The Yankees trailed the Red Sox by a run heading into the bottom of the ninth inning on Sunday night, but there was initially no reason to believe that they had, as Michael Kay is fond of saying, a rally in their bones. Things looked worse after D.J. LeMahieu grounded out meekly to second to open the inning, but then Aaron Judge walked and Gleyber Torres drove him home with a rocketed double down the line, and suddenly the game was tied at four. There was hope.

Gio Urshella whiffed for the second out, but after the Red Sox issued an intentional pass to Gary Sánchez, Rougned Odor came to the plate with a chance to end the game with a base hit. Torres managed to increase the pressure by stealing third base during the at bat, and when Boston closer Matt Barnes wasn’t able to bend a full-count curveball into the strike zone, Odor flipped his bat down onto the plate and turned towards first, delivering what should’ve been a bases loaded opportunity for Clint Frazier.

But home plate umpire Gabe Morales called the pitch a strike and the inning was over.

To be clear, this wasn’t a ball on the edge of the plate that could’ve gone either way. Barnes’s curveball had started wide and had never sniffed the strike zone, a fact clear to both the naked eye and the robotic. It was widely reported that the ball had been 4.55 inches off the plate. Had Odor swung and missed he’d have been chastised for chasing ball four.

Frustrations from a week of futility spilled over immediately as the Yankee dugout erupted. If ever there was a time for a manager to get himself ejected this was the moment, but somehow Aaron Boone remained calm as all those around him lost their heads, most notably third base coach Phil Nevin. That called third strike had not only thwarted a potential game-winning rally, it had offered proof of what was already clear to see. Xander Bogaerts’s two-run double in the top of the tenth stands as the game winner, but that’s like saying Oedipus wasn’t truly ruined until he gouged out his eyes. The fates had conspired against these Yankees.

But if you’ve paying attention, you know that’s a foolish way of looking at things. If the Yankees had become the juggernauts the world expected they’d be and were enjoying a seven-game division lead, they could be excused for dwelling on the misfortune of an umpire’s mistake. It would be understandable that they’d tie the outcome of a game to the temporary myopia of Gabe Morales. But you and I know the truth.

This Yankee offense is historically bad, and it no longer matters whether it’s a team-wide slump, an injury-induced malaise, or something as simple as a coin landing heads 54 times in a row.

Here’s Exhibit A — the historical production of the expected lineup, with the slash lines (AVG/OBA/SLG) from each hitter’s best season, his average season, and (aside from Judge) the trainwreck of 2021. Take a look if you dare.

It wouldn’t have been reasonable to expect or even hope for all nine players to stay healthy and produce like the far left column in 2021 (that team would win 125-130 games), but I’m sure Brian Cashman and Aaron Boone were counting on the middle column or better. As it turns out, they haven’t gotten close to that. Take a closer look…

• Not a single player is anywhere close to his career best. In fact, here’s the average differential: -48/-47/-182.
• Five different players (Sánchez, Voit, LeMahieu, Torres, and Frazier) are slugging more than one hundred points south of their career averages.
• Two of those players, Luke Voit and D.J. LeMaheiu, somehow have slugging percentages that are lower than their on base percentages.
• Of the 27 comparable statistics (nine players x BA/OBP/SLG), only two players are exceeding one of the slash numbers from their career best season: Gleyber Torres’s on base percentage (.351|.337) and Aaron Judge’s batting average (.295|.284).

And so even if you want to blame Sunday night’s loss on an umpire’s interpretation of a single pitch thrown in the bottom of the ninth inning, the much larger concern is that during a seven-game homestand against the Rays and the Red Sox, the Yankees went 2-5 while scoring just 22 runs. But really, even that is a minor concern. Here are some things the Bronx Bombers should really be worried about:

• Only four teams in baseball have scored fewer runs than the Yankees.
• Only five teams have a lower slugging percentage.
• No team has hit fewer doubles.
• No team has hit into more double plays.
• No team has made more outs on the bases.
• No team has seen more runners thrown out at the plate.
• No team has taken fewer extra bases.

Since April we’ve been hearing that these things will turn around, that players will begin to hit like what we see on the backs of their baseball cards, but we’re sixty games into the season. In the old days managers were often criticized for sitting on their hands and waiting for a three-run homer, but this team is waiting for so much more than that.

What if it never happens?

Yanks are bumping along. Some guys like Giancarlo Stanton and Aaron Hicks, both easy to root for, can’t stay on the field, which makes it frustrating to root for them.

Been listening to a majority of the games this year on the radio with John and Suzyn. They spend a good bit of each broadcast complaining about the state of the game today. And not just in the generic it-was-better-in-my-day kvetching, but unrelenting annoyance at what they are watching. Then I read baseball coverage or look at what’s being said on Twitter and whether you are an old school fan or a woke seamhead one thing everyone has in common is that they think the game is in a bad place aesthetically. And I cannot disagree though I have nothing insightful to suggest to make things better.

Is baseball the only sport where you see this much complaining by announcers, writers, and fans about the game itself?

More in Texas tonight.

Let’s Go Yank-ees!

Picture by Bags

A couple of hours before first pitch every game day, my phone dutifully buzzes to announce the Yankees’ starting lineup. Back during spring training, even when I wasn’t watching the games, I would still take a look at the batting order and marvel. More than once I caught myself saying, “Man, this offense is going to be really good.”

For the past twenty-five years, the Yankees have always been really good, and most years they’ve fielded one of the top two or three offenses in the sport. You know, Bronx Bombers and all.

But this year seemed like it might be different. I found myself wondering about preposterous possibilities. Sure, D.J. LeMaheiu had led the league in batting average and on-base percentage in 2020, but what might happen if Aaron Judge’s name was on the lineup card behind him 150 times? What if Aaron Hicks and Giancarlo Stanton stayed healthy? What if Gary Sánchez hit even .250 with 25 home runs? What if Clint Frazier built on the quiet success of last season and blossomed into a star?

All baseball fans are overly optimistic in March, but none of those hypotheticals seemed unreasonable back then. None of those things even seemed unlikely.

Well, we know what happened. The Yankee bats waited a few weeks to fly north after spring training, and the result was nothing anyone could’ve expected. On most nights through April and into the first weekend of May, manager Aaron Boone submitted a lineup card with three or four hitters batting below .200 because he simply had no better choices. A recent string of games against some of the weaker pitching staffs in the league has restored some confidence and allowed the Yankees to even their record at 14-14, but there are still concerns up and down the lineup.

We’re three days into May and Gleyber Torres hasn’t hit a home run. Aaron Hicks is hitting far less than his weight, Clint Frazier is no doubt wondering if he might be headed back to Scranton, and while there is a Yankee catcher with an OPS over a thousand, his name is Kyle Higashioka, not Gary Sanchez.

Perhaps inexplicably, I remain a Sanchez supporter, but after teasing us with home runs in the first two games of the season, Sanchez has managed just eight hits and a single RBI over the 17 games since that promising start. The player often referred to as the best pure hitter in the organization now has an OPS (.619) that is lower than Higashioka’s slugging percentage (.706). Every single Yankee season preview devoted a paragraph or two to the Mystery of the Kraken, and most observers marveled that a player as gifted as Sanchez could see his skills completely evaporate during what should’ve been the prime of his career. The Yankees are 6-12 in games when Sanchez starts behind the plate, and 8-2 when he doesn’t. At this point, Higashioka is the best catcher in pinstripes, and everyone knows it.

Oh, but there’s good news, and it abounds from the mound.

Everything begins with Gerit Cole, and even though anyone reading this already knows that he’s been the best pitcher in the American League this season, he’s probably been even better than most people realize.

Cole’s “worst” game was the season opener, in which he pitched a pedestrian five and a third innings, allowing two runs while striking out eight and walking two. It wasn’t a bad outing by any stretch, but his five starts since then have been ridiculous. In 32.1 innings he’s yielded just 19 hits and 4 earned runs, but that isn’t the amazing part. He’s posted 54 strikeouts while walking just one batter; over his last three starts those numbers are 33 and 0.

We’re only five weeks into the season, but we’re clearly watching something historic. The most dominant season by a Yankee starting pitcher in my lifetime was Ron Guidry in 1978. (I was nine years old that October when I created a Ron Guidry costume for Halloween; none of our neighbors in Naperville, Illinois, had any idea what I was doing.)

Should Cole approach Guidry’s legendary season — 25-3, 1.74 ERA, 248 Ks — he would cement himself in Yankee lore forever, but the Cole-Guidry comparison is about more than just numbers. When Cole is pitching at home and finds himself in a two-strike count with two outs in an inning, the Stadium crowd will rise to its feet in anticipation, bridging four decades with a tradition that stretches back to June 17, 1978, the day when Guidry struck out 18 California Angels. Unlike any Yankee starting pitcher since that season, including Clemens and Sabathia and Cone and Pettitte and Mussina, Cole is a flamethrower who seems to have the ability to overwhelm any hitter any time he wants. If you haven’t already begun to plan your week around his starts or schedule your DVR to record his games, it’s time to start.

If there’s been a pitcher more dominant than Cole this season, albeit in smaller doses, it’s been closer Aroldis Chapman. Last year we were constantly reminded that Chapman had lost velocity, but that’s no longer a concern. His fastball is regularly topping out in triple digits, and he’s added a sinker that also hits the century mark. If none of that seems fair as you read from behind the safety of your computer screen, just imagine standing in the batter’s box. Chapman has faced 35 hitters in his ten appearances, and struck out 24 of them. He hasn’t allowed a single runner to get past second base. There are certainly those fans who will withhold judgment until they see him duplicate this in October, but Chapman has shown enough to allow me to move past his playoff disappointments.

Built largely around the dominance of Cole and Chapman, it’s been the Yankees’ pitching, not the hitting, that has kept the team afloat and finally allowed them to climb all the way back to an even 14-14. The staff leads the American League in strikeouts, ERA, and strikeout to walk ratio. The top three arms in the bullpen — Chad Green, Jonathan Loaisiga, and Chapman — have combined for a preposterous stat line: 43 IP/56Ks/8BBs and an ERA of 0.83. The starting rotation behind Cole has also been rounding into form, with Corey Kluber, Jordan Montgomery, Jameson Taillon, and Domingo German all posting excellent outings this week, highlighted by Kluber’s eight shutout innings on Sunday, a dazzling performance that gave him his first Yankee win and the 100th win of his career.

I doubt that things will continue exactly as they are. We’ll begin to see more from the offense (Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton have shown encouraging signs), and it’s possible that Gerit Cole might walk a batter at some point, but if we forget the record for a moment, there’s a lot to be happy about after these first twenty-eight games. In fact, I’d argue that if April had gone as expected, with the offense outslugging the opponents on most nights to cover for mediocre pitching performances, we’d all be more worried than we are right now.

Jackie Robinson & George Shuba, Opening Day April 18, 1946
© Mike Shuba, from the webpage The Undefeated from an article by William Weinbaum

What does it all mean? Tracing great events and legacies back to simple moments floating ephemerally in time, waiting for the moment to enrich our understanding of humanity. Through good and bad times.  For richer or poorer. Greatness and scorn.  We live in our moments and pass along to the next, hoping to hold onto the greater fo these and pass along the erst, yet some return to bring either destruction or construction.  In this case, let us say we as fans of baseball should always grab hold of moments like this no matter when they reveal themselves again; such as the light traversing the cosmos they bring revelations through time that may stir even greater events in our own time.

This article, written by William Weinbaum for ESPN’s The Undefeated, touches on such light, describing the powerful significance it has in store. Thank you, Mr. Shuba and Mr. Robinson, for this touching and informative moment, and thank you to Mr. Mike Shuba and Mr. Weinbaum for your diligence in rediscovering and bringing this moment along with the memories and lessons it conveys back to tour time.

For the last few years of the last century and the first few years of this one, the rivalry between the Yankees and the Red Sox was as fierce as it had ever been. The Yankees of Jeter and Bernie and Mariano and Posada were on the rise, winning the World Series four times in five years, and the Red Sox were arguably the second-best team in baseball over that stretch.

Whether in the Bronx or Fenway, regular season games carried the intensity of any World Series game played in that era, and any fan from either side of the rivalry whose memory stretches back that far can rattle of an impressive list of dramatic moments — Derek Jeter stumbling out of the stands with blood dripping from his face, Jason Varitek and Alex Rodríguez scrapping at home plate, Pedro Martínez sending Jeter and Alfonso Soriano to the hospital, Mike Mussina losing a perfect game with two strikes and two outs in the ninth inning.

When Major League Baseball switched to an unbalanced schedule in 2001, suddenly the two rivals were matching up 18 or 19 times a season, and each three- or four-game series would drain days off my life. The games would routinely push the four-hour mark, but there were moments within each game that seemed to bend time. Manny Ramírez and David Ortíz used to hit third and fourth, and while their consecutive at bats might only have lasted three of four minutes, the tension — the absolute fear — made watching their plate appearances feel like a punishment dreamed up by Dante.

The Red Sox were a great team, but they were filled with villains. I could never really hate Manny, but I had plenty of venom for other Boston players. We all did. While standing at a Stadium souvenir stand once, a guy turned to me and said, “Fuckin’ Youkilis…” He apologized for his language when he noticed I was holding my three-year-old daughter, but I shook him off. “Don’t worry about it,” I said. “She needs to know.”

All of this escalated more than a little bit when the teams met in the American League Championship Series. I’ve been lucky enough to watch the Yankees play in the World Series ten times, but nothing in their seven wins or three losses — not even 2001 — compares to what happened in the ’03 and ’04 playoffs.

Pedro Martínez reached new depths in 2003 when he plunked Karím García and then tossed 73-year-old Don Zimmer to the ground in Game 3, setting up the drama of Game 7, when he coughed up a three-run lead in the eighth. (Seventeen years later, the highlight clip still gives me goosebumps.) It might seem like blasphemy, but when Aaron Boone hit his walk-off homer three innings later, I knew that the World Series would neither compare nor matter.

In 2004, of course, the Red Sox got their revenge. Before that year’s ALCS, I thought the 2001 World Series would live on as my ultimate Yankee tragedy, but standing by as the Sox climbed out of their 0-3 hole was like watching that bloop single from Luís González four nights in a row. Like having your Promethean heart ripped out by the vultures day after day after day after day.

So here’s my point. THAT was a rivalry. And now we’ve got… the Tampa Bay Rays?

There are so many reasons why I should care about the Rays the way I cared about the Red Sox twenty years ago — the way I care about the Red Sox right now — but I just can’t muster the interest, let alone the hatred.

It should be enough that the Rays maneuvered their way to a division championship last season, but that flag will always have an asterisk on it. It should be enough that Kevin Cash is even more irritating than Alex Cora, but when he threatened to have his stable of relievers throw at Yankee heads, he seemed to be reading from a rejected WWE script. It should be enough that the Rays ended the Yankees’ season last October with a dramatic walk-off blast, but I don’t even remember the name of the kid who hit it.

I’m not being intentionally condescending. There are a lot of things that I like about Tampa Bay. The openers, the incessant shifting, the four outfielders — I love all of those innovations, and I respect what they’ve done without any of the thermonuclear advantages of the Yankees and Red Sox and Dodgers.

But I don’t care about them. So when the Yankees bowed down to them on Friday and Saturday, there was no stomach churning bile, no grinding of teeth into dust, but there were concerns.

We’re only nine games into the season, but we already know a few things. First and foremost, Gerrit Cole is a freak of nature. I know that Roger Clemens was 20-3 and won the Cy Young in 2003, but it’s hard for me to believe that he was any better then than Cole is now. Other pitchers are also throwing well — eight different relievers still have perfect ERAs, led by Chad Green and Jonathan Loaisiga, and Michael King’s one scoreless six-inning appearance was enough to make me want to see him in the starting rotation.

We’re only 1/18 of the way through the season, but it’s still surprising that the biggest Yankee concerns are not on the mound but in the batter’s box. There have been some bright spots — D.J. LeMahieu is riding an eight-game hitting streak and Gary Sánchez is off to a refreshingly nice start, regardless of what the New York Post’s racist emeritus has to say — but there are far more question marks.

Will Aaron Hicks live up to the potential we saw in 2018? Will Gleyber Torres remind us why people think he’ll win an MVP one day? And as good as Aaron Judge has been thus far, will he play 150 games — or even 125?

There aren’t any answers here, nor even any predictions, and I can’t say that I’m bothered by all the uncertainty. Yes, the Yankees are 4-5, but they’ve got 153 more games to figure all this out. The only problem I see right now is this — the Red Sox are 6-3.

Not such a special start to the 2021 season, eh?

More today. And we’ll be rooting.

Let’s Go Yank-ees!

Picture by Bags

Lose one, win one.

Yanks Jays today for the third game of the season.

Happy Easter and Let’s Go Yank-ees!

Baseball!

Let’s Go Yank-ees!

[Author’s note: The following was originally written in April of 2019.]

I read a newspaper today. I found myself staying in a hotel in Washington, DC, along with eighty of my middle school students on an East Coast trip that started in Boston, continued in New York, and finished in the nation’s capitol. When I walked downstairs and turned towards the breakfast buffet, there they were, quaintly laid out on a counter like relics in the museums we’d been visiting all week.

I grabbed a copy of the Washington Post, not necessarily for the news, but for the same reason you might pick up your grandmother’s rotary phone and give it a quick spin. There should be a word that means “amused nostalgia.”

But then something interesting happened. It turned out the Sports section was sitting just where I’d left it ten years ago, three sections from the front, and everything else was just as I remembered. (And by the way, if we’re going to add words to the lexicon, we should also replace outdated similes; from here on out, instead of “just like riding a bike,” let’s agree on a different phrase: “just like reading a newspaper.”)

I’m certain that none of my fourteen-year-old traveling companions could navigate a newspaper, nor would they understand its idiosyncrasies. Headlines make perfect sense in the unlimited space of the internet, where a complete sentence or even two can sprawl luxuriously across the top of an article, but “Nats get boost from Robles in No. 2 spot” drew my eye immediately and reminded me of headlines from a past when static dimensions of pages and columns once gave us headlines like “Spike Inks Pact” or John Updike’s famously poetic “Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu.” It was an art in and of itself.

So after I read the first eight paragraphs about Victor Robles and his productive night from the second spot in the lineup, a kind note at the bottom of the column pointed towards the rest of the article: See NATIONALS on D5. As I dutifully turned the pages, I passed familiar features common to most Sports sections: a digest with highlights from around the sports world, a table of television and radio listings, and a notes column about the hometown Washington Nationals.

But before I could read more about Robles, I was transfixed by a full page of baseball boxscores. Once upon a time this was the highlight of my day. I’d find the Yankee game and carefully scan each line of the agate type for clues about how the game had gone — who had gotten the hits, stolen the bases, and scored the runs. It was a daily ritual during baseball season that began when I was eight or nine and didn’t end until the internet stole it away.

In this current era I’ve become a much more focused fan. I know far more about Judge and Stanton than I ever did about Mattingly and Winfield, but as the internet and satellite television have narrowed my focus, it’s as if the rest of baseball has fallen away.

Again, this morning’s Sports section reminded me of all this. A dozen box scores stood stacked across six columns, each telling a story of a different game, and the league leaders were posted on either side. Perhaps appropriately, there were none of the modern metrics like WAR or even OPS, but instead the statistics from my childhood: batting average, home runs, and RBIs for the hitters; ERA, saves, and strikeouts for the pitchers. Some of the names made sense — Christian Yelich and Khris Davis, Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander — but who could’ve known there’s an Alexander in Chicago hitting over .400 or a Yates in San Diego leading the league in saves? None of that would’ve gotten past me as a child, but today it’s news. Tomorrow it’ll be trivia.

I can’t imagine that I’ll ever subscribe to a daily newspaper again, and that’s a shame. For all I’ve gained, something has been lost. Sure, it’s nice to have instant access to the information I want (the Yankee score wasn’t even in the paper: NY Yankees at LA Angels, late), but it was nice this morning to get all the information I didn’t know I needed.

When I put down the paper, I knew more than when I had picked it up, and I was also left with something else my iPhone will never give me — ink-stained fingertips.

It’s second and third with two outs in the last inning and we’re down a run. A tight spot, but tighter than you think as it’s the last game of the season and we’re staring at 0-10 if we don’t get these runs home. No team sets out to simply not lose every game, but when the end is three strikes away, it’s the only thing every player, coach and parent is thinking about. As the head coach, I feel like I’ve let these eleven-year-olds down and there’s nothing I can do about it.

As our team looks ahead to a new season, it’s impossible to forget the previous one. We practiced at the end of February to get a jump on the spring schedule. Once we got the basics down, we’d implement our beloved trick plays. I played ball into adult leagues and I had all the time in the world to impart the wisdom of 40 years in the game.

We didn’t see each other again for four months.

We retreated from our offices and classrooms to the dining room table. From hardball at the park to Wiffle ball in the backyard. My wife and six-year-old daughter, previously tolerant of my obsession with the game, became enthusiastic sluggers. My daughter holds all the batting records in the family as the precondition for her participation was guaranteed homers. A Boras-worthy contract. She’d bury her face in the flowers outside the third base line rather than play the field.

We lost a case of balls to the eager dogs on two sides of our diamond and the flourishing vegetable garden on the third side. The deck off the living room was an inviting right field porch and homers to left peppered the neighbors’ black and red Mini Cooper. We debated what was more offensive: leaving Wiffle balls scattered in their driveway or contaminating their living space by retrieving them.  Even the newly converted ran out of steam when the summer arrived. We hadn’t played in a few weeks when Governor Murphy announced we could have a summer team.

Our first practice was unproductive. I recorded temperatures, tracked transmission rates in vacation destinations and sterilized catching equipment. One positive case would bring the team, possibly the league, crashing to a halt. The kids, remote-learning since March, were finally close enough to smell each other’s farts again and who was I to interrupt their joyful togetherness with the infield fly rule? We would get to the baseball when the time was right.

When we started playing games, we lost. I noticed nobody even bothered to know the score. Enjoyment divorced from outcome. I’m not built that way – I’ve never gotten over the championship I blew when I was ten – but I knew better than to try to impose my hang-ups on them even under normal circumstances. We never had any positive tests, but the losses piled up and the competitive kids were smiling less and the more vocal parents had advice.

We enter the bottom half of the last inning down six and a winless season is three outs away. The pizza arrives in the bleachers for the postgame party. We want the kids to celebrate something, even if it’s just a slice and Coke. Like a flash, a couple of walks and a couple of hits flood the bases and the tying run is on third and the winning run on second with two outs.

In the on-deck circle my son takes a deep breath and bangs his bat on the turf to loosen the weighted donut. He’s the shortest player on the team and has the walks to prove it. As a parent, I feel relief when ball four sails high and wide. As a coach, I feel desperation.

The other manager wants to reassure his pitcher and calls for time. As I run out to second base during the meeting on the mound, I curse myself for my sloth. I never got around to trick plays. Why give them more than they could handle? Unforgivable!

“Joe, take a big lead and when the catcher has the ball, fall down. When they chase you, stay in the rundown until Connor can score.” Joe might have questions but I won’t let him ask them as I’m already running back to third. I brief Connor with even less information.

The first pitch is a called strike. Joe hits the deck and I do the one thing I can think of which is to yell at Joe like he’s dropped a live grenade. The catcher is startled, decides he doesn’t want the ball and zips it back where it came from. I am briefly worried, but I needn’t be because every other living soul within a mile radius has taken the bait the catcher passed up. Their screams spin the pitcher into action and he fires to second as Joe jabs toward the bag. Connor breaks for home. The second baseman watches him tie the game as the ball flies into centerfield. Joe winds up safe at third.

The bench and bleachers erupt. There’s finally a passed ball on the next pitch, “Go! Go! Go!” I scream, but Joe’s head is still spinning and he hesitates and stays, stays, stays. The batter strikes out and we go to extra innings. We exchange zeroes and the umpire calls the game as the sun sets.

We didn’t win, but I can’t imagine celebrating one any harder. Coke cans became Champagne bottles and the kids drenched each other as we reminded them to keep their masks on. You have to really shake that can to cover six feet. Earlier in the summer, baseball was secondary to the camaraderie. That night, baseball was the reason for the celebration. And the virus, while ingrained, was only the background.

We called it the “Valley Play” because a team named Pascack Valley had used it on us thirty years ago. Don’t tell the kids; they’re still at ease with mystery. It works because when the game is so tight and the players so focused, they don’t consider the absurd. Everyone was shocked to learn that Joe had fallen on purpose. They forgave my recklessness and we stayed at the field until we could barely imagine each other’s smiles in the darkness.

I had trouble falling asleep. Every time I shut my eyes I saw the ball bouncing behind the catcher. Go! Go! Go!  Ties, unlike masks, are un-American.

[Featured Image Photo Credit: Wasyel Danysh]

So there are doing this thing, this spring training and getting ready for a big league season thing again.

What, if anything, excites you about this year’s team?

Picture by Bags

Knicks HC Tom Thibodeau and PG Derrick Rose Courtesy CllickPoints.com

I’ve been pretty tied up as a stagehand on some show for a while now, but behind the scenes I’ve been keeping track of much of the major sports moves across MLB, NBA and even (gulp) NFL as the pandemic has stimulated some dramatic changes on rosters and front offices alike.  I’ve had long email threads involving a few folks here about these events, which eventually turned into a request to open the discussion to the rest of us Banterites, which I’ve decided to do as time permits.  I’m sure most have been kept abreast by your favorite credentialed or otherwise consistent sources, but I offer a familiar perspective you can interact with in our comfortable break room, nothing more and nothing less. Shall we begin?

The latest treacle of info is that the New York Kings of Leon Knicks, who have undergone a much needed and dramatic change of culture from front and back (but sadly not the tippy-top) have reacquired guard Derrick Rose from Detroit.  If you’ve paid attention, you know that Rose was last seen (around here anyway) during the 2016-17 season failing with the Phil Jackson-error squad as he struggled with the surprisingly exposed and obsolete Triangle offense and ended up having injury-marred turns with both Cleveland and Minnesota the next season.  He regained his footing with Detroit in 2019, but because of health issues has started this season off the bench for them, so it’s not as much of a significant move on the surface as his name implies.

Given his travails with the Knicks and his outspoken criticism and desire to get away, I’m surprised he would acquiesce to returning, but then there has been significant change here and with him as well.  For one thing, Tom Thibodeau is the coach now, and Rose had his best years with Thibs, so he’s someone who knows the system and can help integrate the younger Knicks on the roster with said system (and commiserate when they get worn out) that worked well for a while with the Chicago Bulls.  Can’t argue with the results so far; Thibs is known as a defensive guru of a coach and has helped lift the current team to 5th in defense across the league well before reaching the halfway point of the season. Not to mention, the Knicks are in real need of a veteran point guard to stimulate the offense, which tends to be a liability with his teams unless he has decent players in place to make them work. He can develop those types (as he did with Rose, or he and the new front office can acquire those types (as they did with Rose).  Of course, the downside of this is Rose’s injury history; he had a significant ACL tear of his left knee during the 2011-12 season playoffs that kept him out for the rest of the series and all of the following season.  He returned for 2013-14. but tore the meniscus of his right knee in November and missed the rest of that season.  The following season he again required surgery on his right knee in March and missed 20 games before returning in April for the playoffs.  In his lone season with the Knicks he was shut down in the latter part of the season for another meniscus tear.  With Cleveland, Minnesota and Detroit the injury trends continued throughout.  Despite this, Rose has shown flashes of his former All-Star form throughout even after returning from various injuries, so his game seems intriguing enough to have him in anyone’s rotation, but even though he’s 32, his injuries have culminated to the point that Detroit restricted his minutes and had him coming off the bench this season, which is likely to continue in his return.  If nothing else, this is an experience pickup that could provide some productivity while allowing the younger point guards to develop (or buy time and space to find/develop a good starter for that role).  There’s promise in guard Immanuel Quickley, inconsistent as he has been, that shines above current roster guards Elfrid Payton, Frank Ntlikina and Austin Rivers (who seemed to be groomed this season solely as trade bait for contending teams).

Meanwhile back in 2019, this happened:
Dennis Smith was acquired by the New York Knicks, along with DeAndre Jordan, Wesley Matthews, a 2021 1st round pick (DAL own) and a conditional 2023 1st round pick (DAL own), from the Dallas Mavericks in exchange for Trey Burke, Tim Hardaway Jr., Courtney Lee and Kristaps Porzingis.

The flip-side of getting Derrick Rose back is sending Dennis Smith Jr. and a 2021 second-round pick via the Charlotte Hornets. Again if you’ve been paying attention, that probably says more about Rose’s impact on Detroit than Smith Jr has had on New York. To say the least, Smith has been a disappointment. Coming over in what amounted to a salary dump with a couple of okay picks and expiring contracts for guys that probably wudda-cudda-shudda stayed were it not for the massive incompetence of the then-front office… man, this was a strange move, and one that went pretty much as expected as Smith was really deep on the downside of a somewhat promising career and has not deviated from that path to obscurity yet.  In fact, it had gotten to the point that he asked to be placed in the G-League just so he could get quality playing minutes as he was locked out of the rotation and averaged less than ten minuets a game in the 3 games he played in.  Being traded to Detroit could actually be a breath of fresh air for him; a place where he can rehab his game without expectations.

As for the picks; well it’s capital, which will probably be used to acquire more development pieces. Let’s not forget that the Knicks are a rebuilding organization (let alone the team in the locker room) and any success they experience should be viewed from that lens alone. Knicks president Leon Rose and his Funky Associates were brought in specifically to change a losing culture that has hung over and rotted the organization for over twenty years (with one playoff win during this period and oh-look, the head coach from that season is an assistant on the staff this season), and though the coach has them playing surprisingly well, it’s still a work-in-progress, as evident by the trade for a player they once had who can, in a limited capacity, provide a good amount of progression for the younger core players they’ve acquired or drafted.  It won’t change them overnight and it won’t make them surprise contenders, but it does show a commitment to the coach’s system.  I’d start expecting something in year three if I were you.

Oh yeah, Tampa Bay 31, Kansas City 9, Tom Brady greatest of blah-blah whatever…

From the time I was old enough to hold a bat, my heroes were always baseball players, and Hank Aaron was the first. I was only four years old in April of 1974 when he hit his historic home run to pass Babe Ruth, so if that moment was spoken of in my home, I don’t remember it, but it wasn’t long before my mother put a slim paperback book in my hands, The Home Run Kings: Babe Ruth and Henry Aaron. It was the first of many books I’d read about Aaron, and it would deepen my love of the game while kindling a love of reading, two passions that have never left me.

When I saw the news of Aaron’s passing this morning at the age of eighty-six, I thought about that first book and what Aaron has meant to me. 

It begins, obviously, with his name. When I was a boy, there were only two people I knew who shared my first name. My father, who stood in a frame alongside my mother in a picture from their wedding day, and Hank Aaron. That was it.

One biography led to another, and soon the stories and statistics began to fill my head as if they were my own memories. I learned that he had been born in 1934 in Mobile, Alabama, and had taught himself how to play, the same as I had. (I even took more than a few swings cross-handed, with my left hand above my right the way he had before someone set him straight.) I worried for him when I read about his leaving home at the age of 18 with nothing but two dollars and two sandwiches for the train ride to Indianapolis where he’d play in the Negro Leagues for a time with the Indianapolis Clowns.

Before long he was in the major leagues with the Milwaukee Braves, and he quickly developed into one of the best players in baseball. Aaron’s game matched his personality. He was quiet off the field, and quietly great between the lines. We know him now solely as a home run hitter, but he was brilliant in all phases of the game. If steadiness can be dazzling, that was Aaron. He built his mountain of home runs with workman-like consistency, never once hitting as many as fifty home runs in a single season but only twice falling short of thirty from 1957 to 1973. He kept his head down, both figuratively and literally, as he hit all those long balls. Aaron once said that he had never seen a single one of his 755 home runs land, choosing instead to put his head down and circle the bases. That story may or may not be true, but it fits the man and player he was.

Aaron’s greatest accomplishment, his pursuit of Babe Ruth’s career home run record in 1973 and ‘74, was one of the darkest times of his life. Ruth was more than just a baseball player, he was a myth, and there were those in the American South (the Braves had relocated to Atlanta in 1966) who couldn’t stomach the idea of a Black man eclipsing a white icon. The hate mail was horrific, and the death threats were frequent. Just six years after the assassination of Martin Luther King, those death threats were taken seriously. When you watch the clip of Aaron’s historic 715th home run and you see the crowd of fans spilling out of the stands and onto the field, it’s easy to see it as just a celebration; Aaron later admitted that he feared for his life in what should have been the crowning moment of his career.

His stature in the game is secure. He is one of the five greatest hitters ever to play in the major leagues (Ruth, Williams, Mays, and Bonds are the others, end of discussion), but his legacy was ironically solidified when Barry Bonds pushed past him with his 756th home run in 2007. Everyone knew what was going on, and everyone knew that Bonds’s record was tainted, but after Bonds circled the bases that night, there was Aaron on the video scoreboard, praising the new home run king for his “skill, longevity, and determination.” And there was more: “My hope today, as it was on that April evening in 1974, is that the achievement of this record will inspire others to chase down their dreams.” 

I hit only one home run in a baseball career that ended at age fourteen, but Aaron still inspired me to chase down my dreams. I never saw him play a single game, but he was still my hero.

My dad and I met him at a baseball card show when I was fifteen. He was probably the same age then as I am today, and he sat at a table before a long line of memorabilia hounds. Sometimes the signers at these events would chat a bit with their fans, but Aaron was keeping his head down as usual, signing one item after another, baseballs, bats, and photos. No conversation.

But when my turn came and I set down a glossy 8×10 for him to sign, my dad couldn’t help himself.

“His name is Hank,” he said. “Just like you.”

My hero paused, then looked up at me with a smile and said, “Nice to meet you.”

As the pandemic continues to grip the country and insurrection is the mood of the moment, baseball still seems completely irrelevant to me, though I admit to keeping one eye out for trade news. It’s funny to think back on the Hot Stove League with nostalgia as it is a thing of the past, Francisco Lindor-to-the-Mets-notwithstanding.

But it looks as if the Yanks have finally gotten off the schneid: Corey Kluber for one year; DJ LeMahieu for six.

Picture by Bags.

Welp, the strange 2020 season ended on a sour note for the Yanks. Tough noogies for Mr. Chapman once again.

Yanks had fight in them but the loss still smarts. But I can’t pretend this one impacted me that much. I mean, I didn’t watch an entire game all year long until the playoffs, the first time that’s happened since I started following the game in the late ’70s, so I was less emotionally-involved that normal. Still feels weird to me that professional sports are carrying on this year.

Anyhow, I’ll be pulling for the Dodgers and Rays (for all their celebrating, well-deserved as it was, the Rays better not spit the bit now).

Never mind the Blues:

Let’s Go Yank-ees!

The Yanks beat the Rays in Game 4 on the strength of good pithing—and a sterling showing from the bullpen—and a couple of big hits, including a towering home run by Gleyber Torres.

That gives a Game 5 win-or-go-home scenario tonight.

We pause for a moment, however, to tip our cap to Whitey Ford, who died last night at the age of 91. Ford was the biggest of big game pitchers for the Yanks during their dynasty years. We salute the Chairman of the Board.

And tonight, we’ll be watching and rooting for our guys.

Never mind the nerves:

Let’s Go Yank-ees!

Yanks on the brink.

Never mind the preamble:

Let’s Go Yank-ees!

Yanks won Game 1. Their stud pitcher wasn’t great but he showed toughness; Giancarlo Stanton put the cherry on top in the 9th with a grand slam.

Game 2 tonight gives a rookie on the hill for the Yanks. Exciting.

Never mind the sunset:

Let’s Go Yank-ees!

Picture by Bags

The Rays handled the Yanks this season. They had the best record in the league and will be a handful for our Bombers. Irregardless—as some citizens in the Bronx still like to say—we’ll be here root-root-rooting for our boys.

Never mind the nonsense:

Let’s Go Yank-ees!

Picture by Bags

First one went well. What about tonight?

Never mind the cardboard cut-outs:

Let’s Go Yank-ees!

Picture by Bags