Three cheers to Jim Bouton, whose classic book, Ball Four, turns 40 (Jay Jaffe had a great post to mark the event over at the Pinstriped Bible last week).

Last weekend, Bouton was honored by the  Baseball Reliquary in California. According to Tom Hoffarth:

When asked how the title “Ball Four” came into being, Bouton explained Saturday how he and editor Leonard Shecter were at the Lion’s Head Tavern in New York, the famous literary bar near Columbia University, having just turned in the finished product into the publisher:

“We went to have a drink to celebrate this piece of cardboard we had just turned in, and we’re thinking, ‘Now what are we going to call the damn thing?’

“We were talking about the need to have a downbeat title. This isn’t a story about how somebody just won the World Series. It’s about struggling, about difficulty. What’s the toughest thing for a pitcher — a knuckleball pitcher in particular — it’s to get the damn ball over the plate. It’s walking guys ….

“So we’re talking about all this, and there was a lady sitting at the bar. She was very drunk. And she was listening to our conversation. And at some point, she leans over and says, ‘Whyyyyy don’t you caaaaall it Baaaaallllll Foooouuuuurrrrrrr?’

“And we said, ‘nawwwww.’

“Finally we couldn’t come up with anything. And I was walking Shecter back to his hotel before I went home to New Jersey, and then Shecter says, ‘You know, Ball Four isn’t a bad title.’ So we owe it all to this woman at the bar.”

Smile, it won’t mess up your hair.

There’s a new documentary called Jews and Baseball. Looks promising. My father’s family is Jewish and baseball is the game that we care about. So many sportswriters are Jews, and yeah, there have been a couple of pretty good Jewish players as well.

Vampires need not apply.

Serious Eats with the skinny on black garlic:

What is the stuff? It’s simply garlic that’s been left to ferment for about a month until the cloves turn soft, gummy, and black and the papery exterior withers and browns. The details of the process are a trade secret, but involve careful regulation of heat and humidity to keep the garlic aged, rather than, well, rotten. The result is a clove with the sweetness and texture of roasted garlic and a funky, fermented twang reminiscent of molasses and kimchi. The cloves can be eaten raw and have none of the sulfurous bite of unfermented garlic.

The black garlic PR team says you can use it wherever you’d use plain garlic, but those recipes can get a little Mad Lib for my tastes. I prefer it in applications where black garlic’s unique qualities can shine through. It’s great raw or puréed for salads and dips, where raw garlic would overwhelm everything else. Its complex sweetness beats the pants off roasted garlic, making an interesting and time-saving alternative to spreads and mashed dishes.

Chris Jones profiles Javier Bardem in Esquire:

He apologized many times for his English; he didn’t need to. He talked about his reticence for publicity, how he thinks of himself as a working actor, not a celebrity. His mom was an actor, too, and she had raised three children in Madrid largely on her own by pretending to be other people. It was the family business. He said that he knows highly technical actors who can do the job regardless of their feelings for it. He said he is not such an actor: “I have to believe in what I’m doing, otherwise I don’t stand a chance.” He said that he tried to get out of No Country for Old Men, told the Coen brothers that he was a terrible choice, that he abhors violence and couldn’t drive and wouldn’t be able to say his lines without using a strange voice. They told him that made him perfect for it, and they were right. He said that when actors win Oscars, they’re happy only because it means they will probably get more work; he also said actors make lousy award-show presenters because “it’s the only time we have to be ourselves.” He talked about the choices he’s made, that he’s been lucky but also that he thinks about what he’s doing — not as though he’s making some grand plan but as though his days are numbered. He is deliberate. He talked about his doubts and fears and insecurities, this Oscar-winning actor who had just married Penélope Cruz. He talked about his dream of one day working with Al Pacino — “but I doubt that will ever happen” — and how he would love to play Pablo Escobar and Cortez the Killer. He said that he didn’t feel much need to talk about Eat Pray Love — “It doesn’t need any help,” he said — but that he would like to talk about Biutiful. “I think it’s a masterpiece,” he said, “and it needs help.”

On a fishing trip in 1939, film director Howard Hawks told Ernest Hemingway:

“Ernest, you’re a damn fool. You need money, you know. You can’t do all the things you’d like to do. If I make three dollars in a picture, you get one of them. I can make a picture out of your worst story.”

“What’s my worst story?”

“That god damned bunch of junk called To Have and To Have Not [sic.].”

“You can’t make anything out of that.”

“Yes I can. You’ve got the character of Harry Morgan; I think I can give you the wife. All you have to do is make a story about how they met.”

It’s not a great movie but it is good entertainment (and the screenplay was co-written by William Faulkner of all people). Walter Brennan and Hoagy Carmichael are winning in supporting roles and Lauren Bacall practically burns a hole in the screen. Man, what poise, what a kitten:

Peace to Jeremiah’s Vanishing New York for hipping me to the photography of Ted Barron. Here’s some of Barron’s work, featured recently over at Sensitive Skin Magazine:

Check it out.

Then dig Barron’s blog:

Big CC Going for win number 20…

Batter Up:

Serve ’em up fresh, CC.

Let’s Go Yan-Kees!

I like AJ rockin’ the black eye look:

Makes him look cool.

Happy Daze…

[Picture by Bags]

A super-heroic game from Arod inspired both Alex and me to choose images of Superman after last night’s performance. Thanks to Rodriguez the Yankees won 4-3 and gained a game on both the Rays and Sox, moving back into the penthouse of the AL East. The one I chose is a picture by George Perez from the Avengers-JLA crossover a few years ago. This drawing is from the climactic battle. The Vision has just been killed, and Thor is under a pile of bad guys. With his last act, the Vision drains his power jewel into Superman, essentially supercharging their strongest gun. Thor whips him his hammer, Captain America flings him his shield, and Superman puts everything into one swing with the mighty Mjolnir which saves the day.

Yeah, last night was kind of like that.

I’m not picky when it comes to wins. AJ Burnett going seven innings and allowing three runs, even if it was tough to watch at times, is cause for optimism. The offense was brutal, no getting around it, and they’ll have to be better if they want to win the series with Tampa next week. But they have two more games in Baltimore to put on their hitting shoes and I think they will.

I did not think the pitch Alex took for ball two in the ninth was a strike. It required a little restraint from the home plate umpire, but to me it was not overly close and would have been a harsh way to end the game. Though I guess from Balitmore’s perspective, having Arod plaster one into the night is pretty harsh too.

Alex said that Arod expressed his inner-Reggie last night. Coming up big at the biggest times is how heroes are made, and we sure needed hero during this recent stretch. I hope Arod is ready to assume that role for the duration.

When Alex smushes one like that, I imagine the ball flattening upon impact and then snapping back to form as it hurtles into space. It’s a testament to the good folks at Rawlings that the ball did not explode. Next time, he should try the hammer.

Hot damn. Shades of Tino and Mark Langtson as Alex Rodriguez saves the day. Jon will have the recap shortly…

of accents…

When I was a kid one of the activities that I hated most was “browsing.” My mother would say, “Oh, let’s just go browse.”

Are you serious, lady? Why don’t you buy me something? What is this browsing?

What a horrible word: browsing. It didn’t make any sense to me.

Of course, now I can buy what I want–within reason–but I like to browse, at least bookstores and record shops.

Diane hipped me to this piece on the death of browsing. Sad, really.

Goodness:

Remixed by Afrika Bambaataa:

The classic routine.

A talk with Catherine Deneuve.

I always mix these tunes up in my head for some reason…

Yo, check out this great spoken word recording from Boris Karloff via my man Steinski.

The questions remains…