Blog Archives

Thanks to Pete Abe.

It didn’t rain on Sunday but it got progressively hotter as day turned into night. And a whole lot more humid.

The Red Sox, in desperate need of  a win, had their second-best pitcher on the mound–Ace 1B–in Jon Lester. The Yanks countered with Andy Pettitte, who has been throwing the ball well of late. Pettitte wasn’t dynamite early, but he escaped trouble in the first five innings, giving up five hits and a couple of walks (93 pitches), and then retired the Sox 1-2-3 (striking out Kevin Youkilis and Jason Bay) in the sixth, extending Boston’s scoreless inning streak to 30 innings. He set them down in order again in the seventh on just seven pitches.

Lester was sharper and more efficient, busting the right-handed hitters in on the hands with the fastball and mixing in his breaking stuff nicely. Through the first six, he struck out seven, five-looking, painting the outisde black with the heater. Derek Jeter reached second in the first inning, and Mark Teixeira made it to third in the fourth, but the Yanks could not bring them home. After Teixiera’s base hit, Lester retired the next nine batters.

(more…)

It is overcast and breezy in the Bronx today. Rain is the the forecast. It’s the kind of day that makes me nostalgic for the summers I spent with my mother’s family in Belgium as a kid.

Good day for a cup of tea.

Yanks and Sox don’t go until tonight, so hopefully, the rain will be done by then.

In the meantime, check out this article in today’s New York Times magazine by Ron Berler about young pitchers and arm injuries. My question is this: Do young pitchers–high school, college, minor leagues–have TJ surgery on purpose? Do they take the risk hoping that they can add 5 mph on their fastball? I wonder.

How do you follow that up?

With a win, of course. If the Sox come back and win the next two games the weekend will be a drag for the Yanks. Mr. Sabathia has to take over today.

Nevermind the Fox broadcast,

Let’s Go Yan-Kees!

I had a couple of guest posts over at Rob Neyer’s blog yesterday. One on baseball movies, the other on Yanks-Sox. I’m pleased to say I got ripped but good, especially on baseball movies. All you’ve got to do is pan Field of Dreams and you might as well burn the flag. So I’m a soulless so-and-so, I can live with that.

When does Neyer come back?

Actually feels oddly comforting getting trashed by a dude with the moniker, Pornstar7.

Yeah, baby.

John Hughes died yesterday. He was 59.  Hughes wrote and directed a string of wildly popular comedies in the Eighties. They were suburban (filmed outside of Chicago) and white-bred and an indelible part of my childhood.

Hughes’ movies always flattered kids by painting grown ups to be utter morons. There isn’t much point talking about if they were any good or not–we’ll all have different takes on that–but his movies made an impression. They gave us some good laughs–he had a gift for comic timing and for working with actors–and I can easily quote from most of them. They are in regular rotation on TV and I suppose we’ll be seeing The Breakfast Club and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and Uncle Buck for the rest of our lives.  

Sixteen Candles and Weird Science are my favorites.

Update: No matter what you may think of Hughes’ movies, it looks like he was a mensch in real life.

Boxing metaphors are easy to come by when the Yanks play the Sox and I had boxing on the brain today for a couple of reasons: the writer Budd Schulberg died, and Muhammad Ali was honored before the game at Yankee Stadium.

My grandfather the head of public relations at the Anti-Defamantion League from 1946-71 (the year I was born), and helped prepare Schulberg’s statement before HUAC during the communist witch hunt after World War II–he also helped the actor John Garfield with his statement.

I remember seeing a worn copy of Schulberg’s The Disenchanted on my grandfather’s bookshelf; I think my aunt has his signed copy of Waterfront, the book that was the basis of On The Waterfront. Schulberg’s most enduring work is What Makes Sammy Run? a cynical novel about show biz.

Over at  The Sweet Science, George Kimball remembers Schulberg:

He straddled the worlds of literature and pugilism throughout his life, but unlike some of his more boastful contemporaries he was not a dilettante when it came to either. He sparred regularly with Mushy Callahan well beyond middle age. The night of the Frazier-Ali fight of the century Budd started to the arena in Muhammad Ali’s limousine, and then when the traffic got heavy, got out and walked to Madison Square Garden with Ali. A year before Jose Torres died, Budd and Betsy flew to Puerto Rico and spent several days with Jose and Ramona at their home in Ponce. Art Aragon was the best man at his wedding. And when push came to shove, he put on the gloves with both Ernest Hemingway and Norman Mailer and kicked both of their asses, though not, as some would now claim, on the same night.

And from an interview with Schulberg earlier this year in The Independent:

No writer has ever been closer to Muhammad Ali. Schulberg travelled in Ali’s car on the way to fights, sat in his dressing-room even after defeats, and was at the epicentre of some of the bizarre social situations the Louisville fighter liked to engineer. He was at the Hotel Concord in upstate New York when Ali was training for his third fight against Ken Norton. Schulberg was with his third wife, the actress Geraldine Brooks. “Ali,” Schulberg recalls, “asked Geraldine for an acting lesson. She improvised a scene in which he’d be provoked into anger.” After two unconvincing attempts, “She whispered in his ear, with utter conviction: ‘I hate to tell you this, but everybody here except you appears to know that your wife is having an affair with one of your sparring partners.’ I watched Ali’s eyes. Rage.”

Then, he recalls, Ali had another idea. “‘Let’s go to the middle of the hotel lobby. You turn on me and, in a loud voice, call me ‘nigger’.” Once in the foyer, crowded with Ali’s entourage, “Gerry dropped it on him. ‘You know what you are? You’re just a goddamn lying nigger.’ Schulberg recalls how Ali waited, restraining his advancing minders at the very last minute; a characteristic sense of timing that allowed his white guests, if only for a moment, to experience the emotions generated by the prospect of imminent lynching, yet live to tell the story.

The stars were out at the Stadium to see Ali and the Yanks: Bruce Willis, Paul Simon, Kate Hudson, and Hall of Famer, Eddie Murray. Ali was wearing a powder blue shirt and dark sunglasses; he slumped forward, a hulking man, surrounded by young, fit athletes and middle-aged executives. The moon was yellow and almost full. The stands were packed (49,005, the biggest crowd all year) as this was the most talked-about game to date in the new park.

(more…)

Over at It’s About the Money, (stupid!), there is a request that Joba Chamberlain concentrate on pitching and not acting the fool.

Here, here.

Paul Simon scored Buster. I thought this was pretty cool.

Congrats to Joe Posnaski to landing a senior writer gig at Sports Illustrated. And props to SI for nabbing Pos:

Dan Jenkins, when he was offered his job at Sports Illustrated, went to his friends at the newspaper in Texas and basically said (I wish I had my copy of my friend Michael’s book The Franchise with me so I could quote this properly): “I’d like to stay with y’all but … the New York Yankees just called.” I never wanted to play for the Yankees, of course, but I feel the sentiment. I had one of the best jobs in the world. I was offered the best.

So, sure, I took the job. It’s like Arthur says at the end of the movie: “I kept the money, I’m not crazy.”

Josh Wilker, one of the best and brightest we’ve got, shows us how to attain baseball happiness.

Mariano Rivera wasn’t his usual self last night. His “stuff” was good, the cutter had a big break to it, as broadcaster John Flaherty pointed-out several times. But he didn’t locate it well. A few runs scored on his watch (though they were charged to Phil Hughes), and the Jays narrowly missed the big hit that would sink the Yanks.

It was John Wettland time. A nail-biter, and an off-night for Rivera, who lowered his ERA to 1.96. He still earned the save. As Tyler Kepner points out over at the Bats blog, it was the 100th save for Rivera in his last 104 chances, dating back to early 2007.

“Let that sink in for a moment,” writes Kepner. “One hundred out of 104. And he turns 40 in three months. Incredible. Even on his rough nights, Rivera still inspires awe.”

The Yankees play a handful of games each year like this one, a brisk National League-style pitcher’s duel. The kind of game where both starting pitchers are on, the umpire has a liberal strike-zone, and the line drives find leather. It helps when Roy Halladay is pitching. He gave up a lead-off single to Jorge Posada in the seventh and still managed to get through the inning in six pitches and less than four minutes. It was twenty to nine. The game hit a speed-bump late when relief pitchers and base-runners, nerves and a little schvitzin’ took over. They still finished in a managable  two hours and thirty-five minutes.

Andy Pettitte had a crisp breaking ball and six strikeouts. He also was lucky. Derek Jeter snagged two line drives and Marco Scutaro lined-out twice to Alex Rodriguez. Melky Cabrera made a fine running catch to rob Vernon Wells of an extra base hit in the seventh. Pettitte was talking to himself, I saw him mouth “four-seamer” twice and had flashbacks to Game Six of the 2001 World Serious when he tipped his pitches. 

The veteran got himself into trouble in the fourth loading the bases with one out,  Yanks ahead 2-0. Alex Rios lined out to Eric Hinske for the second out and Aaron Hill scored (Hinske’s throw…well, at least he hit the cut-off man…on a bounce). But Pettitte re-grouped and hummed along until he gave up a bloop double and then a walk with two out in the seventh.Phil Hughes entered the game with a 0.95 ERA in twenty relief appearences, and John Blazed a couple of heaters past Jose Bautista him, then put his head to bed with a pretty uncle Charlie.

The Yanks scored twice against Halladay in the first inning and then he resumed his official duties as the Hit-Nazi (“No hits for you!”). Johnny Damon singled and scored on Rodriguez’s double to the gap in right-center field. They got a break when Halladay muffed a weak-feed from Kevin Millar, and Matsui reached on an error. Rodriguez rounded third and Halladay made a good throw to the plate, beating him. But Rodriguez slid into the catcher’s glove and knocked the ball free.

The Yanks had another shot a couole of innings later. First and third and Matsui got a hold of one. Rios and Vernon Wells converged in right center and at the last moment, Wells made a basket catch on the warning track, a few feet away from the electronic scoreboard on the outfield wall. After that, Halladay was a mother. Until the top of the eighth when Damon (18) and Mark Teixeira (27) hit back-to-back homers with two men out. I yelled and scared my wife. Moe Green, the kitten, a bona fide scaredy cat, took off. The older cat, nappin’ on the job, opened one eye, saw I was acting crazy and went back to sleep. I flexed and yelled some more and my wife told me to calm down. I overruled her and carried on.

(more…)

Just wondering if David Ortiz has gotten to the bottom of anything yet. While Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and Alex Rodriguez were front page news for weeks because of their involvement with PEDs, Ortiz, after the initial news cycle, seems to be getting a pass. Are people just fed-up with it all? What gives?

There is a long interview with Gay Talese in the new edition of The Paris Review. This caught my attention:

INTERVIEWER: Are you equally interested in everyone you meet?

TALESE: One of the key facts of my life is that I was raised not in the home, but in a store. My father had been an apprentice to his cousin, a famous tailor in Paris who had movie stars and leading politicians as clients. My father left Paris in 1920 on a ship to Philadelphia. He hated Philadelphia and developed a respiratory problem, and someone suggested he move to the seashore. In Ocean City, New Jersey, he bought an old store on Asbury Avenue, the main business street, and he opened the Talese Town Shop. On one side of the store he set up a tailor shop. On the other side my mother, who had grown up in an Italian American neighborhood in Park Slope, Brooklyn, opened a dress shop. Above the store my parents had an apartment.
       The tailor business never really worked out. The craftsmen were fine, but there weren’t quite enough people in Ocean City who wanted to pay for handmade suits. So my mother became the wage earner. All the money we made was because of my mother selling dresses. She was successful because she had a way of getting women to talk about themselves. Her customers were, for the most part, large women, women who did not go to the beach in the summertime. My mother would give them clothes to try on that made them look better than they thought they had any right to look. She wasn’t a hustler. She made her sales because they trusted her and liked her, and she liked them back. I was there a lot—folding the dress boxes, dusting the counters, doing chores—and I learned a lot about the town by eavesdropping. These women, telling my mother their private stories, gave me an idea of a larger world.

…INTERVIEWER:  When did you realize that you had talent?

TALESE: Never. All I have is intense curiosity. I have a great deal of interest in other people and, just as importantly, I have the patience to be around them.

Talese has been one of my inspirations because he’s always been fascinated by the characters on the margins, and because of his unyiedling curiosity. I am a great fan of his journalism, particularly during his glory days at Esquire in the Sixites.

Earlier this year, Jonathan Van Meter wrote an excellent profile of Talese and his wife Nan, the celebrated book editor, in New York magazine. Talese does not come across as being sympathetic, but the piece provides a sharp look at his career, which imploded during and after the writing of “Thy Neighbor’s Wife,” a book that became Talese’s “Apocalypse Now.”

Talese has a new book coming out about his marriage. I have no idea if it will be worth reading; I thought his last effort, “A Writer’s Life,” was meandering and dull.

If you are not familiar with Talese’s work, here is a selection of his essays, including Looking for Hemingway, a takedown of George Plimpton and his Paris Review crew, and perhaps Talese’s most celebrated story, Frank Sinatra Has a Cold.

I went to Citifield last night and watched the Mets score five runs against Dan Haren and still lose.

“Whadda ya expect,” a fat guy in the Don Zimmer mold told me on the subway ride home. “These guys are a bunch of mo-mo’s. How are you gunna win with mo-mo’s?”

I had no words for him.

But I did learn that Joyce Randolph, who played “Trixie” on “The Honeymooners,” is Tim Redding’s great aunt.

Go figure that.

(more…)

Yaz is still Boston’s King in the clutch, according to Kirk Minihane of WEEI (Peace to the Think Factory for the link).

Michael Pollan had a long, but engaging piece in the Times magazine yesterday about state-of-the-art cooking shows and how they’ve changed the way we look at cooking and eating. First, he riffs on Julia Child:

The show felt less like TV than like hanging around the kitchen, which is to say, not terribly exciting to a kid (except when Child dropped something on the floor, which my mother promised would happen if we stuck around long enough) but comforting in its familiarity: the clanking of pots and pans, the squeal of an oven door in need of WD-40, all the kitchen-chemistry-set spectacles of transformation. The show was taped live and broadcast uncut and unedited, so it had a vérité feel completely unlike anything you might see today on the Food Network, with its A.D.H.D. editing and hyperkinetic soundtracks of rock music and clashing knives. While Julia waited for the butter foam to subside in the sauté pan, you waited, too, precisely as long, listening to Julia’s improvised patter over the hiss of her pan, as she filled the desultory minutes with kitchen tips and lore. It all felt more like life than TV, though Julia’s voice was like nothing I ever heard before or would hear again until Monty Python came to America: vaguely European, breathy and singsongy, and weirdly suggestive of a man doing a falsetto impression of a woman. The BBC supposedly took “The French Chef” off the air because viewers wrote in complaining that Julia Child seemed either drunk or demented.

That learning to cook could lead an American woman to success of any kind would have seemed utterly implausible in 1949; that it is so thoroughly plausible 60 years later owes everything to Julia Child’s legacy. Julie Powell [author of “Julie and Julia”] operates in a world that Julia Child helped to create, one where food is taken seriously, where chefs have been welcomed into the repertory company of American celebrity and where cooking has become a broadly appealing mise-en-scène in which success stories can plausibly be set and played out. How amazing is it that we live today in a culture that has not only something called the Food Network but now a hit show on that network called “The Next Food Network Star,” which thousands of 20- and 30-somethings compete eagerly to become? It would seem we have come a long way from Swanson TV dinners.

Pollan continues:

The Food Network can now be seen in nearly 100 million American homes and on most nights commands more viewers than any of the cable news channels. Millions of Americans, including my 16-year-old son, can tell you months after the finale which contestant emerged victorious in Season 5 of “Top Chef” (Hosea Rosenberg, followed by Stefan Richter, his favorite, and Carla Hall). The popularity of cooking shows — or perhaps I should say food shows — has spread beyond the precincts of public or cable television to the broadcast networks, where Gordon Ramsay terrorizes newbie chefs on “Hell’s Kitchen” on Fox and Jamie Oliver is preparing a reality show on ABC in which he takes aim at an American city with an obesity problem and tries to teach the population how to cook. It’s no wonder that a Hollywood studio would conclude that American audiences had an appetite for a movie in which the road to personal fulfillment and public success passes through the kitchen and turns, crucially, on a recipe for boeuf bourguignon. (The secret is to pat dry your beef before you brown it.)

But here’s what I don’t get: How is it that we are so eager to watch other people browning beef cubes on screen but so much less eager to brown them ourselves? For the rise of Julia Child as a figure of cultural consequence — along with Alice Waters and Mario Batali and Martha Stewart and Emeril Lagasse and whoever is crowned the next Food Network star — has, paradoxically, coincided with the rise of fast food, home-meal replacements and the decline and fall of everyday home cooking.

That decline has several causes: women working outside the home; food companies persuading Americans to let them do the cooking; and advances in technology that made it easier for them to do so. Cooking is no longer obligatory, and for many people, women especially, that has been a blessing. But perhaps a mixed blessing, to judge by the culture’s continuing, if not deepening, fascination with the subject. It has been easier for us to give up cooking than it has been to give up talking about it — and watching it.

I am not an especially ambitious home cook but I enjoy the PBS cooking shows best because they show the audience how a dish is prepared (though the Martha Stewart produced cooking show is as bad as anything on The Food Network, with sexy close-up shots of the food, and amplified sizzling sounds from the pan, and virutally no instruction on how things are made).

But as Pollan explains, food shows are not about education these days. They are about turning you on and getting you hungry. Not the worst thing in the world, but as Pollan suggests, all these glossy TV shows have had one concrete result: they keep us out of the kitchen.

The annual SABR convention took place this past weekend in Washington D.C. Our own Diane Firstman was there and I’m sure she’ll have some stories to tell. I’m never been to a SABR function and don’t think I’d make the effort unless the festivities were held in New York. At the same time, I’m sure you could learn a ton just hanging around the hotel lobby.

Alan Schwarz has a piece on the convention in the Times, and over at The Hardball Times, Chris Jaffe lists ten things he didn’t know before SABR 39.