Blog Archives

Joe Girardi and Don Zimmer are close friends but they disagree about what went down the other day at the end of the Yankee-Rays exhibition game. Over the past three or four seasons, the Rays have occasionally been pesky against the Yanks, though there has never seemed to be any hard feelings between the two teams, not like the ones the Rays have developed with the Red Sox. But it is never too late to start. Who knows? This could be the year. I see that many experts expect the Rays to be much-improved. Maybe this’ll keep Zimmer on-point, poised and ready to rustle up another serving of his inimitable brand of moral indignation.

When I was a teenager, the film critic Pauline Kael was one of my idols. I loved her reviews. Even when I disagreed with her I learned something new. I felt sure that I could predict which movies she’d like and which ones she’d trash, but I was never that sure. She was always surprising. She was crazy for movies and wanted to be overwhelmed by them. She wrote sprawling reviews. They were always something to look forward to.

In the late ’80s, she fell ill, and I wrote her a note, saying, in effect that she could not die before she had the chance to review my first movie. Weeks later, I received a postcard with scrawled handwriting on one side–“It wasn’t the prospect of reviewing your first movie that laid me so low, although something sure as hell did. Good luck, Pauline Kael.” She retired from the New Yorker not long after that.

Her reviews were also condensed into blurbs in the front of the New Yorker. Here is a random selection, sure, as always, to raise an eyebrow, make someone furious, and perhaps turn your head too.

It’s a rainy day in New York. Enjoy:

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And Kyle’s got plenty of it.

Tyler Kepner has a piece on Ian Kennedy today in the Times:

Kennedy’s average fastball is probably 89 miles an hour, and what was exceptional in high school — when he teamed with Young on a United States junior national team — is nothing special now.

But Kennedy, who studies the control artist Greg Maddux closely, has extra life on the pitch to make it seem harder.

“You’re going to see 87s and 88s on the radar gun, but the way the hitters react, it’s not like 87 or 88,” [Kennedy’s AA catcher, P.J.] Pilittere said. “He’s got a nice, easy delivery with that late, hard finish on the ball where he really drives through it. Phil Hughes is the same way. He’ll be throwing 91, and you’ll catch it and say, ‘Man, is he throwing 98 today?’ That’s something you can’t really teach.”

This brought to mind an article that Jack Curry did on Greg Maddux back in 2003:

“Why am I so good?” Maddux said, repeating a question. “I think it’s probably because I understand myself as a pitcher, somewhat. I have an idea of what I can and can’t do on the mound. That’s probably the only reason I’ve lasted for the last five or six years.”

…While Maddux’s fastball rarely exceeds 89 miles per hour, it is a pitch he hones extensively and a pitch that enables him to be so masterly. Maddux’s fastball has tremendous movement and he can usually hit a one-inch box from 60 feet 6 inches. Since he controls it like a yo-yo, it enhances the rest of his repertory. Maddux counsels teammates to spend more time controlling their fastballs and less on curveballs or sliders.

“It’s unbelievable the amount of time he puts on perfecting the command of his fastball,” Mazzone said. “It’s his No. 1 priority. In his mind, if you can command your fastball and change speeds, there isn’t a heck of a lot more you have to do.”

…”I think what separates him is he’s so much better at recognizing what the last pitch dictated and gathering information from that than most guys are,” Glavine said. “Most guys say: `I threw a fastball in. Now I’m going to throw this.’ Why? They don’t know. It might not have anything at all to do with the last pitch. I think that’s what he’s good at. Seeing the hitter’s reaction and using that information on the next pitch.”

Horse of a Different Color

Curry, writing in the Times, and Gordon Edes, writing in the Boston Globe, both have stories on Terry Francona and his relationship with Joe Torre and the Yankees today. Edes notes:

For fans inflamed by provincial loyalties, it may be hard to fathom the personal bonds forged in an environment seemingly more suited for enmity than affection. But this winter, the general managers, Theo Epstein and Brian Cashman, made public appearances together, Cashman at Epstein’s charity event in Boston, Epstein at a speaking engagement at a New Jersey university, one that Cashman jokingly likened to an Obama-Clinton debate. The friendship is genuine.

“We’ve known each other and been friendly for a long time,” Epstein said yesterday.

The rivalry is real, but it’s mostly for (and about) the fans. Which is not to say that players on each side don’t want to beat each other, but, with perhaps a few exceptions here and there, I don’t believe the players dislike each other in the same way they did in the Fisk-Munson days.

I like reading about hardass managers from the seventies–Dick Williams, Billy Martin, Whitey Herzog, Earl Weaver–because it’s just so difficult to imagine them in today’s game. Here is a typical bit of nastiness from Billy the Kid, courtesy of Bob Klapisch and John Harper’s The Worst Team Money Could Buy:

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Mike Lupica and Allen Barra, an incongruous couple if I’ve ever heard of one, both mention W.C. Heinz this week. Barra has a tribute to Heinz in today’s Wall Street Journal:

Perhaps the lasting legacy of Bill Heinz is something he told me in a phone interview 15 years ago. What, I asked him, was the greatest lesson he had learned in nearly half a century of sportswriting? His answer was surprising. “In the end, all of us — fans, writers, coaches, athletes — have something in common: We’re all losers. Everybody is a loser, let’s face it. None of us wins all the time, in games or in life, not Joe DiMaggio, not Muhammad Ali. And none of us is going to live forever.”

Not even Roger Clemens…

This reminded me of what Roger Angell once said about failure, and why, when he started writing about baseball, he was drawn to the Mets and not the Yankees because, he contended, there is more Mets than Yankees in most of us. Most of us can generally relate more to failure than success. Pat Jordan was a failure as a pitcher and then made a career out of profiling so-called “failures” (though he writes just as convincingly about success stories). Check out Jordan’s latest, from last weekend’s Play magazine, on two young golfers.

Last fall I was at Yankee Stadium working on an assignment for SI.com. I wanted to speak to Kevin Long, the batting coach. I waited, just outside of the Yankee dugout, for batting practice to end. The players started walking off the field. When I saw a familiar face approach I introduced myself…only it was to the wrong guy. “No, I’m not Kevin Long,” said Rob Thomson, as if he had often been mistaken for someone other than himself, “he’s the short guy over there.”

I felt like a dope, but Thomson didn’t seem displeased which made me breath a sigh of relief. Well, turns out Thomson will be more visible this year in the Bronx as Joe Girardi’s bench coach. According to Mark Feinsand in the Daily News:

“I knew how prepared he was, how much he knew about the game and all the different roles he had played within the organization,” Girardi said. “The only thing he didn’t have was big-league experience, but he’s been doing it for years.”

Now, after spending four years as the seventh man on Joe Torre’s six-man coaching staff – three as special assignment instructor and one as major league field coordinator – Thomson has been rewarded with a spot as Girardi’s bench coach.

“I’ve known him for a long time; he works as hard as anyone,” said Derek Jeter, who has worked with Thomson since 1993. “He’s always prepared, always positive; he’s a lot of fun to be around. I’m excited for him. It’s well-deserved.”

“He’s earned the right,” Cashman said. “We all talk about the emergence of the young players on our roster, but we have an emergence of our coaching staff from the minors on this roster as well. Rob Thomson is a product of that, as are Dave Eiland and Kevin Long.”

Joba Chamberlian re-upped with the Yanks too. He’ll earn $390,000. Random thought…Last week, I either read or heard that Joba went to P.R. over the winter to attend a charity bowling benefit that Jorge Posada hosted. I wonder if a veteran like Posada paid for Joba to fly down there or if the kid paid is own way.

I caught a couple of innings of Sunday’s exhibition game between the Yankees and Phillies–saw Giambi punch a double into the left center field gap, saw Alex Rodriguez just get under one and fly out. I was struck by how, what’s the right word?, rusty, the fielding was. Not that it came as a surprise, but it reminded me just how smooth most major league fielders are once the season gets going. How talented they are. The routine plays looked difficult on Sunday.

Also saw Jorge Posada take one off the face mask and Ken Singleton, the YES announcer, said, “First one of the year.” I wonder if veteran catchers like Posada are so used to getting banged up by foul balls that they hardly notice it (that is, if it is physically possible to hardly notice getting pounded in the grill), or if he says, “Oy, there’s the first one, only a hundred plus more to go.” Does it get harder and harder the older you get?

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I saw my favorite bus driver this morning. I went to visit my brother and his family. I take the BX7 bus which picks me up on 236th street and Riverdale Avenue and lets me off on 207th street and Broadway, just a few blocks from their apartment. The trip takes between 15-25 minutes, depending on traffic.

The bus stops directly across the street from where I live so pretty much as soon as I walk out my door I know whether I can make a bus or not. I know exactly how much time it takes if I break out and haul ass in a sprint. Today, I started the sprint but didn’t have a chance and missed the bus by a wide margin. Buddy, a fit, old wise guy that lives in my building–he’s always out walking his little venomous dog–watched me sprint and then let up in defeat. I caught his eye and he laughed at me.

Took more than ten minutes for the next bus to show up. But when it did I saw that it was being driven by my man, Bobby Riggs. Bobby Riggs is a pale, lean man in his late fifites with glasses and pockmarked skin. He has a thick New York accent and a friendly disposition. Straight forward, open. But not soft. He’s been driving long enough to have seniority and he only likes to work the 7 line. The first time we met we got to talking sports, cause I brought it up, but he didn’t really care about sports. Somehow we got to tennis and the Billie Jean King celebrity match against…what was that guy’s name again? When I left the bus that day, neither of us could remember the stupid guy’s name.

Couple of hours after I left him that day, it hit me. And the next time I saw the guy, I was ready to pounce. He opens the door and points at me and goes, “Hey, Bobby Riggs.” So we’ve always called each other Bobby Riggs ever since. He’s a real good guy. Lives with his mother. She’s 91 and has alzheimer’s but he’ll never turn her over to a home or an institution.

He was actually getting off the bus himself at 215th street, a shift-change stop for drivers. Time for lunch-o. Before he got off he turned to me and said, “By the way, my name is Paul.”

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Jonathan Mahler, author of The Bronx is Burning, and a frequent contributor to the New York Times Magazine, has a long profile on the Steinbrenner clan in the latest issue of Play. It is a detailed, behind-the-scenes look at the changes that have taken place in the Yankee organization over the past calendar year. Mahler paints Hank and Hal Steinbrenner as we’ve come to know them–good cop, bad cop. It is interesting that Hank rebelled against his father and yet often sounds a lot like The Boss. Witness this bit at the end of the piece:

“Red Sox Nation?” Hank says. “What a bunch of [expletive] that is. That was a creation of the Red Sox and ESPN, which is filled with Red Sox fans. Go anywhere in America and you won’t see Red Sox hats and jackets, you’ll see Yankee hats and jackets. This is a Yankee country. We’re going to put the Yankees back on top and restore the universe to order.”

I agree with part of Hank Steinbrenner’s statement. I think Red Sox Nation is a pompous, self-aggrandizing term (though I’m guilty of using the phrase in this space numerous times over the years), one that has been pumped up by the Red Sox organization, many of their fans, as well as ESPN and other media outlets. But I’m not so sure that you don’t see Red Sox hats all over the country these days. The bandwagon is in full-effect (as is a Sox bashlash). What the Red Sox are not–and correct me if I’m wrong–is an international team. You’ll probably find more Yankee hats worldwide than that of any other sporting team. That doesn’t mean that there are so many actual Yankee fans out there, just that the Yankee hat is a symbol of New York and New York is an international city in a way that Boston is not.

Regardless, the quote from Hank made me think: What’s the over/under on how many cringe-worthy statements Hank Dog will make this year? I say it’ll be under a dozen, but there will be some doosies in there. Either way, I don’t entirely dislike Hank’s bluster because it is a reminder of his old man (man, I never thought I’d say that!).

“I learned to write during the war. The material was so rich you had great opportunity. The trick was to under-write.

…”The writer should be invisible…Listen for the way each person speaks and get that down on paper.”

Bill “W.C.” Heinz

Two wonderful writers died yesterday, W.C. Heinz, 93, and Myron Cope, 79. Both had been sick for some time. Heinz, whose reputation as a pioneer of creative non-fiction has been championed over the past decade, may have been the more accomplished writer of the two, but Cope, who is most famous as the radio voice of the Pittsburgh Steelers, was a terrific takeout writer in his time (1950s and 60s) as well.

How big a deal was Heinz? The late David Halberstam was one of his greatest supporters. In the introduction to The Best American Sports Writing, 1991, Halberstam wrote:

“When I think of the early influences on me and many of my contemporaries, I think of men like [Red] Smith, [Jimmy] Cannon and [W.C.] Heinz. They were the writers who we as young boys turned to every day, and they were the ones experimenting with form . . . When I think of the pioneers of New Journalism, I think first of the trinity of my early heroes: Red Smith, Jimmy Cannon and Bill Heinz.”

Glenn Stout, who is the series editor of the Best American Sports books, wrote in an e-mail yesterday: “If I track back my career as a writer, part of it starts when I first read Langston Hughes, and part of it starts when I first read Jack Kerouac, and part of it starts when I first read Heinz in the old Best Sports Stories anthology and realized that sports writing could be literature, too.”

Allen Barra, also via e-mail, added: “He was The Great American Sportswriter. He never wrote in false hyperboles, never tried to be bigger than his subject. He’ll be read when people have stopped watching ESPN.”

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In this week’s Voice, the always provocative Allen Barra weighs in on Andy Pettitte and Roger Clemens (but mostly, Andy Pettitte):

Why hasn’t Andy Pettitte heard from MLB, and why hasn’t there been talk of a suspension? In his deposition to the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, Pettitte admitted that his father injected him with HGH in 2004. (And surely the most bizarre single piece of evidence to emerge during the entire hearing process is that Pettitte’s dad stuck a needle in his son’s ass.) In admitting this, Pettitte was in effect also admitting that he had lied to the Mitchell Commission—and thus to Major League Baseball—about the extent of his drug use.

Moreover, Pettitte was admitting to a crime. Though HGH wasn’t banned from baseball under the Basic Agreement existing at the time—it wouldn’t be added to the list of prohibited substances until 2005—it was and remains illegal unless prescribed for one of three rare diseases. Pettitte has clarified that he used HGH without a prescription. This means that he has admitted to the illegal use of HGH not once but twice, in 2002 and 2004. So where are MLB, the FDA, and the FBI?

It’s easy to see who doesn’t want to have this issue delved into: Pettitte, who stands to lose a one-year, $16 million contract with the Yankees, and the Yankees themselves. Having been snookered by Omar Minaya and the Mets in the Johan Santana deal, the pitching-hungry Yankees are desperate to hold onto Pettitte, the only capable left-hander on the staff. And there are other parties anxious for closure on the Pettitte story, namely commissioner Bud Selig and Major League Baseball.

Allen’s a living, breathing, barroom argument waiting to happen. What do you make of his latest take?

It happens every year, just like the groundhog looking for his shadow, but it doesn’t always happen on the same date. Sometimes it comes and then goes away again for days or weeks. I look forward to it because I know it will always surprise me. One morning, usually in late February or early March, I’ll walk out of my apartment building and there it is, even in the heart of New York City–vague, ellusive, a mere hint, but it is there all the same: the smell of spring. I can’t exactly describe this smell, but mostly, it is the smell of dirt, of fresh soil, which brings with it the promise of the buds and flowers and all that good stuff coming back to life. I love the spring, it is my favorite season of the year. It means that green is coming back in our grey lives, it means the bountiful produce of summer is coming, it means that women shed their overcoats and we can see some flesh again (legs, legs, New York women have the best legs, and man, do they know how to use them).

But more than anything this smell means one vital thing: baseball.

I caught a hint of the smell this morning, a relatively mild, overcast day in Manhattan. I was half-asleep. Was I still dreaming? Maybe it was the rain from last night. Whatever, it makes the baseball season seem that much closer. For a wonderful look at the boys of spring, check out this picture gallery at the New York Times’ website. It features 16, evocative, very strong line-drawings by Robert Weaver, who kept a sketchbook for Sports Illustrated during a 1962 spring training visit.

Tyler Kepner has a piece on Phil Hughes’ blog today in the Times (I’m quoted in the story). Hughes started the blog last month and has been posting every couple of days, sometimes a number of times in a single day. One of the keys to good blogging is to keep things short and sweet and to update often. Hughes is off to a promising start. I’m curious to see how he maintains the site as the season rolls along. I’m sure if he keeps it up, his readership will continue to grow, no matter how he perfoms on the field.

I think the trend of athletes’ blogging is an interesting one. Fans have more access to information than ever before, yet emotionally, we often feel more detached from professional athletes than ever before too. Blogs provide an immediacy (the illusion of intimacy) that is hard to find, and certainly one that you are not likely to see in post-game interviews on TV. I believe it’s a way for jocks like Hughes to feel connected to his fans in a way that is safe, controlled.

Funny, this isn’t quite like Jim Brosnan or Jim Bouton exposing the secrets of the boys club. This is inviting us into the boys club. Sort of. It’s a PG version of the ballplayer’s life. It’s not the down and dirty stuff. Then again, Hughes wouldn’t be able to get away with exposing the secrets of the locker room, and I doubt that any active ballplayer would dare to be too candid in a blog, certainly not the way Bouton was in Ball Four. Now, when that happens, then we’ll really have something to talk about, right?

Oh, by the way, last week, EJ Fagan, over at Pending Pinstripes posted a very useful reference guide to the Yankees’ best prospects. Check it out when you can.

We won’t know until years from now, but I wonder how history will treat the sluggers of the past twenty years? Or, how home run hitters from the 60s-80s will look in comparison? Which players will be forgotten? Who will be re-discovered? I got to mulling this over recently after reading Laughing on the Outside, John Schulian’s wonderful piece on Josh Gibson (SI, June, 2000):

We know just enough about Josh Gibson to now forget him. It’s a perverse kind of progress, a strange step up from the days when the mention of his name drew blank looks. He has been a Hall of Fame catcher since 1972, so that’s a start. And you can always remind people that he got the Ken Burns treatment and public television, or that he was a character in an HBO movie, or that he inspired Negro leagues memorabilia harding back to his old ball club, the Homestead Grays. Any of it will do to jog memories. Josh Gibson, sure. Hit all those home runs, didn’t he? Then he’s gone once more,gone as soon as he’s remembered.

Gibson died at 35, of “booze and dope and busted dreams,” just a few months before Jackie Robinson and Larry Doby entered the major leagues:

Whatever pain he died with lives on in the Negro leaguers who played with him, against him, and maybe even for him if they were fortunate enough to walk where he never could. “I almost hate to talk about Josh,” says Hall of Famer Monte Irvin, who jumped from the Negro Leagues to the New York Giants in 1949. “It makes me sad, for one thing, on account of he didn’t get to play in the major leagues. Then, when you tell people how great he was, they think you’re exaggerating.”

But that’s what greatness is: an exaggeration. Of talent, of charisma, of the acts that live long after the athletes we deem legendary have shuffled of the mortal coil. So it is with Gibson, who opened Irvin’s eyes in 1937 by hitting a grounder so hard that it knocked the shortstop who caught it backward. Then there was the night in McKeesport, Pennsylvania, when Gibson bashed a homer and the mayor stopped the game until the ball was found, because he’d never seen one hit that far. “I played with Willie Mays and Hank Aaron,” Irvin says. “They were tremendous players, but they were no Josh Gibson.”

This is no different from Roy Campenella telling one and all that the couldn’t carry Gibson’s mitt. Or Walter Johnson arguing that Gibson was better than Bill Dickey in the days when Dickey was the benchmark for catchers. Or Dizzy Dean, a true son of the South, wishing his St. Louis Cardinals would sign Gibson–and Satchel Paige–so they could wrap up the pennant by the Fourth of July and go fishing until World Series time. Irvin, with his proclamation, leaves himself no wiggle-room He doesn’t just count Gibson among the game’s greats; he ranks him first.

If you could go back in time, what player(s) would you most want to see? Gibson is up there for me, Satch too, as well as Pete Reiser, Dick Allen, Walter Johnson, Stan Musial and Yogi Berra (to name just a few).

Joba Chamberlain’s rookie debut in pinstripes was as exciting as any we’ve seen in recent years. Last week, Pete Abraham said Chamberlain came into camp looking, if not exactly svelte, then certainly fit. Joe Lapointe has a piece on Joba today in the Times, with this nice lede:

Joba Chamberlain recently tried to involve his fellow pitcher Mike Mussina in some postpractice recreation in the Yankees’ clubhouse.

Addressing Mussina by his nickname, Moose, Chamberlain asked if he wanted to join in playing video games. No, the 39-year-old Mussina told the 22-year-old Chamberlain; he does not play video games.

Want to watch me play video games? Chamberlain asked. No thanks, Mussina said. Well, Chamberlain continued, would Mussina like to play Ping-Pong? Without answering, Mussina kept walking out the door and turned left down the corridor.

So Chamberlain added in a loud voice, “Hey, is the hearing the first thing to go when you get old?”

Suddenly, Mussina reappeared in the doorway and replied, “I hear everything!” in a way that made Chamberlain smile and onlookers chuckle. It was one of those Joba moments that have helped to enliven what for years had been one of baseball’s most dour clubhouses, where young players always knew their place.

I think this could be a fun year, I really do.

It’s the story that won’t go away: Derek Jeter’s fielding. Jeter’s glove work has been a topic of conversation for the better part of five years now. He is getting older so we can reasonably assume that his fielding will continue to slip. This is no great crime, of course. Unless, the guy playing next to you is, or at least, was, better suited to the position The main bone of contention has been that while some have viewed Jeter as a great defensive player, others, looking at the numbers, say, “You have got to be kidding me.”

In today’s paper, Joel Sherman gets tot he heart of the matter:

This is not just one set of Ivy League academics calling Jeter the majors’ worst fielding shortstop. Just about every respected baseball statistician who has publicized results reveals Jeter is, at best, among the poorest defensive shortstops in the game.

You can attack methodology; you can say no perfect formula has yet been devised to encapsulate all the elements – positioning, speed of the hit ball, field conditions – into a single defensive statistic. However, these metrics keep evolving in sophistication. And Jeter keeps faring poorly in nearly every study year after year. Do you think there is a conspiracy? Do you think statisticians en masse have covertly met and made their quest to soil Jeter’s glovely reputation?

“This study has been done a zillion times and the same conclusion is reached every time,” an AL official said. “What do you think that means?”

For Jeter devotees, it means assailing the geeks. But as an AL executive said, “this isn’t geeks vs. jocks. This is myth vs. reality.” In reality, most baseball officials laugh off the three Gold Gloves Jeter won from 2004-06 in the way they do the four Bernie Williams won as having more to do with offense, fame and winning than with actual defense.

I understand why Jeter did not move from shortstop to second or third when Alex Rodriguez arrived in New York. It is Jeter’s will and his ego that made him into a great player. I don’t even blame him for not wanting to move. However, it would have clearly been the best move for the team, so I take Jeter’s reputation as the ultimate team player with a grain of salt. Jeter’s fielding is an old story around these parts, but it is one that likely won’t go away until the time comes when he finally moves to another position.

It’s snowing, really snowing, here in New York this morning. Here are a couple of few things to get you going:

Gary Sheff on Joe G:

“I think Girardi will do great,” the former Yankee told The Post yesterday at Tigertown. “I’m not saying that he’s better than Joe (Torre), he’s just different. He’s an X and O guy, that is something I’ve stressed and I believe. When a guy is smart about the game, you can never trick him, you can never fool him. He’s always prepared and he puts his players in the right spot. It’s up to you to succeed. You either do or you don’t.

Alex Rodriguez, already in the headlines, thinks that Derek Jeter will win the AL MVP this year. According to George King in the Post:

“I think Jeter is going to have an MVP season, that’s my prediction for the year,” Rodriguez said. “And I think Bobby is going to have a monster year.”

…”I think he is in great shape and he did some great things this winter with his workouts,” Rodriguez said. “I am very excited for him.”

Jeter left Legends Field before he could react to Rodriguez’s prediction. A day before, he spoke about what he did differently this offseason.

“I switched up a little bit,” Jeter said of his workouts. “I focused on agility, legs, first step and lateral movement. I really made some adjustments. I feel a lot quicker and I am moving around a lot better.”

Over at BP, Joe Sheehan believes that Damon in left, Matsui at DH, and Giambo at first is the way to go:

Once you start with the premise that Cabrera has to be the everyday center fielder, the rest of the dominoes fall naturally. Left unsaid, of course, is that Damon, Matsui, and Giambi are all signed to contracts that are unmovable, and there’s no stomach for releasing any of them. In fairness, none of the deals are excruciating; the Damon deal has predictably looked worse two years in than it did on the day it was signed. The two years left on Matsui’s contract are a tough call—his production, from a DH, isn’t special, and he’s not as durable as he was three years ago.

Joe Girardi will have options on a daily basis, of course. When a Chien-Ming Wang starts, you can sacrifice some outfield defense, using Damon in center and Matsui in left. Ensberg or Duncan should make the roster as a righty bat, someone Girardi can also use at first base or DH. Ensberg’s OBP, past track record, and ability to fake playing third base or shortstop all make him the better option in that role. Given the age and recent histories of these players, the Yankees could actually use a fifth outfielder on the roster, although it’s unclear if a 12-man pitching staff will allow for that. Oddly, while Brett Gardner is never going to develop into an everyday player, the skill set he currently possesses would make him an asset in that job right now.

Joe Girardi’s true test isn’t the position players, but the pitching staff, where he’ll be challenged to contend in a tough division under crushing expectations while also developing three very good young pitchers. It is good to see, however, that he has alighted on the right answer to an early question. For a manager we really don’t know very much about, every decision carries a little extra weight this spring.

There are a lot of questions about the Yanks this year–the offense, while still potent, is a year older, the defense isn’t strong, and who knows about the starting pitching (I, for one, think that Andy Pettitte is going to have a rough go of it). Still, I’m really excited to watch this team, aren’t you?

Even the pros do it, and do it well. Witness Buster Olney’s blog or Rob Neyer’s joint over at ESPN. Or, more recently Joe Posnanski, who has taken to the medium like a fish to water. We can add SI.com’s Jake Luft to the mix now that he’s got his own site, Luft on Deck. Stop by and check out today’s post on Hank Steinbrenner (and props to Jake for including George Carlin in the piece).

In brief…check out this CNBC link of Joe Torre talking about George Steinbrenner (the full interview airs Monday at 9p/12a ET on CNBC).

Joel Sherman can’t help it. He still likes Andy Pettitte. Also, the Post has put up a sizable excerpt from Sherman’s informative book, Birth of a Dynasty. It’s the chapter on Pettitte. If you haven’t read Sherman’s book, check the excerpt out.

Finally, over at YES, Steven Goldman has a non-baseball related interview up with the musician Dan Zanes.

Over at Yankees for Justice, Todd Drew writes about going to see Jimmy Breslin speak at the Barnes and Noble on 66th street, across the street from Lincoln Center, and just a few blocks north from where bar-restaurants like The Ginger Man and Saloon and O’Neal’s Ballon used to stand (bars where guys like Breslin, and my father, drank):

“Would you be a newspaperman if you were just starting out today?” I ask.

“That’s a good one,” he says. “The game’s changed and there’s probably no room for a guy like me.”

He pauses for a moment and then really gets rolling.

“Pick up any newspaper in the morning,” Breslin says. “Count the words in the lead sentences. There will be at least 25 in all of them: Guaranteed. The writers just want to tell you how many degrees they have from this college or that university.

“Steinbeck would use 12 words in the first sentence,” he continues. “Mailer 15 words. Hemingway five. That’s because they had respect for their readers. It may sound like I’m being hard on colleges and that’s because I am. None of them have any idea how to teach people to write. They have wrecked the business.”

The business has certainly changed. And it is still changing. Here is Frank Deford, who along with Dan Jenkins was the most celebrated of the old Sports Illustrated writers, in an on-line interview:

Given the flux in the whole journalism industry, I’d be presumptuous to advise any young student quite what to do. It’s too fluid right now. All I could safely say is that if you have talent, you will succeed, but in what venue I have no idea. You got to be quick on your feet now and be instinctive in choosing the right journalistic path for you. And then it will probably require a switch somewhere down the road.

Nothing stays the same–the nature of business, art, the city. But that shouldn’t stop us from appreciating the great tradition of newspaper and magazine writing. The Star-Ledger has a wonderful, eight-part tribute to Jerry Izenberg’s 55 years in the business. Video clips are included along with Izenberg’s memory pieces. In the second installment, he talks about his mentor, Stanley Woodward, the famed sports editor for the New York Herald Tribune. (Woodward wrote a wonderful memoir, Paper Tiger, introduced by John Schulian. Roger Kahn devotes an entire chapter to Woodward in his recent memoir, Into My Own.)

Also, in case you missed it when it ran late last summer, here is Mark Kram’s poignant memoir piece about his father, also Mark Kram. The elder Kram was a gifted but troubled star writer for SI in the sixtes and seventies–his piece on the “Thrilla in Manilla” is widely anthologized:

What I remember now is his back, the way it dampened with an enlarging oval of perspiration as he sat with his big shoulders crouched over the typewriter. Steeped in piles of newspapers and assorted coffee cups corroded with tobacco ash, he labored amid a drifting cloud of pipe smoke in Room 2072 wrapping up a piece on the National Marbles Tournament, which would later be included in The Norton Reader. I remember him chasing away a young woman that day who’d come early for his copy. Even at 17 I had to laugh, because he used every second allotted to him by a deadline, be it an hour or weeks. He’d get up, jam his pipe into his pocket, and pace, up this corridor, down the other, light his pipe and end up back at his office, where his typewriter remained with the same piece of paper in it on which 12 words had been written. His editor Pat Ryan refers to this as “stall walking” — what jittery thoroughbreds do to calm down – but eventually that sweat and tobacco paid off in prose that was like slipping into a velvet boxing robe.

Managing editor Andre Laguerre unlatched whatever raw abilities Dad possessed. The legendary Frenchman did not care if he had been to Georgia for three years or even three hours; in fact, a “Letter from the Publisher” in March, 1968 played up the phony telegram he concocted at The Sun as the act of a resourceful imagination. Laguerre divined in him a deep reservoir of moody sensitivities that could swell into uncommonly seductive prose. That became abundantly clear as his work developed in the ensuing years in an array of sharply observed pieces, none better than his 1973 profile of the forgotten Negro League star Cool Papa Bell called “No Place in the Shade.” That story begins: “In the language of jazz, the word gig is an evening of work: sometimes sweet, sometimes sour, take the gig as it comes, for who knows when the next will be. It means bread and butter first, but a whole lot of things have always seemed to ride with the word: drifting blue light, the bouquet of leftover drinks, spells of odd dialogue and most of all a sense of pain and limbo. For more than anything the word means black, down-and-out-black, leavin’-home black, gonna-find-me-a-place-in-the-shade black.” Dad would come to think of that piece as his finest effort at SI.

But it would be his work on the boxing beat that would bring him acclaim. Down through the years, few in that Ruyonesque galaxy of unrepentant rogues were spared the sharp point of his critical lance, including Ali, his entourage, the new Madison Square Garden, and rival promoters Bob Arum and Don King. “Boxing is a world of freebooters,” says Mort Sharnik, who covered boxing with Dad at SI. “And in that realm Mark was looked upon with much apprehension.” And yet as cynical as Dad could be, I think Sharnik is on to something when he says that he was oddly naïve. “Whenever you told him something, he would draw on his pipe and cock his eye in this skeptical way,” says Sharnik. “But a true cynic would not have allowed himself to be drawn in by some of the questionable characters Mark did. In that way there was always some rube in him.”

Speaking of the old days, Bob Ryan edited The Best of Sport a few years ago, a good introduction to guys like Arnold Hano, Myron Cope and Ed Linn.

If you like that sort of thing…