Six straight wins, now three straight losses.
Here’s hoping Ivan Nova can–well, hell, here’s hoping the Yanks score some runs.
1. Gardner CF
2. Suzuki RF
3. Cano 2B
4. Hafner DH
5. Almonte LF
6. Overbay 1B
7. Nunez SS
8. Cruz 3B
9. Stewart C
Never mind the heat:
Let’s Go Yank-ees!
Over at River Ave Blues, Mike Axisa rounds up the latest Yankee-trade gossip.
Stephen Rodrick is one of our finest magazine writers and this spring he published a compelling memoir about this father, The Magical Stranger. Check out book excerpts in the New York Times; Slate, and a nice long one in Men’s Journal. And visit The Magical Stranger website.
I had the chance to talk with Stephen about the book recently. Here’s our conversation:
Q: As a magazine writer you are used to dropping in on a subject and then you’re out. What was it like having to live with this material for a long period of time?
SR: Well, for my sanity and finances I kept my hand in the magazine game writing three or four pieces a year while reporting the book. That gave me some much-needed distance from all the heaviness that permeates the book. I remember I was writing the chapter on re-creating my dad’s accident and was sinking into the pit of despair, and next thing I knew I was in Malibu with Rick Rubin as he dodged the pot smoke from the guitarist of System of the Down and brought his own eggs to a restaurant before going to work out with the cranky doctor guy from Scrubs. The same thing with the Lindsay Lohan/Canyons story, I just returned from the Gulf where Tupper was struggling through his last cruise and we watched Iranian ‘fishing’ boats shadow the USS Lincoln’s moves through the Gulf. I flew off back through the protests in Bahrain and a few weeks later I’m in the back of Lohan’s Porsche as she flips off the paparazzi in Santa Monica. They were nice Fellini moments to break up trying to decipher the precise speed that my dad’s plane hit the water before disintegrating.
Q: Were there any memoirs that you read, and particularly liked, before writing yours?
SR: I was drawn to James Salter’s Burning the Days because he was a combat pilot back in the 1950s and wrote beautifully about the flying life. On the flip side, Hanif Kureishi’s The Buddha of Suburbia is a novel that reads like a memoir and I’ve read that a half-dozen times. The two couldn’t be more different, but they both share a certain simplicity in the language that I loved.
Q: Have you always felt that this was the story one day you were destined to tell?
SR: I don’t know if I felt I was destined to write it, but it had been gnawing at me for years and i just didn’t feel I had the emotional strength to write it in the way I knew I wanted to do it. The final kick in the ass, was VAQ-135, my Dad’s old squadron, was phasing out the Prowler, his old plane, and I knew it was now or never if I wanted to follow his old squadron flying his old plane. They even got me up in a flight, which was one of the most frightening and meaningful moments of my life even if I did boot a spectacular yellow fluid into my barf bag.
Q: How did you arrive at the narrative structure for the story, shifting between your story from childhood through the present, with that of Tupper and the current Navy?
SR: It just sort of happened naturally, I’m not a big outliner, but I knew the chapters I wanted to write and they somehow clicked into place. I know I wanted to start at both of our points of entry: For me, the day my father was killed marked an obvious demarcation in my life. For Tupper, it was the day that he took command. From there, things sort of tumbled out naturally going back and forth between my journey and Tupper’s. I was hoping the reader would be able to see what life was like from the two perspectives: The son left behind and the father trying to do his job.
Q: Early in the story you talk about being described as “the magical stranger” by a friend who says that you have this remarkable ability to adapt to social situations and put people at ease.
SR: Yeah, as a magazine writer, you’re always the new kid, you don’t know where the bathrooms are etc. I don’t put on a persona when I go and talk with people; I’m just me, just a paying more attention me. With very few exceptions, I’ve been blessed to write about men and women I find fascinating so I don’t have to fake it.
Q: As a military kid you moved around a lot, always being the new kid. Is that charm, for lack of a better word, the ability to get people to feel comfortable, something that’s conscious?
A: That’s a really good question. Is it a nature or nurture thing? I was always the smartass from the start, but I don’t know if it was just the nature of my personality or part of always being the new kid and realizing that the best way to ingratiate yourself is to get people either laughing with you or laughing at you, whichever one doesn’t really matter.
Q: Has it ever gotten in the way of you forming intimate relationships–not with subjects so much, as friends, family?
SR: I’m not sure. There’s a restless nature in me that doesn’t always mesh with every-day life. I think the key is finding like-minded people who understand that and still love you anyway. I think one of the great things about doing the book was finding out that my purportedly straight-arrow dad was a troublemaker in his younger days. I’d always felt with my personality that I was an alien in my own family and a massive disappointment. I found a diary he kept when he was thirteen, the age I was when he was killed. And sure, he’s serving mass and getting scholarships, but he’s also getting called a punk by the nuns and hitchhiking throughout New England as an eighth grader. I went to his 50th high school reunion and a friend of his told me: The stuff Pete cared about, he was the best and smartest kid I ever knew, the stuff Pete didn’t care about he didn’t give a damn about and he’d stare out the window for the entire class. And that was gratifying to me because I’m sort of the same way. I found a precious connection that I never knew was there and eased my burden of never feeling like I could measure up to him. It’s like he was a statue on a pedestal that magically walked off it and put his arm around me and said, “Son don’t sweat it, I’ve done some dubious things. It’s ok.” There’s never been a man more excited that his dad was a teen fuck-up than me.
Q: You also say that it was your father who was really the magical stranger. How did you fantasize how things would have turned out had he not been killed?
SR: Well, there’s the fantasy and the reality. The fantasy is he would of came home and we would have probably moved to DC and he would have kicked me into shape and I would have ended up at Georgetown or one of the Ivies and gone on to be president of the United States. The reality is he was a devout Catholic while I was distancing myself from Catholicism quickly before I hit twenty. We probably would have fought over that. So, you just never know how it could have been. But I’d pay any price to have the chance to find out.
Q: You’re tough on yourself when you describe yourself as a kid. Now that the book is finished, have you let go of any of the harsh judgment?
SR: Ha! I wish. I think it’s hard to shake a childhood where everyone is constantly disappointed in you. Whether it’s a priest—later busted for pedophilia—telling you that “you’re the man of the house,” and then not stepping up or entering high school with one of the highest board scores and the vice principal telling your Mom at graduation that “Steve was the student with the most potential who did the least with it.” (Thanks Ms. King!). It’s hard to shake that even after having success as an adult. I still see myself as inherently lazy while my wife sees me as a workaholic. But I’m trying to give myself more of a break. Sometimes, I tell myself, Hey, you lost your Dad at thirteen when you needed him most and you might have stumbled, but you didn’t fall. You still turned out ok. You’re a man your father would be proud of. (Well, he wouldn’t be proud that I hate the Red Sox, but most things). I try to own that as much as I can.
Q: Did you emphasize your difficulties in the book for the sake of a dramatic arc?
SR: Nope. The one thing I wanted to do with my story and my family story and Tupper’s story was to keep it simple: This how this happened. This is how we dealt with it. One thing I can say is I lived this life, not just my own but Tupper’s life for three years. You can criticize my approach as artless, but I’ve never had much time for grandiose set-ups, faux Faulkner hand wringing, or 2000 words of throat clearing before you get down to the task at hand. To me, this is what my life and the life of the others I wrote about really were like, good and bad, dangerous and idiotic.
Q: I was compelled by how your family dealt with things by not dealing with them—the Rodrick way. When you approached your mom to talk about your father you discovered that you’d both avoided it in order to spare the other person’s feelings. Yet your mom seemed willing, appreciative even, to share her memories. Has your relationship for the better?
SR: It has. We sort of had this standoff for decades where she thought I didn’t want to talk about my father and she thought I didn’t want to talk about him. It really took me writing the book for us to breakthrough that wall. So thank you to the publishing world.
Q: How did she like the book?
SR: Funny story. My mom is the only person in the book that I let read it in galleys. I went to see visit her in Michigan and stayed with my sister about 20 miles away. After she had the book for a few days, she told me she had read it and told me to come over for lunch and we could talk about it. I arrived, very nervous and sweaty. But she told me she liked it and that she was very proud. I was so relieved; we watched the Lions lose, had lunch and took her dog for a walk. It was perfect. I drove back to my sister’s and spent about 24 hours in a state of euphoria, blasting their stereo and dancing around in my boxers. But then my sister came up for work and just shook her head at me and said, “You’ve got to go and talk to mom again, she’s bitching about the book all over town.” (Mind you, all over town would be maybe five people).
I drove back over to her house with a single Xanax in my jean pocket not sure if it was for her or me. She let me in and said, “I don’t want to rain on your parade, but I come across as a bit of a bitch in the book.” I told that wasn’t other people’s take, but she said “It’s not anything you say isn’t true, but there’s no mention that even in the worst of the times, I kept you fed, washed your clothes, and car-pooled us all over town.” And she was absolutely right; I’d fallen into a somewhat myopic well on that subject. I was happy to add a few lines to the book to make it clear, it was the least I could do. My mom is a sweetheart who was left with three kids at 36, one who was a constant pain in the ass—that would be me. She did the best she could and none of her children were lost. We’re all doing pretty well and that’s a testament to her.
Q: I think you’re fair to your mom. What I found moving was that she apologized to you for being so hard on you back when you were a kid. To me that’s the real takeaway—parents do the best that they can.
SR: That’s it exactly. The Go-Betweens have a song called “Devil’s Eye” that has a line that goes “Sometimes, we don’t come through, sometimes we just get by,” and that. I think, is pretty true of the human condition. Saying you’re sorry and forgiving make the world go round. And Chipotle.
Q: You don’t really mention it in the book but did you seek out father figures, mentors, or just older men to hang out with as you’ve grown up?
SR: No, not really, probably to my own detriment. I know this sounds like something out of a cheddar voiceover in a Western, but I’ve always found more comfort in the company of women than men. Maybe it’s not surprising since I grew up with my mom and two sisters, but there it is. Not having a mentor professionally probably has hurt me at different points, but it’s also saved me from idol worship, which might be an even tradeoff.
Loudon Wainwright has a great song “One Man Guy,” that his own children, Rufus and Martha, sing probably to taunt him a bit. (My ex-wife hated that I loved it.)
The solo life that Loudon’s raves about as a young man comes across as sad in middle-age so I’ve made an effort to reach out and make more dude friends. But they’re all equals–Fed Ex delivery guys, Navy pilots, book editors–no one that I put on a pedestal as a mentor. I think part of that is because I always had my father on that pedestal, there wasn’t room for anyone else.
Q: It makes sense about being more comfortable around women, and not having room for mentors with your father looming so large. Have there been other magazine writers that, if you haven’t worshipped, then admired? Both in creatively and just how they conduct themselves?
SR: I fell in love with magazines as a kid reading Sports Illustrated, all those bonus pieces week-after-week. Frank Deford’s byline is the first one I distinctly remember. That’s not a bad one. His pieces are not-flashy, but funny and human. That’s something to shoot for.
Someone gave me Pat Jordan’s first memoir, A False Spring, and I’ve read it many times. I finally met him a few years back when I was in Florida on a spring training story and a friend suggested I meet Pat so he could finally tell me the difference between a curve and a slider.
I went to his house in Fort Lauderdale. We had a drink and either he or his wife was packing heat. There were dogs and birds screeching and Jordan kept telling me, “Get out of New York, move to Florida, you can live on 65 grand here, make 65, you’ve made your nut.” I was like “What is this nut you so speaketh about?” We went out for dinner and I think New York Magazine ended up buying a take-out steak for their dogs. And I thought, Now, here is a guy I can look up to.
Q: That’s great. In the book, you talk about sports and politics being a big deal for you as a kid but only touch on how music impacted your life. When did it become a major part of who you were?
SR: I’ve got a big weakness for the line of tart, clever British songwriters from Ray Davies to Paul Weller, to Damon Albarn, to Pete Doherty. Oh The Beatles aren’t so bad. My love of music started as a kid listening to transistor radio on my back delivering newspapers. I remember hearing Supertramp’s “Take the Long Way Home” at 12 or 13 and going ‘oh wow, this song isn’t a happy one. Guy’s talking about being the joke of the neighborhood, what he could have done with a little more time, and that his wife thinks he’s gone insane. And that was a Top 40 song! I loved that you could tell a story in three to five minutes. I love the economy of language you need to write a great pop song.
The older I get the more I listen to it as I write to set a mood, if I need little anger/outrage I go with The Stones’ “Monkey Man” because of the great marimbas at the beginning, the swaggering guitars, and the bad/sublime lyrics: “I’m a flea bit peanut monkey, all my friends are junkies. That’s not really true. I’m a cold Italian pizza I could use a lemon squeezer.” He’s an animal an unreliable narrator, and then pens worst line ever. Genius!
Q: “Monkey Man” is one of my all-time favorites. What were you listening to while you wrote the book?
SR: Half the World Away by Oasis. ‘So here I go, still scratching around in the same old hole, my body feels young, but my mind is very old,’ was sort of my personal motto for the book along with another line, “I’ve been lost, I’ve been found, but I don’t feel down.” ITunes says I listened to the song 397 times. Perhaps that is too much.
Q: What was the reaction from the military guys you hung with after the book came out?
SR: I’d say 99% of them loved it and loved the Catch-22 tales I tell of squadron life. Of course, they’re human and they all wish I’d left the story about the time they buzzed Midway Island causing an ecological furor or sprinted across an Army base in Japan just in a kimono hoping to thank the base CO for his hospitality at 4am in the morning out of the book. But they’ve been so supportive, I consider myself lucky to have these nuts in my life.
Q: Beyond that, what has been the response from military families that you don’t know to the book?
SR: I’ve got some great notes on my website and people coming up to me at readings and saying, ‘I lost my dad in a helo crash when I was twelve and your book said all the things I couldn’t say.’ That means more to me than I can say.
Q: How do you feel—exhilaration, relief, let down?—now that it’s done?
SR: Well, like most of life it has been alternately spectacular and heartbreaking. The friends and family that have come up to me at readings and written to be about my Dad makes me feel closer to him than I ever felt possible. But there is a bit of postpartum depression that sets in when your book is done. Should I have spent another year on it? Should I have spent a year less on it? They’re no greater second guessers than authors. Well, except for Stephen A. Smith. I love that guy.
Q: What does it say about the world that you can spend three years on a book but one quote of Serena Williams saying something dumb and that’s what people focus on?
SR: There’s not a lot you can do about it: She said it, it exploded, and the rest of the story has sort of have been forgotten. That happens, but it’s frustrating because I think there’s a lot of stuff in the story that paints her as a real, live human trying to figure life out. But that’s the nature of the business. It’s all the nature of modern life if you search my name on Nexis—not that I would do such a narcissistic thing!—you’ll find eighty or ninety mentions of the Serena and Lohan pieces, and maybe five or six on my book. But hey, THAT’S SHOW BUSINESS.
Q: You do a lot of magazine stories on jocks and entertainers. Access is so difficult to come by these days. How do you work around the restrictions?
SR: That’s a simple one: unless I can get enough to spend enough time to write about anyone—navy pilot, tennis player, independent film festival guy– where I feel like I have a sense of who they are, then I’ll pass on the story. I’ve only done two or three profiles based on a single sit-down interview and I hated it. I know there’s a whole genre of magazine profile writing where the guy–and it’s always a guy–tap dances for 2000 words before you get a snippet of the guy he’s writing about. It’s like a 30-second commercial where you don’t know what the hell they’re selling until the tag line at the end. I’ll tell my editor to cut the story from 4,500 to 2,500 words just so I don’t have to play Three Card Monte for half the piece. I want to write ‘this is what the person was like from observing him and watching him in action not ‘this is what the person is like in my fantasy relating to my childhood in the coalfields of West Virginia.
Q: Last one. I wonder, do you still feel the same restlessness now that you did when you were a kid or even in your 20s?
SR: I do, but in a different way. Now I just want to have two residences, down from the four or five of a decade ago. I’d love someday to own a summer place up in Anacortes, Washington where the book is largely set. It is so goddamned beautiful and it’s 58 degrees and misty which is my kind of weather. It’s strange, I only lived there from seven to thirteen, but I feel that place is home deep down in my bones. I remember being in Dublin once and I heard some teen buskers playing this beautiful song “Learn to Be Still” and I was struck: That’s exactly what I need to do: Learn to be still. I gave them money and had them play it again. A little later, I found out it was an Eagles song. I took that as an ominous sign and kept moving.
Q: Ha. So, what’s next?
SR: Therapy.
I went to the game last night with a longtime Banter reader. I’d never met him before but he was in town, had tickets, and was kind enough to invite me. We were joined by a childhood friend of his who was also in town.
We sat in the sky down the left field line. It was the kind of muggy that you just have to give yourself over to, which in some ways is what it’s like following this year’s Yankees. (Resistance is futile.) By the second inning, my pants were clinging to my legs and I was already dreaming of the shower I’d take when I got home.
The Yankees loaded the bases against James Shields in the first inning but only scored one run, the only one they’d score all night. They managed just two more hits so it was another one of those nights, an admirable loss for C.C. Sabathia who went the distance, gave up two solo homers and another run late as the Royals won it, 3-1.
My favorite part of the night came as an unspoken moment of recognition between fans. So we’re watching the game and talking and our we’re involved in our conversation when Luis Cruz, playing third base, took a step to his left and dove for a ground ball. He snagged it and our conversation was interrupted by all three of us spontaneously shouting, “Ooooooh!” We exchanged high-fives, our only such celebration of the night, and then went back to talking.
Those shared instincts were enough to make me feel close to two guys I’d just met.
The loss seemed inevitable but a surprising number of fans stayed at the game til the end. It was a weeknight, broiling hot, but I got the sense that people wanted to linger, they didn’t want to leave the ballpark yet.
When it was over we parted ways and I was pleased to have made two new pals. Outside, on the street, people cluttered together and you could here shouts of “Water, one dollar, one dollar, one dollar, water.”
I took a few pictures.
Across the street from the new Stadium is a ball field where the old stadium used to stand. There was a fast pitch softball game going on and fans stopped to watch.
The good news: C.C. The bad news: James Shields and the gluten-free Yankee offense.
1. Gardner CF
2. Suzuki RF
3. Cano 2B
4. Hafner DH
5. Almonte LF
6. Overbay 1B
7. Nunez SS
8. Cruz 3B
9. Stewart C
Never mind the carbs:
Let’s Go Yank-ees!
“The Artist’s Studio in the Afternoon Fog” By Winslow Homer (1894)
Over at SB Nation Longform, here’s Jorge Arangure Jr on Brooklyn’s Field of Dreams:
In East Brooklyn, carved out among an urban dystopia of car washes, donut shops and fast-food joints sits an unlikely baseball field, the main field at City Line Park.
Although no one will mistake it for a professional field, the surface is almost immaculate. The infield dirt is well groomed and the foul lines are painted in perfect symmetry. In stark contrast to the dull grays of the surrounding streets and concrete sidewalks, the grass is a lush, rich green.
As much as a baseball diamond cut into a cornfield in Iowa, its presence here seems out of place. Yet if that place is known as the Field of Dreams, then surely this park in Brooklyn, at the corner of Atlantic Ave and Fountain Ave., is the Field of Broken Dreams.
Writing in the New York Times, here’s Oliver Sacks on the Joy of Old Age:
Eighty! I can hardly believe it. I often feel that life is about to begin, only to realize it is almost over. My mother was the 16th of 18 children; I was the youngest of her four sons, and almost the youngest of the vast cousinhood on her side of the family. I was always the youngest boy in my class at high school. I have retained this feeling of being the youngest, even though now I am almost the oldest person I know.
I thought I would die at 41, when I had a bad fall and broke a leg while mountaineering alone. I splinted the leg as best I could and started to lever myself down the mountain, clumsily, with my arms. In the long hours that followed, I was assailed by memories, both good and bad. Most were in a mode of gratitude — gratitude for what I had been given by others, gratitude, too, that I had been able to give something back. “Awakenings” had been published the previous year.
At nearly 80, with a scattering of medical and surgical problems, none disabling, I feel glad to be alive — “I’m glad I’m not dead!” sometimes bursts out of me when the weather is perfect. (This is in contrast to a story I heard from a friend who, walking with Samuel Beckett in Paris on a perfect spring morning, said to him, “Doesn’t a day like this make you glad to be alive?” to which Beckett answered, “I wouldn’t go as far as that.”) I am grateful that I have experienced many things — some wonderful, some horrible — and that I have been able to write a dozen books, to receive innumerable letters from friends, colleagues and readers, and to enjoy what Nathaniel Hawthorne called “an intercourse with the world.”
It’s not so much that we’re watching a non-gluten Yankee offense, that would imply trying to be healthy for the sake of winning. Maybe something like what George had in mind with his misbegotten Bronx Burners project in 1982 (never mind power, we want speed). This Yankee team is more like offensive crudite: Zoilo, Ishikawa, Romine, Luis Cruz, Alberto Gonzalez. There’s just not much there. So you can’t blame them entirely when they’ve got situations set up nicely but don’t follow through. Last night the most dramatic scene came in the 9th with the Yanks down 5-1. They loaded the bases with nobody out and then the next three hitters struck out and the game was over.
That’s just the pill we’ve got to swallow right now.
Final Score: Royals 5, Yanks 1.
[Photo Via: Cookthink]
It’s Phil Hughes, hot weather, and the some sort of theory that says Hughes just can’t continue to pitch well.
Here’s your no-frills lineup:
Brett Gardner CF
Zoilo Almonte LF
Robinson Cano 2B
Travis Hafner DH
Vernon Wells RF
Travis Ishikawa 1B
Luis Cruz SS
Alberto Gonzalez 3B
Austin Romine C
Never mind the humidity:
Let’s Go Yank-ees!
[Image Via The Libertine found at This Isn’t Happiness]
Second batter up cause the first got served.
Here’s Lou Reed on the new Kayne West album:
Kanye West is a child of social networking and hip-hop. And he knows about all kinds of music and popular culture. The guy has a real wide palette to play with. That’s all over Yeezus. There are moments of supreme beauty and greatness on this record, and then some of it is the same old shit. But the guy really, really, really is talented. He’s really trying to raise the bar. No one’s near doing what he’s doing, it’s not even on the same planet.
People say this album is minimal. And yeah, it’s minimal. But the parts are maximal. Take Blood on the Leaves. There’s a lot going on there: horns, piano, bass, drums, electronic effects, all rhythmically matched – towards the end of the track, there’s now twice as much sonic material. But Kanye stays unmoved while this mountain of sound grows around him. Such an enormous amount of work went into making this album. Each track is like making a movie. Actually, the whole album is like a movie, or a novel – each track segues into the next. This is not individual tracks sitting on their own island, all alone. Very often, he’ll have this very monotonous section going and then, suddenly – “BAP! BAP! BAP! BAP!” – he disrupts the whole thing and we’re on to something new that’s absolutely incredible. That’s architecture, that’s structure – this guy is seriously smart. He keeps unbalancing you. He’ll pile on all this sound and then suddenly pull it away, all the way to complete silence. And then there’s a scream or a beautiful melody, right there in your face. That’s what I call a sucker punch.
Guest Post
By Peter Richmond
Not that Mark Sanchez dancing with Alana (a former “bottle service girl” at the San Diego club Voyeur) and Janna (a “socialite,”) wasn’t the best sports-video clip of a really slow day last week, although I was disappointed at the glaring absence of Katie, Jessika, Jenna, Nikki, Emi, Danielle, Krista, Gina, Ashley and the rest of the Jets Flight Crew 2013 swimsuit wall calendar gang. What brought me down was the flashback.
Last time I spoke to EK was when we were passing each other in the hallway at school in June 2008. She was a ninth-grader. I was her brother’s English teacher. She said, “Hi, Mr. Richmond,” and I said, “Hi.” That was the usual exchange between us. Nice kid. Good student. A few days later, she graduated from our private middle school and went on to high school, and I resigned after deciding that my day gig should no longer involve having to call out ninth-grade girls for violating the dress code by wearing Uggs in my classroom.
The next time I saw the girl was on the web in February of 2011. This was a few days after her cell-phone photographs of Mark Sanchez’ bedroom had hit the web after Deadspin broke the tale. I recognized the girl immediately, despite the noticeable increase in layers in makeup, because she didn’t look much older than she had three years earlier in ninth grade. At least to me, she didn’t. Apparently, though, glimpsed through the giddily romantic New Year’s Eve atmospherics of Lavo (“an Ultralounge!” raved New York), she was only seventeen.
At that point, according to the girl’s account, Sanchez was gentlemanly enough to respond that he couldn’t see her until she was 18. Mark clearly had the schoolgirl’s best interests at heart — at least, until she corrected him: in New York, she told him, to be seventeen years of age was to be (Yes! The initial ruling at the table is overturned!) of legal age. This news apparently cleared the way for the girl’s subsequent photographs of Sanchez’ bedroom in his place on a Jersey golf course.
The last time I saw a picture of the girl was in a paparazzi-tabloid shot taken in her Connecticut hometown a week after it all broke, wherein, caught outdoors in her village, in a parka, her expression vibed panic, on the verge of teenaged tears. This was the ninth-grader I used to see at the salad bar.
That summer, six months after his quarterback’s alleged tryst, alleged New York Jet coach Rex Ryan, alleged star of one of the great foot-fetish role-playing videos of all time (wherein he allegedly plays the cop drawn to the woman’s bare feet sticking out a car door; his alleged wife allegedly plays the woman), named Mark Sanchez his captain.
Talk of Sanchez’ schoolgirl dalliance quickly and mysteriously muted, and then mutated: In a GQ profile that allegedly appeared in September of 2011, allegedly eight months after the alleged liaison, the alleged affair is referred to thusly in a brief aside near the end of the piece: “A 17-year-old high-school student…told a gossipy sports site…they went on a date.” Indeed they allegedly did; the writer of the story identified an object in Sanchez’ bedroom that the girl had photographed with her phone.
(In a highlight in the annals of profile hilarity, the piece led with an anecdote in which then-linebacker Bart Scott chides Vladimir Ducasse about leaving a party the night before, despite their being so many “hos” at poolside. Ducasse complains that they were too old. Scott asks Sanchez, “Were those ho’s too old?”
(“Define old,” says Mark.)
As a lover of freakazoid behavior in the National Football Lockstep, a league sport that thinks it’s a branch of the Pentagon, I’m all for aberrance, as long as it stops short of a 24-year-old quarterback texting a high-school girl at 2 a.m. asking if she wants to go out that night, and she has to answer from her bedroom in her parents’ suburban Connecticut home, “I have school tomorrow,” and his head coach names him captain. Doesn’t a captain of a football team have to exhibit something approximating leadership qualities?
If teaching larval teenaged girls for three years taught me anything about larval teenaged girls, it’s that lots of them like to dress up and make-up to look more mature than they are, but have less idea of what they actually look like to older men as goldfish who want to look good to other goldfish in the tank in the dentist’s office know what they look like to people awaiting root canals.
I have no doubt that the girl wanted to look alluring at the ultralounge. I also have no doubt that to any rational adult in that club that night, which Mark Sanchez allegedly was, she looked exactly like what she was: someone beneath accepted legal age.
In 2011, the Jets went 8-8. They were 8-5 before losing their last three by a combined scored of 93-50. Mark completed 56 percent of his passes and threw only 18 interceptions.
In March of 2012, the Jets extended Mark’s contract, which guaranteed him $20 million. “It gives the team,” Mark said, “just a reminder that I’m the leader of this team.”
By that fall, Mark had put aside such childish things as the teenager I’d known. By the start of training camp, he was going out with Eva Longoria, the thespian known for, among other things, playing a detective in the wildly underrated Senorita Justice. Eva was 12 ½ years his senior. She’d already had an ugly breakup with Tony Parker. I figured her worldliness and experience would help the Jets’ leader grow up.
But one month into the season, she broke up with him. According to TMZ, in a break-up message, she called him “moody” and “inconsistent.” She did not elaborate on the latter adjective. She did say, “We’ll always have the season opener in Buffalo.” He’d completed 19 of 27, with three TD passes, in a rout, before the Jets lost ten of their next 15 games and finished 6-10. The team, perhaps sensing by now that Jesus was weeping, hired Tim Tebow.
Today, of course, the most viral video of Mark Sanchez remains the game last year when, scrambling, he runs into the butt of one of his lineman, and fumbles. But I am reassured that he is finally dancing on videos with age-appropriate women.
And since he might still possess football talent, I am going to give him the benefit of the doubt: that when he escapes the skeeviness of his current employee (see Favre, masseuses hired as rewards for good games; Ryan Footwear) and gets the start in whatever city the Jaguars are in two years from now, he might win more games than he loses. Being an NFL quarterback is a whole lot more difficult than being a bottle girl.
So how to compute Sanchez’ true Skeeve Quotient? Maybe, emotionally and developmentally, Sanchez is a 17-year-old himself. As Los Angeles’ (“City of Illusion”) former star Trojan, maybe no one ever asked him to grow up. If he’s psychologically stunted, then in his own head he did no wrong, right? When Sanchez allegedly called the girl I knew on an alleged Sunday night after allegedly losing to the Steelers in Pittsburgh in the playoffs, and she allegedly declined to meet him that night, wouldn’t that like, so indicate the melding of two teen minds? The girl saying, “I can’t! I didn’t do any homework all weekend!”
And the guy saying, “So what? Come on! I’m rich!”
Completely understandable adolescent behavior.
But for the sake of any other former ninth-graders I might know who might cross his ultrapath in the future, I would ask Mark to heed the wisdom Joe Namath offered him in the GQ piece. When the writer asks if Joe has any dating advice for his successor in the Lavo limelight, Joe answers: “To really do his homework.”
[Photo Credit: AP; Bert Stern; GQ]
Nice piece of Americana in the Times magazine yesterday. Here’s “The Last Mermaid Show,” by Virginia Sole-Smith.
[Photo Credit: Katy Grannan]
What was it that Ms. Clavel used to say in the middle of the night? Something is not right. Well, that’s the feeling I had watching the game today–not that something wasn’t right, exactly, but that things were fragile, a 1-0 lead perishable. It was another hot summer day in the Bronx and the game proceeded uneventfully, except the two starting pitchers who were in good form. Oh, sure Robbie Cano made a wonderful fielding play but he’s so fluid he makes the remarkable look pedestrian.
The only exciting thing came in the middle innings when Manny Machado made one of those kinds of plays that makes you sit up and remember you aren’t sleeping.
A ground ball was hit to his right. He bent down to field it and the ball knocked off the heal of his glove. Still moving to his right, now in foul territory, he was able to pick up the ball on a bounce. He took another few steps before he could get rid of it, a side armed chuck that somehow zipped over to first base to get the runner–a disbelieving Luis Cruz–by a step. Not many men could make that play. Lucky for baseball fans–particularly those in Baltimore–Machado is here to stay.
The only other excitement came in the 9th and it was unfortunate for the Yanks. With 1 man out Nick Markakis almost hit a home run against Mariano Rivera. It went just foul down the right field line. He singled, anyhow, and then Mo left a flat cutter over the middle of the plate to Adam Jones who hit it over the wall in left field.
And that was that–enough to spoil a sweep, and another impressive outing by Hiroki Kuroda on soporific day at the park.
Drag.
Final Score: Orioles 2, Yanks 1.
I can’t quite believe I’m typing this, but this afternoon the Yankees are going for a sweep of the Orioles and their seventh-straight win. Remember when we used to take these winning streaks for granted? Remember when we only checked the standings occasionally, more out of politeness than anything else? Ah, the good old days.
But some of the good old days might be coming back. Derek Jeter played his first rehab game last night and accomplished his goal — the ankle didn’t break. (Michael Pineda also pitched well; it will be nice to see him in New York finally, perhaps some time after the All-Star break.)
For now, though, let’s focus on the game. We play today, we win today. Dat’s it.
Brett Gardner, CF
Ichiro, RF
Robinson Canó, 2B
Travis Hafner, DH
Zoilo Almonte, LF
Lyle Overbay, 1B
Luís Cruz, 3B
Eduardo Núñez, SS
Chris Stewart, C
Hiroki Kuroda (7-6, 2.95, 1.06) vs. Jason Hammel (7-5, 5.19, 1.40)
Will this be the day that Andy Murray finally finds his destiny and brings home the Wimbledon title for the British masses? (It’s probably been at least a decade since I really cared about tennis, but I have to admit that I’m rooting hard for him.) Early on it certainly looked like it would be Murray’s day, as he jumped out to a two-set and lead and broke the Joker in the first game of the third — then looked to be on the verge of breaking him again two games later — but the tide just might be turning. Djokovic won four straight games to take a 4-2 lead in the third set.
Nothing better than a little drama in the Wimbledon championship.
Amidst all the unpredictability and chaos that has welled up this season, Saturday afternoon’s game was stunningly normal. It was a game we’ve all seen thousands of times, and there was something soothing about it, like a tall glass of lemonade on a hot summer day.
As it started out, it looked more like lemons. Andy Pettitte was on the mound for the Yanks, and he retired the first two batters quickly before giving up a single to left by Adam Jones. As Chris Davis dug in at the plate I wondered if there had ever been a hitter whose reality differs so much from the perception. Davis’s name and appearance are as plain as Peoria, but when his bat lifts off his shoulder he’s suddenly as dangerous as Detroit. After working the count full, Davis produced a high fly ball that concerned no one — not Pettitte, who stood on the mound patiently, not Michael Kay, who calmly described the lazy arc of the ball, not Brett Gardner, who cruised calmly back to the wall in center field, and not even Davis himself, who shook his head in disgust as he trotted out of the box. But then a funny thing happened — the ball just wouldn’t stop carrying, no doubt because of the 100° air, until it landed a few feet over the wall for a two-run homer.
The Orioles scored a third run in the second inning, and this one was also questionable. Nolan Reimold dribbled a ball down the third base line, and Pettitte had no option other than the Jeter Jump Throw™. But Pettitte is not Jeter, and the ball ended up down the right field line, allowing Reimold to make it to second. Alexi Casilla doubled two pitches later, bringing in Reimold and his unearned run.
The old Yankees — and by that I mean the Yankees from a week ago — would have curled up into a ball when faced with a 3-0 deficit against Chris Tillman in the top of the second, but these are the New Yankees! Travis Hafner led off the bottom of the second with a walk, then crisp singles from Zoilo Almonte and Lyle Overbay loaded the bases with none out. Luís Cruz then looped a base hit just in front of Reimold in left field, and the Yankees were on the board, 3-1. Eduardo Núñez stepped to the plate for the first time since May 10th and responded with a sacrifice fly to give the Yanks another run, but Overbay foolishly tried to advance to third on the play. He was thrown out easily for the second out, and the rally was essentially over. Chris Stewart made it official when he struck out looking.
The O’s picked up another run in the fourth when Taylor Teagarden cashed in a J.J. Hardy double to make the score 4-2, but the Yanks came back in the fifth with their new station-to-station offense. Núñez and Stewart opened the inning with singles, then moved over to second and third on Gardner’s sacrifice bunt. Ichiro flipped a looping liner over the mound that was flagged down by Brian Roberts at second; as good as the play was, it saved one run, not two, and the Yanks were within one at 4-3. Canó was up next, and he dumped an excuse-me single in front of Reimold to bring home Stewart to tie the game at four.
Pettitte rolled through the sixth, and the Yanks played some more small ball in their half. Overbay picked up his third hit of the game to lead off the inning, then moved to second on Cruz’s bunt, setting things up for Núñez to be the hero in his first game back. Nuney took the first pitch for a strike, then grounded the next one up the middle for a base hit. When third base coach Robby Thompson sent Overbay chugging around third to challenge Jones’s arm in center field, I was certain it was the wrong decision, but Jones’s throw was a bit up the line and Overbay scored the go-ahead run.
Nothing else really mattered except for the ninth inning and Mariano Rivera. If you look at the play-by-play, you’ll read about two ground balls, a single, and a strikeout, but that hardly tells the story. J.J. Hardy, Nate McClouth, Ryan Flaherty, and Chris Dickerson were all so overmatched that they couldn’t have been faulted had they each asked Rivera for his autograph before leaving the field. Hardy looked at one pitch, then squibbed a ball that barely made its way out to Canó, who flipped to first for out number one. Pinch hitter McClouth then hit another ball out to Canó, this one so soft that the play at first was close. Flaherty managed a base hit, but only because Rivera’s cutter so overwhelmed him that even with a full swing the ball only travelled about ninety feet before fluttering to the grass like a wounded bird in front of second. No matter. Rivera struck out Dickerson on three pitches to end the game. Yankees 5, Orioles 4. Same as it ever was.
It was Rivera’s 29th save of the season (and his 72nd save of a Pettitte victory), putting him on a pace for 54, which would be his career best. Here’s what I wrote about Rivera back on May 9th after he recorded his twelfth save:
Here’s something to watch for. It’s early, but the way this team is constructed, it wouldn’t be a surprise if Rivera actually topped his career high of 53 saves from back in 2004. Then he’d walk off into the sunset with a Cy Young Award, just like Koufax. Wouldn’t that be poetic?
The Cy Young Award seems less likely at this point, but here’s something else that would be poetic. After Saturday’s game we found out that Rivera had been named to the American League All-Star game, but that’s not good enough. Mariano Rivera should be the starting pitcher for the American League. I’m not the first to come up with this idea — I seem to remember Michael Kay suggesting this for the 2008 ASG in Yankee Stadium — but this would be the perfect year to do it.
There’s no need to have an actual starting pitcher start the game, since most pitchers only throw an inning or two anyway, even some of those who start the game. (Max Scherzer would be the starter most likely to start, but Detroit manager Jim Leyland has already indicated that Scherzer probably won’t be available to pitch that day.)
Rivera is having a phenomenal season and could end up with the highest single-season save total of his career. There’s no real guarantee that he would get into the game in the ninth inning, nor is there any guarantee that those final outs would be meaningful. So why not send him out to start? It might seem counterintuitive to have Rivera, the greatest closer of all-time, appear in his final all-star game as a starter (and Rivera might not even want to do it), but what better way is there to honor the greatest pitcher any of us will ever see?
[Photo Credit: Jim McIsaac/Getty Images]
So Alex is on assignment — or perhaps on the run — and he’s left me the keys to the place. You’re all welcome to stop by whenever you like, just don’t act like a bunch of animals. I’ll be in and out myself, but I trust you. Don’t steal anything. If I come back here and anything’s missing, I’m going straight to the police. I mean it.
So now that that’s out of the way, on to the Yankees. Not much going on there, eh? Suddenly a five-game winning streak, capped last night with the Wells Walk-off (though I must admit that I prefer pie to Gatorade), and things are looking a lot different than they were a week ago. Some fans might even be looking with hope towards the top of the standings rather than dread towards the bottom.
Oh, another thing — a guy named Jeter is scheduled to make his first rehab start down in Scranton tonight, and there are whispers that we might see him in the Bronx next week. It won’t be too soon.
And finally, the lineup, featuring the recently recalled Eduardo Núñez (David Phelps was sent down):
Brett Gardner, CF
Ichiro, RF
Robinson Canó, 2B
Travis Hafner, DH
Zoilo Almonte, LF
Lyle Overbay, 1B
Luís Cruz, 3B
Eduardo Núñez, SS
Chris Stewart, C
Andy Pettitte (5-6, 4.40, 1.36) vs. Chris Tillman (10-2, 3.68, 1.30)
Bronx Banter. There is no substitute.
