the incogruity of it all. Then she stopped reading and talked to her son, who was pointing at the ads overheard, and they laughed together.

Well, these two were absolutely priceless, weren’t they?

[Here is another guest post by Jon DeRosa. Jon has previously written two pieces for Bronx Banter (here and here) and will be a semi-regular this season. Jon played ball at Georgetown and still has that sweet, lefty swing.–AB]

By Jon DeRosa

Of the 8 teams that entered the 2009 postseason, 7 teams saw their closer blow a save or lose a game. The 8th team was the Yankees. As they marched to the 2009 World Series Championship, much was made of Mariano Rivera’s fabulous and unprecedented Postseason career. And rightly so, because no pitcher has ever approached the same quantity of quality innings on the game’s grandest stage. But there are a few quirks of history from which Mariano has undoubtedly benefited that have enabled him to compile his mind-boggling numbers: He plays for the most successful team and his career began exactly at the introduction of the Divisional Playoff Round. He stands, not just alone, but so far isolated as to discourage any conceivable comparison. Nobody’s numbers compare. Nobody’s innings compare. It’s Mariano and then a Grand Canyon to somebody else. And that’s how I like my heroes and gods – unassailable.

But in 2008 didn’t Brad Lidge have a much ballyhooed “prefect” season and playoff run? And wasn’t Papelbon annoyingly brilliant the year before that? And Wainwright and Jenks? And most painfully, didn’t Foulke do a ballsy job in 2004? So then, isn’t the closer on the championship team likely to have pitched as well as Mariano has in any single year? Or do Mariano’s individual series stand out from the pack in the same way that his overall numbers do?

I looked at the closer on every World Series team from 1995-2009 (TB 2008 was the only team without a nominal closer) and compared their postseasons. I wanted to know which guys were the most dominant (K/9, K/BB, BR/9) which guys were the most effective (R+IR/G, WPA) and which guys shouldered the heaviest loads (INN, INN/G) and faced the toughest jams (aLI). I don’t claim to reach definitive conclusions, but I think there’s valuable information to be gleaned:

1) The highest WPA for any closer was 1.56 for John Wetteland in 1996. The lowest was Trevor Hoffman’s –0.35 from 1998.

2) Brad Lidge in 2009 faced the highest leverage situations at 2.90. And it’s no surprise he failed, since 11 of the 13 closers facing the highest aLI’s failed in the World Series. In contrast, 15 of the 16 lowest aLI’s saw the closer emerge unscathed. John Wetteland again distinguishes himself by facing the highest leverage situations without failure (and 4th highest overall): 2.36.

3) Memory matches the stats as Foulke’s change-up racked up 19 Ks in 14inn and Wainwright’s curve ball baffled more than just Beltran – 15 whiffs in 9.2 innings.

4) The Red Sox emulate the Yankees in at least one respect: they want to use Papelbon for multiple innings in the postseason. Other than Mo, Papelbon was the only pitcher to average more than an inning and a half per appearance in any single postseason.

5) Only 3 pitchers have kept a perfectly clean ledger – no runs inherited, earned or unearned. Papelbon, Wainwright, and Rivera (99).

6) Eight of the 15 World Series losers saw their closer blow a game (I am including Rocker in 1999) while only 3 of the 15 winners endured a meltdown. (For ranking purposes below, if he blew a game while losing the series, I didn’t consider him – both Rocker and Rivera version 2001 would have done well otherwise.) Regardless of your opinion on the value of closers, it’s hard to win a 4 game set when you cough up a lead in one of the games.

(more…)

Big Mama:

The King:

New York City is a Jets town this week. Lots of barking from players, columnists and the man on the street. I guess I haven’t been paying attention over the years–I was an avid NFL fan, a Jets fan, for most of the 1980s, but haven’t been emotionally charged about the game since–but I don’t understand why so many Jets fans are as brash as they are. I would be waiting for the other shoe to drop, waiting for the Jets to crumble. The older Jets fans I know will be watching Sunday’s AFC Championship game with one eye closed and their nerves decidedly clenched.

This morning, I talked to one of the security guards in my office building about the game. He’s a Mets fan and a Giants fan but he pulls for New York teams across the board. “The Jets are going to win, man,” he said. “I love Peyton, but this is the year for teh Jets.”

I asked if he was betting on the game. “No, I can’t do that, can’d do that. I bet with my heart. I can’t bet against the Jets. I go with my heart.”  Better not to bet at all.

I went upstairs and walked through the kitchenette on my floor. One of the kitchen staff was stocking the fridge full of milk. He is Haitian and has family back home, four brothers and a couple of sisters. He has heard from one of his brothers but doesn’t know about many of his cousins, especially after yesterday’s aftershock. One of his brothers’ wife is pregnant, due to give birth in a few weeks. His brother is trying to convince him to come back to Haiti to help out. But there is no place to live and it is dangerous. He has his own family and doesn’t have money to send. He is not sure what he is going to do. What he can do.

He is a powerfully built man with broad shoulders but has a gentle touch. His face is sympathetic.

I said good morning.

“Same old,” he said. “Same old.” He shrugged. The same thing he says all the time though it doesn’t ring true at the moment. “Same old, but it is good,” he said. “We have life.”

My father came from a bookish family. Everyone had a substantial library. And though he was well-versed in the classics, I never considered the Old Man an intellectual in the Ivory Tower sense. More than anything, he was a voracious reader of detective stories and mysteries. I recall shelves of paperbacks, stocked with names like Dick Francis, Ed McBain, Ruth Rendell and John McDonald. One of his favorites was the Spencer series by Robert B. Parker.

I’ve never read any of these books but I feel a second-hand affinity for them–and I always appreciated their pulpy, sometimes racy covers. Reason I mention it is because Parker passed away a few days ago. He was 77.

According to the Times obit:

Mr. Parker wrote the Spenser novels in the first person, employing the blunt, masculine prose style that is often described as Hemingwayesque. But his writing also seems self-aware, even tongue-in-cheek, as though he recognized how well worn such a path was. And his dialogue was especially arch, giving Spenser an air of someone who takes very few things seriously and raises an eyebrow at everything else. Mr. Parker’s regular readers became familiar with the things that provoke Spenser’s suspicion: showy glamour, ostentatious wealth, self-aggrandizement, fern bars, fancy sports clubs and any kind of haughtiness or presumption.

Spenser is, in other words, what Marlowe might have been in a more modern world (and living in Boston rather than Los Angeles). Unsurprisingly, Mr. Parker considered Chandler one of the great American writers of the 20th century. (He audaciously finished an incomplete Chandler manuscript, “Poodle Springs”). And he has been often cited by critics and other mystery writers as the guy who sprung the Chandleresque detective free from the age of noir.

“I read Parker’s Spenser series in college,” the best-selling writer Harlan Coben said in a 2007 interview with The Atlantic Monthly. “When it comes to detective novels, 90 percent of us admit he’s an influence, and the rest of us lie about it.”

Ed Alstrom, who plays the organ at Yankee Stadium, has a new cd out: Gettin’ Organ*ized.

Check it out.

So, why not make this a musical week of originals and covers?

Cover:

When I was in college, black kids used to wear t-shirts that read, “It’s a Black Thing. You Wouldn’t Understand.” My twin sister Sam and I wanted to get our own shirts made, “It’s a Twin Thing. You Wouldn’t Understand.”

It’s hard to figure a Twin unless you are one. Just ask Ron Gardenhire, manager of the Minnesota Twins, who, according to this piece by Landon Evanson in the Winona Daily News, thinks his team is not far behind the big, bad New York Yankees:

Some would suggest that the Yankees “own” the Twins, but the manager doesn’t buy into that.

“They don’t own me,” Gardenhire said. “Every game that we’ve played against them has just been nip-and-tuck.”

…”We’ve had our chances,” Gardenhire said. “We could have beat them as is, but next year we’re not taking any more off them. And if it takes fighting them, we’re fighting them.”

I sure would like to see the Twins sign Joe Mauer to a long-term deal. That’d be a good start, no?

When I was growing up and one of my mother’s relatives from Belgium came to visit, I would go to the room they were staying in and smell their luggage. The contents of their bags–their clothes and toiletries, perfumes and chocolates–reeked of Belgium and jumped-started a rush of memories. I payed less attention to the smells of my grandparent’s apartment in Manhattan because I was there so often.

As a kid, I visited Belgium a half-a-dozen times and since I only spoke broken French and my relatives spoke broken English, language became less important than communicating–which we did, in part, through exaggerating body language. The rest of my senses were heightened, especially my sense of taste and smell.

I got to thinking about this while reading an interesting piece in this week’s New Yorker (which is not available on-line), about smell-memory. It is called “The Dime Store Floor,” by David Owen: 

A few years ago, an online store I’d been using ran out of my regular brand of deodorant, and, because I was unable to think of anything else, I switched to Old Spice, the kind my father used. The container had changed, from the sturdy ivory tube I’d often seen in his medicine cabinet to a bright-red elliptical cylinder, but the name and, to a smaller extent, the smell imparted a mild hum of remembrance, and I never switched back. Just recently, while travelling, I found that I’d left all my toiletries at home, and went to a local drug store to buy replacements. There I saw that Old Spice deodorant comes in more strengths, forumlations, and scents that I had thought, and realized the one I’d been using–High Endurance Pure Sport–couldn’t have been my father’s. I bought, this time, Classic Original Scent (the container of which was imprinted with a small picture of the old ivory tube and the promise “Original Round Stick Formula”). And when I sued it for the first time, in my hotel room, I was almost knocked over by what I can only describe as a physical memory of my father. It was the smell of him driving me to school, and of him bending over to pull tight and tied the cord in the hood of my snow jacket, and of him fixing himself a drink in the pantry while he and my mother were waiting for dinner guests to arrive. So now the question is whether to stay with Classic Original Scent, thereby causing my brain to gradually overwrite my collection of father-related fragrance files, eventually making them irretrievable, or to set it aside and use it only on special occasions.

Dig the Difference.

Original (The quality of this recording is weak, but you get the vibe…check out the acapella too.):

Cover:

According to an ESPN report, it looks like Felix Hernandez will be pitching for the Mariners for a minute. Very cool. I hope the Twins sign Joe Mauer to an extension too.

Over at Lo-Hud, the intrepid Pete Abraham has been replaced by the intrepid Chad Jennings.

Here is the latest Yankee tidbit.

I saw my neighbor on the street the other day. He had to shield his eyes to recognize me from up the block. I hadn’t seen him since the holidays. He is a college professor. His teeneage daughter has looked after our cats on occasion when we’re away. And his wife is dying of ALS. She has kept her humor and from what my wife and I have seen, has not displayed any self-pity. Her husband told me she never feels sorry for herself, which is something so remarkable that I can’t exactly get my head around it.

My wife and I have helped them in small ways–cooking a meal, navigating medical insurance claims. But I remember seeing the husband last fall and he looked ready to come undone the stress was so great.

The other day, I asked about his wife and he said that she only has three or four months left to live. “You come to peace with it, you know, life doesn’t stop” he said, adding that he just hopes that she is alive long enough for their daughter’s sweet sixteen this spring. The daughter has poise and has been asked to grow up fast. He worries about her.

I hope his wish comes true. They deserve it.