Here is a digitized recording of the great Flannery O’Connor reading her story, “A Good Man is Hard to Find.”

Here’s the text.

[Drawing by David Levine]

For years, I’ve heard about “The Wire.” That is was not only good, the best thing on TV, but the greatest show of all-time. I finally got around to watching it, the entire series in just under a month. I don’t know enough about other dramas to know how to rate it, exactly, but I was not disappointed. Did I like it?

I loved it. The writing, the acting, all so memorable. When it ended I wanted to go back tot he beginning and start over again.

It’s one of those shows where it is hard to pick a favorite character. Once you are locked in on one guy–Omar, Bunk, Lester–someone else pops up. Here are some, though not all, of my favorites:

The intrepid Chad Jennings gives us this wonderful nugget from Brian Cashman:

“I do think that we have a pretty strong pro scouting department. Our scouts know a lot of these players individually, live near them or around them or played with them or what have you. We get pretty good information. There are certain guys currently in this free agent market who I know have no interest in playing in New York because they flat out told our personnel sometime in the summer. Now they probably wish they didn’t, but that’s good information to know.

“When we start going through our pro scouting meetings, we’ll start going through the player and (a scout will say) ‘This guy does not want to play here. He told me this in this city and he says he’d never play there, doesn’t want to play there.’ Ok, let’s move on. We don’t even cover him any further than that.”

As an example, here’s the story Cashman told:

“I won’t tell you the name, but there was a guy that was on vacation, and there happened to be a Yankee fan that we knew that was on vacation with him in Mexico,” he said. “All he did was badmouth this place, but I can’t tell you how many times he called trying to get a job here when things didn’t go well in free agency for him, and he was desperate to come here, (saying) ‘Oh, I want to be a Yankee.’

“And I wouldn’t even take the call. I was like, you’re so full of it. I even told his agent, ‘Look, tell your client, our people were right there with him drinking those pina coladas when he was badmouthing us. He doesn’t want to play here. He just wants our money.”

Jennings had a great year at the Lo-Hud, continuing the fine tradition established by Pete Abraham.

Mr. Wunnerful.

[Photo Credit: Peter Martin]

According to ESPN, NL MVP Ryan Braun has tested positive for PEDs. The article also says that according to a source, Braun was tested a second time–after learning of the initial positive result–and that result was negative.

More to come for sure.

Ah, yes. Morning y’all.

[Photo Credit: Beau Davis]

A very funny fellow.

The latest installment of Grantland’s “Director’s Cut” series gives Johnette Howard’s first story for The National: “The Making of a Goon,” about hockey enforcer, Joe Kocur:

“See, hockey fighting is different than boxing,” says Kocur, who once visited the training camp of Detroit’s Thomas Hearns — courtesy of Red Wings owner Mike Illitch — to pick up a few tips. “In hockey, fighting is pulling and punching. If you just stand there and hold a guy out and hit him, you won’t faze him. But if you can pull him into you and punch at the same time, that’s when you start hurting people.”

How to hit hard is just one of the lessons an enforcer must learn. There’s also an unwritten and often unspoken code of honor that governs who hits whom, and under what circumstances. Kocur also likes to do research of his own; knowing other fighters’ tendencies helps him avoid surprises. But nothing, Kocur says, supersedes the most basic fighter’s rule: Never, ever lose.

“You’ve got to understand some things about the fighter’s job,” says Demers. “Tough guys in this league are under a tremendous amount of pressure. Unfortunately, many of them are untalented except for fighting, and they’ve gotten here the hard way. And once you’re recognized as a tough guy in this league, you go from having targets to becoming one.

“As long as you’re beating up somebody, the fans are cheering and shouting our name. But the first time you lose one, everyone gets down on you. You have to be fearless. I’ve seen guys lose just once, and pretty soon they just sort of fade away.”

Though coaches and other players all say that Kocur has good all-around hockey talent and that Demers encourages him to use it, Kocur considers himself a fighter first. He believes that preserving his aura of invincibility is essential because “it pays off down the line. Maybe I’ll be going into the corner to get the puck and the guy going with me will think, ‘Uh-oh, it’s Joe Kocur. This guy’s crazy. I won’t give him the elbow in the face. I’ll give him that extra step and poke at the puck instead of trying to take the body.’ And then maybe I can make a play, make a good pass. And maybe we’ll put the puck in the net.”

[Photo Credit: Stefan Alforn]

Here’s Bill Simmons at his best:

Remember what pissed us off most about LeBron picking Miami over New York? It wasn’t just that he tried to stack the decks with a superteam; it’s that he walked away from New York, the city with the most basketball fans, the city with the biggest spotlight, the city that would have either made him immortal or broken him in two. He didn’t want it. He copped out. He could have picked loyalty (Cleveland) or immortality (New York); instead, he chose help (Miami). That killed us. We hated him for it. What was telling about Chris Paul’s choice was that he eschewed the Clippers (a safer basketball situation for him; he would have been able to grow with Eric Gordon, DeAndre Jordan and Blake Griffin) for the Lakers (a much more volatile basketball situation with Kobe’s miles and Bynum’s knees) for the simple reason that he wanted to be a Laker.

For the right players, it’s not about cities as much as teams, uniforms, histories, owners, fans, titles … and Chris Paul cares about the right things. He’s the best teammate in the league. As much as it killed me that my least favorite team landed him, the “basketball fan” side of me loved it. Chris Paul and Kobe Bryant … together? Playing across the street from my office? How cool was that? I remember when KG landed on the Celtics, one of my Lakers-fan buddies told me, “I hate KG and I hate the Celtics, but this is going to be cool.”

That’s how I felt about Chris Paul and the Lakers. If you love basketball — if you truly love it — you appreciated what was happening. And it had nothing to do with the Washington Generals. Believe me.

Of course, that’s not how December 8, 2011 will be remembered. Years from now, I won’t remember anything about that day except for David Stern losing control of his own league. Once upon a time, it was reassuring to look there and expect to see him, and darn, he was there. It was kind of neat. Those days are long gone. The National Basketball Association has lost its way. I feel like crying.

Ian Thomsen has more over at SI.com.

So, have you heard enough holiday music yet?  Are you missing baseball enough?  If the answer to both questions is “yes”, please take a gander at my baseball name-oriented version of the “12 Days of Christmas”.

Enjoy!

Busy sports day yesterday. Pujols, Wilson and all that. The Hardball Times offers a recap (and they did a fine job covering the meetings).

The Yanks are layin’ in the cut, though they have reportedly made a one-year offer to pitcher Hiroki Kuroda. Also, Mariano Rivera is okay after having surgery on his vocal chords.

Over in the NBA, a nixed trade (gas face0; Tyson Chandler to the Knicks? Dwight Howard: Brooklyn’s Finest?

Plenty to schmooze about. Have at it.

[Photo Credit: David Bekerman]

The writer Nik Cohn was profiled in the New York Times Magazine last weekend. A gifted critic of Rock n Roll, Cohn is most famous for this piece–“Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night”–the basis of the movie “Saturday Night Fever.”

Thing of it is, he made most of it up:

“There’s nothing I’ve written that I’ve been able to reread in later years without deep, deep dread,” [Cohn] said, waving off a compliment. The prime example remains “Saturday Night.”

It’s hard now to believe anyone took it for literal truth. Its audacious artfulness makes most New Journalism look like court stenography. Vincent and his Bay Ridge posse were composites, based on the mods he knew in London a decade before. Cohn — who appears in the article as a shadowy figure in a tweed suit — never did spend much time at the 2001 Odyssey disco. That “Saturday Night” struck a deep nerve was not particularly comforting to its creator. “I found it very difficult to function,” he says of the aftermath, not overjoyed to be talking about it. “I completely lost my way and had enormous self-contempt. It knocked me off my trolley, and my trolley has never been the solidest base in the universe.”

…“When I was young and on the hustle, there was something that made people not want to talk to me,” Cohn admits, still savoring the turnaround. “So when people actually started talking to me, I thought, Wow, this is far more fascinating than all the stuff I made up. I realized you don’t have to create the myth. You don’t have to embroider. It’s all there.”

I’ve never read Cohn’s stuff on Rock. But I’m curious.

Final day of the winter meetings.

Hardball Talk’s got it going on.

Update: Albert to the Angels. Whoa, Daddy.

It’s cold in New York today. I saw a dude on the train on my way to working this morning. He was not wearing a coat. I looked down.  Sandals with no socks. Really, man?

When I got to work and, I said good morning to Big Lou, one of the security guards in my building. I told him about the guy on the train.

Lou said, “Well, you never know, he could have a foot problem.”

“No, Lou, I think some people are just Herbs.”

“You never know, Al. Who are we to judge?”

I stopped and looked at Lou and told him that he was right. I thanked him for pointing out the facts. Won’t be the last time today that I need correcting.

Good to have people like Lou in your life.

Let’s all agree that before you write an article about trading Jesus Montero for a starting pitcher, that starting pitcher needs to be better than current free agent C.J. Wilson.

For the last two years, C.J. Wilson has been better than Gio Gonzalez in almost every way. Wilson pitched more innings, kept balls in the park at a better rate and walked fewer batters. They whiffed guys at close to the same rate, but Gonzalez jumped up in 2011 to claim a slight edge. That’s in raw numbers. When you look at the home road splits, it becomes clear we are talking about two different animals. Wilson is stellar outside the harsh environs of the Ballpark in Arlington. Gonzalez is ordinary once removed from Oakland and its acres of foul territory.

The main knock against Wilson is that he has walked 167 men in the last two years. Gonzalez has issued 183 free passes in 25 fewer innings.

Gio Gonzalez is five years younger than C.J. Wilson and still under team control for several years. His explosion in strikeouts in 2011 bodes well for his future. Those are huge points in his favor, no doubt. He’s projectible and cheap and certainly may be better than C.J. Wilson in a few years when Wilson gets older and Gonzalez is in his prime. But Jesus Montero is under team control for six more years. Which sounds better, Jesus Montero for six years and C.J. Wilson for whatever it takes to sign him? Or Gio Gonzalez for four years and whatever bat they have to sign to replace Jesus Montero?

The Yankees are not making headlines during the Hot Stove season, so the writers are left to make their own heat. Hey, I’d love to see Gio Gonzalez at the back end of the staff while he tries to get those walks down and learns to pitch to Death Valley in Yankee Stadium. But not at the cost of six years of a bat like Montero’s. Not when a better version of the same pitcher can be obtained on the free agent market.

The Yanks win negotiating rights with Hiroyuki Nakajima.

Here’s another original manuscript from W.C. Heinz, reprinted with permission from his daughter, Gayl Heinz.

This piece, “Maybe Tomorrow, Maybe the Next Day” is about a comedian, Jeremy Vernon. It originally appeared in the Saturday Evening Post (January 27, 1968).

Enjoy.

f

A few weeks ago, I received the following e-mail from Jeremy Vernon:

Unfortunately I can’t tell you a lot about Bill, except that I very much enjoyed his company and working with him. He was a warm, gentle man (perhaps, somewhat surprising to me, for a sports figure) extremely considerate and tactful, and his questions were well thought out, intelligent and he dug deep.
He took notes rather than using a tape recorder during the interviews, which were casual, btw, at purely random times, it seemed.

Bill followed me to Cherry Hill, NJ where I was appearing with Peggy Lee at the Latin Casino. He was with me for about 5 days, I believe. The band leader appeared to be soused or otherwise whacked out, and Bill kindly eschewed mentioning it in the article. Between shows I took Bill to see a nearby 2nd rate club I had working in my salad days, The Hawaiian Cottage, a pseudo-Polynesian “family” restaurant. The owner, Joe Zucchi (singular of zucchini?), treated me to a sandwich, but presented Bill with a bill for his food. Bill took it with a knowing, tolerant smile.

The way the article came about was that Bill had been given an assignment to write about a working comedian who was not a “name.” He contacted the William Morris agency, who directed him to the late Corbett Monica (who wasn’t late at the time), and me. I was appearing at the Copa, with Miss Peggy Lee. Bill said he chose me over Monica, if memory serves, because I was less well known, which he found a richer source for a story. Hey, this was some 44 years ago. Possibly Bill found me less slick and unassuming.

For more W.C. Heinz here’s Part One, Two, and Three.

Before long, Albert Pujols will agree to a long contract worth a whack of cash. The Marlins? The Cards? I still figure he’ll stay in St. Louis but would enjoy seeing Pujols shaked things up and head to Ozzieland in Miami.

Meanwhile, the Yanks play Take My A.J., please.

Over at Deadspin, I profile the late George Kimball:

George Kimball hung upside down some 70 feet in the cold Manhattan air, still in need of a cigarette. Well, the doctors had said smoking would kill him, hadn’t they? The previous autumn, they had found an inoperable cancerous tumor the size of a golf ball in his throat and given him six months to live. Five months had passed. He’d finished his latest round of chemotherapy, and now George, 62 years old and recently retired from the Boston Herald, was at the Manhattan Center Grand Ballroom in 2006, to cover a night of boxing for a website called The Sweet Science.

He’d never set foot in the place before. He didn’t even know what floor he was on when he went for a smoke between fights. There was a long line at the elevator so he went looking for a backstage exit and stepped out into the winter night, onto a tiny platform seven stories over the sidewalk. And then, as George would later tell the story, he plunged into darkness.

His leg caught between the fire ladder and the wall. He knew right away it was broken. He dangled from the fire escape like a bat—except bats can let go. He tried calling for help but his voice was too weak from the cancer treatments; he could barely whisper. Also, he wanted that fucking cigarette. A security guard, ducking out for his own smoke, found him, and it took another 20 minutes before the paramedics could get George on his feet. They wanted him to go to the hospital for X-rays but George talked them out of it. His wife was a doctor, he explained, and with all the chemo, he had more than enough painkillers at home.

He went back to his seat to watch the last two fights. Afterward, he hobbled to a drug store and bought a knee brace, an ice pack, a large quantity of bandages, and a lighter to replace the Zippo he lost in the fall. Two days later George would go to a hospital to set his broken leg. But that night, he went home. His wife Marge cleaned the scrapes on George’s arms, and he took a big hit of OxyContin. Then he filed his story on the fight.

* * *
George was a large man with one good eye, a red beard, a gap between his two front teeth, and a huge gut. He was a literate, two-fisted drinker who never missed a deadline and never passed up an argument. One night, when he was 21 and partying in Beacon Hill, he was struck on the side of the face with a beer bottle. That’s how George got his glass eye.

It became his favorite prop. “You’d be amazed,” he said, “by how many people ask you to keep an eye on their drink.”

George began his career when Red Smith and Dick Young were the lords of the press box. On the night he fell out of the Manhattan sky, he had been a sports columnist for close to 40 years, “the last of his kind,” according to Michael Katz, the longtime boxing reporter for The New York Times. He drank one-eyed with Pete Hamill and Frank McCourt, smoked dope with Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, and did with William Burroughs and Hunter S. Thompson whatever was in their heads to do at the time. George covered Wimbledon and the Masters, the World Series and the Super Bowl and more than 300 championship fights. He golfed with Michael Jordan and sat in a sauna with Joe DiMaggio. “He’d show up with Neil Young,” Katz said, “and get drugs from the Allman Brothers. Mention a name and he’d somehow know the person.”

Check it out if you get a chance. I’m proud of the effort I put into this one.

Hey yo, check out the wife’s note card site: Blue Pear Prints.

Just in time for the holiday sale.

Don’t sleep.