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Tonight’s pitching matchup proved equal to the hype: it was Sabathia vs. Price, and neither ace gave an inch. Both went eight innings and walked two; I guess Sabathia gets a bit of an edge for allowing 2 hits – as opposed to Price’s whopping 3 – and striking out 9 men, compared to Price’s 4. But basically, for most of the game, nobody was hitting anything. Sabathia changed speeds and spotted his pitches precisely; Price’s fastball blew away the Yankee hitters, who for the last week or so (if not, in many cases, a bit longer) have looked old and tired and tonight looked even more so, although to be fair, most people look that way when facing David Price.

So why, after the game, did Joe Girardi say of the two aces, “both of them were tremendous” in the same flat, soul-crushed tones one might normally use to say, “my girl ran off with my best friend and took my dog with her”? Well, the Yankee hitters didn’t do any better against the Rays’ relievers than they had against Price, and with the score tied 0-0 and the game heading into extra innings, Girardi inserted Chad “Abandon Hope” Gaudin and Sergio “Pushing Your Luck” Mitre to pitch the 10th and 11th innings, respectively. The many viewers who pessimistically assumed that Gaudin would lose the game, particularly after he loaded the bases, were proved wrong when instead it was Mitre who allowed the big game-winning homer — to Reid Brignac, the first batter he faced.

Well, according to Joe Girardi’s testy and dispirited post-game press conference, David Robertson and Joba Chamberlain weren’t available (though why Joba wasn’t, having not pitched since Friday, I don’t know), and Mo (possibly because he looked so dreadfully un-Mo-like in his last outing?) was only going to be used in a save situation. Still, that doesn’t necessarily explain why Kerry Wood was pulled after one quick and easy ninth inning, or why Boone Logan only faced one batter, or why Curtis Granderson bunted against a righty to bring up… Collin Curtis. Coming on the heels of a series of brutal Yankee losses, this latest fiasco dunked New York into second place and left Girardi open to plenty of criticism.

Of course, the Yankees haven’t been making Girardi’s job any easier lately – questionable managerial moves are prone to be noticed and leaped upon much more often when the team of the manager in question isn’t hitting worth a good goddamn. And I’m quite sure Girardi didn’t call for two of his team’s most boneheaded plays: Jorge Posada getting thrown out trying to steal second in the fifth inning and, far worse, Brett Gardner getting thrown out trying to steal THIRD with two outs in the tenth. After the game Gardner apologized to his teammates, and in postgame interviews he looked like he wished desperately for the ability to melt into a guilty puddle of shame on the locker room floor, but even he could not really explain what he’d been thinking.

I’m not somebody who feels strongly about winning the division rather than going in through the Wild Card; I just want playoffs. But if the Yankees don’t start playing better, on both sides of the ball, it’s pretty hard to imagine them lasting long in October no matter how they get there. So here’s hoping they rouse themselves from their slump soon, because a beautifully kickass performance like the one C.C. Sabathia gave us tonight should not go to waste. And also because Joe Girardi sounds like he’s maybe three more bad losses away from taking a fungo bat and going after the next reporter who asks him about his pitching choices.

AP Photo

Well, that’s one way to limit Phil Hughes’ innings.

Like lions attacking a herd of wildebeests (or whatever it is that lions attack herds of), the Blue Jays have spent this series picking off the Yankees’ young – first Ivan Nova, who was good but not quite good enough to escape two nights ago, and now Phil Hughes, who was less good. The Yankees were behind the entire game and lost 6-3 but, thanks to the Angels’ 12-3 thrashing of the Rays, remain in a tie atop the AL East.

There’s been much discussion of Hughes’ unspecified innings limit recently, and so it would, in a sense, be nice that he pitched less than four innings tonight – except that he threw 106 pitches in those three and two thirds innings, his shortest outing of the year. They were fairly high stress, and definitely frustrating, as over and over again he got a batter to two strikes before eventually allowing a hit. According to Girardi after the game,  3.2 innings is still just 3.2 innings, but that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me. Neither does bringing in Javy Vazquez in relief – it would, except I thought the whole issue was he had a dead arm and needed rest, and I don’t see how pitching 4.1 innings on short notice is going to enliven said arm. I assume the Yankee trainers know more about this than I do, so probably it’s fine… but then again with an off-day tomorrow, why push your luck? The Yankees don’t necessarily need Hughes and Vazquez at their best to have some postseason success this year, but it’s hard to see them getting far without at least one of them. Anyway, the good news is Vazquez pitched well (maybe his arm is only mostly dead?), allowing just one run, on an Aaron Hill homer, and finishing out the game.

Meanwhile, Jays starter Brett Cecil is not this good – at least, not against any other team. As the guys at River Ave Blues point out, he’s now got a 1.64 ERA against the Yanks, and a 4.21 ERA against non-Yankees. Whether that’s because he’s doing something particularly effective against the Bombers, or an accident of small sample size, I can’t really say, but in any case he was effective again tonight, allowing seven hits and two walks, but limiting the damage to two runs over eight innings. The Yankees got two runs in the fourth, when Robinson Cano doubled and Marcus Thames, batting right behind him, homered; they tacked on one more in the ninth, when Eduardo Nunez singled home Austin Kearns. It was a short-lived rally, and the Yankees head into their needed off-day still perched on top of the standings, but a bit battered- Nick Swisher’s knee is hurting now, hence his absence from tonight’s lineup.

The Yankees still have two series to play against the Blue Jays, one home and one, the last of the season, back in Toronto. So you haven’t seen the last of these guys. Presumably the Yankees and their coaches will be watching a lot of Brett Cecil video between now and then.

I got tired just watching the Yankees’ rather epic pair of games in Texas, so I can only imagine how the players felt when they dragged themselves to the extremely hot and humid ballpark in Kansas City tonight. They were showing signs of wear – Nick Swisher was pulled late in the game with incipient heat exhaustion, as was the Kansas City center fielder – but the Yanks built a little lead and then clung to it for dear life, eventually staggering home with a 4-3 win. Of course, it probably helped that they were facing the Royals, who are now 47-68, but never mind.

Fun fact: in the seventh inning, Mark Teixeira faced Kansas City reliever Kanekoa Texiera, and flew out.

C.C. Sabathia was in near-ace form tonight, and by pitching to within one out of a complete-game Yankees win, he was exactly the horse the team needed. He flagged in the ninth, quite understandably, but prior to that he scattered his hits and gave up just one run, when Alex Gordon doubled and Mike Aviles singled him home. But that came in the fourth inning, and by then, the Yankees had earned themselves a little wiggle room – all of which they’d eventually need.

Curtis Granderson and Austin Kearns (!) were the main hitting stars tonight. As is often the case when a slumping player breaks out, much of the credit for Granderson’s turnaround seems to be going to hitting coach Kevin Long, who worked with the outfielder on some widely-publicized changes to his swing; but whether it’s related to his work with Long or not, Granderson seems to be returning to decency. His second-inning single scored Robinson Cano and gave the Yanks a lead they’d cling to til the end. They tacked on another in the third, when the much-missed Teixeira hit a sac fly that scored Derek Jeter, and another in the top of the fourth, on Austin Kearns’ homer. (Granderson hit a double in that inning too, for good measure, and walked once as well, just to show off). Their final and eventually crucial insurance run came in the seventh, in rather unexciting fashion, when Derek Jeter – that guy again – scored on an A-Rod groundout.

The bottom of the ninth was a stressful little mini-game in itself. When C.C. reached 110 increasingly laborious pitches, accompanied by an alarming amount of sweat and baserunners, David Robertson was called in to mop up with two outs and Royals on first and third. The last out played hard-to-get. Willie Bloomquist doubled in two runs, and suddenly it was a one-run game. Wilson Betemit, refusing even to ground out properly, instead ended up on first base. Finally, Jason Kendall, after a determined 8-pitch at-bat and numerous fouls, struck out and let everyone go off to bed. Robertson eventually got it done… and then did not punch any older relatives or, so far as I know, anyone else in the face, so the Yanks have that going for them.

The Yankees won last night’s game 7-6, but that’s kind of like saying the plot of The Sun Also Rises is “a guy watches some bullfights.” I really don’t know where to start with this particular thrill ride, which, around 10 PM, I thought the Yankees had absolutely no shot at winning. (I wasn’t far wrong). In fact, I didn’t really think they had a shot until they actually took the lead and put Mariano Rivera on the mound, and then right away the first batter he faced hit a triple and I still wasn’t so sure. But I’m getting ahead of myself here. They say when you don’t know where to start, you should start at the beginning.

The Yankees were facing Cliff Lee, who, in case you’d forgotten, is mind-bogglingly awesome. Since arriving in Texas he’s walked three batters – two of those intentionally. (Though why the hell Cliff Lee was intentionally walking anybody I can’t imagine). He’s allowed nine walks all season, which makes me think of Joe DiMaggio and that crazy 1941 season where he only struck out 13 times. I’ve had a platonic baseball-crush on Lee ever since he made that sick behind-the-back catch in Game 1 of last fall’s World Series and then shrugged it off with Steve-McQueen cool; I’ve also been looking at him as a bit superhuman, and so I didn’t expect much from the Yankees last night. Especially since Marcus Thames was batting third*.

And, against Cliff Lee, they indeed didn’t do much… except they had some good at-bats, and made him work (though of course not actually walk anybody), which is often really the only thing you can do when facing someone like Lee. The Rangers didn’t beat around the bush, starting their scoring in the 1st with a Michael Young homer, as Javier Vazquez continued to struggle with both his velocity and his location. The Yankees evened things up in the 4th, when Marcus Thames singled and A-Rod doubled him home and I thought, not for the first nor last time over a four-hour span, okay maybe I’ve been a little hard on Marcus Thames; but it didn’t take. The Rangers scored two more in the bottom of the inning (two-run Mitch Moreland single, off the glove of Lance “not Mark Teixeira” Berkman at first), and three more in the fifth (single, single, botched run-down, double, fielder’s choice, single), and when Javy slumped off the mound to make way for Sergio Mitre it was 6-1 and I was thinking about how I should frame the loss in the recap.

But Sergio Mitre was just fine, actually – 1.2 hitless, scoreless innings – and it turned out the Yankees were only mostly dead (“mostly dead is slightly alive!”). In the same way they used to have some success against aces like Pedro Martinez back in the day, they took a bunch of pitches, fouled others off, kept scuffling, and got Lee out of the game after 6.1 innings – which is, by Cliff Lee standards, quite early; as Michael Kay pointed out, Lee had pitched 8 innings or more in ten straight starts. The comeback trail began in the sixth, when Derek Jeter tripled –  seems like it’s been a long time since I wrote that – and scored on a rare Cliff Lee wild pitch, but I don’t think the Rangers were exactly quaking in their boots at that point. The next inning, though, things started to get a little interesting: Robinson Cano doubled, and Austin Kearns singled, hard, and when Austin Kearns creams one like that it’s a pretty good sign that Cliff Lee is probably starting to get a little tired. (It was 100 degrees in Texas last night, which couldn’t have helped any). Lance Berkman hit a ground-rule double, and then Brett Gardner singled, and suddenly it was a decently close 6-4 game. The Texas bullpen is very good, though, and the Yankees were relying on Kerry Wood for two innings, so I remained unimpressed except in a vague, it’s-nice-they’re-showing-some-fight-however-futile sort of way.

Like Sergio Mitre before him, Kerry Wood exceeded my expectations, although he did add a little spice, in the form of two straight singles in the seventh before he induced a Nelson Cruz double play. But he kept things from getting any worse, and so when Marcus Thames led off the 8th inning with a sonic boom of a home run off Frank Francisco – huh, perhaps I really was a little hard on that guy – it was suddenly a one-run affair. Cano and Posada walked… but then Austin Kearns, who giveth and taketh away, ground into a DP of his own and you had to figure that was probably that.

In the top of the ninth inning, Lance Berkman walked and, being rather less swift than a puma these days, Curtis Granderson came on to run for him. And he drew a lot of attention from the hard-throwing Rangers reliever of the moment, Neftali Feliz, but he still hadn’t gotten anywhere when Brett Gardner singled him over. Derek Jeter was getting ready to bunt (grrrrr), but Feliz — perhaps overcome with admiration for Jeter’s selflessness in being willing to sacrifice himself for his team! — threw a wild pitch and both Granderson and Gardner advanced, no bunt necessary. Jeter then bent over, picked a four-leaf clover, and hit a sneaky seeing-eye hopper of a single that came within an inch of being caught by both the pitcher and the second baseman before trickling into the outfield. Tie game. Nick Swisher struck out, but that brought up Marcus Thames, who singled off of Alexi Ogando, scoring Gardner and giving the Yankees their first lead of the game.

You know, it’s possible I’ve been a little hard on Marcus Thames.

Anyway, the one-run lead meant Mariano Rivera for the bottom of the ninth. I’d say he was looking for redemption after the previous night’s rare blown save but, really, Mariano Rivera doesn’t need any redemption; he’s got redemption coming out of his ears. He did, however, give everyone a bit of a start by immediately giving up a whopping triple to Elvis Andrus.

Michael Young flew out, just not quiiiiite far enough to score the run.

Josh Hamilton grounded directly into Rivera’s glove.

Vlad Guerrero took one whole pitch before swinging from his heels and sending the ball to Alex Rodriguez, who made a nice play and tossed him out by several entire feet.

If the Yanks and Rangers meet down the road in October, it could be quite a series. In the interests of being prepared, I recommend you start discussing blood pressure medication with your doctor sooner rather than later.

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*There’s no doubt that the Yankees miss Mark Teixeira – that lineup hasn’t been looking all that awe-inspiring the last few days. (Still, to the people who are actually upset that Teixeira is taking several days off to be with his newborn child and wife, I can only say: you’ll feel differently about this down the road, once you’ve matured a bit, and passed puberty.) Ken Singleton made the extremely good point that, as with the Bereavement List, when players leave for the birth of a child, their team should be able to call up a replacement. Teams would therefore feel less of a squeeze when a player like Teixeira does the right thing and spends a couple of days with his family, and there would be less pressure on the player himself to rush back immediately. Paternity leave: get on it, MLBPA.

Come on, what else could I write about during Shark Week?

Deep Blue Sea opens with an homage to and ripoff of Jaws, as do roughly 90% of all movies about dangerous aquatic creatures. Which is fitting, since Jaws impressed and traumatized me at a very young age and gave me a so far life-long fascination with sharks. I used to check over my shoulder in the deep end of swimming pools, looking for fins; I still to this day scan the horizon only semi-ironically if I’m in the ocean above my thighs. The idea of huge monsters in the murk coming at your vulnerable body from below… it still gets to me more than just about any other horror trope.

That’s one reason I started watching Deep Blue Sea when I came across it on TV for the first but certainly not last time, a decade ago. Another reason, I’m only slightly embarrassed to admit, is the early scene featuring Thomas Jane is a bathing suit:

Hello, ladies.

Deep Blue Sea’s set-up is pretty simple: rich and famous executive Samuel L. Jackson is threatening to shut down the research of driven scientist Dr. Susan McCallister (Saffron Burrows… what? Her hair’s pulled back and everything!), so she flies him out to her floating lab to demonstrate how close she is to curing Alzheimer’s using protein from shark brains. (Indeed, the film’s conceit that a drop of shark brain fluid applied to dead human brain cells will cause them to completely regenerate and spark to life in 6.5 seconds is perhaps its most ridiculous moment of all, which is really saying something in a movie where LL Cool J kills a genius shark with an oven to avenge his dead pet parrot.)

At the lab, far out at sea, we meet the weekend skeleton crew: neurotic engineer Michael Rappaport, dour researcher Stellan Skarsgård, pixie-ish researcher Jacquelyn McKenzie, comic-relief cook LL Cool J, spunky control tower operator Aida “Janice Soprano” Turturro, and macho shark-wranger and ex-con Thomas Jane. Naturally, a huge storm arrives, just as Dr. Saffron Burrows’ rushed research is coming to a head – and as the experimented-upon sharks are acting less and less like fish, and more and more like evil masterminds.

Well, wouldn’t you know it, the sharks’ brains have been genetically engineered to many times their natural size, which made them smarter, “as a side effect.” When the storm hits, they turn the tables on the lab staff in a hurry. Their first assault gruesomely takes out Stellan Skarsgård and causes a huge helicopter crash (take that, Megashark!) that severely damages and floods the lab, kills Janice Soprano, and sets the brilliant demon-fish free to stalk the significantly less brilliant human characters.

The following scene (SPOILER ALEEEEEEEEEERT!) is by far the best in the movie, and almost single-handedly elevates it from so-bad-it’s-good empty calories to something a bit more. This Samuel L. Jackson speech, and its abrupt end, genuinely startled me more than a movie had in a very long time, and in a fun, wry, knowing way.

Obviously Deep Blue Sea is hardly the first movie to kill off what the audience thought was the main character much earlier than expected – see Psycho for the most dramatic example, decades earlier. But Deep Blue Sea gives you no previous hints that it’s going to be that kind of movie. Everything has gone according to the rulebook, and suddenly the rulebook is set on fire. And to do it in the middle of a big, dramatic speech about togetherness and cooperation – that’s just awesome. Sure, working together to overcome obstacles is great and all, but massive, vicious genetically engineered predators with rows of razor-sharp teeth will trump any amount of community spirit.

Dr. Saffron Burrows takes most of the movie’s blame for causing all the trouble by pushing nature (and pissed-off mutant sharks) way too far in her single-minded pursuit of an Alzheimer’s cure. “What in God’s creation…” wonders Samuel L. Jackson. “Not His,” says Stellan Skarsgård, “Ours.” He is, naturally, the first to die, though really it’s as much because he’s a smoker as because of his blasphemy.

This is what happens when you smoke, kids.

So the movie (like so many before it) posits that the Doc brought this misery on herself and her friends because she played God, but I tend to disagree. I think if you can really find a cure for degenerative brain illness, and the price of that is a few terrifying evil mutant sharks, you damn well go for it; the unforgivable mistake of the Deep Blue Sea crew was, rather, surrounding huge unnatural killing machines with freaking mesh wire fences. (Jurassic Park teaches the same flawed lesson about human hubris. I mean, go ahead and mess with nature – just don’t keep your only backup generator on the other side of the goddamn Velociraptor habitat! Common sense, people).

Deep Blue Sea was directed by Renny Harlin, whose spotty record includes the mega-flop Cutthroat Island as well as the minorly entertaining hits Die Hard 2 and the Long Kiss Goodnight. No one would really confuse him with an auteur, but he knows how to direct action and he keeps things taut. Meanwhile, the screenwriters are no one of any distinction. But somehow the movie has a spark of life and ingenuity and just sheer joy in its own stupid premise that elevates it above most similar summer junk.

For example, I have to give the film full credit for its handling of the obligatory leading-lady-in-her-underwear sequence, which often, in these movies, comes with only the flimsiest of pretexts. Here Saffron Burrows, having gone back to her quarters in a staggeringly stupid fit of determination to save her research, is attacked by a shark in neck-high water, stands on a desk, and takes off her wet suit to reveal her bra and panties… then stands on said wetsuit for insulation and fries the shark with a loose electric cable. I just can’t argue with that reasoning.

Fair play.

In the end, this movie is both saved and cursed by its self-consciousness. That’s what allows the writers to play with the rules of the genre so effectively at times, but it also stops the film from ever being particularly affecting – it never really lets you forget that you’re watching a movie, and a silly one. And so as entertaining as it is, Deep Blue Sea is never all that scary, or sad, or uplifting. It will not distract you from your popcorn.

Just as the movie opened in Jaws’ shadow, it closes there too – with a huge shark exploding in a fountain of blood and flesh, and two exhausted survivors (though not, I have to admit, the two I initially expected). Deep Blue Sea isn’t one fourth of the movie that Jaws is. But it connects to that same primal fear… and then adds hot people in wetsuits, and all manner of explosions, and ludicrous scientific jargon, and an original LL Cool J track. And I have now watched it at least four times.

I had never heard James Shields reffered to as “Big Game James” prior to this afternoon, but the Rays starter didn’t give me any opportunity to snicker at it. Shields handily  outdueled C.C. Sabathia and led the Rays to a clean 3-0 win, and bringing them to within a game of the AL East lead. Sometimes I miss the Devil Rays of my youth.

The Yankees weren’t lifeless, but they only managed to scrape together 5 hits and, tellingly, one walk against Shields, while Sabathia was solid but not at his best – and it would’ve taken his best to compete against Shields, whose changeup baffled most of the Yanks all afternoon. New York wasn’t helped by Girardi’s odd choice to start Lance Berkman at first base over Mark Texeira, and the defensive downgrade cost the Yanks at several points, but given Shields’ great game it probably didn’t matter in the end. Meanwhile, Alex Rodriguez sat out today, to give him a mental and physical break, but I can’t really quibble with that call. And he made a dramatic pinch-hit appearance in the 7th… believe me, if he’d hit one out, you’d have heard about it. So that storyline continues, god help us, but at least Lance Berkman’s 0-for-his-Yankee-career slide ended a day after it began, with a sixth-inning single.

Sabathia chugged along steadily into the 7th inning, but after he climbed over 100 pitches Girardi pulled him for Newest Yankee Kerry Wood – who made a good first impression by striking out Evan Longoria with a nasty little curveball. I really hope one day I’ll be able to look at Wood and see a reliever with good stuff instead of a symbol of sky-high expectations unfulfilled, but I think it’s going to take a while. In the 8th Wood got two outs (thanks in part to Jason Bartlett’s bunting strikeout, which I imagine has to be one of the worst feelings in baseball) but also loaded the bases, and was replaced by… Chad Gaudin? A baffling decision in a pretty close game, if you ask me, which nobody did. But he struck out Reid Brignac, so no harm no foul, I suppose.

Shields came out after recording one out in the 8th, and was replaced by Chad Qualls; but even against Qualls, the bane of many a fantasy team this year (to say nothing of the actual Diamondbacks), the Yankees couldn’t do a thing. Lance Berkman grounded into a double play, and Qualls lowered his ERA to a shiny 8.15. It’s tough dropping a series to the team breathing down your neck in a division race, but the Rays are a very good team and the games were close- plus there’s a bit of breathing room in the Wild Card race – so there’s no reason for alarm. Still, if the Rays don’t scare you this year, you haven’t been paying attention.

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* I of course had, however, heard Lance Berkman referred to as “Big Puma,” which prompted me to head for baseball-reference.com and look up all the Major Leaguers who’ve had “Big” nicknames. It’s quite a list. By my count there have been no less than 17 players nicknamed Big Bill, and 18 Big Eds. In addition to the well-known Big Train, Big Unit, Big Mac, Big Papi, Big Hurt, Big Poison, and both Big Cats, there’s been Big Six, Big Bow, Big Donkey, Big Daddy, The Big Bear, Big Murph, Big Country, and more, including Big Ebbie, who also, to my delight, was known as “Steam Engine in Boots.” You’re welcome.

A Very, Very Resilient Little Muscle

“How the hell do I know why there were Nazis? I don’t know how the can opener works!”

One thing I like about Woody Allen is that, for the most part — and unlike so many of even my favorite movie directors — he tries to create complete, psychologically complex female characters. It doesn’t always work, but I appreciate the effort. Martin Scorsese, to pick just one example, has made some of my favorite movies ever, but no more than a handful of female character with more than two dimensions.

Mia Farrow, Dianne Weist, and Barbara Hershey star in Hannah and Her Sisters as Hannah and… her sisters, Holly and Lee. Hannah is married to Michael Caine’s Elliot, and her ex-husband is hypochodriachal comedy writer Mickey, played by — well, you’ll never guess. But Allen wisely casts himself here as a kind of comedic Greek chorus figure, and not the leading man. The sisters’ various relationships, with each other and with a number of different men, make up the movie’s many plot threads, particularly Elliot’s doomed secret affair with Lee. (Michael Caine is one of the very, very few actors who could pull off this role without leaving you loathing the character, although I still end up having less sympathy for him than Allen’s script seems to). The great ensemble of complex, distinctive, well-drawn characters is the real strength of Hannah and Her Sisters – one of my favorite Woody Allen movies after Annie Hall and Manhattan, and one that he clearly poured a lot of care into.

The movie is packed with cameos, and future stars in small roles – Julie “Marge Simpson” Kavner plays a producer on a comedy show that also employs, for one or two lines each, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Lewis Black, and John Turturro. Allen must have had one hell of a casting director. Sam Waterston plays a slimy-suave architect who dates both Holly and her friend April – who’s played by Carrie Fischer. J.T. Walsh and Daniel Stern make appearances, the sisters’ parents are played by the late, great Lloyd Nolan and Maureen O’Sullivan, and Lee’s pretentious older artist lover is the awesome Max von Sydow. A very very young Soon-Yi Previn even shows up at the end as a “Thanksgiving Guest”.

Woody Allen, even in his youth, was always something of a grumpy old man – he never warmed up to rock and roll even a little bit, and after complaining about Bob Dylan in Annie Hall, here he grouches endlessly about having to sit through the “noise” of a punk band. Everyone in this movie loves opera, jazz, classical music, fine art, and Cole Porter; only Diane Weist’s insecure cokehead listens to musical genres that developed since 1950. But if you can overlook those rather anachronistic character touches in a movie that’s otherwise very much of its 1980s New York setting, you find some very believable, recognizable people. No one in this movie is a villain; everyone is just trying to muddle through, with varying degrees of success. And Allen’s script is big enough to find some sympathy for everyone.

Much like Mia Farrow’s character in Purple Rose of Cairo, Woody Allen’s Mickey essentially has his life saved after a half-hearted suicide attempt by movies – in this case, the Marx Brothers, who convince him that even if life is meaningless and God nonexistent, we might as well try to enjoy ourselves while we’re here. I never found it especially convincing that he and a suddenly transformed Dianne Weist end up blissfully together at the end of the film (with her sister’s/his ex-wife’s blessing), but I do buy into the moral a bemused Allen expresses in the final scene – “The heart is a very, very resilient little muscle, it really is.”

In a way, it’s the same message Allen had for the audience at the end of Annie Hall – a message I like so much that when my dad asked me to read something at his wedding last month, that’s what I picked. We need the eggs.

Granted, all of this might be a little easier to fully embrace if Allen’s own private life hadn’t taken such a creepy turn in the 90s, but never mind; as is so often the case, you have to separate the man’s personal life from his creative one if you hope to ever enjoy a movie without conducting a moral audit of its director. Which is something that I think Allen, or at least the desperate movie-loving character he plays here, would entirely agree with.

Leeches; Orcs; Johan Santana’s recent talks with the Mets’ PR department; Abe Vigoda’s armpit; C.H.U.D.s; this guy; Newark; the 2010 Orioles; Don Mossi.

What do those things have in common? They’re all prettier than tonight’s steaming pile of an excuse for a ballgame. And yet, in the end… I wasn’t totally sorry I watched. That’s thanks to the go-ahead Curtis Granderson homer in the 10th inning, and Marian River’s ultra-dramatic white-knuckle save to preserve the Yanks’ 6-5 win. But, lord, you did not want to watch them making that sausage.

I began the evening feeling sorry for Dontrelle Willis – a fun, charismatic player who I loved watching in his prime, which feels like it was a long, long time ago now (…but then, the third inning feels like it was a long, long time ago now). An hour or two later I mostly felt bad for myself and anybody else still watching the slow-motion tragicomedy of errors well after 1 AM on the east coast. The fact that the Yankees eventually came back from their self-dug grave and pulled a win out of their caps made it more bearable, of course, but still, all traces of this game should probably be scrubbed from the archives immediately to protect the public.

You will, I hope, forgive me for not giving you a complete blow-by-blow of this game, but it’s late, I’m tired, I had to delete most of the writeup I had ready in the ninth, and this is a family website. Willis went just 2.1 innings, gave up two hits, and walked seven. It was excruciating to watch, and he left, head hanging, after walking Alex Rodriguez to force in a run. The fact that the Diamondbacks got out of that inning with the score tied at 2 is a testament to how sloppy the Yankees were playing all night – numerous outs made on the bases, often dumb ones; swinging at all kinds of things they shouldn’t be swinging at. By the end of the game the Bombers had amassed 10 hits and 13 walks (!) with six runs to show for it; early in the game that ratio looked even worse. Damaso Marte added some nice flourishes in the sixth inning with a balk and a wild pitch. Going into the ninth, the Yankees were down 5-4 and I was not exactly brimming with confidence, despite the reassuring presence of old friend Aaron Heilman on the mound.

“They play 162, and they can’t all be Rembrandts,” someone wrote to me on Twitter while I was bemoaning this festering eyesore. Which is true. But surely there’s plenty of middle ground between a Rembrandt and this, which is really more of a monkey-painting-the-cage-wall-with-its-own-feces sort of a game.

Or at least that’s what I was thinking before the ninth and tenth innings. It wasn’t a Rembrandt but maybe it was, I dunno, a lesser Basquiat or something. In the end, I was glad I’d stayed up for it – it certainly wasn’t dull. That said, as I wrote last night: just because you made it home okay, doesn’t mean it was all right to drive drunk and high on meth, you know?

—

Runner-up titles for this post:

This Game’s so ugly, it couldn’t get laid in a prison with a handful of pardons.

This Game’s so ugly, I took it to a haunted house and it came out with a job application.

This Game’s so ugly, even the tide won’t take it out.

2001: Thus Yawned Zarathustra

Before you freak out, let me assure you that I’m not saying 2001: A Space Odyssey is a bad movie. I’m not saying it’s not well-made, beautifully crafted, and culturally significant. I’m not saying it doesn’t have interesting, thoughtful things to say about human consciousness and technology and the nature of intelligent life.

I’m just saying I don’t like it.

I tried, I really did. I watched it in high school, and was ashamed to find myself bored. I watched it on the big screen in college, as a film major, and fell asleep. I watched it later in college – this time with the help of substances my friend was sure would help me “get it” – and fell asleep much faster. After loving Dr. Strangelove and Lolita I watched it one more time, just to make sure, because I felt my failure to embrace or even tolerate 2001 was one of my greatest failings as a film major.

I still don’t like it.

Partly this is just personal preference – the movies I love most tend to have involving, well-drawn characters and great dialogue, and even Stanley Kubrick’s most ardent admirers surely can’t claim that for this movie. I’m not especially visual, so while I can love and appreciate great cinematography or camerawork when I see it, movies like this (or for example, Solaris) which are almost entirely about their images just don’t tend to grab me, through no fault of their own.

But my issues with 2001 run deeper: I can think of very, very few films that take themselves this seriously. And there’s nothing wrong with being serious about art, but in my view 2001 crosses the line into pompous pretension early on and never makes it back. Any movie that begins with the chyron “THE DAWN OF MAN,” and is not a Mel Brooks comedy, is unlikely to hit the mark for me.

Can I remind you that this movie leads off with fifteen minutes of people in monkey suits hopping around and screeching. Fifteen minutes. God forgive me, but rewatching it today on YouTube in preparation for this post, all I could think of was the Star Wars Holiday Special and its opening 20 minutes, which are nearly entirely in Wookie, sans subtitles.

(more…)

Yes, I just used a Counting Crows lyric for the post title. It was the ’90s, I was very young, and this is like the 149th time the Yankees have played the Orioles this year — sue me.

C.C. Sabathia started out a little shaky, throwing too many balls in the early going and allowing too many hits by a team whose best hitter to this point is, probably, Ty Wigginton. This would be no big deal, except that C.C. Sabathia has been shaky a bit more than usual this year… but it hasn’t stopped him from beating the Orioles three times already in 2010, and it didn’t stop him from doing so again tonight. He eventually found his happy place, got a bit of support from his offense, and pitched 7 solid innings for a 4-2 win over Baltimore. I feel I’ve called the O’s”hapless” too often already since April, so tonight instead I will describe them as unpromising, unhappy and ill-starred.

By the end of the third inning, Baltimore had taken a two-run lead, on RBI singles from Garrett Atkins and Adam Jones; they’d hold it for five innings, the longest they’ve held any sort of lead since May 25, which, yikes. In the fourth inning Robinson Cano singled (this was his third straight game with three hits, bringing his average back up to .376 — and over .500 against the Orioles), then advanced on a throwing error and groundout and scored on Curtis Granderson’s sac fly. Two innings later, his bouncing single knocked in Mark Teixeira and tied the game at 2-2. In what was not exactly a powerful offensive explosion, Alex Rodriguez then scored on a Jorge Posada force out, but the Yanks had the lead and, by that time, C.C. Sabathia was in his mental cave communing with his Power Animal. After several strong innings he got into a tough spot in the seventh – bases loaded thanks to two singles and walk, with two out – and extricated himself by striking out Luke Scott. His final line: 7 IP, 9 H, 2 ER, 3 BB, 8 K.

New York’s one extra run came in the 8th, when Gardner pinch ran for Posada, stole second even though everyone in the building knew he was about to try and steal second, and scored on a sharp single by Francisco Cervelli. Joba Chamberlain had a relatively non-terrifying eighth inning (let’s get that ERA below 5!) and Mariano Rivera notched his 14th save with a perfect ninth, just because.

The Yankees will play the Orioles again on Thursday, and also, I assume, the day after, and the day after that, and the day after that, and every single day Michael Kay will discuss the declining attendance at Camden Yards, every day, oh god it will never end, never, not ever!

[Sob]

Ahem… deep breaths… A.J. Burnett starts next time out for the Yanks. I’m fine. I SAID I’M FINE.

Because “Bitter Smell of Vicious, Cynical Self-Loathing” Would’ve Been a Hard Sell at the Box Office

“I love this dirty town.” That’s the only line from Sweet Smell of Success that I quote on a regular basis, but only because I don’t quite have the presence to pull off “You’re dead, son. Get yourself buried.” For that, you need Burt Lancaster.

Sweet Smell of Success is one of the most brutal movies I’ve ever seen that includes almost no physical violence at all; it’s just funny enough to keep you from slitting your wrists afterwards, but with humor so cold and sharp you could use it for a razor blade. Anyone who thinks of the 1950s as a Norman Rockwell era of innocence should be sat down in front of this paean to cutthroat cynicism and soul-destroying ambition, then given a nice mug of warm milk and a hug.

Tony Curtis and Burt Lancaster, two good-looking actors with charisma to burn, have never been less attractive. It was a brave choice by both of them (and the studio was opposed to Curtis taking the role of smoothly sniveling Sidney Falco, a press agent who’s had all the empathy, dignity, and morality burnt out of him by a lifetime of humiliations), but I think especially by Lancaster. Sidney Falco is at least occasionally pitiable, but Lancaster’s Walter Winchell-esque monster J.J. Hunsecker is one of the least redeemable characters ever committed to film. (See his inclusion on the AFI’s list of all-time movie villains, although that is, now I look at it, one terrible list — if you think Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow were the “villains” of Bonnie and Clyde, you missed the whole damn point. And “Man” in Bambi as an all-time villain? Please. But that’s a whole separate post).

I first remember seeing Lancaster in Atlantic City, a favorite VHS rental of my dad’s (mostly for the line “You should’ve seen the Atlantic Ocean back then… it was really something.”). Later I saw him in From Here to Eternity and the cheesy fun western Vera Cruz, with his magnetic appeal on full display, and in the film noir classics Criss Cross and The Killers, where he was a dark, flawed, but handsome and charismatic figure. He is still my definitive Wyatt Earp in Gunfight at the O.K. Corral – which came out in 1957, the same year as Sweet Smell of Success, but takes place in a staggeringly different America. Lancaster was a gorgeous young man, and still quite an eyeful in his forties, but J.J. Hunsucker is too despicable to have even a shred of sex appeal.

Words are the weapons in Sweet Smell of Success (written by Ernest Lehman and blacklisted lefty Clifford Odets, and directed by Alexander Mackendrick), and J.J. Hunsecker is its serial killer; Freddy Kreuger and Mike Myers earn more viewer sympathy. This is all by design, of course, and the merciless screenplay doesn’t pull a single verbal punch:

It’s a dirty job, but I pay clean money for it.

The cat’s in a bag and the bag’s in a river.

Like yourself, he’s got the scruples of a guinea pig and the morals of a gangster.

Son, I don’t relish shooting a mosquito with an elephant gun, so why don’t you just shuffle along?

My right hand hasn’t seen my left hand in thirty years.

Match me, Sidney.

Those last three are Lancaster’s, and only a handful of the movie’s best. (For full effect, of course, the last one needs to be quoted while holding an unlit cigarette). According to rumor the script was brilliantly rewritten by Odets months past deadline, while he was in the midst of a nervous breakdown, and then rushed scene by scene directly from his typewriter to the set.

The movie was shot on location in New York, and I’m not sure you could say it has any affection for the city — really, I’m not sure you could say this movie has any affection for much of anything — but it certainly gets a jolt of jittery energy from its setting. The story could be transplanted to Los Angeles easily enough, I expect, but it wouldn’t be same without the rushing crowds its characters struggle past, or the packed bars and restaurants where glamor and power and desperation and slimy cunning are jostled together.

If Sweet Smell of Success has a flaw, it’s that the female lead, J.J.’s sister Susan, around whom the whole plot turns, is never really developed as a character, at least not compared to the devastatingly etched male leads. But on reflection I believe this is not really a gender issue – not because she’s a woman, but rather because she’s moral and kind. These are not the human facets that Sweet Smell of Success is interested in, and god bless it for that. Nice people are almost never any fun to quote.

With the messy explosion of baseball news last night – from Griffey’s retirement to Galarraga’s excruciating blown perfect game – it was a little hard for me to get my head into the Yankees’ 9-1 all expenses included Royal Caribbean cruise of a win over the Orioles (if memory serves, already the 123rd Yanks-O’s game of the season). Not that I’m complaining: watching the New York hitters tee off while Phil Hughes figures it all out is hardly the worst way you could spend a summer night, and you need to store up games like this one to keep yourself warm during the long cold winter.

I saw the Yankees’ lineup yesterday afternoon and thought: now that’s more like it. No Marcus Thames,  Randy Winn, Juan Miranda or Ramiro Pena; the Yankee outfield once again consists of Swisher, Granderson, and Gardner, as God and Brian Cashman intended, and Jorge Posada made it back from the DL faster than he goes from first to third (even if he’s only cleared to DH for now). But it was Robinson Cano, who’s been here all long, who led the way again, hitting early and often: his single in the second began a four-run rally that set the tone for the rest of the game, though ensuing doubles from Granderson, Gardner, and Swisher [contented sigh] did not hurt either. Cano homered in the seventh, too, with the Yankees in tack-on mode, his 12th of the year – and not surprisingly, he’s got more longballs against the O’s than any other team. Granderson, Swisher, and A-Rod all had themselves big games too, and Posada, so far, is moving better than an aging catcher with a fractured foot has any right to move.

Meanwhile, back on the mound, Phil Hughes looked comfortably in charge. After the game, he told reporters that he realized early on that his cutter wasn’t cutting it, and mostly stayed away from it thereafter – the kind of on-the-fly adjustment that, coming from a young developing pitcher like Hughes or, across town, Mike Pelfrey, warms my cold shriveled heart. His only notable stumble came in the sixth, when Ty Wigginton — the Oriole’s best hitter to date, which says quite a bit about the 2010 Orioles — singled in Miguel “Ty Wigginton is hitting how much better than me?” Tejada. (Perhaps in a misguided effort to overcompensate, Tejada would go on to get thrown out at home plate with his team down 8-1 in the eighth inning).

Chad Gaudin pitched the last two innings, allowing a few hits but no runs and lowering his ERA to… uh, 7.43, but hey, it’s a start. Have a good day, Banterers, and if you can’t manage that, at least be glad that you’re not Jim Joyce right now.

The Yankees limped into this series, but it hasn’t mattered much; if the Twins didn’t have bad luck against the Yankees, they wouldn’t have no luck at all. Minnesota lost two one-run games in the space of an evening – the second half of last night’s suspended Scoreless Wonder, which ended up a 1-0 Yanks win thanks to Derek Jeter’s solo home run (and lead-preserving nifty defensive play), and then tonight’s 3-2 duel, which saw Andy Pettitte prevail over Francisco Liriano. Mariano Rivera saved both games, and if he didn’t quite radiate moonbeams and rose petals and ride off the field on a pegasus like he normally does, it was at least a step in the right direction.

I figured on the bullpen being a minefield today (as just getting through nine innings has proved plenty tough enough for those guys recently), but David Robertson, Joba Chamberlain, and Mo staggered through to the end of the first game unscathed, and Andy Pettitte gave everyone a break tonight by throwing 72 of his 94 pitches for strikes — “attack-tastic,” as my friend put it — powering through eight relatively smooth innings with a little help from his good friend the DP grounder. Safe to say he’s showing no ill effects from his recent elbow issue (…well, safe to say, but I’m knocking on wood anyway, just in case). He hit a few speed bumps: in the first inning, when my guy Denard Span doubled, stole third, and was delivered to home plate by Joe Mauer; and in the seventh, with Delmon Young’s RBI double. Beyond that, though Pettitte allowed eight hits, he walked no one, struck out four, and was generally able to keep his anguished, muttered self-criticism on the mound to a minimum. When he induced Joe Mauer to hit into the Twins’ third DP of the night and end the eighth inning, his fist pump was downright Joba-esque.

With the Yankees still staging their community theater adaptation of Waiting For Godot, starring Mark Teixeira’s offense (“We are all born mad. Some remain so”), they patched together a few runs from the bottom of the lineup. In the fourth Francisco Cervelli went all speed-demon on the Twins, beat out a potential double play throw, and scored from first on Kevin “Strong Island” Russo’s double; Russo himself scored in the seventh inning when Brett Gardner tripled. (“Let us do something, while we have the chance! It is not every day that we are needed. But at this place, at this moment of time, all mankind is us, whether we like it or not. Let us make the most of it, before it is too late!”).

Each team had two runs and eight hits when Nick Swisher came to the plate in the top of the ninth to face Jon Rauch and his neck tattoos. The third pitch of the at-bat was a ripe fastball, and we can only hope its violent death was quick and painless, as Swisher absolutely creamed it. It soared over the right field wall and gave them a 3-2 lead that they held onto, thanks to a much more Mariano-like Rivera appearance than we saw in the first game. Take a deep breath, the Yankees won another series.

There was time to kill between doubleheader games yesterday, and half the Tigers’ roster – including the entire bullpen – killed it by giving themselves mohawks. A bored baseball clubhouse is a dangerous, dangerous place. We have only a small sample size to go on but, so far, advanced scientific analysis suggests the move may have backfired; in the nightcap, Phil “Phew” Hughes edged out Jeremy Bonderman in a tight duel, and a ninth-inning Yankee offensive renaissance gave New York a pleasant 8-0 win.

Hughes is probably due for a bad start one of these days – or at least a mediocre one – and for a little while I thought this might be it; he was getting good results, but laboring a bit, running up a high pitch count in the first few innings. Instead he got better as the game went on and ended up with another gem: 7 innings, 5 hits, no runs, 8 strikeouts, 1 measly little walk; he threw 71 of his 101 pitches for strikes. Phil Hughes is not messing around. Going by almost any statistical measurement (as well as by your lyin’ eyes) he’s been one of the best starters in either league this season – though of course he doesn’t have as many wins as MLB leader Tyler Clippard of the Nationals. You just can’t predict… oh, never mind.

Anyway, the Yankee hitters seemed to be nursing a hangover from their punchless day-game loss, but they did manage to eke out a couple of runs early on, which would have been enough by themselves – in the first inning, Alex Rodriguez singled in Brett Gardner, who was hitting second tonight (and ended up making that seem like a wise move with three hits, two runs scored, and RBI and the obligatory stolen base). And in the third, Bonderman walked Derek Jeter and lived to regret it when Jeter stole second and scored on a Mark Teixeira double.

But it wasn’t until the ninth that the Yankee batters really woke up, when old buddy Phil Coke stumbled and Alfredo Figaro couldn’t get the last two outs without considerable bloodshed. More than half an hour later, after a flurry of singles and walks, the game arrived at its misleading final destination of 8-0. It stayed that way in the bottom of the ninth, of course, because Mariano Rivera is back; and seeing him on the mound again (albeit in a very non-save situation) is deeply comforting in a primal sort of way. Mo’s in his bullpen, all’s right with the world, as the man said.

Notes:

-Jay-Z and Eminem’s visit to the booth in the 4th inning (to promote their planned stadium concerts in Detroit and New York this fall) was one of the most gloriously awkward only-in-America culture clashes I’ve seen in some time. I hope one day we get to watch Dallas Braden chat with Yo-Yo Ma. Or perhaps we can arrange a coffee klatch between Carl Everett and Philip Glass.

-Years ago an Eephus Pitch commenter pointed out that Jeremy Bonderman bears a distinct resemblance to Alice the Goon from Popeye. One day I may be able to watch him pitch without thinking about that, but today is not that day.

-It wouldn’t be an official game unless a Yankee strained something, so Nick Swisher is now day-to-day with sore biceps.

Nick Johnson is still coming to bat to the Miley Cyrus earworm “Party in the USA” (a song so insidious that even our own Cliff Corcoran, normally a pillar of taste and decency, could not stop humming it at Monday night’s Yankees game, until I threatened to stab him with a pencil). But I will not make fun of Johnson for that today, because he got on base all five times he came to bat, with a home run, a double, and three walks. The Yankees ended up needing every run they could scrape together, as seven innings of fairly stress-free cruising turned into a nail-biter thanks to Andy Pettitte’s early exit (with elbow stiffness) and the twitchiness of the Mariano- and Joba-less bullpen; New York held on by their fingernails for a 7-5 win and a sweep of the Orioles.

The Yanks are increasingly banged up, and today it was Battlecat Pettitte’s turn to leave the game early with stiffness. This came shortly after the fourth inning, in which he loaded the bases with one out, got Matt Wieters to strike out, walked in a run, and then wriggled out of further trouble with a Craig Tatum groundout – the quintessential bend-don’t-break Pettitte of recent years. Early reports are that his subsequent MRI indicated mild inflammation, which doesn’t sound too bad… but then, who knows – multiple members of the 2009 Mets left games with a mild inflammation and were never seen again.

The New York hitters never exactly bludgeoned O’s starter David Hernandez, but they knocked him around for a few innings, much like my friend’s cat behaves when it has a spider cornered. He wasn’t helped by a number of sloppy plays and lackadaisical baserunning on the part of his teammates, and neither, I’d wager, was Dave Trembley’s blood pressure. Nick Johnson hit a booming home run in the first; Nick Swisher homered in the second; Alex Rodriguez singled Jeter home in the third. In the fourth the Yankees put together a messy rally through walks, singles, a bunt and a fielder’s choice, knocking Hernandez out of the game and putting the score at a then-comfortable 6-1.

Sergio Mitre kept things under control for several innings after Andy Pettitte’s departure – and maybe earned himself a spot start if Pettitte needs to miss a game – before giving up a two-run homer to Ty Wigginton (ASIDE: I only just realized I have been incorrectly writing “Wiggington” for many, many years). Damaso Marte got New York out of the eighth, but Joe Girardi’s Reliever Roulette luck ran out in the ninth: Dave Robertson was awful, giving up two homers and swelling his ERA to 14.21, and Boone Logan could not staunch the bleeding, getting one out but walking two Orioles, and leaving the game with the go-ahead run at the plate. Finally, Alfredo Aceves came to the rescue and induced a fly ball from Wigginton. No harm, no foul, but nothing shakes up a baseball fan’s soul like a terrifyingly unpredictable bullpen — and for Yankees fans, pretty much any bullpen that does not have Mariano Rivera available qualifies as terrifyingly unpredictable.

***

Meanwhile, it seems Dallas Braden has still not recovered from the emotional scars he received when his pitching mound was stepped on several weeks ago. He also actually said the words “We don’t do a lot of talking in the 209,” with “the 209” apparently referring to Stockton, California. This is now officially the most inane, ridiculous baseball story we’ve had in quite some time, and I have to say I’m enjoying it immensely.

A couple weeks ago, the closed captioning at Yankee Stadium translated A.J. Burnett as “A.J. Burning Net,” and I decided that’s how A.J. would be known in my household from now on. It also prompted me to check for A.J. Burnett anagrams*, which turned up, among other gems, A Burnt Jet and Nut Jar Bet. Being a natural pessimist, I tend to fixate on Burnett’s unpredictability. But when he’s on, he makes you forget all about those kind of jokes, and tonight was one of those nights; the Yankees strapped themselves on the back of the sizzling-hot Robinson Cano and cruised to a 4-0 win over Baltimore, winning the series and getting back on track after a few minor early-season blips.

Cano continued what I like to think of as his “Oh, You Didn’t Know? You Better Call Somebody” tour of the AL with two more home runs, a double, and a killer defensive play in the third inning  – ranging way over to his right, then hurling the ball against his momentum right to Mark Teixeira’s glove, throwing out poor Nolan Reimold with one step to spare – that left A.J. Burning Net standing on the mound with his hands on his head in disbelief, and Derek Jeter staring at him like he’d just grown an extra head. He provided plenty of offense all by himself, but the Yankees also scattered 11 hits and a walk against Orioles pitching throughout the game; Baltimore starter Brian Matusz did pretty well in limiting the damage to three runs in six innings.

The Yankee scoring began in the first, when Jeter came home on Alex Rodriguez’s sacrifice fly. Cano’s first home run, a booming no-doubter, came in the fourth; he followed it with a double in the sixth, and Marcus Thames knocked him home with a double of his own. Finally Cano burned Alberto Castillo for his 8th homer of the year, and this one wasn’t cheap either (Ken Singleton: “I’ll have what he’s having”). We’ve seen Cano do this before for a few weeks at a time, usually later in the season, and obviously he’s not going to hit .407 all summer; but it’s spring, and for now I think I’ll just enjoy the many pleasant possibilities.

The Orioles threatened only mildly against Burnett, who eased through eight innings and 116 pitches (77 of them strikes) even without much of a curveball, and Mariano Rivera polished them off with 13 pitches, fava beans and a nice Chianti in the ninth. It all looked easy tonight.

—

*That same (very productive) evening, I discovered that Curtis Granderson has by far the best anagrams on the Yanks, including but not limited to: Corianders Strung, Transcends Rigour, Scarred Tonsuring, Crusader Snorting, Sardonic Restrung, Contrariness Drug, Unerring Cad Sorts, Graced Rosins Runt, and Rug Torn Acridness.

Also, one anagram for Michael Kay is: Lama Hickey. You’re welcome.

I remember watching Phil Hughes’ great, painfully cut-short start against Texas three years ago*, and thinking it was the most depressing 10-1 Yankees win I’d ever seen. Last night’s game was not nearly such a bummer: Hughes pitched the best game of his career, took his no-hitter into the eighth and was finally derailed by a comebacker bouncing off his glove, not by a key muscle making an unhappy popping noise. The Yankees won 3-1, and the Phenom/Phranchise nicknames would seem to be back in business.

Hughes walked Daric Barton on four pitches in the first inning, but put away the next 20 A’s he faced, 10 by strikeout, a career high. He got himself all the way into the eight inning with no hits and barely any drama – none of those dazzling close plays that Sabathia got in his no-hit innings of a few weeks ago. Everything was moving in exactly the way you’d want it to move, and while I don’t think his fastball topped 92 or 93 mph, that’s evidently plenty fast enough.

The Yankees scraped a pair of runs together in the fourth, when Alex Rodriguez tripled, and made it look like such a good idea that Robinson Cano decided to do the same immediately afterwards, later scoring on Posada’s groundout. Meanwhile, Hughes was being ostentatiously ignored in the dugout until the eighth, where with his pitch count still quite low and mostly made of strikes, he promptly allowed a hit to Eric Chavez. Well, kind of – the ball hit off Hughes’ arm and glove, and while he wasn’t hurt (PHEW… hey, can that be Hughes’ new nickname?), he also couldn’t find the ball for a few very long seconds. He regained his composure but as he reached 100 pitches with several runners on base, Girardi brought in Joba Chamberlain; one run scored before the Yanks could turn the game over to Mariano, who made things slightly more interesting that was strictly necessary in the ninth but, as usual, remained in control.

Pre-Mo, the Yankees got an ultimately unneeded but reassuring insurance run when Brett Gardner dunked a single into left to score Curtis Granderson (who, in case you were wondering, has been adjusting just fine to NYC off the field, too). Ken Singleton had just been saying, as Gardner faced a 3-1 count, “one more ball out of the zone and Jeter will come to the plate,” and I was thinking, hey, there is a chance Gardner will actually get a hit, you know. (I watched the Mets-Cubs game earlier in the evening and let me tell you, there is nothing like it to make you appreciate the Yankees’ lineup. The Cubs happened to win tonight with plenty of offense, but then they were facing Oliver Perez, and Lou Piniella still spent most of the game looking like he was watching someone strangle a koala… or, perhaps, like he would like to strangle a koala himself).

Anyway, as much as we all wanted to see a little history, it seems ridiculous to call this game disappointing. Hughes’ no-hitter interruptus didn’t bother me much, because it was just beautiful to see him pitch so well… and then to be available again in five days.

Now excuse while I go knock on all the wood within a mile radius.

—

*Holy crap, was that really three years ago?

Photo courtesy of the NY Yankees

The Yankees got their shiny new rings today, and they were just as subtle and understated as you might expect. But if the swelling music and the giant hunks of ice were not exactly humble, the ring ceremony itself still managed to be lovely – because of the presence of Whitey Ford and Yogi Berra, the glee of the crowd, and the obvious joy on the players’ faces as they jogged out to collect – and a perfect prelude to a 7-5 win.

The highlight was the reception for Hideki Matsui, now the Los Angeles Godzilla of Anaheim, who was given a ring, a huge ovation from the fans, and hugs on the field from all his teammates. I can hardly wait for the inevitable squawking about the horrors of fraternizing with the “enemy.” This may be the most amicable player-team divorce I can recall, and it was nice to see the uber-professional Matsui reap the benefits of that. Even the many Yankee-haters of my acquaintance find it hard to work up any bile for the guy.

(Less fuss was made over current Padre Jerry Hairston Jr’s presence, but I like that he flew all night to be in the Bronx for this moment – without even asking permission, because he was afraid someone might say no. It’s always nice to get a sense that the players care as much or more than the fans; it helps us feel less silly).

As for the game itself, it was about as low-stress as Yankees-Angels games ever are. Is there any Major League player we know better, at this point, than Andy Pettitte? How many times over the last few years have I tried to find a new way to describe a start like this? He got himself into trouble and then he got out of it; he was not dominant or overwhelming, but he was enough. Pettitte’s demeanor and persona do not seem to fit the word “crafty” (more like “aw shucks”), but he has gradually turned into one of those lefties; I wouldn’t necessarily say he strikes me as a deep thinker, but he knows what the hell — “the heck”, he might say — he’s doing. Today’s final line was six innings pitched and no runs allowed, despite five hits and three walks, aided by six strikeouts.

The offense was provided by Nick Johnson and Derek Jeter, who hit solo homers early on, and the Yankees tacked on gradually via a slew of infield singles, walks, and doubles, which never quite coalesced into a huge inning but came out to the same thing in the end. It was a good homecoming for Johnson, who came through in several key moments (and managed not to lose any limbs), as did Cano, an ultra-patient Swisher, and the usual suspects – Jeter, Posada, and of course Mariano Rivera, who saved Chan Ho Park and David Robertson from themselves with his usual easy flair.

So far, so good.

To fantasize, or not to fantasize?

I have an on-again, off-again relationship with fantasy baseball. The first few years I did it – 2003, 2004, somewhere around there – it was downright valuable; for someone like me who was used to just watching the Yankees and Mets, it forced me to familiarize myself with the mid-level players on other teams that I otherwise wouldn’t have known much about. Willy Taveras, whatever his flaws, will always have a place in my heart thanks to his unexpectedly non-sucky 2005 season; Aaron Harang remains a target of my misplaced resentment ever since his 6-win, league-leading 17-loss 2008 season crippled my Brooklyn Excelsiors. (Pretty much my favorite part of fantasy baseball, of course, is naming my team. My Little Lebowski Urban Achievers had a particularly successful run in the middle of the decade).

Too often, though, I’ve been That Person: the one who gets busy or forgetful or just frustrated with a lousy roster or bad luck, and abandons her team sometime in late July, allowing it to float gently to the bottom of the standings. Nobody likes That Person. But when I get stressed out, or just distracted by a shiny object, my fantasy team will be the first thing jettisoned. So perhaps, this year, I should leave it to those with more devotion, or at least longer attention spans. Maybe I can convince someone else to let me name his or her team.

Even if it may not be for me anymore, it would seem to go without saying that there’s nothing wrong with fantasy baseball. And yet, last night I came across Ron Shandler’s Huffington Post piece about a new fantasy baseball documentary:

There is a segment in the new documentary film, Fantasyland, when several esteemed baseball media veterans rail against fantasy baseball….

Mike Francesa of WFAN, Phil Mushnick of the New York Post and Hall of Fame writer Murray Chass are classified as “The Naysayers.” They think fantasy baseball is “foolish” and “ridiculous.”

(Mike Francesa, Phil Mushnik, and Murray Chass. You know that popular interview question, “Name the three people you’d most like to have dinner with”? This reads like the answer to the opposite of that question. Welcome to Brunch in Hell.)

Is fantasy baseball “foolish” and “ridiculous”? Maybe, but then, isn’t baseball itself? It’s no sillier than most of the things we do for fun. (Let’s pause here for a moment to allow Murray Chass time to Google the word “fun”). Obviously you can take a fantasy fixation too far – one of the cardinal rules of sports blogging is: No one cares about your fantasy team. But no one cares about the dream you had last night, either; that doesn’t mean it has no meaning for you.

Anyway, this got me thinking: is baseball really so different from fantasy baseball? I may not have a team this year, but I’ll watch a collection of players perform, and I’ll hope that they hit well and pitch well, and if they do better than another collection of players, it will make me happy, even though the tangible benefits to my daily life are nonexistent. Obviously, given the choice, I’ll choose flesh-and-blood baseball over fantasy baseball any day of the week, but let’s not kid ourselves: fandom is essentially irrational, except insofar as it gives us pleasure. Hell, at least in fantasy baseball, you can win some money.

If I were writing copy for the Yankees, I would probably be contractually obligated to refer to the “Yankee legacy” of Chien-Ming Wang and Hideki Matsui, and even Brian Bruney. But I’m not, so instead, like Alex earlier, I’ll just wonder aloud about if, how, and for how long the various exiting Yanks will be remembered.

Wang and Matsui obviously won’t be forgotten anytime soon – both made huge contributions to the Bombers, and had fascinating cultural implications as well (I think each, in their way, helped affirm every New Yorker’s belief that the world does in fact revolve around us). It seems that technically Matsui didn’t quite earn his salary – but in a metaphoric sense, he definitely did. And Alex already touched on the fabled porn collection and the excellent at-bat music, but I also think of the time Matsui broke his wrist on a freakish sliding-catch-gone-wrong, back in 2006. He managed to throw the ball in before collapsing in pain with his wrist held at a gruesome angle, but no sooner was he back from the hospital than he apologized, profusely, to his teammates, the Yankees, and his fans. For having a broken wrist. Try to imagine any American player ever doing that. Hell, try to imagine Ichiro doing that. Yes, I will miss Matsui… and to a slightly lesser extent I will miss his translator, Roger Kahlon, who (now it can be said) is one good-looking dude.

I’m not sure how much to eulogize Chien-Ming Wang’s New York career – because, who knows? He may yet be back, if not next season then somewhere down the road. He’s still young enough that if his shoulder actually heals properly, he could pitch for years and years. That’s the optimistic view of course, but even if he’s never again a top-flight starter, Wang’s isn’t a truly sad story: he threw two-plus excellent Major League seasons, which is a lot more than most people get to do, and became a truly massive and beloved celebrity in his home country, which ditto. But still.

Anyway, it seems pretty clear to me that in ten, twenty, or thirty years Yankee blogs (or whatever has replaced them) will still mention Matsui and Wang from time to time, but I wonder about another suddenly ex-Yank, Brian Bruney. I wrote enough game summaries featuring the guy that I’m certain I’ll remember the name, barring any degenerative brain diseases, plus I spoke to him a few times during my brief tenure in the clubhouse. How often will I think about him, though, as the years go by? And what about the average fan? The Yankees were able to snatch Bruney from the Diamondbacks because Arizona felt he had some attitude problems, was the word on the street back in ’06, and whether or not he ever really overcame those I couldn’t say; he had a bit of a meathead look about him, but a sensitive streak too.

Bruney had good games and bad, but it’s hard for me to think of any really iconic moments – there’s not really a Bruney equivalent of Chien-Ming Wang’s virtuoso performance against the Mets at the Stadium, or Matsui’s playoff heroics and walk-off homers. Such is the nature of middle relief, I suppose. I can’t pretend to have any strong feelings about the guy, but I spent so many cumulative hours watching him pitch that maybe I should. Is there anything bittersweet about the fact that he will likely be greeted among baseball fans, upon reemerging from the swamps of memory, mostly with indifference?

What do you guys think – in 2039 or so, will there be any spring days when your fancy lightly turns to thoughts of Brian Bruney?