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Alex Rodriguez will in fact have surgery, tomorrow morning, and is expected to miss six-to-nine weeks. It is likely that he will have another surgery after the season as well.

The news is in about Alex Rodriguez’s hip injury. And it’s bad news for the Yanks.  According to an ESPN report, Rodriguez’s brother says the Yankee star will have surgery and miss 10 weeks.

So?  Who’ll play third?  Just where is Charlie Hayes when you need him?

This was my dad’s spot.  He went to Elaine’s when she first opened her restaurant uptown in the Sixties, and later hung out at a place called Herb Evans, which was on the corner of 64th street and Broadway.  Then, he and his gang settled on The Ginger Man, which was just down the block from Herb Evans.   The Ginger Man opened in the mid-Sixties and became the place to be around Lincoln Center.

According to everyone that I’ve spoken with who was there back in those days, The Ginger Man made the best hamburgers in New York.  My old man spent many afternoons at the bar in the early-to-mid Seventies, telling stories and getting drunk instead of working.  He was an operator and a dreamer.  At one point, he had his own phone at the bar, the only guy to pull off that stunt. 

Years later, when I was ten, eleven years old, the old man would take my brother and me to the bar.  My twin sister must have come too, but I don’t remember her being there.   It never occured to me that there was anything suspect about a man bringing his kids to a bar.  It wasn’t a seedy place.  It felt sophisticated. 

The place smelled grown up, salty, of olives and alcohol.  The bartenders were all nice and happy to see us–one taught us how to twist a lime around the rim of our glasses.  My brother and I would “get drunk” on Coca Cola.   We ate the salted peanuts at the bar, and, occasionally, warm potato chips that came straight from the kitchen.  We wore Ginger Man t-shirts and felt grown up being there.

My old man remained friendly with Mike O’Neal, who along with his brother, the late actor Patrick O’Neal, ran the place.  Dad got sober in 1983 and lost touch with Mike.  The Ginger Man eventually closed, and the old man later rekindled a relationship with Mike before O’Neal re-opened the spot as O’Neals.    They remained close over the last five or six years of my dad’s life.  

I went to visit Mike last month.  We met on a Saturday afternoon after the matinee rush and spoke for several hours.  I learned much of his story and the history of the joint.   (The brothers also owned O’Neals Ballon, which was directly across the street from Lincoln Center; the last scene in “Annie Hall,” where Woody tells the joke about needing the eggs, was filmed in O’Neals, as was the pick-up scenes in “Sea of Love”).  He was happy to talk about my old man who he misses.  His affection for my dad was genuine. 

When we were finished, Mike walked me to the door.  He uses a cane now.  As I went out into the cold, I looked inside and saw Mike turn around.  A couple moved past me, through the front door, and I heard the man say, “This used to be The Ginger Man.”

There was a piece on Mike and his family–and their wonderful apartment (which is in one of my all-time favorite buildings) yesterday in The Times. 

Dig it.

Our man in L.A., the great Jon Weisman, is a heppy ket tonight as Manny makes like Randy Newman:

The original:

The remake:

Groan

New York City schools were closed due to snow yesterday for the first time since 2004. This morning, I heard a little girl on the subway tell her father, “They should close school today. It’s too cold for school.”

When I got off the train in midtown, I caught a headline of one of the local papers out of the corner of my eye: “Recession Deepens, No End in Sight.” The anxiety is almost palpable these days. Even if you have a job, there is no sense of security, no telling how long it will last, if you’ll be the next to go.

I’m happy that baseball has begun because it provides a welcome distraction to these daily concerns.  I’m not one to get especially involved in spring training but it’s comforting to know that somewhere it isn’t cold, and that they are already playing the summer game.  Because it can be as cold as it wants, winter can drag out into the middle of April, but there is no stopping what is coming: the Spring, my favorite of all seasons.

The warm weather, the blossoms, and the skirts will be here soon enough. Which won’t erase our worries, of course. But it will provide more lovely distractions.

Over at The New Yorker, Roger Angell weighs in on the Joe Torre book.  Angell is impressed with the book and he misses Torre:

Floods of media will turn out at Yankee Stadium on April 16th for Opening Day (against the Indians), the official début of the new $1.3 billion park, built largely at taxpayer expense, and also the unveiling of the Yankees’ two brand-new starting pitchers, C. C. Sabathia and A. J. Burnett, signed for a combined two hundred and forty-three million dollars, and a new first baseman, Mark Teixeira, who comes with a hundred-and-eighty-million-dollar price tag. They will be closely watched, but probably not as much as Alex Rodriguez, whose recent admission that he used steroids while with the Rangers in the 2001 to 2003 seasons has dominated the Yankee news in spring training, as it will through much of the summer. Fans and sports columnists and op-edists and bloggers will ceaselessly debate his future as a potential Hall of Famer, when and if he surpasses the lifetime seven hundred and sixty-two homers struck by the tainted Barry Bonds, who is about to go on federal trial in California for perjury. Also on trial, so to speak, will be the new Stadium’s attendance figures in this era of economic anxiety, and renewals on those new corporate luxury boxes (grand luxe, perhaps, at a half million dollars and up per season). When the races begin, the Yanks will have to win in the unforgiving new baseball arena created by the luxury-tax impost on top team payrolls, which has produced fourteen different names in the World Series in the past nine years, and eight different winners, and will make it hard on dynasties, however famous, in the years ahead.

Joe Torre won’t be there, and, come to think of it, he’s better off where he is, away in the wrong time zone. He’s a cinch for the Hall of Fame—as a manager, not a player—whenever he’s ready to retire, and he’s already in the Grownups Hall of Fame, which has a few more members than the one in Cooperstown but tougher admission standards.

A few weeks ago I went to see an old friend who was apartment-sitting on the upper west side.  Before I left, I cheked out what was on the bookshelves.  It was as if they hadn’t bought a book in years, but many standard titles from the Eighties were there: “House,” by Tracy Kidder, “Edie,” by George Plimpton, and of course, “Growing Up,” by Russell Baker.

One book that wasn’t there, but very well could have been, was “The Collected Stories of John Cheever,” a book that I noticed at my grandparents’ apartment as a kid because of the reddish orange cover. 

There was a long piece in the Sunday magazine yesterday by Charles McGrath on Cheever, who lived one town over from where my mother lives in Westchester.  Interesting to see how a reputation changes over time.   

The Times has a wonderful page of articles devoted to Cheever.  Check it out, if you like that sort of thing.

I love the idea of this site and it’s got one of the best names ever. It’s one to keep an eye on. I don’t know if there are any true classics on there yet, but it’s still pretty cool. I like this one.

Tyler Kepner has a nice piece on Billy Eppler, the Yankees’ top scout.

I don’t generally go for music that makes me feel sad, especially somber rock n roll or folk records. I admire Neil Young but many of his most famous tunes just make me want to weep. So I stay away. But there is one song of his that I’ve always loved, ever since it spent a brief amount of time in heavy rotation on MTV back when. (Funny how even with guys you don’t like there is usually at least one record that stirs you; I’m no Bruce fan but I dig “Tenth Avenue Freeze Out,” and I steer clear of U2 at all costs but have always liked “I Will Follow.”)

Here’s my favorite Neil Young tune, almost a gag record, but soulful and a lot of fun.

You are divine.

As I’ve gotten older I have become less embarrassed by what I don’t know, what I haven’t read, where I haven’t been.  Still, there are some places in New York that I haven’t visited, and I usually keep it to myself.   “I got my pride,” as Ralph Kramden once said.

Ellis Island, for starters.  Oy.  Never been.  I’ve also never taken a ride on the Staten Island Ferry.  Dude, never been to the Museum of the Moving Image out in Astoria.  The shame!  But for me, the greatest sin, is that I’ve never been to the Frick Collection.  Seeing as how I’m into fine art and all, this is almost unfathomable, not to mention, inexcusable.

Nevermind all that.  I’m going to the Frick tomorrow morning with my uncle, who is a painter.

What famous NYC landmarks have you never been to?  You know, the ones you feel bad about.  C’mon, fess up.

Apropos of nuthin…the great Lester Young.

BP’s Steven Goldman

Yo, the Baseball Prospectus crew will be at the Yogi Berra Museum & Learning Center this Sunday promoting the new annual.  That’s March 1.  They’ll be on at 2 p.m.  For more info, call (973) 655-6891.

Check, check ’em out.

My friend Kevin is a painter. I met him in college and we spent a lot of time smoking cigarettes, laughing, drawing, and talking about painting.  “Modigliani paints the best babes,” he told me one time.   He just might be right about that.

Kevin is still painting.  Here is his website.

Recently, he painted this picture of the President.

Kev is selling t-shirts of the painting for those of you who might be interested in that sort of thing.   I think they are pretty cool myself.

Another season ticket holder horror story.  This one is from Jay Jaffe and she ain’t pretty.

Welp, tonight’s the night, if you care about this sort of thing. I don’t, but I do enjoy bagging on all the celebrities, goofin’ on all the pomp and whatnot.  I like being a contrarian and the almost certain prize for Heath Ledger, which he seemingly won before the latest Batman movie was released, is perfect to get me going.  I didn’t think he was so terrific in the role either.  He wasn’t bad, but, ah, anyhow, it’s something to talk smack about. 

So, who do you like to win the big awards?

It’s been said that the biggest problem with American men is that we are forever stuck in adolescence. Sometimes my wife will look at me and ask, “What are you thinking?” I’ll saying, “Nothing,” and if she presses, most of the time I’ll confess, “I was thinking about El Duque’s wind-up.” And that is the truth. I day dream about sports, especially baseball, all the time.

The reason that I’ve enjoyed rooting for Alex Rodriguez goes even further back–it is infantile and all about my relationship with my father. My dad was not a mediocre man. He was exceptionally bright, charming, and exuded self-confidence. At one time, he had the world on a string, he was a comer. But it crumbled and so did he. He was a dreamer who dreamed big, grandiose dreams. It wasn’t enough to start small and eventually succeed. It had to be boffo from the start.

In the end, he was a failure in his professional life. He drank himself out of a marriage. He talked the talk, but he fell down a lot.

On the other hand, my mother walked the walk in life. If my dad was Reggie Jackson, home run or strike out, my mother was Willie Randolph or Don Mattingly or Derek Jeter. Hard-working, earnest, competitive, tough. She was very much a heroine. Not without her own flaws and problems of course, but she took care of my brother and sister and me, and thrived professionally when she could have fallen apart.

Still, her success always underscored my father’s failure. And as a kid, my dad was my hero. I wanted to believe his promises, needed to believe that he’d eventually come through. Defended him when it seemed that everyone in our family, and in the world, was against him.

Which is why I’ve been drawn to rooting for Rodriguez. It’s about wishing for greatness to be realized. And not just solid, dependable greatness like Jeter, but fantastic, over-the-top, all-time greatness.

I came to accept my father, warts and all, as best as I could. By the time I was in my Thirties, I became my own man and didn’t need him to be a hero anymore. And since he’s been dead, I think about him with more compassion than I ever could when he was alive.

But baseball is different. It brings out the kid in us who yearns for heroes. I may know intellectually that ball players, like other entertainers, are not necessarily admirable human beings, but that doesn’t matter.

I figure things are going to continue to get worse for Rodriguez because he’s like a beautiful-looking version of the hapless Charlie Brown. Today we find out that the drug he got in D.R. was illegal. There will be more mishegoss to follow, I’m certain.

But even if Rodriguez isn’t a guy I’d want to hang out with, or to know personally, that doesn’t prevent the little kid in me from wanting him to make good, just like the kid in me hoped for my old man to strike it rich and fulfill his great potential.

It’s that time of year again, time for the new crop of baseball books to hit the shelves.  The Joe Torre/Tom Verducci book made a splash several weeks ago, and Selena Robert’s forthcoming biography of Alex Rodriguez is sure to make the best-seller list when it comes out in mid-April.  But there are a bunch of other interesting titles set to drop this spring as well, including “As I See ‘Em,” Bruce Weber’s book about professional umpires; “Heart of the Game,” S.L. Price’s account of Mike Coolbaugh, the minor league coach who was killed by a foul ball in 2007, and “Odd Man Out,” Matt McCarthy’s evocative and entertaining look back on his brief minor league career with the Angels.

McCarthy pitched at Yale, played for a year with the Angels, and then moved on to a career in medicine.  He’s now an intern at Columbia Pres uptown, just a stones throw from where the New York Highlanders once played.

Last week, Sports Illustrated ran a long excerpt from “Odd Man Out”, and on March 3rd at 6:00 p.m., Matt will  be at The Corner Bookstore (1313 Madison Avenue at 93rd street) to talk about the book.  I was fortunate enough to get together with Matt recently and talk about his life in professional baseball.

Enjoy.

BB: John Ed Bradley wrote a terrific memoir about playing football at LSU called “It Never Rains in Tiger Stadium.” His experience might have been unique, but he describes the bond between his teammates almost like something soldiers feel. But I don’t get that same sense of being a team in baseball, even in college. Did you?

MM: Minor league baseball is a unique environment. It’s hard to be a good teammate when your primary goal is to leave the team- to be promoted to a higher level. And I was as guilty as anyone. If I pitched two scoreless innings and our team lost, I was relatively happy. No one makes the big leagues solely because they were on a winning minor league team. College baseball couldn’t be more different. We rooted for each other and still do. I still get a dozen texts every time Craig Breslow (my teammate at Yale who now pitches for the Twins) gets a big strikeout.

BB: Can you talk about the arrested development of the clubhouse culture. How do boys become men in that world?

MM: See: Kotchman, Tom. The Angels are very fortunate to have Kotchman. He could easily be a big league manager but instead he’s chosen to coach a rookie ball team. He’s able to influence players who’ve just signed very large (and very small) contracts and instill in them a culture of winning and for that the franchise owes him a large debt of gratitude. I don’t know if there are many guys like him still around, but I hope there are. That lucky charm of his- a large black dildo with two baseballs glued to the base- is something I’ll never forget. And the same is true of his Andrew Dice Clay impression. I’ve been out of baseball for six years and I still think about the Dice Man. He’s mentioned in recent interviews that he’s planning to retire from coaching sometime soon to become a full time scout. As I say in the book, I hope he reconsiders.

BB: Some of your teammates busted your chops about coming from Yale and assumed that you had a privileged life set up for yourself as a fallback in case baseball didn’t work. While they were wrong about you being on any kind of gravy train, you did have another career to turn to. How aware were you of that while you played?

MM: When you’re on the bottom rung of the minor league ladder, you can’t help but be aware of how expendable you are. That life after baseball is not just a possibility, but a reality. I was surrounded by guys who were coming to that realization and it was interesting to see how they responded. The realization came to me rather quickly- the first pitch I threw as a professional resulted in a bases-clearing double. I’m not sure if I ever recovered.

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