David Robertson hadn’t given up a run since last September. He was due for a beatin’.

Then again, Jack Curry reminds us that Mariano Rivera blew3 of his first 6 save opportunities back in 1997.

If the only baseball you’ve watched over the past fifteen years has involved the Yankees, it’s possible you’ve come to believe what some will tell you — the closer is the most overrated position in baseball. Those last three outs are really no different than the first three outs. Far too much glory and farther too much money are heaped upon those few soles lucky enough to have been weeded out of the starting pitching pool and thrust into the last spot in the bullpen. Any pitcher, after all, could get those last three outs. If the only baseball you’ve watched over the past fifteen years has involved the Yankees and Mariano Rivera, it’s possible you think those last three outs are easy.

They aren’t. At least not always.

On Wednesday night the Yankees scored a run in the top of the first inning when Derek Jeter notched his 50th hit of the season and scored all the way from first a few minutes later on Robinson Canó’s double to left field. That 1-0 lead stuck for a long time, thanks mainly to an impressive start by Yankee rookie David Phelps.

Phelps got off to a rough start, giving up a leadoff double to Ben Zobrist and backing that up with a walk to Carlos Peña. He’d eventually issue another walk to Luke Scott to load the bases with two outs. He recovered to get Will Rhymes to ground out to second to end the inning, and then settled into a groove, setting down nine of the next ten batters to cruise into the fifth.

Baseball is a funny thing. If everything we read back in 2007 had come true, Joba Chamberlain and Phil Hughes, the one-time jewels of the Yankee farm system, would have about 150 wins between the two of them by now. Sure, Phelps was the team’s Minor League Pitcher of the Year in 2010, but he hasn’t generated nearly the hype of countless other Yankee prospects. Still, it looks like he might stick around, even if his spot in the rotation is given to Andy Pettitte. His control is good, and his money pitch — a Maddux-like fastball that starts at a left-hander’s hip before darting back over the inside corner — seems perfectly designed to neutralize the scariest hitters he’ll face in Yankee Stadium.

With two outs in the fifth and still clinging to that 1-0 lead, Phelps looked to be in position to grab his first major league win. But with his pitch count climbing into the eighties, a walk to Peña, another to B.J. Upton, and Joe Girardi’s itchy trigger finger all conspired against him, and Phelps found himself walking off the mound an out too early.

Boone Logan quelled the rally by striking out Matt Joyce, then set down two more in the sixth before passing the baton to Cory Wade, who saw the game through the seventh. Things got a bit interesting in the eighth, thanks to a leadoff walk issued by Rafael Soriano and a throwing error by Canó, by Soriano wriggled free and passed the game to David Robertson in the ninth inning.

Robertson’s statistics coming into the inning were obscene. He hadn’t allowed a run since the end of last August, and he had struck out 23 hitters in just 13 innings in 2012. Sure, he had struggled a bit the night before, but this was the Hammer of Thor. Now that he had worked his way through his jitters, he’d surely get back to doing what the Hammer does — pounding the strike zone and blowing away any and all overmatched hitters who dared oppose him. These last three outs, after all, are no different than the three in the eighth.

All of this zipped through my head as Robertson came to a set and readied for his first pitch to Sean Rodríguez. Fifty-five seconds later the Rays had runners on second and third with no one out. Rodríguez singled to left on the first pitch of the inning, and Brandon Allen echoed that with a single of his own to right on Robertson’s second pitch. (Nick Swisher’s ill-advised attempt to nail Rodríguez at third was nowhere near the cutoff man, and Allen was able to take second.) Robertson was probably as stunned as anyone else, and he promptly walked Zobrist on four straight pitches to load the bases and bring the dangerous Carlos Peña to the plate.

Robertson’s teammates call him Houdini for his uncanny ability to squirm free of jams like this one; in his career fifty batters have faced him with the bases loaded and twenty-five of them have struck out. Peña became the twenty-sixth of fifty-one, and suddenly it seemed possible. On a 1-1 count to Upton, Robertson dropped a pitch that may or may not have (but probably didn’t) dance across the outside corner. It was the type of pitch that many umpires would honor, but Jim Reynolds had been squeezing pitchers on both sides all night, and he saw this as a ball. If Robertson had gotten that pitch, you can bet he would have pumped a 1-2 fastball up in Upton’s eyes, and you can bet that Upton would’ve swung right through it for strike three. But at 2-1, justifiably fearful of extending to 3-1 with the bases loaded, Robertson was forced deeper into the meat of the strike zone with his fourth pitch. Upton didn’t get all of it, but he got enough to float a fly ball to medium right. Swisher made one of the best throws I’ve ever seen him make, but Rodríguez slid in just ahead of Russell Martin’s tag. The game was tied, and the save was blown.

A few minutes later Matt Joyce hit a three-run home run to right (spraining his ankle on the swing and falling down at home plate), and the game was over. Rays 4, Yankees 1.

Should we worry about Mr. Robertson? Hardly.

[Photo Credit: Kathy Willens/AP Photo]

Derek Jeter SS
Curtis Granderson CF
Alex Rodriguez 3B
Robinson Cano 2B
Mark Teixeira 1B
Nick Swisher RF
Raul Ibanez DH
Russell Martin C
Dewayne Wise LF

Phelps goes again. Plus, Chad Jennings has the latest on Mo.

[Photo Credit: MCNY]

Andy Pettitte is on his way but he’s not what the Yanks need writes Tyler Kepner in the Times:

Rays Manager Joe Maddon credited Ron Porterfield, the team’s head athletic trainer, for his pitchers’ durability, but Hellickson said he assumed all teams had the same kind of programs. Cashman said the pressure of New York makes the comparison unfair.

“I know they have a lot younger guys, but Pineda’s young and he just went down,” Cashman said. “I know the innings here are more stressful than the innings there, no doubt about that. Throwing 100 pitches in New York versus 100 pitches in Tampa are two different stresses. The stress level’s radically different on each pitch.”

Maddon said Cashman’s theory was worth considering. In a cosmic way, he could have added, the Rays deserve a benefit from playing before small crowds in an outdated home ballpark. In any case, Maddon said, the starters are essential to their model.

“Without that pitching, all the other wonderful stuff that we are, I don’t think really works nearly as effectively,” Maddon said. “It all starts with the starting pitching. That particular group and that part of our team really permits us to do all the other things well.”

While you are there, check out Hunter Atkins’s story about Joe Maddon–the King of Shifts.

[Photo Via Rays Renegade]

A Life photo gallery for us movie nerds.

Steve Kerr advocates raising the NBA’s age limit over at Grantland. His argument is that the NBA is better served financially by having players in college longer. And in the end, Steve, isn’t what’s in the best financial interests of  the NBA really what’s best for America?

The dreckiest sentence in this mountain of dreck is this one: “Why should NBA franchises assume the responsibility and financial burden of player development when, once upon a time, colleges happily assumed that role for them?”

Let’s rewrite that question for Steve, but add one single ounce of humanity and perspective: “Why should anyone other than the NBA assume the responsibility and financial burden of player development?” Steve thinks the NBA is entitled to reap the corrupted benefits of the professional basketball player factory that is the NCAA.

And thank goodness for the NCAA. Assuming responsibilty over here and financial burden over there, all out of the goodness of their collective heart. The NCAA and NBA have concocted a virtually risk-free scam in which the NCAA develops talent at no cost, funnels that talent into a monopoly.  The only potential risk is a player getting hurt before he gets pushed through the funnel. That’s a minimal risk because the flow of talent is endless.

Well, minimal risk for the NBA and NCAA anyway. But screw the kid. That’s Kerr’s point and at least he had the guts to state it bluntly – albeit after he piled on about 2000 words of tone-deaf platitudes and other compost:

The arguments against raising the age requirement hinge on civil liberties, points like, “Who are we to deny a 19-year-old kid a chance to make a living when he can vote, drive, and fight in a war?” If this were about legality or fairness, you might have a case. But it’s really about business. The National Basketball Association is a multi-billion-dollar industry that depends on ticket sales, sponsorships, corporate dollars, and media contracts to operate successfully. If the league believes one rule tweak — whatever it is — would improve its product and make it more efficient, then it should be allowed to make that business decision.

With that guiding principle Steve, what other “rule tweaks” might serve the greater good of the NBA, and by definition, America? An endless and frightening list of things comes to mind. No business should be allowed to violate fundamental freedoms of our society to improve their bottom line. That type of thinking is vile.

And why is Grantland publishing this badifesto? I’m not asking an entire collection of writers to speak with one voice, but dropping in a non-writer with partisan ties to an issue to editoriolize is in poor taste. Especially when his case is so glaringly weak and offered without counterpoint.

I also don’t think rich, old, White men should be allowed to arbitrarly decide when impoverished, young, Black adults should be allowed to earn a living in their chosen profession, but Steve Kerr deftly dealt with that issue by not mentioning it.

Kudos to Rolling Stone who reprinted Jonathan Cott’s 1976 profile of Maurice Sendak:

In the Night Kitchen, one of Sendak’s greatest works, shows little Mickey falling naked through the night into the Oliver Hardy bakers’ dough, kneading and pounding it into a Hap Harrigan plane, flying over the city, diving into a giant milk bottle, then sliding back into his bed to sleep. It is a work that pays extraordinary homage to Sendak’s early aesthetic influences – especially to Winsor McCay – to the cheap, full-color children’s books of the period, as well as to the feelings about New York City he had as a little boy.

“When I was a child,” he told Virginia Haviland, “there was an advertisement which I remember very clearly. It was for the Sunshine bakers, and it read: ‘We Bake While You Sleep!’ It seemed to me the most sadistic thing in the world, because all I wanted to do was stay up and watch… it seemed so absurdly cruel and arbitrary for them to do it while I slept. And also for them to think I would think that that was terrific stuff on their part, and would eat their product on top of that. It bothered me a good deal, and I remember I used to save the coupons showing the three fat little Sunshine bakers going off to this magic place at night, wherever it was, to have their fun, while I had to go to bed. This book was a sort of vendetta book to get back at them and to say that I am now old enough to stay up at night and know what’s happening in the Night Kitchen!

“Another thing is: I lived in Brooklyn, and to travel to Manhattan was a big deal, even though it was so close. I couldn’t go by myself, and I counted a good deal on my elder sister. She took my brother and me to Radio City Music Hall, or the Roxy, or some such place. Now, the point of going to New York was that you ate in New York. Somehow to me New York represented eating. And eating in a very fashionable, elegant, superlatively mysterious place like Longchamps. You got dressed up, you went uptown – it was night when you got there and there were lots of windows blinking – and you went straight to a place to eat. It was one of the most exciting things of my childhood. Cross the bridge and see the city approaching, get there and have your dinner, then go to a movie and come home. So, again, In the Night Kitchen is a kind of homage to New York City, the city I loved so much and still love.”

I love this bit:

Maurice’s sister Natalie gave him his first book, The Prince and the Pauper. “A ritual began with that book,” Sendak once told Virginia Haviland, “which I recall very clearly. The first thing was to set it up on the tablel and stare at it for a long time. Not because I was impressed with Mark Twain; it was just such a beautiful object. Then came the smelling of it… it was printed on particularly fine paper, unlike the Disney books I had gotten previous to that. The Prince and the Paper – Pauper – smelled good and it also had a shiny laminated cover. I flipped over that. I remember trying to bite into it, which I don’t imagine is what my sister intended when she bought the book for me. But the last thing I did with the book was to read it. It was all right. But I think it started then, my passion for books and bookmaking. There’s so much more to a book than just the reading. I’ve seen children touch books, fondle books, smell books, and it’s all the reason in the world why books should be beautifully produced.”

Give the article a read. It’s terrific and well worth your time.

With a 4-2 lead after seven innings, the Yankees showed off their new “Plan A” bullpen tonight. Rafael Soriano took over eighth-inning responsibilities as David Robertson packed his hammer for the ninth. It was the first close game since Mariano got hurt and I felt another wave of shock and depression as Mariano’s theoretical absence hardened into an actual game situation. It’s not that I’ve never seen the Yankees win a close one without Mariano, it’s just that those games were obviously temporary. A fleeting glimpse at an alternate universe, its otherness reaffirming our reality where Mariano was firmly and safely entrenched. This, as we all know too well, was different.

Ben Zobrist rocketed a triple to left-center gap to greet Soriano. He bounced back to strikeout Carlos Pena and B.J. Upton and was one strike away from stranding Zobrist when he threw a 55-foot slider that glanced off Russell Martin’s chest protector and bounced far enough away for Zobrist to score. Soriano then walked Matt Joyce on a close pitch, another slider, and went 3-0 on Luke Scott. Scott was ripping dead-red on the  3-0 pitch and Martin and Soriano wisely stayed with the slider. Soriano worked the count full and punched Scott out on a nasty, diving slider – the one he meant to throw Joyce.

The lead down to one, the Yankees rallied to give David Roberston a little slack. Alex Rodriguez hit a screaming bastard of a line drive that nearly impaled B.J. Upton in center. They gave Upton an error for letting Alex get to second, but better an error than a hole in the chest. Teixeira finally out-hit the shift and snuggled a double into the right field corner, scoring Alex.

David Robertson faced the bottom of the order in the ninth and did not burst into flames when he took the mound. It took a couple of batters. He got the first out but walked Rhymes. He let up a single to Sean Rodriguez and Tampa sent up Brandon Allen to homer or whiff. He whiffed. The real problem was that the Rays had turned the lineup over and their most dangerous hitter, Ben Zobrist, came to bat as the go-ahead run. Robertson worked him carefully but could not get the umpire to give him even an inch on the outside corner. He walked him on five pitches to load the bases.

Holy shit. Couldn’t we get a nice easy save our first time out there without Mo? It has to come down to the one player on the Rays who can hit it 500 feet at any time? Carlos Pena had had a rough night with three strikeouts coming into the at bat, but I’d like to meet the Yankee fan that was glad to se him up there. Robertson started Pena with two perfect pitches – a curve and a fastball both on the outside corner – for two called strikes. Robertson tried to get Pena to chase a low curve and a high heater, but the count ran even at 2-2. Don’t let it get to 3-2, I thought, with all those runners in motion, any hit might lose the game. Robertson took aim at the outside corner one last time and drilled it with his best fastball of the night. Pena never took his big bat off his big shoulder and the Yanks won 5-3.

Phew. That only counts as one win? Are we sure?

The Yankees scored their first four runs on homers – two by Raul Ibanez, who is a more animated corpse than I thought he would be, and one by Curtis Granderson. Good thing the Yanks hit the ball over the fence, because they can’t buy a hit between the lines. The Rays are employing the shift with such audacity, I think it’s as much gamesmanship as it actual defensive strategy. It’s starting to remind me of how the 1986 Mets were completely spooked by Mike Scott’s scuffed balls. If they’re not careful, they’re going to end up mindfucked against their most dangerous division rival.

For the second game in a row, Joe Girardi pushed Ivan Nova through a trouble spot in the seventh inning. Last week, Nova kept the Yankees close for six innings but it wasn’t close after he pitched the seventh. The rest of the thirteen man staff watched the game get out of hand. This time, through an annoyingly consistent rainfall, the Yankees gave Nova a three-run bulge to work with. He was strong through five, but allowed solo shots in the six and the seventh. Perhaps rattled by the homers, he gave up his only two walks of the night immediately following the dongs. And he looked vulnerable for the first time all night in the seventh.

In the sixth, Mark Teixeira and Derek Jeter turned a nifty 3-6-3 double play to erase the walk and end the inning. In the seventh, it didn’t look like Nova would be so lucky. After the walk to Jeff Keppinger, Will Rhymes doubled down the first base line. It rattled around the corner, but Keppinger held at third. Sean Rodriguez flew out to shallow right. Swisher caught the ball with his body moving towards home plate and uncorked a very good throw just to the first-base side of home plate. Russell Martin received the ball and spun to place the tag in front of the plate. Keppinger stayed at third. Martin stood in front of the plate with the ball like a kid on a doorstep with flowers in his hand waiting for his date to come down the stairs.

Keppinger would have no trouble winning a Republican primary with such unimpeachable conservative principles.

Mad props to Ivan Nova, who struck out eight Rays with his excellent mix of pitches. I thought the change-up, slipping down, just out of the zone, was particularly promising tonight. He looked so good through most of his outing, it’s hard to reconcile the homers. He let Jose Molina take him deep, which, on a better team might be a punishable offense in Kangaroo court. Nova was up 0-2 in the count and threw a pitch like he was down 2-0. Watching Molina jiggle around the bases I wondered if this game is really as hard as we make it out to be sometimes.

Despite the Molina incident and coming damn close to blowing the lead in the seventh, Nova held on and rewarded his manager’s faith in him. But even though Nova and Ibanez were the stars of the game, the story was new look bullpen. And in life after Mo, we’re going to have to settle for success, even if it’s not quite as beautiful.

Yanks and Rays, first of three in the Bronx. Nova vs. Shields.

Derek Jeter SS
Curtis Granderson CF
Alex Rodriguez 3B
Robinson Cano 2B
Mark Teixeira 1B
Nick Swisher RF
Raul Ibanez DH
Russell Martin C
Eduardo Nunez LF

Let’s hope the weather cooperates. If it does for rest of the week Andy Pettitte will start on Sunday afternoon.

Never mind the storm clouds:

Let’s Go Yank-ees!

[Photo Credit: Bron Stadheim]

Check out this gorgeous photo gallery by John and Tina Reid over at Everyday I Show.

Maurice Sendak, rest in peace.

Here’s a vague update on Mo. The news is not good. What it means I don’t know.

[Photo Credit: Daniella Zalcman for The Wall Street Journal]

Y’all want to hear that beat, right?

This is too rich for just a Beat of the Day.

Chairman Mao gives us Hip Hop’s Top 25 James Brown Sampled Records. At Ego Trip, where else?

“The Avengers” had the biggest box-office opening in movie history. Here’s Anthony Lane’s review in the New Yorker:

One of the failings of Marvel—as of other franchises, like the “Superman” series—is the vulgarity that comes of thinking big. As a rule, be wary of any guy who dwells upon the fate of mankind, unless he can prove that he was born in Bethlehem. Superheroes who claim to be on the side of the entire planet are no more to be trusted than the baddies who seek to trash it, nor is the aesthetic timbre of the movies in which they both appear. I remember the joy of reading David Thomson’s entry on Howard Hawks, in “A Biographical Dictionary of Film”; the principle underlying Hawks’s work, Thomson argued, was that “Men are more expressive rolling a cigarette than saving the world,” and his adage rings true far beyond “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” or “The Big Sleep.” All movies thrive on the rustle of private detail—on pleasures and pains that last as long as a smoke—and there has been nothing more peculiar, in recent years, than watching one Marvel epic after the next, then sifting through the rubble of gigantism in search of dramatic life.

If it smolders in “The Avengers,” that is owing to Downey and Ruffalo, two A-grade actors who are damned if they are going to be smothered by a two-hundred-million-dollar B movie. Downey realized, in “Iron Man,” that spectacular pap could be made piquant only if the central icon was a jerk—a narcissist with a roaring cash flow, rescuing not Earth from destruction but, way more important, his own soul from fidgety ennui. Ruffalo, at the other extreme, is all diffidence and glancing timidity; as Banner, he seems embarrassed by the prospect of his own wrath, and there is a wonderful closeup of the sad, apologetic glow in his eyes as he turns green. Banner begins the film as a practicing doctor (not just any doctor but, in line with Marvel’s overreach, a doctor in an Indian slum), and ends as we might have guessed, slinging humongous metal lizards around the canyons of Manhattan.

Nice quote from Thomson. I never read “The Avengers” as a kid and have no interest in seeing the movie. Did anyone go last weekend? Any good?

[Featured Image by Daniel Acuna]

Andy Pettitte is close to joining the Yankees but he got lit up in a Triple A start yesterday. Our old pal is also drawing attention for his off-field activities.

Over at Grantland, Jonathan Abrams has a piece on the divergent careers of Tyson Chandler and Eddy Curry.

[Photo Credit: Williams and Hirakawa for SLAM]

“Cityscape” 1963, By Richard Diebenkorn. Not a fugazi.

And so the Yankees made us happy today when Robbie Cano, Nick Swisher–and later in the game, Alex Rodriguez–went Boom! Cano hit a grand slam in the third inning. Mark Teixeira followed and flew out to the warning track in right and then Swisher hit a bomb over the right field wall. Took a minute to admire it, too.

Rodriguez dumped a three-run home run into the fountain out in left field in the eighth.

Meanwhile, Phil Hughes pitched well (walked one, struck out seven)–yo, into the seventh inning, he pitched.

Final Score: Yanks 10, Royals 4.

And the Knicks won a close one at the Garden.

Yippee.

[Photo Credit: Ed Zurga/Getty Images; Frank Franklin III/AP]

Phil Hughes, encore une fois.

Derek Jeter SS
Curtis Granderson CF
Alex Rodriguez 3B
Robinson Cano 2B
Mark Teixeira 1B
Nick Swisher DH
Raul Ibanez LF
Russell Martin C
Dewayne Wise RF

Time to stick together and get ‘er done:

So never mind the bellyachin’ and: Let’s Go Yank-ees!

[Photo Via: Craig Robinson]

“And Me” The Beastie Boys

[Photo’s via: She is Glorious]