Blog Archives

According to Sam Borden at the LoHud Yankee blog, Pedro Martinez will start Game 2 in the Bronx.

That’s juicy, man.

Baby, baby.

I was not accepted into college. Didn’t have the grades to get in. I had planned to go to art school so I focused on my portfolio (sort of), and didn’t care about grades. Then, when I changed my mind about art school during my senior year, I was in a bad spot. Not getting into any school, was humiliating.

During freshman year of college when all of my friends were away, I lived with my father in my grandparent’s apartment in Manhattan, took three classes at Hunter college, and worked for a post-production company in midtown. Economics, Anthropology and a 400 level course on Samuel Beckett. I barely passed the first two, but tackled the Beckett class with enthusiasm and earned a B.

I didn’t understand a lot of what I was reading or what the professor was talking about. But I faked it well enough (I put a lot of effort into faking it.) I’ll never forget studying for the mid-term. I was sitting at the dining room table of my grandparent’s apartment, hand-written notes covering half of the table, when my father’s friend Jim Nolan dropped by.

Jim wore a leather bomber jacket and had the rugged good looks and easy charm of the kind of blue collar hard guy that Gene Hackman or Paul Newman played in the movies. Tough but tender. Funny, but in a sly way. Not an intellectual. Not from New York.

Jim sat down with me and asked what I was studying. I told him about the mid-term and Beckett and everything I had to study. I picked up a piece of paper and said, “Nothing is more real than nothing.” He looked at me waiting for more. “Descartes said that,” I added.

Jim thought for a long moment. “Nothing is more real than nothing.” He considered it some more. Then: “You know what? I wish that guy was sitting right here, right now cause…I’d…like…” Jim thought some more. “…to…punch him right in the mouth. Nothing is more real than nothing. Yeah, I’d like to punch him right in the fuggin face.”

That’s my favorite Jim Nolan story and it jumped to mind last night as I read an article in The New Yorker about Wes Anderson. I couldn’t figure out who I wanted to punch more–Anderson or the guy who wrote the article.

I just got a subscription (a birthday gift) and this was my first issue–I haven’t read the magazine on a regular basis since I was in high school and Pauline Kael was still writing for them. And it serves me right that an over-written and meandering profile of Anderson (with talk about “mood” and “tone”), who I find hopelessly self-absorbed and precious, was there to greet me.

Pow, right in the kisser.

Over at ESPN.com, Howard Bryant takes a look at a Boffo World Serious match-up:

This is the World Series everyone who cares about top-shelf baseball has been waiting for: a National League team that plays with an American League attitude — and actually has a power threat on its bench to play designated hitter — that features a comparable, fearsome lineup versus the pre-eminent American League team, with a $200 million-plus payroll in its inaugural year in its $1.3 billion stadium built for one purpose — to win the World Series at all costs.

How both teams arrived at the summit underscored the critical distance between each and its closest competitors, and neither has been challenged this postseason the way they will challenge each other during the coming week.

…Underneath the global issues lie delicious subplots: Pedro Martinez pitching once again against the Yankees in a pressure situation; Lee and Sabathia, the two former Cleveland aces, pitching against each other instead of as the front end of a pitching rotation as they once did. Two homer-friendly ballparks not necessarily favoring either home team will provide the stage, two rabid fan bases providing the acoustics. And there will be no shortage of stars: Cy Young winners Martinez, Lee and Sabathia; World Series MVPs Rivera, Cole Hamels and Derek Jeter; and regular-season MVPs Rodriguez, Howard and Rollins. If the World Series has been something of a dud this decade — three of the past five Series have been four-game sweeps and none has gone beyond five games, while the Series hasn’t reached a Game 7 since the Angels beat the Giants in 2002 — Phillies-Yankees portends to provide the antidote.

There is an interesting review of Mark Frost’s new book about Game Six of the 1975 World Serious over at Pitchers and Poets:

Game Six is a difficult to review because it seems to reach in so many different directions. Foremost is the action of the game, which carries the narrative momentum forward, and even constantly broken up by various back stories, manages to maintain coherence. Frost writes in enough detail, and with enough perspective, that even taken alone, the game sequences would never be mistaken for a newspaper recap. His description of Carlton Fisk’s famous twelfth-inning home run, allotted an entire chapter, merits a special mention for its lyricism.

Then there are the various back stories. If the action of the game is the book’s engine, then these histories are its cargo. They are what make Game Six valuable, but also at times what make it unbearably weighty. These are histories of commentators and coaches, players and owners, even of the franchises, their cities, and of baseball itself dating back to the 19th century. Their goal is a raising of the stakes. Framed by all these things, the game is meant to take on greater significance. But while none of the stories seem extraneous, their vitality and immediacy are inconsistent; some lend urgency to the action on the field, others are merely anecdotal.

These kinds of books, re-creating the past, are tough to pull off. Anyone read this one yet?

Yanks finally tame the Halos:

Larry Roibal, on-point once again:

Yeah, that was goodness all around last night, wasn’t it?

(more…)

The Yanks have given us a wonderful season so far. It’s been as good as any in recent memory, really it has. Tonight gives the biggest game of the year, the first truly big game at the new Yankee Stadium. Here’s Cliff’s take, leftover from yesterday.

As you know, I’m generally a nervous fan, but after the Yanks lost Game Five I felt confident that they’d come back and close the Angels out in Game Six. Then there was an extra day off and now the butterflies have taken over and I’m Shook Bird like so:

I don’t remember the last time I felt this anxious.

I still say the Yanks find a way to win this series because I don’t want to fathom them not winning. As bad as things felt in 2004 I wasn’t surprised by it. The Red Sox were due. That they won in dramatic fashion made some kind of cosmic sense. I get that. But now, this is the Yankees’ time. Course the Angels won’t go out like chumps but it’s time for Good Andy and the Bombers to flex and be:

FRESH for 2009, you suckas!

Let’s Go Yan-Kees!

It is warm but raining in New York.

Bob…

Some laughs.

sss

At least the Yanks made them earn it.  Okay, that’s the good spin. Of course, I’ve been mulling over the various failures–AJ Burnett, an unfortunate fastball right down the pipe to Vlad Guerrero, Nick Swisher’s final at bat, Joe Girardi’s drive to become tighter than Gene Mauch’s ass–but in a game the Angels had to win, the Yanks didn’t roll over.

Today is one of those challenging days…is the glass half-full or half-empty? Did the Yankees blow their chance or will they pick themselves off the mat and roll come Saturday night–if the weather holds up, that is. (I believe they will come out strong in Game Six.) Got too much time on our hands, either way.

Fug it, Dude, let’s go bowling.

Oh, I got the day off from work. But I live on the seventh floor of my building and they are doing work on the roof. So guess who was up early?

Oy and veh. Fug it, I’m going to the movies:

Yanks are close. But close doesn’t count, do she?

People get ready. G’wan be lots of cheering tonight as the pennant is on the line for the New Yorkers.

Give ’em hell, boys:

Let’s Go Yan-Kees!

Tonight’s starter, Big John Lackey on how to deal with Alex Rodriguez:

“You’ve got to pick your spots, obviously,’’ said John Lackey, the pitcher tasked with keeping Rodriguez off the bases in tonight’s elimination game for the Angels. “It’s tough to pitch around one guy in this lineup because they’re so deep. But if I pitch up to my capabilities, I think I’ll be OK. I’ve had a little bit of success against him [9 for 51 lifetime, 4 homers].

“It would be nice to get the guys out in front of him. That kind of limits the damage right there. You’ve got to try to get those guys out in front of him, and hopefully he’s hitting with nobody on base.’’
(Amalie Benjamin, Boston Globe)

Speaking of Lackey, Joseph Pawlikowski over at River Avenue Blues (the blog for the city that never sleeps), weighs in with his take on the man.

And then there is AJ Burnett.

When I think about Burnett, I can’t help but think of Todd Drew. Been thinking about Todd all day, really. Todd liked AJ, loved his stuff, was a fan. After two good outings so far this October I feel that Burnett is due for a clunker. But another part of me–the part that is touched by the Todd Drew Angel from Above–wonders if he won’t be onions, hunches be damned.

Which one of these?

“This is why I signed,” Burnett said before yesterday’s off-day workout. “The opportunity to pitch in the postseason, you know. …The first year over here I have an opportunity, so I’m taking full advantage of it. I cannot wait.”
(Pete Botte, New York Daily News)

Neither can we, Meat. Neither can we.

There is a show of Robert Frank’s most famous photographs at the MET. I haven’t been yet but plan of getting there soon as I’m a great fan of those pictures.  In the Times review, Holland Cotter writes:

I’m reading feelings in here, but I think Mr. Frank was reading them into his subjects, which is why his pictures, separately and together, feel so personally laden. At this point, in 1955, he was on the first leg of a transcontinental car trip that would last 10 months and take him 10,000 miles. He was still learning the American language, the language of race and class, a stranger in a strange land that was getting more baffling.

How did he come to be there? Born in a German Jewish family in Zurich in 1924, he was interested in picture making early on. He apprenticed with several leading local photographers in his teens; in his early 20s he was doing promising work, examples of which are in the Met show. But he was temperamentally restless and impulsive. He needed to leave home, so he headed for New York.

Years after he took these career-making pictures, Frank directed an infamous (and officially un-released) documentary about the Rolling Stones.

The Dodgers turn to one V. Padilla tonight as they hope to bring the series back to L.A.

Man, oh man, it is going to be tough to beat the Phillies though.

Skillz.

Mark Lamster’s second book was released this week. It is called Master of Shadows: The Secret Diplomatic Career of the Painter Peter Paul Rubens.  Dig this essay from the Wall Street Journal:

Today, Peter Paul Rubens is best remembered as the Old Master with a penchant for fleshy, pink nudes and baroque grandiosity. These perceptions suggest a man of unchecked libertinism, but Rubens was in fact a man of controlled appetites, with a modest disposition and a reputation for tact and discretion. Almost inevitably, given his proximity to monarchs and statesmen across Europe, he was conscripted into political service as a covert diplomat and spy; his artistic work could always provide cover for his clandestine activities.

Because we think of Rubens primarily as an artist, and because the political affairs of the 17th century are so remote, Rubens’s diplomatic career is neglected when it is not altogether forgotten. But a review of Rubens’s correspondence, along with other archival sources, suggests he played a central and active role in European statecraft. Indeed, many of his contemporaries considered him as skilled a diplomat as he was an artist, and he was then almost universally revered as a painter without rival.

Rubens worked primarily as an operative for the Spanish crown, which was engaged in a prolonged war with the nascent Dutch republic, an intractable conflict that had engulfed all of Europe’s powers and that extended fully around the globe. Rubens believed he could resolve this perpetual war, and he devoted several years of his life to this effort, risking all that he had achieved. His plan was triangular: he would arrange for a peace between Spain and England, with the expectation that England would then force its Dutch ally to compromise with Spain. It was a savvy bit of strategic thinking, but it would not work unless Rubens could convince England and Spain, traditional enemies, to come to terms.

Mark, known around these parts as the co-founder of YFSF, is nothing if not versatile and wildly talented.

I received my copy of the book this morning and it is stunningly handsome. Once the baseball season is over it’s at the top of my reading list. Congrats to Mark on the publication of what looks to be a terrific book. What an accomplishment, man. We’re proud to know him, count him as a friend, and wish him nothing but success.

Maybe one day he’ll post a picture of the 1975 Yankees bumper sticker he once showed me.

CC Sabathia’s performance in the fifth and sixth inning last night–bend don’t break, son–was the season for me. That was an ace out there. And Alex Rodriguez’s home run was about as satisfying as it gets. I knew they didn’t want Scott Kazmir to face Rodriguez again, not after Rodriguez had a good hack in his first at bat, and hit a line drive up the middle the next time up. So they bring in a reliever who threw a good pitch, down and in, and Rodriguez jacked it over the fence in left.

Mmmmm.

Oh yeah, and Johnny Damon’s home run in the eighth was none too shabby either.

Still one very big win left. So I ain’t countin’ no chickens. And, dag, for such a compelling win, there sure was some ugliness–Mr. Posada and Mr. Cano, I’m looking at you. But in the end, yeah, that was the way to respond to a tough loss, wasn’t it?

From Roy Ayers to Teix, Cano (all the hitters, really) and the Big Fella.

It’s on you.

Go git ’em BOYS!

Okay, maybe a ‘lil bit.

I thought I’d find more Yankee fans in a state of fury today. But the ones I’ve spoken to have been reasonable.

One thing is for sure, everyone is placing the blame for yesterday’s loss squarely on Joe Girardi’s shoulders. As Cliff mentioned earlier it was a dispiriting loss. Tit for tit, as Dwight Schrute would say. Yanks won a tough one on Saturday, lost a tough one on Monday.

Still, the Bombers have Sabathia on the hill tonight in a game that feels like Game 4 of the ALCS in 1998–the El Duque game. I was dating a girl in Brooklyn at the time and I was sick that night, my stomach killing me. So I begged out of going to a party with her–she was not pleased or understanding, and the relationship didn’t last too long after that–and went back to her apartment and watched that game in bed, hiding under the covers for most of it.

I have faith in CC though and am eager to see how the Yanks bounce back after a tough loss. Let’s see what kind of onions these dudes really have, eh?

‘Nuff said.

More cold, more rain in New York today. Woke up late, read the paper, smiled, and read the sports page again. Wanted to go to the movies but the rain and the cold and the sleepiness and…nah. So, I shopped, cooked my wife food for the week, and then made the princess pancakes.

After that, I made like so:

Content. Allowed myself a day off from worry and anxiety.

There’ll be plenty of time for that tomorrow and the rest of the week. In the meantime, there’s a ball game tonight.

Here, here. Chin, chin, and Enjoy!