Blog Archives

Andy Speaks:

“Do you feel like at some point they didn’t go out and try to get a pitcher this year because they didn’t want to lose some (young) pitchers? That’s what it seemed like. They’ve invested a ton in these guys and, to a certain extent, you can’t blame them for doing that.

“Hopefully it works out and hopefully these guys are all great and they come up here and have wonderful big-league careers. Also, the budget isn’t endless – you have to draw a line.

“At some point, you’ve got to go with the team you’ve got and players have to perform. The bottom line is, it comes down to us and we haven’t played well enough so far to say we’re a playoff team right now.”

(McCarron, N.Y. Daily News)

Tonight, our favorite nemesis, AJ Burnett.

How do the Red Sox, Yankees and other teams fare against good pitching?

Here’s an excellent look…

And just cause, here’s my favorite low budget music video of all time:

Rob Trucks has a good interview with my man Steinski over at the Voice today.

I don’t know about you guys but I find ESPN’s wall-to-wall coverage of the Little League World Series to be more than somewhat disturbing.  I’m generally not a moralist by nature but I’m just so turned off by watching kids televised as if they were professionals.  It doesn’t seem right to me, it feels like too much pressure is being placed on them too soon.  How can they just kick back and have fun?

This year, the coverage is more pronounced than ever as highlights make their make nightly onto Sportscenter and Baseball Tonight.  I simply turn the channel.  I just won’t watch it. 

Anyone else have any thoughts on this? 

According to Bryan Hoch at MLB.com, either Carl Pavano or Phil Hughes will be called up to start on Saturday.  Carl Pavano.  Jeez, imagine?

Caught this link over at Rob Neyer’s blog.  Has to do with Mariano Rivera and wild pitches.  Interesting stuff…

This is one of my favorite times of year in New York City, when half the town is out-of-town.  The weekend weather was a gift, low on humidity; the hot late-summer sun was cut nicely by a cool breeze.  Cliff and his mom’s must have had a b-a-double-l at in the bleachers today as it was Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez, Xavier Nady, Jason Giambi and Cody Ransom leading the Yankees to a good old-fashioned Sunday roastin of the KC Royals.

Mike Mussina won his 16th. 

“To be to 16 in August, that’s a rarity for me,” Mussina said. “I’ve been doing some things right. I’ve been getting a few breaks. The bullpen has been really good behind me, the guys are scoring me runs, we’ve been playing solid defense. You need all those things to work for you.” (Borzi, New York Times)

Brett Gardner and Robinson Cano each had a couple of hits too. 

15-6 was the final.  Nothing but Peaches n Cream and a Sunday celebration with Ma.

Mmm’mmm Good. 

“Mothers are beautiful, they really are.” –Bill Cosby.

My mom took me to a bunch of games when I was a kid–mostly for birthday parties. I don’t remember much about them, though one year Mike Gittleson stepped on a pack of mustard outside the Stadium and it splattered on my mom’s leg. She didn’t skip a beat and rubbed her leg against Mike’s removing the mustard from her and putting it on him.

Years later, I was working on my first cutting room job when my mom called in the middle of the day. “I’ve got two tickets for tonight’s game, do you want them?” It was the first round of the 1995 playoffs, the first post-season game the Yankees were in since 1981. Ma lives and works in Westchester and she offered to drive to Manhattan and drop off the tickets. I said, “Ma, why don’t we just meet by the bat and go to the game together?”

So we did, and it was a memorable game of course, one the greatest experiences I’ve ever had watching the Yanks.

Cliff took his mom with him to the game today to celebrate her birthday. He’s only only a good son, but she’s a great Ma too. Here’s hoping they have a grand time and get to see Moose win his sixteenth game of the year. The Yankee offense has been so bad of late you gotta figure they are gunna unleash soon. C’mon you dummies, do it for Moose and do it for Cliff and his Ma.

Let’s Go Yan-Kees!

“What can I tell you?” Royals DH José Guillen said. “That was the kind of game you haven’t seen from us in a while. We didn’t do any of the little things. A lot of wasted opportunities. Both sides, too. They were the same.”

It was a gorgeous afternoon in New York, unseasonably reasonable. The sun dipped in and out of the clouds but it was a terrific day to be outside. The Yankees and Royals played a long game, close to five hours, that lasted thirteen innings. It was another Yankee game filled with aborted offensive rallies, strange managerial moves, good starting (Sir Sidney, once again) and relief pitching, and plenty of frustration. The crowd was mostly silent for the last hour or so; I was fighting off sleep watching from the comfort of my couch. In the end, Brett Gardner slapped the game-winning single to left giving the Yanks a 3-2 win.

According to the Times:

“To be quite honest with you, I don’t care who ended it,” said Derek Jeter, the Yankees’ captain. “We needed to win a game. This would have been a rough one to lose, with so many opportunities.”

“It doesn’t matter how we win as long as we win,” Manager Joe Girardi said. “This was a big win for us today because we’ve been scuffling, and scuffling to score. Maybe this is the game that gets us back on the winning track and we win a bunch in a row.”

The Yankees are going to have to start playing a better brand of baseball to generate any kind of winning streak. They were fortunate to win yesterday. Let’s hope the bats finally bust loose today.

The Bronx Bummers are at it again this afternoon. At this pernt, you’ve got to laugh to keep from cryin. Here’s hoping they give something, anything to cheer for today.

Let’s Go Yan-Kees!

Over at SI.com, John Rolfe revists a world without the Yankees in the post-season.  I consider the possibility of a silent October in the Bronx at The Hardball Times.

I got off work and headed downtown yesterday evening just as it started to pour.  By the time I reached Union Square, the stairwell leading the street was crammed with people.  Some were just waiting for the rain to let up, others were soaking wet.  At the top of the stairs an African woman chanted, "Umbrella, umbrella, umbrella."  I smiled at her and said, "How’s business?"  She titled her head at me, paused and then went back to her mantra. 

I braved the elements until I got to Fourth avenue and 12th street, where I stopped underneath an overhang, where several people were huddled.  I sat and watched the traffic pass.  It’s funny, the rain.  Some people are completely unfazed by it.  Others will wait it out cause they can’t stand getting wet.  A kid in his early twenties passed me, no umbrella, drenched, his t-shirt sticking to his long torso.  I remembered being in my early twenties seeing this kid and I smiled at his carefree manner as he strutted by.

Then a familiar face passed.  As I thought about who it was, I said, "J?"  The dude stopped and sure enough it was J-Live, the MC and record producer.  Back in the summer of ’01, the year before I started Bronx Banter, I conducted a long interview with J in the basement of The Sound Library, an upscale record shop, when it used to be on Avenue A.  This was just after J’s second full-length album, All of the Above was released.  Although it took some time to pin him down once we spoke, J was insightful and a thoroughly decent guy.

I’ve drifted from the music scene in recent years though I did hear that J put out a new record earlier this summer.  I congradulated him on the new joint (which I haven’t heard yet), told him what I’m up to, and then let him go.  If it hadn’t been raining, I would have never run into him.

(more…)

Fat and Skinny works in comedy partnerships: Laurel and Hardy, Abbott and Costello, Siskel and Ebert. The Yankees didn’t get the memo when they hired Charlie Steiner to work with John Sterling–it was like Hardy and Hardy.

Mike and the Mad Dog have been the most successful fat and skinny radio duo in sports radio history and now, a few weeks shy of their 19th anniversary at WFAN, they are splitting up. Mike will stay at the FAN. Russo is reportedly going to Sirus.

Like them or not–I found them entertaining in measured doses–they were an institution in New York sports coverage and this is certainly the end of an era.

Here is one of the best Russo rants of them all:

The FAN won’t be the same without the Angry Puppy.

"Bill Heinz is a walking contradiction of the stereotype of the phlegmatic Teuton. He is emotional and demonstrative. He can sink into depressions so deep they would give a sandhog the bends. His highs are several stories high. As cityside reporter, war correspondent, sports columnist, freelance journalist, and novelist, he was and is a dedicated craftsman and a penetrating observer who never gives half measure.

‘Bill,’ his doctor once told him, ‘if you don’t stop trying to be the greatest writer in the world, you’re going to kill yourself.’

‘I’m not trying to be the greatest writer in the world,’ Bill said, ‘I’m only trying to be the best writer I can be.’"

Red Smith, from the Introduction to Heinz’s collection, American Mirror.

W.C. Heinz, one of the finest journalists this country has ever produced, died earlier this year. A few months ago, a tribute was held in Vermont in his honor, and Adam White wrote a fine piece on the event for the Bennington Banner. In it, he quotes Bob Matteson, who was the editor-in-chief of the Middlebury College newspaper when Heinz was sports editor in 1936-37.

"He could spot make-believe – or phoniness – right away in a person," Matteson said. "And he wanted no part of it."

White continues:

Therein would seem to lie the key to Bill Heinz’s writing, his true method for distilling parable from the mundane. There is a sort of universal admission among those who were close to Heinz that he could be averse to, even dismissive of, certain people and personality types – but there is equally compelling evidence that such an attitude stemmed from his heightened sense of intuition regarding truth. Without such intuition, it is unlikely that he could have even recognized – let alone captured – the majesty and romance that pervades so much of his work.

"The secret is love," (Jeff) MacGregor said. "It’s his empathy, [though] not for individuals; I don’t know that [Heinz] even liked people. His genius was his empathy for the situation that we all share, that common cause of human enterprise. The truth that [Heinz] wrote about is the struggle that we all face, every day, when we get out of bed – and how good a fight we put up before the end of the day."

(more…)

In the New York Sun, Tim Marchman wonders if next year’s Yankees won’t look an awful lot like this year’s edition.

Is there anything more New York than the sight of kicks hanging from a wire?

The Yanks lost again yesterday, finally ending what Pete Abraham aptly called their 3-7 "stumble across America."  It was more of the same–no hitting, and poor, sloppy fielding.  Hard to tell where the Yankees’ heads are at.  Sure ain’t in the game. The final was 4-2.

Back up the bugle folks.  This team looks out of life.

D. Rasner is back on the hill this afternoon out in Minnie as the Yanks go for the series win. Pete Abe’s got the line-ups.

Last night was exhausting. Let’s hope for better things this afternoon.

Bombs Away!

Alex Rodriguez is having another fine season, but his lack of production with runners in scoring position has been a glaring weakness (a couple of days ago, SG had an informative post on Yankee clutch-hitting). For his career, Rodriguez is .302/.403/.553 with runners in scoring position. Still, over at Dugout Central, John Paciorek has some thoughts as to how Rodriguez can be even better:

Let’s compare Rodriguez to Barry Bonds and [Albert] Pujols and see if we can figure out what’s going on.

Rodriguez does something that the other two don’t (or potentially in the case of Bonds “didn’t”) – and the result is that he has a larger margin for error. This error margin is what holds him back from being even better.

When Bonds bats, his front foot hardly lifts off the ground. It moves just slightly forward while Bonds keeps his head and eyes perfectly still and maintains a low center of gravity. Pujols only lifts the heel of his front foot, while staying balanced and low. One result is maximized visual acuity. Another is the ability to get the front foot properly planted when it’s time to attack the ball with the synergistic forces of the legs, hips, shoulders, arms and hands. Very seldom can a pitcher catch either Bonds or Pujols off balance enough to disrupt their swing.

Rodriguez is different. His stance begins balanced, low and stable. But as the pitcher releases the ball, Rodriguez starts an obtrusive attack with what I’m sure he thinks is a precise timing mechanism to generate a power surge. It isn’t and it doesn’t. What happens is that Rodriguez lifts his front foot high off the ground while he waits in suspended animation to detect the speed, direction and nuances of the pitch before he abruptly lunges forward and down to plant the foot so as to begin the swing. If the plant is too early, he’s out in front of the pitch and loses much of his power. If he is late with the plant, the fast ball is by him.

There wasn’t anybody on last night in the 12th inning when Rodriguez hit the go-ahead homer. No matter, it was a much-needed shot in the arm for both the team and Rodriguez, especially on a night when Mariano Rivera blew his first save of the year and Hank Steinbrenner all but conceeded the season.

Jonah Keri reminds us of a painful moment in baseball history.  (Thanks to Repoz for the link.) How about a pouring vinegar on a paper cut while you are it, bro? 

Ah, late summer, ’94.  I had just been kicked out of my dad’s apartment–or was just about to be kicked-out–and my one-year stint as a waiter was about to begin.  I had spent the first six months of the year working on Ken Burns’ "Baseball" series (my first post-college job) which was the only thing about baseball that kept me going that summer–that, and oh yeah, a pretty swell season by our New York Yankees.  

It was a drag for Yankee fans, yet the start of beautiful things to come.  The Expos on the other hand…the vinegar still stings…