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I’m a sucker for oral histories.  I just love ’em.  They are the kinds of books you can pick-up and put-down at your leisure.  And they don’t have to be perfect in order to stimulate convesation, debate, and get the old juices flowing.  Change Up: An Oral History of 8 Key Events that Shaped Modern Baseball, by Larry Burke and Pete Foranatele is a fine addition to your baseball library. You can argue about the chapter selection, which is half the fun, but that’d really be missing the point, because it is what is in the chapters that’s winning.

Here is Thomas Boswell on the one-of-a-kind shortstop, Cal Ripken, Jr.

Everyone on Earth saw that he was a prototypical third baseman except for one person: Earl Weaver.  Only Weaver had the imagination to see that Bobby Bonner needed to go and that Ripken would work as a shortstop.  I was covering the team then as the daily beat writer and there is no question that this was 100 percent Earl Weaver against universal indifference or mild hostility to the idea from everybody else in baseball.  Nobody else though Cal Ripken could play shortstop.  Period.  Anybody who says differently wasn’t there and is wrong.

I guess we can credit Weaver for helping pave the way for Jeter and Rodriguez. 

In a wonderful chapter on the Latino Wave, here’s Luis Tiant:

I don’t go to my country for 46 years.  I want to go before I die to see my country, to see some of my family, if they’re still alive.  I haven’t had contact with them for a long time.  My aunts–I think, I know I have a couple of aunts still alive.  One time I was on a cruise ship over there in Key West.  You can see Cuba right there.  It was so close you could see the cars and the people.  It makes you sad.  You’re that close and you can’t go to your country.  Forty-six years here is a long time.  You say the number easy, but it’s a long time, a lot of days and nights.  A lot of Latino players from the other countries, like two weeks before the season was over they all talk and laugh, "I’m going to go back to my country and go to Christmas and eat and party every day."  And, I sit down there and listen to them, and they’re happy.  All of these lucky guys.  They can go back to their countries, and I don’t know when I’m going to go.  It’s amazing.  It’s a real bad feeling.  You have to do what you have to do.

For a more detailed look at baseball in Cuba, check out Michael Lewis’ long piece for Vanity Fair.

I like driving enough.  I got my permit at sixteen like everyone else in the suburbs.  But I’ve never owned a car, never cared to, and have never had anything but a passing interest in them.  I live in a city where you don’t need a car–though that never stopped my old man, one of the true Manhattan crackpots who prefer having a car (he knew the alternate side of the street laws better than he knew the Passover Haggadah).  As a kid, I loved saying the word "Volvo," and could recognize the boxy cars easily.  Everyone loved a VW bug.  But my favorite American car was a Cadillac.  And only becacuse I liked the how the tail lights looked.  

I have a general memory of being a kid leaving my grandparents apartment at night.  As we waited for my father to pull the car around, we waited under the canopy of 15 West 81st street, across the street from the Hayden Planetarium and the Museum of Natural History, I looked at the bright red and yellow lights moving up and down the street.  I was usually half-asleep.  I remember being captivated by tail lights on the Caddy’s.  They weren’t the usual, blocky lights, they were sleek slits of lights, standing erect. 

My other favorite car was the plump, old Citroen’s, which I saw often during visits to my mother’s family in Belgium.  They really did it for me.

Any of you guys care about cars? 

If so, which ones float yer boat?

Derek Jeter is the leading vote-getter in the American League for the All-Star Game. He’s the guy you want to build a team around, he’s the most overrated player in the game. He’s a future Hall of Famer, yet Jeter has struggled through much of the first half of the season. Mark Feinsand has a good piece on the Yankee captain in the News today:

Jeter won’t even offer a guess at the reason for his declining numbers, but Yankees hitting coach Kevin Long has his own theory.

“I can tell you that he probably lost 30-35 points in his average due to his hand injury, but he’d never admit that,” Long said. “His swing wasn’t the same, he was favoring it and he got into some problems when it came to staying behind the baseball, which has always been his strength. He still contributed and helped us in other ways, but his hitting suffered.”

…Jeter began expanding his strike zone, swinging at pitches on the corners or off the plate. As Long watched those bad habits, he knew something wasn’t right.

“How much damage can you do with a pitch that’s (a foot) off the plate?” Long said. “Since he’s been healthy, he’s had to get out of some of those bad habits, and now he’s starting to put a little something together.”

Meanwhile, in the New York Sun, Steven Goldman explains why the Yanks should move Melky Cabrera:

The reason the Yankees can deal their starting center fielder for need without opening up another hole is the performance of prospect Brett Gardner at Triple-A Scranton. The speedy center fielder is currently batting .292/.408/.436 with 10 doubles, nine triples, three home runs, and 52 walks in 73 games. He has also stolen 29 bases in 37 attempts. Gardner, 24, will not be an impact player in the major leagues. However, given his patience, a .275 batting average, and his ability to run balls down with his speed, he should be at least as productive as Cabrera and provide a better on-base threat at the bottom of the order, creating more opportunities for Johnny Damon, Derek Jeter, and the top of the lineup.

Finally, could the end be near for Mike and the Angry Puppy? Say it ain’t so.

For more than ten years I’ve talked about records, record labels, record producers, rare 45 b-sides and comedians with my dear friend Alan who knows more about records and record history than anyone I know, and it’s not even close.  When we see each other, we usually go right into an old Carlin routine, or a Lenny Bruce sketch, or Bugs Bunny riff.  Alan was the first guy I thought of this morning. When he got into work and saw the red light on his phone, he knew who the message was from

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 I couldn’t resist.

Here’s my beard.
Ain’t it wierd?
Don’t be sceered,
Just a beard.

When it comes down to it, the story is the thing. Whether we are talking about one of the great comics like George Carlin, or a great movie, a magazine article or blog entry, we are attracted to stories and to storytellers. Baseball of course is replete with wonderful stories, some true, some not. (As Rob Neyer explores in his new book, sometimes the truth can only get in the way of a good story.)

Has anyone ever read Prophet of the Sandlots, Mark Winegardner’s gem of a book about travelling with Tony Lucadello, one of the most successful scouts in big league history? If you haven’t, there aren’t many baseball books I’d recommend more. Lucadello signed a ton of guys, including Jim Brosnan, Alex Johnson, Toby Harrah, Larry Hisle, Fergie Jenkins and Mike Schmidt. Like many scouts, he was a great storyteller. Here is a scene, featuring Carl Loewenstine, one of Lucadello’s protogees:

Though Carl is in his late thirties, with a drawl, a bushy red mustache, a chaw of tobacco, a Dodgers World Series ring, and friends in the country-music business, he has more in common with his mentor than appearances suggest.  After Tony secured him the full-time job with the Phillies in 1979, Carl was first assigned to the Deep South.  As we sat in an unheated press box in rain-soaked Dayton watching mediocre playes flail about on a muddy field, Carl started telling stories.  The best involved a quaest into deepest bayou country on the trail of a huge high-school dropout with a blazing fastball, no shoes, a drinking problem, and a pregnant twelve-year-old girl friend.  Carl ended up signing the kid, whose can’t-miss fastball couldn’t save him when he left his minor league team in Oklahoma to rob a bank, tryingo to get enough money for the girl friend to buy her own house.

I asked why baseball has always been such fertile territory for stories and storytellers. My theory is that ball players, coaches, and scouts have so much time to kill that those who can tell the best, funniest, most ornate stories are naturally the most popular, which helps them stay in baseball, which allows them to amass and embellish more stories.  Carl nodded, spat, and said maybe so.  "My own theory on that," he said, "is that every player in major league baseball has overcome the odds.  Only a tiny fraction of the players who are stars in high school or college ever get signed.  Then, probably only one in two hundred of those players make it to the majors.  Then, only about half of the those players stay around long enough to say so. Of the ones who do, most are out of the game in five or six years.  Your players who make it, really make it, are one in several million.  Everybody’s a long shot.  But there’s always that chance.  And that’s the great equalizer, the thing you’ll find in most every real baseball story.”

Ah, to be able to hang with the likes of grouchy old’ Don Zimmer for a spell. Or Joe Torre. David Cone might offer some good ones as the season rolls along, and I bet Giambi’s got more than few good stories to tell, dont’ ya think?

I was ten when my parents split up. My mother broke the news to us in the car after dropping my father off at the Metro North Station. My twin sister and younger brother were in the back seat.  I was in the passenger seat. When she was finished telling us the what was going to happen, I turned to her and said, "Don’t worry, Mom, I’ll take care of you now."

We grew up quickly over the next few years. My father started dating a woman who lived on the same block as my grandparents on the Upper West Side, and soon they were living together. She was good to us, gave us sex education tips without shame or titilation–straight, blunt, sound advice. I remember seeing a shiny box, The Devil in Miss Jones, next to the other videos on a shelf in her bedroom, but I never had the nerve to watch it on the sly.

Everything was grown-up. When we visited my dad, we hung around adults.

Perhaps the most important discovery I made in her apartment was when I pulled a record from the shelf with a picture of a hippie sitting on a stool. The record was AM/FM, the lp that won a Grammy Award for Best Comedy Album and the one that put George Carlin on the map for good. It wasn’t a racy record–heck, by this point, we had Eddie Murphy to idolize–and it was dated, filled-with Vietnam Era references that I didn’t understand. But it had curse words as well as Carlin’s elastic imagination, nibble word-play, and funny-sounding voices. Carlin sounded like a grown-up kid.  Friendly, approachable, caustic, but decent.

We were hooked. I can’t tell you how much material I swiped from Carlin and claimed as my own when I was a kid.  Later, Carlin’s follow-up records, Class Clown and Occupation Foole became like the Torah for me (I still remember my old man taking us to King Carole Records on the west side; I proudly selected Toledo Window Box). There is his legendary routine about the seven words you can’t say on Television, and who’ll ever forget his contribution to the debate between football and baseball?

For years, in high school and throughout college, I would go to sleep with the sounds of a comedy record playing in the background. Bill Cosby and Carlin were always good choices–Mel Brooks and Richard Pryor were too lively for that time of night. I must have listened to "Occupation Foole" five hundred times easily. I know Carlins’ inflections, the rhythms of his voice, his faces, all of his characters, as well as I know a member of the family.

So, it is a sad Monday morning as George Carlin passed away yesterday at the age of 71. That is too young. He was from Morningside Heights in Manhattan and he ranks up there with Lenny Bruce and Richard Pryor as one of the Giants of stand-up comedy.

I want to take this moment to thank him for everything he gave me.  He made me feel grown when I was a kid, and has made me feel young as I’ve gotten older.

We’re going to spend a lot of time waxing nostalgic about Yankee Stadium this year, sharing our own favorite memories and listing the all-time great moments. For all the Yankee highlights the place has seen, not to mention one of the most famous football games ever, the biggest event ever to go down in the House that Ruth Built may well have been the Joe Louis/Max Schmeling rematch which took place seventy years ago today (Here is audio from the fight).

In her review of "Beyond Glory," David Margolick’s acclaimed book about Louis-Schmeling, Joyce Carol Oates wrote:

Boxing is the most pitiless of sports, as it can be the most dazzling, theatrical and emblematic. Where race and nationalism are involved, as in the famous Joe Louis-Max Schmeling heavyweight fights of 1936 and 1938, two of the most widely publicized boxing matches in history, the emblematic aspect of the sport can assume epic proportions. When the second fight, of June 1938, pitting the 24-year-old American Negro titleholder, Louis, against the 32-year-old Schmeling, the Nazis’ star athlete, was fought at Yankee Stadium, the contest was as much between the United States and Nazi Germany as between two superbly skilled athletes. There were almost 70,000 spectators and an estimated 100 million radio listeners throughout the world: "the largest audience in history for anything."

…Most of the chapters are impersonal historical accounts, culled from numerous sources, in which the author’s voice is subordinate to his material. Amid much summarizing, press clippings of the era, many of them painfully racist, provide candor and color; occasionally there are outbursts of a kind of comic surrealism, as in this rapid collage following the dramatic outcome of the 1938 fight:

"In the stands there was bedlam. Tallulah Bankhead sprang to her feet and turned to the Schmeling fans behind her. ‘I told you so, you sons of bitches!’ she screamed. Whites were hugging blacks. ‘The happiest people I saw at this fight were not the Negroes but the Jews,’ a black writer observed. ‘In the row in front of me there was a great line of Jews – and they had the best time of all their Jewish lives.’ . . . ‘Beat the hell out of the damn German bastard!’ W. E. B. Du Bois, a lifelong Germanophile who rarely swore, shouted gleefully in Atlanta. In Hollywood, Bette Davis jumped up and down; she had won $66 in the Warner Brothers fight pool. . . . ‘Everybody danced and sang,’ Woody Guthrie wrote from Santa Fe. ‘I watched the people laugh, walk, sing, do all sorts of dances. I heard "Hooray for Joe Louis!" "To hell with Max Schmeling" in Indian, Mexican, Spanish, all kinds of white tongues.’ "

If you didn’t catch HBO’s fine Joe Louis documentary earlier this year, it’s well-worth watching.

It’s difficult to fathom the magnitude of that night. But it begs the question: Has an event held at Yankee Stadium ever had a greater social impact on the entire country, let alone the rest of the world?

After being wowed by the Reds’ arms all weekend, the Yankees needed a hundred dollar bill performance on Sunday from their veteran, Andy Pettitte.  And that’s exactly what they got.  Pettitte was able to get himself out of a couple of dicey-looking jams, in the fourth and the sixth.  With the bases loaded and one out in the fourth, Pettitte fanned the pesky Joey Votto and then Jay Bruce to end the inning.  It was an overcast day, but the sun peaked-out just as Pettitte delivered the 3-2 pitch past Bruce. 

Two innings later, the sky was dark and the wind was whirling around the Stadium.  The wind was so violent, kicking up the infield dirt, Brandon Phillips had to step-out of the box several times before he could hit.  With runners on the corners and just one out, Pettitte got Paul Janish to pop a bunt up in the air, caught easily by Jorge Posada.  Pettitte stood on the mound, straight and tall, his pants rippling against the strong wind.  It brought to mind James Agee’s description of Buster Keaton: "mulish imperturbability under the wildest of circumstances."  Pettitte struck Votto out.

Jason Giambi’s mustache looked noticably darker than it did a day earlier.  When he was at the plate, it looked as if he was wearing one of those fake Groucho disguises.  Whatever he did, it worked, as Giambi collected three hits and a couple of RBI.  He also stole a base in the second inning.  He ran on a full count pitch to Posada, who took it for strike three.  When Giambi was on second, he looked toward the Yankee dugout and gave his boys a little shoulder shimmy shimmy ya. 

Kyle Farnsworth served up a solo shot to Junior Griffey in the eighth.  It was career dinger #601 for Griffey.  Mariano Rivera was called to record a four-out save after Farnsworth left the game with an injury to his finger.  Mo worked around two dinky singles to start the ninth, didn’t allow a run, and earned his 21st save of the season (in as many chances) as the Yankees salvaged the final game of the homestand, 4-1. 

The weatherman says we’re going to get summer storms this afternoon. Hopefully, they get the game in. I expect the Yankees to knock the hell out of the ball today, don’t you?

If you can’t beat ’em…eat ’em. 

I’ve never tried Cincinnati Chili, a truly weird n wunnerful sounding-dish, but my cousin Jonah and his wife Jenn absolutely love it.  Here is an introduction from Jenn, followed by a fool-proof recipe from the good people at Cook’s Illustrated (aka America’s Test Kitchen):

"My husband and I first learned about this chili recipe while babysitting our nephew Archer one Sat morning.  We had just discovered America’s Test Kitchen tv show and when they were demonstrating this recipe it literally stopped us in our tracks.  We sat enthralled at why someone would ever want to blanch ground chuck.  And then when we saw them mixing all those spices, we started salivating.  By the time they got to the buttered spaghetti, it was over: our jaws were on the floor, tongues agog a la Wyle E. Coyote.  America’s Test Kitchen = super geniuses.  At that point we both turned to each other and, without a word, we both knew what was for dinner that night.

The great thing about this recipe is that it’s super easy to throw together and it’s got enough interesting flavors to whet anyone’s palette. Since we made it the first time, we’ve been making it pretty much once a week.

I suppose you could sub ground chicken / turkey for the beef but what makes this dish delicious is the fat and I’m not sure chick or turk have enough of it (but I could be wrong).  The spices – in particular the cocoa – are what make it pop and give it a rich, beautiful color.

You must do all the required toppings for the big finale: the sharp tang of the cheddar, the sweet bite of the raw diced onion, and the mellow smoothness of the warmed red kidneys all add a nice dimension to the beefy, spiced chili.

While some people prefer to avoid having leftovers, for this dish it’s actually fine. It still tastes excellent the second time around (you can do both stove-top sauce pan method or the cover with foil in the oven method, though with the oven method the noodles do get a little crispy, if you’re into that)."

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On Friday night, Joe Girardi’s decision to intentionally walk Jay Bruce in the fifth inning–a move his pitcher Mike Mussina did not agree with–back-fired. However, the Yankees were also overwhelmed by Edinson Volquez. Johnny Damon said “He’s one of the better guys that we’ve seen in a long time.” Jason Giambi agreed. “He’s got Pedro-type stuff. You’ve got to tip your cap. The kid threw a good game.” As usual, Derek Jeter got right to it. “Sometimes guys are going to be better than you. He was better than us.”

A mere blip. It happens. I don’t think anyone expected the Yankees to get shut-down on Saturday afternoon by a kid making his major league debut. But that happened too. Fresh direct from Double A, Daryl Thompson woke up at 4:30 in the morning, was understandably amped up, and then went out and threw five scoreless innings, getting out of a bases-loaded jam in the second. Four other Cincy relievers combined to shut-out the Yankees, 6-0.

For the Yankees, Dan Giese, was equally impressive. Unfortunately, a throwing error by Giese in the seventh lead to a four-run rally by the Reds, enough to do the Yankees in.

Edinson Volquez out-dueled Mike Mussina on Friday night as the Reds beat the Yanks 4-2. It was a terrific evening at the Stadium, weather-wise, and the Yankees had their chances–the tying run was at the plate in the bottom of the ninth, and Jason Giambi just missed a change up with two men on in the seventh (he would hit a long fly out to death valley, another one he was just behind). Mussina scattered ten hits over eight innings but really only made one mistake–a flat fastball to Jolbert Cabrera in the fifth. Johnny Damon lost a fly ball in the lights to start the inning:

“I saw it, I felt I had a bead on it,” Damon said. “Then, you’re seeing shadows. It makes me disgusted. I didn’t realize it hit off my glove. That’s tough to overcome when you’re facing a tough pitcher. Unfortunately, losing the ball in the lights cost us three.”
(Lapointe, N.Y. Times)

It was a night of near-misses.

Volquez was a lot of fun to watch. He was “effectively wild,” but not like Daniel Cabrera. He wasn’t wild enough to be hitting guys. But his pitches darted every which way. More to the point, when he fell behind in the count, he was able to come up with the big pitch. He was supremely confident, and why not? He hasn’t allowed more than three runs in any start this season.

It’s hot n hazy again in New York today. A 1:00 start promises to bring plenty of heat.

Let’s Go Yan-Kees!

Harpo doin the Gookie.

This was the can’t-miss, home run, bust-a-gut move for Harpo Marx.  Whenever the Marx brothers were doing a show and started to bomb they’d send Harpo up to do the Gookie.  Once he busted it on you–seemingly out of nowhere–you were at his mercy.

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Variety has a wonderful new issue out celebrating 50 years of the Dodgers being in L.A. Our good pal Jon Weisman has his talented finger prints all over this one. I contributed two pieces to the issue–one, my picks for the ten best baseball movies of them all, another, a sidebar on ten memorable baseball scenes in non-baseball movies. Let me know which baseball flicks you think were robbed. Also, give me some more examples of good baseball scenes in non-baseball movies. There are many more of them than decent baseball films. I didn’t even mention the Mantle-Maris scene in that old Doris Day movie, or the grenade-thrower from "Under Fire" who loved Dennis "El Presidente" Martinez.  Or the softball game in "Gung Ho."  Or…

Dayn Perry has a new blog.  In his latest post, Dayn raves about Michael Lewis’ long piece about Cuban baseball in the new issue of Vanity Fair.  Perry writes, "I can say, without exaggeration, that it may be the finest example of long-form sports journalism I’ve ever read."  That’s enough of a recommendation for me.  Sold.      

Giorgio Morandi is one of my favorite painters.  He was a little old Italian guy who almost excusively painted still life pictures.  They are humble and deeply satisfying–he’s a painter’s painter.  Even though the subject matter is traditional, his pictures tackle space, form and composition just like the great modern abstract painters.

The reason I mention him, is because looking at his drawings and paintings is a simple but cherished pleasure for me.  And last night was filled with simple pleasures. It started when I arrived home with a dozen white roses for my wife.  I got caught in the rain and was soaking wet but didn’t mind a bit.  When the rain stopped, we saw a rainbow outside of our apartment window in the Bronx.  Later, a full yellow moon beamed high in the black night.  The weather was crisp and unseasonably cool, almost too good to be true.  

At the Stadium, there was Robinson Cano, who is really starting to swing the bat well, and Joe Girardi seeking out Melky Cabrera on the bench after Melky lined-out in the second inning, then offering him words of encouragement.  Later, Melky made a head-first slide into second that looked more like a belly flop into a swimming pool.  It was a potentially reckless play but one that gave his teammates a good laugh. 

There was the joy of watching one of the all-time greats in fine form.  Alex Rodriguez stole a base, made a wonderful throw to end the fourth inning and crushed a solo home run off of Jake Peavy.   David Cone, who just keeps getting better, looser, funnier, John Flaherty and Michael Kay provided entertaining and informative commentary throughout.  At one point, Kay mentioned that the demonstrative Peavy does not curse and he asked Cone if he ever had any teammates that did not swear.  "None that I trusted," said Cone.

There was pleasure to be found in the Yankees not folding, even after Edwar Ramirez gave up two solo homers and Kyle Farnsworth gave up one of his own.  What makes a fan feel better than insurance runs?  Uh, Johnny Damon’s doing pretty well these days, ain’t he?  And there was Mo, of course, getting a brother-to-brother double play to end the game.  Finally, there was the pleasure of watching the game on-line with the Banterites, who are not only insightful but funny.  Diana had the best line of the night, even though she invoked one of those dreadful 80s pop songs that stick in your head for days:

We can score when we want to
We can kick your team’s behind
Cause your team can’t score and if they can’t score
Well they’re no threat to mine

Pete Abraham’s game-post last night was chock-full-of-goodies, but my favorite part, a bit of information that my wife also shared with me (she learned it from S. Waldman on the radio), came from Ron Guidry, who called Chien-Ming Wang and told him, "You can pitch but you can’t run."

A Wocka, wocka, wocka. 

Cyd Charisse passed away yesterday.  A finer pair of legs have never graced the Silver Screen.  If you’ve never seen her work, I suggest you start with The Band Wagon and Singin in the Rain. 

Last night I got on the subway and stood next to two beefy, corn-fed couples.  They were young, blond, in their twenties, all wearing shorts, a sure sign that they are from out-of-town (it’s not that New Yorkers don’t wear shorts, we do, but in the summertime, suburbanites and tourists seem to almost exclusively wear shorts).  One of the guys had a tatoo on his leg.  They were talking loudly.  I turned to one of them and asked where they were from. 

"St. Louis.  How did you know we were from out-of-town?"

"Just a hunch." 

The foursome was headed up to the Stadium for their first, and only, trip to see the Yankees.  Next, they are going to Boston to catch the Cards play the Sox. 

I thought of them later in the evening as I was watching the game on TV.  What an ideal night to visit the old place.  Sure, it wasn’t a great game–the Padres inept performance made sure of that, as Cliff already noted–but the weather was gorgeous (not a rain drop in sight), Alex Rodriguez hit a bomb, Giambi hit two, including a real shot to left center, Robinson Cano got in some good hacks, and in a blow-out game, the out-of-towners were treated to a vintage three-K performance by Mariano Rivera.  There’s a Yankee Stadium memory for you, tension-free and made-to-order.

Rodriguez also made two nifty plays to his backhand side, showing off his strong arm in the process.  But it should also be noted that his Manny Ramirez impression in the seventh inning cost him his first triple of the season.  Rodriguez hit a line drive to straight away center and judging by the way he left the box, watching, jogging, he thought it was good enough for his second homer of the game.  Instead, he cruised into second and not third.  It’s a lot easier to see a player Cadillac-it when his team is up, 8-0.  Still, Chubb Rock could have been standing on third with his first triple since May 31st, 2006.