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We all know about pitchers who can write: Pat Jordan, Jim Brosnan, Jim Bouton. But there are also a handful of writers who can pitch too. Historian Glenn Stout used to pitch in an over 30 league. Kevin Kerrane pitched semi-pro ball too. And veteran New York sports writer Bob Klapisch has been pitching since he was in college (he used to pitch against Ron Darling when he was at Columbia and Darling was at Yale). For the past couple of years I’ve been meaning to go watch Klap pitch in a game, thinking it would make for an interesting story.

Unfortunately, Klap’s playing career came to an abrupt end last week when he was struck in the right eye by a ground ball. In a recent e-mail, Klap explained what happened:

I was pitching Thursday night in Parsippany NJ for the Morris Mariners, one of the two semi-pro teams I play for. (Hackensack Troasts is the other). Batter hit a hard comebacker which took a wicked bounce over my glove. It was one of those old-fashioned configurations, with a bowling alley-like strip of dirt connected the pitching mound to home plate. So the ball was traveling on dirt, not grass, and must’ve hit a rock. It flew up towards my face, like a stone skipping on a lake. Caught me flush in the right eye.

Had to have emergency surgery that night. It was just my right eye that was damaged. I can do everything (read, write, play with the kids) with the left. The right suffered a partially detached retina, and damaged cornea, which will require a transplant. I also have multiple fractures which will require plastic surgery. The whole process starts on Monday when I go under for repair of the retina. After 3-6 months, the doctors say I’ll have my vision back. Worst case, 20/200, best case 20/50. It sure beats the alternative, which is what I’m experiencing now – a black curtain over the right side of my face. Very strange.

My baseball career is over, so my goal is to play catch in the backyard with my kids. I am determined to make that happen.

Man, talk about a bad break. What a humbling way for the universe to tell you it’s time to stop playing ball. Klap does seem to be taking it exceedingly well, however. And he’s one tough cookie.

Still, it must be a scary spot for him to be in. So here’s sending best wishes to Klap. Let’s hope that his surgeries are a success. Hang in there, Klap, you’re the man.

Can I Kick it?  Yes, you can!

Last night I was on the uptown platform at 103rd street. I had just missed a train. There was a tall, dark lady cop on the platform. I said hello as I passed her. Then, I started making small talk, about staying up late for the All-Star game. I asked if she ever worked up at the Stadium and she said that she did and that it was a fun beat.

"Unless, they are playing the Red Sox. Too much alcohol. Then we have to take people out."

She didn’t mean escort them out, she meant take them out. By any means necessary. She looked up the platform as we spoke and said there are usually around thirty arrests when the Sox are in town.

I held out my hand and introduced myself.

"My name is Jack," she said and pointed to her badge. It read, "Jack." Not Jackie, not Jacklyn. Jack.

Yes, M’am.

Jack went on to tell me that when she works the Stadium she is stationed where the visiting players’ wives sit. She said the wives tell her how much safer it is at the Stadium than in other parks around the league. Go figure that, right?

"They told me that teams generally have to bring their own security with them at other places. Not here. Not since Steinbrenner adopted a zero-tolerance policy."

Jack then told me, with considerable pride, about how quickly two fans were bounced on two nights earlier during the home run derby. It was when Josh Hamilton hit one into the black seats and two kids chased after it. I was watching on TV and recall seeing a cop put his hands around one of the kids’ neck.

Jack shook her head and smiled.

She said that the cops working inside the Stadium are not on the job, they are paid privately "by Steinbrenner."

Hey, I’d feel pretty safe if Jack had my back. Man, it sure ain’t like the old days no more.

I know I’m late to the party on this, but man, what a drag about our ailing Godzilla. Could be that the Matsui is gone for the year. Steven Goldman takes a look in today’s New York Sun.

I was able to watch a good portion of yesterday’s parade up sixth avenue from my office building. Players sat in the back of sparkling Chevy trucks which proceeded slowly from Bryant Park to 57th street. When Hank Aaron’s truck stopped in front of my building, I saw a little old lady with a big white hat approach him. She walked right by the police, up to the truck like she came down to the parade to do just one thing. She went right up and shook Aaron’s hand. It was brief. Then she walked back to the sidewalk where a small boy was waiting for her.

As she moved away from Aaron, she clenched her fists and shook them over and over again. It was as she was saying, “Yes. I shook the man’s hand.” I don’t know if she had been waiting for years to make that contact but the moment clearly made her day, if not her whole year.

It must be a strange sensation to be a ball player, knowing that your accomplishments mean so much to so many people. I wonder how many of these kinds of encounters an athltete remembers? They must all blur together after awhile. One thing for sure though, that lady will never forget touching Hank Aaron, even it was just for a moment.

The opening ceremonies were but a distant memory by the time the All Star game merifully ended close to 2:00 a.m. but the sight of George Steinbrenner being carted around the field will be the image I remember most. There was the Boss, with his trademark navy blue blazer and aviator sunglasses, sitting next to his daughter, his son Hal right behind him, bawling like a baby, overcome with emotion. The Fox cameras tastefully kept their distance until Steinbrenner’s cart reached the pitcher’s mound. There, his daughter handed him a plain manilla envelope. The Boss took out four baseballs and gave one each to Whitey Ford, Yogi Berra, Goose Gossage and Reggie Jackson. Ford leaned over and kissed George on the cheek, so did Yogi. Paying their respects to The Godfather. Steinbrenner was then quickly ushered off the field, perhaps for the final time.

It’s funny how things turn out. For as long as I can remember, Steinbrenner has lorded over his team as The Boss, commanding the back and sometimes even the front pages of the local newspapers, hiring-and-firing managers and general managers at an alarming rate, throwing buckets of money at free agents, harassing his employees, berating his players, building championship teams and then tearing them down. He was boorish, obnoxious, paranoid, driven, obsessed. He was also generous, charitable, and unfailingly patriotic. Steinbrenner was a lot of things, and most of all, he was vital, a force.

In 1989, when I was a senior in high school, I honestly believed that the Yankees would never been a winning organization again until Steinbrenner was gone. I was wrong of course, and the Yankees’ run in the nineties was more spectactular and satisfying than the one in the late seventies. Steinbrenner deserves credit for that, even if the team was carefully re-built while he was serving his second suspension from the game, and even if Joe Torre gets most of the ink for the teams’ great run.

Again, it’s interesting to see how things turn out. Instead of a dramatic departure, Steinbrenner has slowly faded, like the air fizzling out of a birthday ballon that is three weeks old. It is humbling. And his many critics have laid off of him as his health has declined. Mike Lupica, one of his biggest foes, has written nothing but glowing things about Steinbrenner for the past few years. And so even an orge gets a moment of grace.

I enjoyed the pre-game introductions. Thought it was typically crass of Willie Mays to ignore Josh Hamilton when the young center fielder took his place next to the Say Hey Kid. Also, is New York the only place in the world where you can get away with following-up Hank Aaron with Reggie Jackson or what? And yo, you had to love them saving Yogi, the best, for last.

The reason why baseball movies will never get it right is because no amount of clever CGI can ever replicate what we saw from Josh Hamilton, a real life Roy Hobbs, last night at the Stadium. I still feel buzzed.

“If I was managing the team, I would close,” [Jonathan] Papelbon said. “I’m not managing the team, so it don’t matter.”

…”We’ve both earned that right; us, by winning the World Series and having the opportunity of having our manager there and our team being represented, and Mariano by what he’s done for this role, we’re in Yankee Stadium and blah, blah, blah,” Papelbon said. “It’s not that easy. Everybody thinks it’s a cut and dry answer, but it’s not.”
(N.Y. Daily News)

Well, Jonathan Paplebon is an athlete. And I’d rather have a guy who is dumb and good than smart and crappy. So this wasn’t an especially bright thing to say. He isn’t paid to be bright.

Joe Pos takes a look.  Peep, don’t sleep.

Over at New York magazine, Will Leitch weighs in on the latest Alex Rodriguez circus:

As we watch A-Rod’s tabloid excoriation across our tabloid media this week—He’s having an affair with Madonna! No, it’s only spiritual! He dates strippers and bodybuilders! He’s a bad dad!—it’s worth considering that the breakup that has landed A-Rod in his predicament isn’t necessarily the one with his wife, Cynthia; it’s the one he had with Scott Boras last October.

Over the past sixteen years, Boras was the one constant in A-Rod’s life. A-Rod’s job was simple: Hit baseballs a very long way. Boras, his agent, managed his money, public image, contract negotiations, you name it. Then, when negotiations with the Yankees went haywire, he dumped Boras, and Madonna’s longtime manager, Guy Oseary, was hired to remake A-Rod’s image. Which has happened now, spectacularly.

You can say that again.

Rob Neyer has a fine appreciation of Bobby Murcer’s career today at ESPN:

After playing briefly for the Yankees in 1965 and ’66, Murcer was one of the very few major leaguers drafted into the military during the Vietnam War. Inducted into the army during spring training in 1967, he missed all of that season and the next while serving as a radio operator. Murcer worried that his career was over, but would later tell author Philip Bashe, "What I thought was going to be a horrible experience was really a positive thing for me in the long run. I learned responsibility and, obviously, a little bit of discipline. When I got out I was ready to proceed with my baseball career on a much more mature level."

No kidding. Murcer, who had struggled in the majors before going into the army — understandably, considering that he’d been a 160-pound teenager — got off to a brilliant start in 1969. He homered on Opening Day and drove in three runs. He homered in his next game, too. When Murcer hurt his ankle in late May, he was leading the majors with 43 RBIs.

He cooled off after getting back into the lineup, but still led the club with 82 runs and 82 RBIs. Also that season, Murcer finally moved into Mantle’s old spot in center field. Murcer, like Mantle, had been a shortstop in the minors, and he’d stuck there during his first stints with the Yankees. But in 1969 they moved him to third base, an experiment that lasted five weeks and included 14 errors. He spent the next months in right field, and finally moved to center in late August; the transition was complete, and in 1972 Murcer won a Gold Glove (something Mantle never did).

In 1971, Murcer’s first great season (and his best), he played in his first of five straight All-Star Games. They didn’t all come with the Yankees, though. In 1974, Murcer became the highest-paid Yankee ever — his $120,000 salary topped the $100,000 earned by Joe DiMaggio and Mantle. But Murcer hit only 10 home runs in 1974, and shortly after the season the Yankees traded him to the Giants for Bobby Bonds.

(more…)

Andy Says:

"If we want to make the playoffs, we have to be better," said Pettitte, who took the loss Sunday. "We stink right now for the most part. As a team, we’ve kind of stunk it up here lately, so we need to play better."

…"We’ve got to find a way to put it all together for an extended period of time with our pitching and our hitting combined," Pettitte said. "It seems like right now, we’re feast or famine."
(N.Y. Daily News)

(more…)

Hustle Buck Tater.

The Yankees 9-4 win over the Blue Jays this afternoon, which featured Derek Jeter’s 200th career home run as well as Alex Rodriguez’s 537th career bomb (moving him past Mickey Mantle on the all-time list), was overshadowed by the news that Bobby Murcer has passed away.

Murcer was a solid star player for the Yankees during the late 60s and early 70s–good but never truly great–and later, a friendly voice in the broadcast booth. Murcer knocked a game-winning, pinch-hit homer over the right center field wall against the Orioles in September of 1981. I was at that game with my dad and my brother. I’ll never forget watching two drunk guys sitting down the row from us in the upper deck, chanting "Bob-by, Bob-by!" and then all hell breaking loose when Murcer hit the dinger.

George Carlin, now Bobby Murcer. It certainly hits a lot closer to home when you grew up watching and then listening to a guy. Sixty-two is too young, man.  At least he’s not in pain anymore.  Let’s hope he’s at peace.  I know it’s the natural order of things and all, but, good goosh, we’ve been talking an awful lot about death lately.

Time for a win.

Let’s Go Yan-Kees.

Yes, the Yankee offense has been less than inspired of late, but there ain’t much that even the best hitting teams can do when they face a buzz saw like Doc Halladay. The Blue Jays’ ace delivered a vintage performance on Friday night, throwing a complete-game, two-hit, shutout against the Yanks. Jays 5, Yanks zip. Joba Chamberlain pitched well, giving up three runs in 6.2 innings, striking out nine without a walk. Just one of those nights.

Rufus Ratus Johnson Brown, whatta ya gunna do when the rent comes round?

Allen Barra pens the Voice cover story this week on New York’s two new baseball Stadiums.   

 Steven Goldman+Josh Gibson+Yankee Stadium= Good Banter.

Mariano Rivera: 42.3 innings, 4 walks, 50 strikeouts, 1.06 ERA.

‘Nuff Said.