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Alex Rodriguez and the Yanks are shooting for one…more…win.

Do it.

If the Yankees hold on to win the Serious, Johnny Damon’s at bat and stolen bases in the ninth inning of Game Four will be a major reason why. Duh, I know. But still, it’s hard not to linger on Damon for a moment this afternoon as we gear up for Game Five.

World Serious Game Four.

The Big One.

Let’s Go Yan-Kees!

Trying to keep busy as the hours creep along. Man, tonight is the game of the year for CC and the Yanks. This is what it is all about. Meanwhile, there’s this thing called football on TV, and why not? It is November, after all.

Time for some soup. See you in a little bit.

Trick

or Treat?

I worked for the Coen brothers for a little over a year, first as their personal assistant and then as an assistant film editor on The Big Lebowski. I didn’t become lasting friends with them but I got to know them some and had as good a time working for them as I did for anyone else in my short career in the movie business. They were definitely Jewish and definitely New Yorkers but they weren’t Jewish New Yorkers, not like any of the Jews I grew up around. They were from somewhere else, no place I knew from, a place with space and open sky. A place where there was a lot of silence and even more time for thinking.

I remember being in Joel’s apartment one time when I saw a small black-and-white photograph hanging on the wall. The picture, which must have been taken in the late Fifties or early Sixites, was of a man wearing slacks–pulled up high, a buttoned-up shortsleeve shirt, tie. But the photograph turned foggy at the man’s neckline and you could not see his head at all. Eraser head. It was a striking image but one that happened by accident–one of those in-camera mishaps, or maybe a screw-up at the developers.

Joel told me that he had taken the picture and the man in it was his father.

I looked at it was thought about what an artist friend once told me about the Coens. “They make pictures,” he said.  Their gift for the arresting image developed way back.

I looked at  the picture of Mr. Coen and Joel said, “Yeah, this pretty much says it all about my dad.”

A Serious Man is the Coen’s latest movie and it is the most personal movie they’ve ever made and one of the most Jewish movies I’ve ever seen. I don’t know that it is autobiographical in any literal sense, but it feels knowing in a special, intimate way.  In a fine review for the L.A. Times, Kenneth Turan writes:

Writer-directors Joel and Ethan have seized the opportunity afforded by the Oscar-winning success of “No Country for Old Men,” to make their most personal, most intensely Jewish film, a pitch-perfect comedy of despair that, against some odds, turns out to be one of their most universal as well.

Set in a very specific time and place — the Jewish community in suburban Minneapolis circa 1967 — that closely echoes the Coens’ own background, “A Serious Man” is a memory piece re-imagined through the darkest possible lens.

Yet the more the man of the title suffers the torments of Job, the more he tries to deal with the unknowability of the usual willfully absurd and decidedly hostile Coen universe, the more we’re encouraged to wonder if this isn’t just the tiniest bit funny. And the more real the pain becomes, the more, in a quintessentially Jewish way, laughter becomes our only serious option.

The movie is full of Jewish tradition and detail. And while it can be grotesque it isn’t mean-spirited or self-loathing. It is about passive-aggresive Jewish men and over-bearing Jewish women. It is about how important thinking, being a thinker, is for Jews, about having a moral center, about questioning the universe, and how in the end, none of the big, existential questions really matter. Unless, of course, they do. It is about dreams and the unconscious and mystery.  

My father’s family is Jewish but I never had a bar mitzvah and the only time I went to Temple was once a year to visit my grandparents on the high holidays. I can’t relate with much of the spiritual and moral questioning that defines many Jews, like my grandfather for instance.  When I think back on this movie I’m not drawn to trying to figure any of it out, necessarily, though I could see why some people would. Still, I feel eager to talk about it. It’s of those movies that you just want to talk about when you leave the theater.

I think it is one of the most successful movies the Coen’s have ever made. It is beautifully realized, disturbing, and often hilarious. The performances, the writing, the pacing, the images, are all wonderful. The Coens have rarely been integrated high and low culture as seemlessly as they have here. The movie feels fantastic and surreal, rational and irrational: completely authentic.

When it was over, I felt happy and content, even though the ending is a doozy. After the credits finished rolling (one of the last credits read, “No Jews were harmed during the making of this film”), an old woman who was sitting in front of me said, “Marvelous,” in a husky New York accent. The lights came on and I saw her face. “Simply marvelous.”  She was wearing a blue wrap around her head and couldn’t have been more than five feet tall. She turned to her friend and said, “That might be the sadest movie that I’ve ever seen, don’t you think?”  And it was sad in a way though I didn’t feel sad or depressed. I felt satisfied.

The pictures and sounds and stories in the movie were stimulating, and I felt like staying put and watching it again.

Joe Blanton will start Game 4.

Read the news over at River Avenue Blues, who picked it up from Joel Sherman.

There has been a lot of talk about the lame the vibe at Yankee Stadium in the first two games of the Serious. This is nothing new. Back in 1962, Roger Angell wrote about the “ignorance and moneyed apathy” of a World Series crowd in the Bronx:

This jet Subway Series moved three thousand miles east last Saturday, but in watching the reactions of the local crowds to the first of the three marvelous games in Yankee Stadium this week I had the recurrent impression that the teams’ planes had overshot their mark, and that the Series was being continued before a polite, uncomprehending audience of Lebanese or Yemenis. New York is full of cool, knowing baseball fans–a cabdriver the other day gave me an explicit, dispassionate account of the reasons for the Milwaukee Braves’ collapse this year–but not many of them got their hands on Series tickets. Before the first game here, on Sunday, the northbound D trains were full of women weighted down with expensive coiffures and mink stoles, not one of whom, by the look of them, had ever ridden a subway as far as the Bronx before. There was no noise in the stands during batting practice, and the pregame excitement seeemed to arise from the crowd’s admiration for itself and its size (a sellout 71, 431), rather than for the contest to come; ritual and occasion had displaced baseball.

…By the sixth inning, when the game was still scoreless, spectators had begun walking out in twos and threes, surrendering their tickets stubs to the perserving verticals; the departees had accomplished their purpose, which was to be able to tell their friends they had been to a Series game.

Now, the schmucks and schmuckettes behind home plate wave, talk on their phones, and spend more time texting than watching the game.

Philly it is.

Poster can be found at Sports Propaganda.com.

They are as different as you can get, but last night Pedro Martinez and Mariano Rivera showed us once again that baseball is more about art than science. Both pitchers are great competitors, great performers–not only craftsmen, but true artists.

We are lucky to watch them work.

This is one of those fun games where all the analysis goes out the window because you can basically see any number of things happen. Pedro could get bombed, AJ could get bombed. Burnett could throw a gem. Pedro could be decent. He could maybe plunk somebody, just cause, you know? Homers and errors and relief pitchers and it’s past midnight and they are still playing. Or a pitcher’s duel. How about a so-so game, where they both allowe 3 or 5 runs in 5 or 6 innings. I can’t call it. And that’s the beauty part, right?

It’s one of those games that could be pedestrian but feels like it’s going to be surreal and nuts like so:

For pure theater, it should be good. Pedro Martinez has been a great bad guy in the Bronx and never fails to angry up the blood.

Pedro is one of the few players that draws upon the hatred of a crowd instead of needing to respond off the enthusiasm of a home crowd (and that’s the difference between Pedro and Cole Hamels according to the men that make the moves for the Phillies). Course I’d love nothing more than to see him get served, but with Pedro, you never know. Who’ll be shocked if he pitches a gem? He’s a great artist and you never know with those guys if they’ve got one last great flourish in them.

He’s never pitched in the new Yankee Stadium, that’s one thing. I’m sure the Yankee hitters will be happy to face him compared with Cliff Lee.  Yeah, the offense should be fine tonight. Yes, Joe Girardi is already working hard starting Jerry Hairston over Eric Hinske or Brett Gardner. But the mashers are supposed to mash here, so, c’mon: mash dummies.

The $99,000 question is what it has been all season: Burnett.

We’ve said all year long around here, the Yanks win the World Serious if they’ve got Burnett pitching well.

Nu? So, C’mon Meat. You kin do it. We’ll be dying right with ya.

Bombs Away, Fellas.

Let’s Go Ya-Kees!

(more…)

Jerry Hairston in for Nick Swisher; Jose Molina in for Jorge Posada.

Like the Hairston move, but as for Molina…Yipe!

Word-for-word, piece-for-piece, I think Lee Jenkins is one of the best writers at Sports Illustrated these days. His latest piece, previewing the Serious in this week’s issue, is on Blastmaster Ryan Howard:

Howard’s bat measures a stout 35 inches, 34 ounces, but in his hands it looks like a toothpick.

Those hands, big as a middle infielder’s mitt, are what former Phillies general manager Pat Gillick noticed the first time he saw Howard play six years ago in the Arizona Fall League. When Gillick is scouting a player, he looks forward to shaking the player’s hand. A strong handshake portends home run power. “That’s where the evaluation begins,” Gillick says. When he thinks back on the strongest handshakes he has felt in more than 40 years of scouting, he rattles off some formidable names: Eddie Murray, George Bell, Alex Rodriguez and Howard. (After shaking this reporter’s hand, Gillick said, “Didn’t hit many home runs, did you?” So true.)

Teammates compare Howard’s drives to golf shots because they backspin out of the ballpark and don’t stop rising until they’re out of sight. “When you hit one flush, you don’t feel a thing,” Howard says. “You just hear the pop.”

Speaking of Howard, I know I’ve mentioned this before, but man, does he ever remind me of the Boogie Down’s own, Kris Parker, KRS-ONE for short.

Okay, enough with the calmness. Time to start getting amped.

I was saddened to hear the news that Terry Miller, Marvin Miller’s wife, has passed away. Tim McCarver mentioned it during the broadcast last night.

I met her once, in their apartment, almost two years ago. It was the day before Christmas and they were celebrating their 68th wedding anniversary that day. I came on business and brought her flowers. She had short hair and wore a necklace that looked straight out of the Sixties. She was pleasent but tough. Not cold, just tough. Their apartment was bright and flooded with light (it is where the Miller interviews from Ken Burns’ Baseball were shot). It was clean and decorated in a minimal style. I imagined there would be more books. A copy of my book on Curt Flood was on one of their shelves which will forever be a part of my personal highlight reel.

I didn’t stay long. But it was a great honor to meet them both.

Terry Miller was 90.

So sayeth Pedro the Mouth, the man Yankee fans love to hate.

I was e-mailing with a friend this morning who played ball in college. He wrote:

I want to see a ton of hard hit balls tonight. I want LOUD outs when they make outs. Give AJ the lead, rip Pedro early, don’t let him sit there mugging for the cameras after 4 scoreless, reducing AJ to a supporting character in Pedro’s comeback drama. AJ will not react well to that, if it’s a staredown, AJ will blink first. Win tonight and any scenario is back on the table for the Yanks.

Pedro’s pitches are much slower and much less intimidating. He CANNOT throw the fastball by them, so he will try to get everybody out with the changeup. This is high school baseball strategy for the hitters: when the opposing pitcher canot throw the fastball by you, you adjust your approach. You try to hit the slow stuff up the middle and try to take the fastball the other way. If you gear your timing to the slow stuff, you can’t be fooled. I won’t be upset if they guess fastball while ahead in the count and take big swings and misses, but there should be minimal strikeouts and minimal weak shit induced by being way out in front of the changeup. With 2 strikes, stay back, hit the changeup back up the middle, fastball the other way.

Sounds like a plan.

No reason to get un-Dude, here. Lee was a sombitch, not much you can do about that (I couldn’t decide if I hated him or loved him for his deadpan Buster Keaton catch). We’ll have plenty of time to get amped about Mr. Pedro and Mr. Burnett as the day rolls along.

For now, how about a deep breath, and some lightness of being:

It is raining in New York City. The sidewalks are covered with leaves. But that can’t squarsh our excitement.

And more from us:

Over at Baseball Prospectus, Jay previews the Serious. Be sure to pop by Jay’s live chat this afternoon, starting at 2 p.m. est too.

Playin’ Records.

This is one is so hype. (I dig it to death.)

This one is so sweet.

How about makin’ records? Like Pete.

Or using them to sell smokes. Like Fred.

Also…Hinske in, Guzman out.