Grandmaster of the day…

Neil Adams

Wait, did I bury the lede?

There’s no shortage of good boxing movies. We’ve talked about that in the past. But what about laughs? Welp, dig these two funny boxing scenes from the masters: Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton. Watching them again, they are a decent example of how different Chaplin and Keaton were stylistically.

First, from City Lights:

And from one of Keaton’s lesser features, The Battling Butler:

I caught this little primer by rapper-turned-actor Common (formerly Common Sense) in the L.A. Times Magazine on the differences between the acting and rapping. I clicked on it not expecting much, but it’s actually a good read.

Dig…

Another boxing beat:

…For the Brown Bomber:

Nineteen-sixty-eight is remembered in mostly reverential terms as “The Year of the Pitcher.” But at the time, Roger Angell complained about the lack of hitting in The New Yorker and dubbed it “The Year of the Infield Pop-up.”

Our man Cliff takes a look at ’68 and other dominant pitching years, over at SI.com. One surprise–1997:

Just because offenses dominated in the late ’90s doesn’t mean there wasn’t great pitching going on. Between the strike year of 1994, when 4.92 runs were scored per game, and 2000, when the era peaked with 5.14 runs scored per game (the most since 1936), 1997 represented a relative low point for run scoring with “just” 4.77 runs crossing the plate per contest. The sheer quantity of star pitching talent on display that season, the last before the most recent round of expansion and the homer-happy season of 1998 was staggering.

Start with the Braves’ rotation headed by future Hall of Famers Greg Maddux (19-4, 2.20 ERA), Tom Glavine (14-7, 2.96 ERA), and John Smoltz (15-12, 3.02 ERA, 241 K’s) and complimented that year by a career year from lefty Denny Neagle (20-5, 2.97 ERA). Those four men combined for a 2.80 ERA over 962 innings (an average more than 240 innings per pitcher). None of them took home the Cy Young award, however, as that was claimed by a breakout season from 25-year-old Expos righty Pedro Martinez (17-8, 1.90 ERA, 305 K’s). Despite those 305 punchouts, Martinez finished second in the league in strikeouts to the Phillies’ Curt Schilling (17-11, 2.97, 319 K’s), marking one of just six seasons in baseball history in which two pitchers each struck out 300 men. Schilling’s 319 strikeouts remain a record for a right-handed National Leaguer.

Another Comic Book Grandmaster: Steve Ditko.

Boxing Week continues…

Ticket Dealer: [to manager, referring to Homer] That overweight guy wants to see the movie.

Manager: I’m terribly sorry, sir, but I’m afraid our facilities are not equipped to meet your needs.

Homer Simpson: What are you talking about?

Manager: What I’m saying, sir, is that a man of your carriage couldn’t possibly fit in our seats.

Homer Simpson: I can sit in the aisle.

Manager: I’m afraid that would violate the fire code.

Bystander: Hey, Fatty! I’ve got a movie for ya: A Fridge Too Far!

While we’re on the topic of sweet junk…

Popcorn, raisinets, ju ju bes, twizzlers, sour patch kids…

How do you roll when you go to the movies?

I like to strap a feedbag on and eat popcorn like that. Sometimes, I’ll have something chocolate cause I’m a surf n turf kind of guy.

My mother, old Johnny Appleseed herself, loved to take us camping as kids. I didn’t like it then and I don’t like it now, much to my wife’s chagrin. Emily is a country mouse and loves the idea of camping out underneath the stars. I’ve adopted the Woody Allen front, complaining about mosquitos and owls and nature.

About the only thing that sounds appealing about camping is making smores, and I don’t even love them either. I mean, what good are graham crackers anyway?  But some people are knuts for smores (fortunately, if I ever get a craving I don’t need to go camping to have ’em). My wife thinks they are heavenly.

What about you? Do smores melt you where it counts?

[Photo Credit: Sun-Sentinel and TLC]

Two years ago, Emma wrote about Dandy, the Yankees’ short-lived mascot. Today in the Wall Street Journal, Scott Cacciola has a piece on the biggest bust in team history:

In 1979, the Yankees appeared eager to replicate the success of the Phillie Phanatic, the green, pot-bellied mascot that Mr. Harrison and Ms. Erickson created in 1978. In his first two years of existence, according to Mr. Harrison, Phanatic-related products generated $2 million in revenue—and his popularity has not waned.

He made more than 550 public appearances last year, has his own merchandise store in Philadelphia and is on display at the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Dandy, on the other hand, got thrown in a dumpster.

He was designed by Ms. Erickson, who had worked on “The Muppet Show” and created Miss Piggy, among other characters. Dandy was marketed as a “dyed-in-the-wool” Yankees fan.

He was blessed with a pear-shaped physique that was almost Ruth-ian. He had a hat that spun, a cartoon-size baseball bat and a big, bushy mustache that evoked Thurman Munson, the team’s star catcher—which was no coincidence.

Above all, Dandy was a New Yorker.

“He was supposed to be sassy,” Mr. Harrison said. “He was supposed to have that Yankee swagger.”

Nah, no mascots. No cheerleaders, no mascots. We’ve got enough nuts and clowns in the Bronx as it is.

[Photo Credit: Wayde Harrison]

Tonight gives a treat: Doc Halladay vs. CC Sabathia.

 Over at ESPN, Mark Simon takes a look at Halladay, King of the Yankee-Killers.

The Yanks have the night off. Here’s an open thread for whatever should come to mind…

[Picture by Bags]

How about a week of American comic book artists? Let’s start with the master, Jack Kirby:

In celebration of the recent publication of The Fighter Still Remains: A Celebration of Boxing in Poetry and Song from Zevon to Ali (edited by George Kimbal and John Schulian), let’s do a week of boxing tunes.

First up, a classic:

This’d make a nice, quick lunch. Thank you, Mr. B.

Here’s the recipe.

Maybe his stuff doesn’t date so well, maybe he was imitated too often, maybe he became a parody of himself, his later work turned to schtick, overshadowing the former excellence. Whatever the case, Jimmy Cannon has not aged well. And it’s a shame because at his best, he was not only a terrific big city sports columnist, but one of the best we’ve ever seen.

A friend hipped me to this little piece on him from the Time Magazine archives (circa 1952):

When Jimmy Cannon was a newspaper shaver, the late Damon Runyon gave him some advice: “The best way to make a living is to be a sportswriter.” Cannon followed the advice, and Runyon liked the results so well that before he died he made Cannon “the custodian of my reputation when I’m gone.” At 43, as sport columnist for the New York Post, sad-eyed Jimmy Cannon has also come closer than any other sportswriter to taking Runyon’s place. His favorite columnar character is Two Head Charlie, a thoughtful horse player, who talks like this: “You take a real ugly bum . . . with a face a monkey would be ashamed of. Let him get a shave and a haircut and meet a broad. What’s the first thing the broad says to him, she says you look cute tonight . . . I admit I look like a kangaroo . . . But every broad I take out tells me I’m cute. Soon as a dame says that, I know I can’t trust her.”

Delicatessen Nobility. Bums, bettors, Broadway guys, hangers-on and contestants at every sports arena are material for Cannon’s column; his ear is finely tuned to their talk. “They’re a kind of delicatessen nobility,” says he. “I know lots of guys who talk like Two Head.” Cannon knows them because he was born & raised in their midst, on Manhattan’s lower West Side, still lives in a hotel midway between Broadway and Madison Square Garden. At 17, as a copy boy on the Daily News, Cannon’s skill with words caught the city editor’s notice. Once, when a crank invaded the city room and introduced himself as “God,” Cannon answered: “Pleased to meetcha. Heard a lot aboutcha.”

There is a decent collection of Cannon’s work called “Nobody Asked Me, But…” that you can find on the cheap.

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The first rated “R” movie I ever saw in the theater was Neighbors, a not-so-funny John Belushi/Dan Ackroyd comedy. Came around the time of my parent’s separation. The high school daughter of my dad’s best friend took my brother, sister and me. When it was over, I asked her what it meant to pork someone and she refused to tell me, said I’d find out soon enough (which was the opposite of finding out soon enough as far as I was concerned).

A few months later, I saw Shoot the Moon, a relentlessly grim movie about divorce. I was obsessed with seeing it and begged the adults I knew to take me. Finally, I got my cousin Deborah to bring me to see it. It was a heavy movie for an eleven-year-old–it’s a heavy movie for a grown up–but life was heavy at that moment. And much of it rang true–the emotional violence, the sadness, the confusion and messiness of it all.

So? What was your first rated “R” movie? Were your parents uptight or liberal when it came to such things? Whadda ya hear, whadda ya say?

With a debate raging over our reactions to yesterday’s draw with England, we went to bed a Banter divided. Tonight, because of a tie of a different sort, a tie for first place, we’re reunited in contentment, or as our esteemed founder would say, as a bunch of heppy kets.

The Yankees completed their sweep of the Astros 9 to 5 just before the Marlins won their series with the Rays, dead-heating the AL East rivals at 40 and 23. The Rays’ funk came after the Yankees’ rut, but they are remarkably similar. After a blistering 21-8 start, the Yankees lost one to the Red Sox and proceeded to gag 12 of 20. The Rays were a mind-boggling 30-11 before getting swept by the same Red Sox on their way to losing 11 of 19. At least the Yankees can point to some injuries – the Rays can only blame gravity. And the schedule plays a part in this too. The Rays benefitted from a soft start, the Yankees are currently enjoying the Snuggle Fabric Softener portion of their schedule en route to a fluffy-fresh bounce back – 11 wins over the last 14 games.

If Phil Hughes falls short of any statistical milestones this season, I think he’ll look back on the rain-soaked battle with Tony Manzella in the sixth inning today and the ensuing four runs will stick between his teeth like broken pieces of sweet summer corn. Six innings, five hits, one inconsequential run and six strikeouts would have been another fine plank in his pleasantly plausible Cy Young platform. As the box score reads, he got bombed by the weak-hitting Astros. I was miffed about Jeter’s inability to get to Manzella’s topper, and before I could finish the grouse, Cash had homered.

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It’s hot n hazy in New York as the Yanks go for the sweep today.

Keep it rollin’ fellas.

Let’s Go Yan-Kees!