Blog Archives

Back with more McCarron and Lamster. Today’s topic: AJ Burnett or Derek Lowe?

I’ve never been keen on Burnett. Last week, I was talking to my good friend Rich Lederer who accused me of being overly critical of players like Burnett, guys who have tremendous “stuff.” Guilty as charged. I got an e-mail from Rich last night, highlighting the many good things about Burnett’s 2008 season:

A.J. was 7th in FIP (Fielding Independent Pitching ERA) among American League pitchers last year. FIP is based on the three variables a pitcher can control: strikeouts, walks, and home runs. The six pitchers ahead of him were Lee, Halladay, Beckett, E. Santana, Mussina, and Danks. He was one of only 16 starters whose FIP was lower than his ERA and FIP is a better indicator of pitching prowess than ERA. As such, Burnett’s ERA of 4.07 doesn’t accurately portray just how good he pitched last year.

A.J. was first in K/9 and, in fact, was the only starter in the AL who struck out more than one batter per inning. His closest competitor (Beckett) was more than a half of a batter per nine behind Burnett.

A.J. was ninth in HR/9. The eight pitchers head of him were Lee, Eveland (not so good), Lester, Matsuzaka, Halladay, Danks, Hernandez, and Mussina.

Not to be dismissed, A.J. had the fourth highest batting average on balls in play (BABIP) at .328 (vs. about .300 for league average), suggesting that he may have been unlucky. No other Blue Jays starter had a BABIP over .293.

A.J. had the 8th highest groundball rate and GB/FB ratio. Burnett is a rarity in that he can miss bats and keep the ball on the ground, which is exactly what you want in a pitcher.

Not for nothing, A.J. tied for the third hardest average fastball at 94.3 mph. Only Hernandez (94.6) and Santana (94.4) threw harder. Burnett also has one of the best curve balls in the game, a hard, hump-backed curve (second in velocity only to Felix) that is one of the best out pitches in the game.

Oh, and A.J. did all this in the AL East, facing the Rays, Red Sox, and Yankees multiple times.

I’m not making a call on the length and size of the contract or his injury history. Instead, I’m just vouching for the quality of the pitcher.

Given a cherce, which guy would you take?

This is one of Edward Hopper’s last paintings.  He said it was “about me.”  Space, light, composition, isolation.  You never see Hopper’s people smile much.  And smiles were hard to come by with Mike Mussina too, although he’s got a dry wit and could be cutting and sly with reporters. 

Something about Moose always reminds me of Hopper’s world–private, self-contained.

My brother liked him first.  Back when Moose was pitching for Baltimore.  Then again my brother has always been drawn to pitchers, particularly guys as cerebral, fastidious and determined as Moose.  Reports tonight have it that Mussina is going to retire.  An official announcement will likely be made by the end of the week. 

This comes as no surprise.  Still, it’s rare to see an athlete walk away from the game on his own terms and there is something deeply satisfying about Moose splitting with 270 wins.  It’s neat and controlled like Mussina himself. 

Moose finally won twenty games this past year, an achievement that had eluded him during his fine career.  It wasn’t his best overall season (though it was probably in the top five) but it was impressive.  He pitched beautifully and had just the right amount of good fortune.  In fact, it was all the more admirable because he pitched so well at an advanced age after it appeared that he was all but warshed up.

270 wins.  No Cy Young awards.  No World Serious hardware, but a great winning percentage and some fine playoff performances.  Durable, reliable, stubborn.  A winner.

Is he a Hall of Famer?  (Tyler Kepner addressed the matter a few days ago in the Times.) I’d say yes.  Joe Posnanski had two posts about Moose’s Hall of Fame candidacy earlier this week:  one and two.  Check em out.

Thanks for the great memories Moose.  We’ll miss ya, but are proud to see you calling one last shot.

Over at SNY, Tom Boorstein’s got it on lock: Bring Back Bro!

You were expecting maybe these two dudes?

I’m hosting a Yankee hot stove series over at SNY and was fortunate to have Mark Lamster and Anthony McCarron kick things off. Dig…

[poll id=”2″]

Lenny Shecter is perhaps best remembered as the man behind Jim Bouton’s classic Ball Four. But for a generation of sports fans and writers who followed Shecter’s columns in the New York Post in the late Fifties and the early Sixties, he stands as one of the great sports writers of them all. John Schulian, Vic Ziegel (who was a pup covering high school sports for the Post in the early Sixties when Shecter and the other Lenny, Leonard Koppett were covering baseball there), and Roger Kahn all point to him as a major figure.

Perhaps because he was a newspaper writer first and foremost, Shecter is largely forgotten today. He had a quick-witted but thoughtful style and did write a handful of books, including The Jocks, a scatching a cynical collection of essays about the world of sports that was released the year before Ball Four. Shecter’s take on the famed Yankee teams of Mantle-Berra-and-Ford was much tougher in The Jocks than in Bouton’s book.

Shecter’s name did resurface this past September when Alan Schwarz wrote about piece about him in The Times. The following week, Stan Issac’s wrote a follow-up piece on Shecter. Both are worth taking a look at.

So leave it up to me, old Dorkasaurus Rex, to hit the microfilm room at the main branch of the New York Public Library, in search for old Shecter columns. Here is just a small sampling of some of his ledes that caught my attention:

April 7, 1961

The Yankee spring training camp had to be the strangest in ten years. It was run as though it was a St. Petersburg subdivision of General Motors and while there has long been an air of cold efficiency which hovers about the Yankees like the odor around the beach at low tide, an important softening ingredient was missing. Casey Stengel.

October 2, 1961

Great events of history are over swiftly. A ball, even if it’s the first in the long and noble history of baseball to be hit for a 61st home run, takes only a few heartbeats of time to be propelled from home plate to the outfield seats.

For those who were at Yankee Stadium yesterday, some 24,000 people, it was over all too quickly. It would have been better if the ball leaped in exaltation, turned in the air and wrote a saucy message (like WHEEE!) against the blue sky, dipped nobly and shed a tear over the monument to Babe Ruth in center field.

But the way it was the count was two balls and no strikes. Roger Maris hitched up his trousers, pumped the bat once toward the pitcher, Tracy Stallard, young Boston righthander, then waited.

(more…)

My great aunt Anita passed away in the middle of the night. She was 95. I was at her apartment yesterday evening with cousins, aunts and uncles. Her family was with her and I can only assume that was a great comfort to her as the family matriarch.

Two of my cousins are due to give birth momentarily. So as we say goodbye to the end of an era in our family, we are ready welcome in a new one. That’s how it’s supposed to go, right?

The painting above is by one of my favorites–Richard Diebenkorn.

That’s the James Bond from Ian Fleming’s novels.  

A few years ago, Allen Barra wrote a terrific overview of the Bonds books for Salon:

The Bond of the books was physically smaller than [Sean] Connery by about 2 inches and 20 pounds, and not quite so “cruelly handsome” (as many early reviewers described Connery). I had forgotten that James Bond wasn’t really a spy at all but a cross between the commandos Fleming had known during World War II and a highly trained assassin — obviously, or else why would he be licensed by his government to kill? The literary Bond chafed at the paperwork he was obliged to do plenty of, and unlike his movie counterpart — whose budget for sports cars, rocket-powered backpacks and speedboats, to say nothing of tuxedos, seemed to exceed the entire GNP of Great Britain — was always mildly resentful about his lack of funding.

In “You Only Live Twice,” he apologizes to Tiger Tanaka, the head of the Japanese secret service, for his meager expense account: “Under ten million pounds a year doesn’t go far when there is the whole world to cover.” In “From Russia With Love,” he ruefully compares his own arsenal with that of his Soviet rivals. “If only,” he laments, “his cigarette had been a trick one — magnesium flare, or something he could throw in the man’s face! If only his Service went in for those explosive toys!” And in “Thunderball” he envies the “CIA the excellence of their equipment, and he had no false pride about borrowing from them.”

Readers often come to, well, bond with Bond precisely because of his ordinariness. Unlike the Bond of the movies, the Bond on the pages doesn’t seem radically different from most of us. With the right background and training — and, of course, a willingness to kill in the line of duty — it’s easy to feel we could be the hero of those adventures. Chandler’s Philip Marlowe is somebody you’d like to have a drink with. Bond doesn’t interest us in that way; he’s more like someone you’d want to be if you had another life. Which seems to be precisely why Fleming wrote the books, to create a fantastic yet believable alternative existence.

The new Bond movie was released yesterday and Mr. Barra again looks at the differences Bond on the page and Bond on the screen (Wall Street Journal).

By Mike Vaccaro

What I’ll always remember most are the eyes: eyes belonging to professional baseball players, who aren’t supposed to be impressed by much and are surprised by even less. Eyes filling a clubhouse containing men who had already won three consecutive World Series and 11 consecutive playoff series and were already being listed among the greatest dynasties of all time.

And yet late on the night of Nov. 1, 2001, and early in the morning of Nov. 2, those eyes were all rheumy and moist and wide with wonder. Even the Yankees couldn’t believe what they’d just seen, and done. Even the Yankees couldn’t quite fathom that, a night after Tino Martinez had rescued them with a two-out, two-run home run in the bottom of the ninth inning in Game 4, Scott Brosius had done the same exact thing, taken Byung-Hyun Kim deep and sent Yankee Stadium into the kind of frothy frenzy that you can still summon in your ears, and your memory, all these years later.

I remember it especially well because it is the only time in 20 years as a newspaperman that I’ve ever blown an edition. I was working for the Newark Star-Ledger at the time, and had written a “running” column which described how valiantly the Yankees had fought in losing and going down three games to two in the Series, and I’d done so without composing a backup “early” column in case it didn’t work out that way.

But it was clear: lightning had struck once the night before.

Couldn’t happen again.

And then it did.

I had already left the press box to stand outside the Yankees clubhouse, to avoid the rush and the crush of postgame. There was a TV monitor set up there, which was on a four-or-five second delay. Which helped add to the surreal nature of the moment, because Kim was still in the stretch position on TV when suddenly there emerged from the tunnel leading to the home dugout a roar that defied explanation. And could mean only one thing.

(more…)

The Source:

DJ Premier chopped this tune up twice. The first, is Gang Starr’s classic, “Ex Girl to the Next Girl”:

And here’s “Speak Ya Clout” (skip to the last part of this three-segment jam):

Yanks sign Marte.

Cliff’s analysis is forthcoming. In the meantime, swing, papi, swing:

By Luis Guzman

(as told to Alex Belth)

I grew up in Greenwich Village in the 60s on 10th and Hudson. I went to PS 41. Then when I was ten, we moved to the LES, to the Lower East Side. All my life I’ve been a Yankee fan, B. Mantle, Pepitone. I remember Horace Clarke, Kekich, Peterson, Hamilton, “the folly floater.” When I was between the ages of say 10 and 14 which would have been ’66 to 1970, I’d get together with my buddies in the Villiage, my man Wayne Teagarden, my boy Norman sometimes too, and we’d shine shoes outside of the bank of 7th avenue and Christopher Street. We’d shine shoes in the morning, make enough money, sneak on the train, get up to the Stadium, and sneak into the bleachers. We’d make $2-3 dollars which was pretty good back then. Sometimes we’d pay to get in, it depended. It was fifty, seventy-five cents. We’d fill up on hot dogs and soda and cracker jack, which was the thing at the time.

Back then, they had day games during the week. We used to go out Sunday for bat day and hat day and ball day and yadda-yadda day. It was great. I’d go to every Old Timers’ game, that was a big thing for me, and nothing was bigger than the day Mickey Mantle retired. We had seen Mickey play, he had hit a few home runs when I was there, that was big stuff man. But that day, his family was there, it was heavy.

Between 66-70 the Yankees weren’t doing too good. But we watched Mickey Mantle wind down his career, and you’d see other guys that would come in—Yaz with the Red Sox, Luis Aparicio with the Twins, Harmon Killebrew, Rod Carew.

We didn’t know at the time but the old Stadium was…it was amazing. They had those beams that would come down and we’d wonder how anybody would be able to see if they had to sit behind one of them. But we were always in the bleachers, the right field bleachers, cause we used to like looking into the bullpen to see who is warming up. Remember when the bullpen was in the tunnel? We’d be talking to the pitchers.

Back then Yankee Stadium was a real relaxed, kicked-back kind of a place. They didn’t have guys coming onto the field between innings like now, it wasn’t this high–security place. It’s when it was a ballpark. Dude, we used to wait for the third out in the top or bottom of the ninth and after the third out we’d jump over the railing and run around all over the outfield. There would be fifty, one hundred kids running around. But that’s all we’d do was run around. We were respectful about it. We’d wait for the last out, you know, bro.

(more…)

Jay Jaffe pays tribute to Preacher Roe, pictured below with Pee Wee Reese and Jackie Robinson, who passed away yesterday.

Herb Score died today.

Score was perhaps most famous for being drilled in the face with a line drive off the bat of Yankee infielder Gil McDougald. Score did manage to come back, but arm trouble derailed what looked like a promising career. His decline was blamed on the beaning, but Score shrugged it off. McDougald was equally as devastated by the beaning, if not more so.

From Terry Pluto’s The Curse of Rocky Colavito:

“I know it was an accident. It looked like the poor guy just couldn’t get his glove up in time. The nicest thing was that Herb’s mother spent a long time on the phone with me. I’ll never forget that. But I never felt the same about baseball after that.”

Pluto continued: “[McDougald] retired after the 1960 season at the age of thirty, even though there was plenty of life left in his career. He batted .289 in the seven years through 1957, and .253 in the final three seasons after Score’s injury.”

(more…)

By Rob Neyer

My first visit to Yankee Stadium, and for that matter my first visit to the East Coast, was in 1991. I was working for Bill James then, and accompanied Bill to New York for the annual Society for American Baseball Research convention. At that time, I had seen only five major-league ballparks, and none east of Cleveland.

Of course I’d been reading about Yankee Stadium since I was a little boy. By 1991 I was utterly obsessed with baseball — this was before I developed any other serious interests — and in a sense Yankee Stadium was New York.

Just one problem: When Bill and I were in town, the Yankees weren’t. Instead we went to a Mets game at Shea. Now, I don’t mean to complain because it was baseball and it was New York and of course there’s been plenty of history at Shea Shadium. But it wasn’t where Ruth and Gehrig and DiMaggio played. So one afternoon during our stay, I hopped on the subway and headed for the Bronx, just to see what I could see.

From the outside, I couldn’t see much. If you’ve been there, you probably know that the building doesn’t look like much (and I didn’t walk around to the third-base side to see the big Louisville Slugger). But a big gate beyond the right-field corner was open to the sidewalk, and I could see the field, blindingly green in the sunlight. I wanted to see more, so I scrunched up my courage and walked in like I belonged there.

I got about two steps when a beefy security guard with a mustache and a blazer stepped right in front of me. I couldn’t see the green anymore.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

“Uh. I just wanted to, umm, see the field.”

“You can’t do that.”

So that was Yankee Stadium, and would be for nearly nine years.

(more…)

Some people are turned off by armchair pyschoanalyis, but not me. I love it, far more than I enjoy breaking down managerial decisions or roster construction. So let’s return to our favorite superstar head-case, Alex Rodriguez.

This summer, a magazine writer who once wrote a piece on Rodriguez, told me that the Yankee third baseman is clearly a bright and sensitive guy, the kind of guy who doesn’t feel comfortable in the locker room environment. “He knows it, so does everybody,” the writer told me.

I’ve asked some of the Yankee beat writers about Rodriguez and they contend that he isn’t as smart as he thinks he is, but that he does try, too-hard, to be one of the boys.

At the end of the season, I spoke to a Yankee scout who said what I’ve always assumed–Rodriguez’s problems stem from the fact that he didn’t have a father in his life as a kid. Armchair Shrink 101.

I got to thinking about this last week when I re-read an old–and expertly written–profile on Jimmy Connors and his stage mother Gloria, by Frank Deford (SI, 1978):

Playing, competing, with a racket in his left hand, Jimbo is more a Thompson [his mother’s madien name] than a Connors—in a sense, he is Jimmy Thompson. Has any player ever been more natural? But then, in an instant, he wiggles his tail, waves a finger, tries to joke or be smart, tries too hard—for he is not facile in this way, and his routines are forced and embarrassing, and that is why the crowds dislike him. He is Jimmy Thompson no more. He is trying so hard to be Jimmy Connors, raised by women to conquer men, but unable to be a man…He is unable to be one of the boys.

Rodriguez is the natural, he works as hard as anyone, yet he still comes across like a candy ass not a bad ass. I believe that he’s such an achiever that he can do anything he sets his mind to, but he also has a knack, a gift, for getting in his own way, for saying the wrong thing, for coming across exactly how he doesn’t want to come across.

He’ll be in the gossip pages all winter. After what some considered a “down” year in ’08, I can’t wait to see how he’ll produce next season.

Some of my favorite magazine pieces by Pat Jordan are about his past–his failed baseball career, and his childhood growing up with a father who was a professional grifter.  Here’s a fine example of the latter, from the SI swimsuit issue in February, 1987.

Bittersweet Memories of My Father, The Gambler:

I remember the day I first became aware of the pervasiveness of my father’s gambling in our lives. I was eight years old and just beginning my love affair with baseball, which was encouraged by my parents. We were Italian-Americans and my mother loved the Yankees—DiMaggio, Rizzuto, Crosetti, Lazzeri, Berra, Raschi. She hated only Eddie Lopat and, later, Whitey Ford (my secret idol) with their pink, freckled Irish faces. (Today, approaching 80, my mother has a photograph of Dave Righetti taped to the mirror in her kitchen.)

My father was a Yankee fan, too. Only for him they were less a team he could point to with ethnic pride than one he could confidently lay 9 to 5 on.

One Sunday afternoon in July, my father invited three of my “aunts” and “uncles” to the backyard of our suburban house for a cookout. None of them was, in fact, my real aunt or uncle—they were my father’s gambling cronies—and, even more significantly, my father was not a cookout kind of guy. He took no pleasure in neatly mowed suburban lawns, especially if he had to mow them.

…The afternoon of my father’s cookout was hot and sunny. My “uncles” stood around the barbecue fireplace under the shade of a maple tree and sipped Scotch. They made nervous small talk while simultaneously listening to a Yankee-Red Sox game coming from a radio propped on the kitchen windowsill. My father was bent over the barbecue, lighting match after match and cursing the briquettes he was unable to ignite. He was a dapper little man who dressed conservatively—gray flannel slacks, navy blazer—and he always wore a tie, even around the house. He was very handsome, too, in spite of his baldness. He had pinkish skin, youthful eyes and a neatly trimmed silver mustache. He truly fit the part, at least in his dress, of a suburbanite entertaining guests. Even if those guests did look as if they had just stepped out of the cast of Guys and Dolls.

…My mother, a dark, fierce little birdlike woman, and my “aunts” sat around a circular lawn table that was shaded by a fringed umbrella. They were sipping Scotch, as well, while playing penny-ante poker—deuces and one-eyed jacks wild—and chatting. I stood behind them and followed their play of cards.

Soon I got bored with the adults and I lost myself in the baseball game. When DiMaggio hit a home run for the Yankees, I shouted, “Yaa!” and clapped my hands. Suddenly, I was aware that everyone was looking at me. My father’s face was flushed. I caught my mother’s eye. Her lips were pursed in a threatening smile. She called out sweetly, “We musn’t root for the Yankees today, Sweetheart! Uncle Freddie is down 50 times on the Red Sox.”

For those of you who are so inclined, I hope you took the Jets and the over today.

I was a little too young for the original SNL.  I remember the end of the Bill Murray years and when I was in middle school the Eddie Murphy-Joe Piscapo was a big deal.  A few years later, I loved the Billy Crystal-Martin Short–Harry Shearer–Christopher Guest stuff–which you never see in re-runs these days–but I never really loved the show after that.  Some bits and performers here and there, sure, but never as an “event.”

Anyhow, thanks to You Tube, here’s a Saturday Night Revue of silliness for you:

Warming Up

First Course

(more…)

Peace to James for sending me a link to this mp3 medley of “Impeach the President” tunes.

Dizzy Gillespie played a Sax?