It is supposed to rain and rain and rain some more in Baltimore tonight. Here’s hoping they get the game in. If’ ‘n’ they do, you know how we do: Let’s Go Yan-Kees.

[Photo Credit: WeatherCurrent.com]

Personal Values, By Rene Magritte (1952)

Here’s a couple of cool shots by Bags, the Banter’s own picture-making whiz. Bags tools around town in his free time and takes photographs with a variety of cameras–just not digital cameras. His work has been gracing this space for the past month and will continue to be featured here for as long as he wants.

We’re lucky to have him.

Over at The Harball Times, Alex Eisenberg takes a look at the Trouble in Birdland.

Further Proof that Rock Will Never Die:

This one is a must for all you loose-tea nyerds out there.

 A most excellent product.

[Photo Credit: cooking.com]

Boitday, that is. Join me in raising a mug to our own Diane Firstman. Then smash that mug on the floor and rock out to this:

Self-Portrait, By Lucian Freud (1985)

Stephen Strasburg makes his Major League debut tonight. Over at SI.com, Joe Posnanski tells us what it all means while Cliff analyzes the debuts of some other hyped phenoms.

I remember this one:

Dwight Gooden
Team: New York Mets
Opponent: Houston Astros
Date: April 7, 1984
Line: 5 IP, 3 H, 1 R, 0 HR, 2 BB, 5 K, W

The fifth-overall pick in the 1982 draft out of Tampa’s Hillsborough High School, Gooden struck out 300 men in 191 innings in A-ball in his full-season debut in 1983, and in 1984, he broke camp with the Mets as a 19-year-old who had never pitched as high as Double-A. Gooden was sharp in his debut and, after a hiccup in his second start (3 1/3 IP, seven hits and six runs, all earned, while taking the loss against the Cubs), he went on to enjoy one of the best starts to a pitching career in major league history. In 1984, Gooden won the Rookie of the Year award on the strength of a 17-9 record, 2.60 ERA, and a league-leading 276 strikeouts (in 218 innings!). In 1985, he won the NL Cy Young award and the major league pitching triple crown, leading the majors in wins (24 against just four losses), ERA (1.53, second only to Bob Gibson’s 1.12 in 1968 since the arrival of the live-ball era in 1920) and strikeouts (268). Things went downhill from there, in part because of the 744 2/3 innings Gooden threw over three seasons prior to his 22nd birthday, but also because they couldn’t go up. The impossibly high expectations Gooden created for himself led to a vicious cycle of self-destructive behavior including alcohol and drug addictions which continue to disrupt his life to this day.

My mom has always loved music. She loves to sing and whistle (and even hum). Ma is game, too. She’ll listen to rock n roll, soul music, funk, jazz, and her “classic music.” But she’s never been a big record-buyer. When I was growing up, she had some Judy Collins records and Simon and Garfunkel lps, and of course, her Jacques Brel albums. Oh, how she looooved Jacques Brel. And we had an Edith Piaf record, too.

Most French-speaking peoples of my mom’s generation revered Edith Piaf.

I always think of Edith Piaf–of my mom singing in French, of Nuke Laloosh mistaking Piaf for a “crazy Spanish singer” in “Bull Durham”–whenever I hear Rice Pilaf. Edith Pilaf?

Sounds good, tastes good. Sometimes the French know what they are doing…

[Photo Credit: Janet is Hungry]

Guest Writer: John Schulian

It is a sign of the times that our movie heroes no longer go traipsing off to Mexico to scratch their itch for unlikely nobility, filthy lucre, or good old-fashioned trouble. The show-me-your-papers crowd in Arizona would have us believe there are so many illegals heading north that even celluloid mercenaries looking south of the border better stay home lest they be trampled. Myself, I’d suggest that the abundance of lead being slung in Mexico’s drug wars makes telling stories about brave yanquis, especially the contemporary variety, about as plausible as having Madonna sing with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.

Once, however, the land of Villa welcomed Humphrey Bogart so he could die a greed head’s death in “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre” and Robert Mitchum, fresh out of a very real jail, as he tracked down a missing Army payroll in “The Big Steal.” You should know about “The Magnificent Seven,” of course, just as you should “The Wild Bunch”: two classic Westerns that sprang from the idea of American bad men finding something good inside them under Mexican skies, the former ending with a triumphant ride out of town, the latter with a fireball of dark glory. And then there is a hugely entertaining Western that is too often forgotten, “The Professionals,” which is about early 20th Century mercenaries who are crazy brave but not stupid. Four of them, to be exact: Burt Lancaster, Lee Marvin, Robert Ryan, and Woody Strode, each possessing more testosterone by himself than there is in all of Hollywood today.

Lancaster was a former circus acrobat who did his own stunts and, legend has it, could handle himself in a street fight. Marvin fought his way through World War II as a marine in the Pacific, and, with a mug like his, he must have put up his dukes a few times as a civilian, too. Ryan boxed in college (and was nothing less than splendid in the fight racket noir “The Set-Up”). Strode played football at UCLA, broke the NFL’s color line (alongside college teammate Kenny Washington), wrestled professionally, died a righteous death in “Spartacus,” and, though he was 52 when “The Professionals” was released in 1966, looked like he was made of steel cable.

(more…)

Over at River Ave Blues, Mike Axisa takes a look at Cito Culver, the Yankees first-round pick:

I’m not a big fan of the pick; it’s definitely a reach. For what it’s worth, Oppenheimer called it an “easy decision.” Whenever a guy’s best tool is his throwing arm … well it’s always a cause for concern because you’d like the other skills to be refined. It’s not an indefensible pick though; there’s nothing wrong with selecting a premium up-the-middle athlete that will stay there for the next decade-plus.

I’ve seen some people quick to dub this another C.J. Henry pick, but the only similarities between the two are that they’re African American shortstops taken out of high school. Henry was more of a hacker who projected to hit for power but not average, and wasn’t guaranteed to stay at short. Culver’s basically the opposite.

There were definitely better players on the board, and so it’s not the best pick they could have made. No need to declare this one a bust yet. The last thing prospects provide is instant gratification. Frankie Piliere noted that Culver got huge grades late in the year, so he peaked at the right time.

Over at Was Watching, Steve Lombardi isn’t impressed either:

…Today, with their first pick in the 2010 draft, the 32nd overall pick, the Yankees selected Cito Culver – probably two or three (or maybe four?) rounds earlier than he should have been selected – passing on talent like Anthony Ranaudo, Bryce Brentz, Ryan LaMarre and Seth Blair (just to name a few).

Considering all this, and then factoring in that the Yankees had screwed up their first three picks in the draft just about every year from 1998 through 2008, I have to wonder about what’s going on in the Yankees front office with respect to handling the draft? (“What about 2009?” some may say? Well, the jury is still out on that one.)

At some point, Damon Oppenheimer – and his bosses, Mark Newman and Brian Cashman – have to be held accountable for the way they’ve been wasting the Yankees “prime” picks, draft after draft, no?

Hey, yo. Forgive a day of light posting. My Internet connection was on the fritz.

Emma’s Burt Lancaster piece is the first of five we’ll have on Million Dollar Movie this week celebrating the great American star.

More food, music, art and yeah, Yankee Baseball tomorrow…

[Photo Credit: efn.org]

Because “Bitter Smell of Vicious, Cynical Self-Loathing” Would’ve Been a Hard Sell at the Box Office

“I love this dirty town.” That’s the only line from Sweet Smell of Success that I quote on a regular basis, but only because I don’t quite have the presence to pull off “You’re dead, son. Get yourself buried.” For that, you need Burt Lancaster.

Sweet Smell of Success is one of the most brutal movies I’ve ever seen that includes almost no physical violence at all; it’s just funny enough to keep you from slitting your wrists afterwards, but with humor so cold and sharp you could use it for a razor blade. Anyone who thinks of the 1950s as a Norman Rockwell era of innocence should be sat down in front of this paean to cutthroat cynicism and soul-destroying ambition, then given a nice mug of warm milk and a hug.

Tony Curtis and Burt Lancaster, two good-looking actors with charisma to burn, have never been less attractive. It was a brave choice by both of them (and the studio was opposed to Curtis taking the role of smoothly sniveling Sidney Falco, a press agent who’s had all the empathy, dignity, and morality burnt out of him by a lifetime of humiliations), but I think especially by Lancaster. Sidney Falco is at least occasionally pitiable, but Lancaster’s Walter Winchell-esque monster J.J. Hunsecker is one of the least redeemable characters ever committed to film. (See his inclusion on the AFI’s list of all-time movie villains, although that is, now I look at it, one terrible list — if you think Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow were the “villains” of Bonnie and Clyde, you missed the whole damn point. And “Man” in Bambi as an all-time villain? Please. But that’s a whole separate post).

I first remember seeing Lancaster in Atlantic City, a favorite VHS rental of my dad’s (mostly for the line “You should’ve seen the Atlantic Ocean back then… it was really something.”). Later I saw him in From Here to Eternity and the cheesy fun western Vera Cruz, with his magnetic appeal on full display, and in the film noir classics Criss Cross and The Killers, where he was a dark, flawed, but handsome and charismatic figure. He is still my definitive Wyatt Earp in Gunfight at the O.K. Corral – which came out in 1957, the same year as Sweet Smell of Success, but takes place in a staggeringly different America. Lancaster was a gorgeous young man, and still quite an eyeful in his forties, but J.J. Hunsucker is too despicable to have even a shred of sex appeal.

Words are the weapons in Sweet Smell of Success (written by Ernest Lehman and blacklisted lefty Clifford Odets, and directed by Alexander Mackendrick), and J.J. Hunsecker is its serial killer; Freddy Kreuger and Mike Myers earn more viewer sympathy. This is all by design, of course, and the merciless screenplay doesn’t pull a single verbal punch:

It’s a dirty job, but I pay clean money for it.

The cat’s in a bag and the bag’s in a river.

Like yourself, he’s got the scruples of a guinea pig and the morals of a gangster.

Son, I don’t relish shooting a mosquito with an elephant gun, so why don’t you just shuffle along?

My right hand hasn’t seen my left hand in thirty years.

Match me, Sidney.

Those last three are Lancaster’s, and only a handful of the movie’s best. (For full effect, of course, the last one needs to be quoted while holding an unlit cigarette). According to rumor the script was brilliantly rewritten by Odets months past deadline, while he was in the midst of a nervous breakdown, and then rushed scene by scene directly from his typewriter to the set.

The movie was shot on location in New York, and I’m not sure you could say it has any affection for the city — really, I’m not sure you could say this movie has any affection for much of anything — but it certainly gets a jolt of jittery energy from its setting. The story could be transplanted to Los Angeles easily enough, I expect, but it wouldn’t be same without the rushing crowds its characters struggle past, or the packed bars and restaurants where glamor and power and desperation and slimy cunning are jostled together.

If Sweet Smell of Success has a flaw, it’s that the female lead, J.J.’s sister Susan, around whom the whole plot turns, is never really developed as a character, at least not compared to the devastatingly etched male leads. But on reflection I believe this is not really a gender issue – not because she’s a woman, but rather because she’s moral and kind. These are not the human facets that Sweet Smell of Success is interested in, and god bless it for that. Nice people are almost never any fun to quote.

Get to work.

Photo by Abelimages/Getty Images

I have to admit that for much of this weekend’s series in Toronto, I wasn’t at all convinced that the series was even happening.  Sure, Michael Kay never crosses the border, but with Bob Lorenz in the booth, I was starting to imagine Capricorn One conspiracy theories.  Were these games scripted by YES?  Was I just watching a collage of highlight footage spackled together to look like an actual game?  Did Bud Selig know what was going on?  And the biggest question of all — if they really were scripting the action, why couldn’t they have at least written in a few hits for Mark Teixeira?

Ah, but I kid.  Now to the game.  For much of Sunday afternoon, the hitters were mere bystanders as Brandon Morrow and Javier Vazquez took turns making them look foolish.  There was no scoring on either side for the first five innings, and the Blue Jays didn’t get their first base hit until Vernon Wells ended the drama (dramatically) with a no-doubt two-run home run to left, putting the Jays up 2-0.

As good as Vazquez was in the early going, Morrow was even better.  He gave up only four hits and a walk, and at no point during the first seven innings did it ever look like the Yankees had a shot, mainly because of an unhittable fastball that was clocking between 95 and 97 all day long.  I hate to bring this up, but Brandon Morrow is what Joba Chamberlain was supposed to be when he grew up.  Projected as top of the rotation starters, both pitchers arrived in the majors in 2007 (Morrow was in Seattle back then) and brought their high octane stuff to the bullpen.  Morrow had an extra year of experience, but he wasn’t nearly as effective as Joba.  Since arriving in Toronto this year Morrow has worked exclusively as a starter, and if what we saw today is any indication, he’s in the right spot.

In the eighth inning, though, he was in the wrong spot.  Even though he had thrown 104 pitches through those dominant seven innings, Morrow came out to start the eighth and plunked lead-off hitter Francisco Cervelli.  Toronto manager Cito Gaston immediately replaced Morrow with Scott Downs, who then drilled Brett Gardner to put the tying runners on base with nobody out and the top of the order due up.  As you might expect, this is when things got interesting.

With Derek Jeter facing a 1-1 count, Downs through a pitch which may or may not have tailed off the outside edge of the plate.  Home plate umpire Bruce Dreckman called the pitch a strike, but Jeter disagreed as vigorously as he ever will.  The field mikes at Rogers Centre were fairly sensitive all game long, so you could easily hear his disgust: “That was not a strike!”  After pursuing the issue a while and repeating his opinion about the pitch, Jeter shook his head, stepped back into the box, and lined a double down the right field line, cutting the deficit in half.

Nick Swisher came up next and quickly found himself down in the count, 1-2.  Desperately needing a strikeout, new pitcher Jason Frasor went for the kill on the next pitch, bouncing a splitter that Swisher couldn’t resist.  Swisher started his swing, and replays clearly showed that the checked it, but Dreckman punched him out, ruling that he had swung at the pitch.  (Somewhere in Cincinnati, Paul O’Neill put his shoe through the television screen.)  For his part, Swisher was incredulous, immediately pointing down at third base to ask for an appeal that would never come.  Joe Girardi had seen enough — enough of Dreckman, enough of the Blue Jays, maybe even enough of Canada — so he came out with the clear intention of getting kicked out.  He even left his hat behind in the dugout, something I don’t remember ever seeing.  What followed was the fastest ejection in history.  Girardi pushed Swisher out of the way, asked Dreckman, “Are you shitting me?” and that was that.  Showers.

So with one out and the tying and go-ahead runs on second and third and Alex Rodríguez in the on-deck circle, Cito Gaston, of course, decided to walk Mark Teixeira and his .211 batting average.  (And by the way, isn’t it time to start thinking about dropping Teixeira in the order?  I wouldn’t mind seeing Canó in the three hole with Teixeira hitting sixth.  But I digress…)  Gardner brought home the tying run on a wild pitch, and A-Rod struck out, failing for the first time in that situation, bringing Robinson Canó up with two on and two out and the score tied.  Canó took one pitch then lined the next into left, scoring two for a 4-2 lead.

Joba Chamberlain came in to start the eighth inning, and even though the box score says he gave up two hits and a run, that’s a bit deceptive.  José Molina led off with a double off Curtis Granderson’s glove, a drive that Gardner would’ve caught easily, and Fred Lewis’s RBI single was just a high-hopper that bounded through the middle of the infield.  Joba recovered nicely enough to get Aaron Hill to ground into a double play, and his day was done.  I’m doing my best to think positively about him.

There was a little drama as Mariano Rivera came in mistakenly (and was sent back) after that double play even though acting manager Tony Peña had asked for Damaso Marte, but he came back again in the ninth and used only five pitches to close out the 4-3 Yankee win.  Oh, and in case you’re wondering about A-Rod, who was lifted for Ramiro Peña in ninth, he’s okay.

Next stop: Baltimore.

Perk up with this:

In his series preview, Cliff pointed out the peculiarity that is the 2010 Blue Jays, a team that abhors smallball, and lives and dies by the homer.  Coming into today’s game, the Jays were leading the majors in homers . . . by a whopping 17 over the Red Sox (94 to 77).  Their gaudy, majors-leading  .476 slugging percentage was tempered by a 23rd-best .248 team batting average.   Their resulting ISO (isolated slugging; the difference between batting average and slugging percentage) of .228 would be the highest season total in at least 20 years.  They are also dead last in GB/FB ratio, at .63.  The edict in Toronto seems to be “we are Jays . . . everything we do must involve flying”.

Furthermore, they’ve executed exactly two sacrifice bunts and attempted only 29 stolen bases all year.  Smallball is apparently not spoken in Canada anymore.

Andy Pettitte looked to stem the Gashouse Gorillas conga line of homers today as he faced off against Ricky Romero.   Pettitte worked both corners well throughout the game, striking out a season-high ten, all of them swinging.

Meanwhile, Romero, when he wasn’t toying with Mark Teixeira like Teix was a frenzied kitten,  was inducing many groundballs with a solid changeup.  The Yankees best early threat came in the top of the second, as Alex Rodriguez singled, and two outs later, Francisco Cervelli and Brett Gardner each walked.  On his already-40th pitch of the game, Romero got Kevin Russo to ground out to short.

Leading off the bottom of the second, Vernon Wells took a Pettitte fastball up in the zone out beyond the RF fence. Two outs later, Lyle Overbay hit a one-hop double to the RF wall.  But Andy got John Buck to foul out to Francisco Cervelli to end the inning.

After a couple more well-struck pitches in the third, including a ground-rule double leading off the inning, Pettitte really settled down, as there were no more pitches left up in the zone.   From that double through the end of the sixth, he allowed but two walks and one single.  In a one-run game seemingly dominated by the pitchers, for each of those three baserunner opportunities, Jays manager Cito Gaston eschewed trying to build a run through a sacrifice, hit-and-run or stolen base attempt.

Meanwhile Gardner led off the Yankee 5th with a double down the RF line, and then Derek Jeter capitalized on a rare Romero mistake, a changeup left up and outside, to collect his 6th homer of the season, giving the Bombers a 2-1 lead.

The Yanks had a rare, but golden opportunity to extend the lead in the 7th.   Cervelli led off with a hard-hit grounder to Edwin Encanarcion which knocked him down, allowing Cervelli to beat the throw to first.  Gardner walked again, and then Russo complied with General Joe Girardi’s smallball order, executing a nice 1-3 sac bunt to put runners at 2nd and 3rd with one out.

With the infield a few steps in all around, Jeter then lined a ball right at second baseman Aaron Hill.  Hill caught it, then dropped it on the transfer to his throwing hand.  Cervelli made the mistake of not watching the ball to see if it got out of the infield, and took off for home on contact.  Hill easily doubled Cervelli off third, as Jeter wondered what had happened.  Your not-so-basic 4-5 double play.

Meanwhile, the top three hitters in the Jays lineup had gone 0-10 against Pettitte as he took the mound in the bottom of the 7th.  Unfortunately the cosmic laws inherent in the Yanks missing a scoring opportunity bit Pettitte, as #6 hitter Alex Gonzalez led off with a homer on an 0-1 pitch, knotting the game at two.

Soon after, the game turned into a battle of the bullpens.  Girardi had relieved Pettitte after 107 pitches with 2 outs in the eighth, while Romero had completed eight innings, finishing by inducing a double play grounder from Alex Rodriguez.

Joba Chamberlain relieved Pettitte and promptly gave up a single to Wells.  But once again, Gaston didn’t put any wheels in motion, and Jose Bautista struck out looking on a nasty curve.

Chamberlain was still pitching in the ninth when he yielded a one-out single to Lyle Overbay.  Surely this would be the time for a pinch-runner for the sluggish Overbay? Nope.  Instead John Buck popped up to Cano and Encanarcion struck out.

The Yanks mounted a 2-out rally in the 10th against Kevin Gregg on a Jeter single and an eight-pitch walk by Swisher, but Teixeira struck out swinging for the fourth consecutive time, on his way to his own hellish version of a 5K.

Against David Robertson, Bautista led off the bottom of the 11th with a full-count walk, and again . . . the Jays did not play for one run . . . in a tie game in extra innings.  Gonzalez promptly banged into a 6-4-3 DP.  Even after Overbay immediately singled, there was no pinch-runner, and Buck flew out to deep left.

The Yanks did try to make something happen with their limited opportunities in extras.  Gardner singled with one out in the 12th, and one out later, stole his 20th base of the season.  But Jeter ended the threat grounding out to third.

In the bottom of the 12th, Chan Ho Park came on and walked the sub-.200 hitting Hill with two outs, but Gaston sat on his hands as Lind K’ed.  Park was still pitching in the 13th when Gonzalez placed a two-out single down the LF corner and Overbay walked.  But Buck buckled under the pressure, grounding to short.

In the top of the 14th, the Yanks tried to show Gaston about this smallball thing one more time, as Posada laced a long one-out single, and pinch-runner Ramiro Pena came on.  Pena couldn’t get a good lead on new pitcher Casey Janssen and somewhat curiously, Cervelli wasn’t asked to bunt.  Cervelli eventually struck out.  Pena did manage to steal second with Gardner up, but was left stranded when Gardner flied to Bautista.

Finally, in the bottom of the 14th, Gaston finally seemed to have the smallball impetus, and the absolute best players to employ it.  It also helped that they were now facing Chad Gaudin.  Encanarcion walked on four pitches leading off, and then Lewis executed a nice little 5-3 sacrifice.  Girardi elected to have Gaudin pitch to Hill, rather than setting up the force/DP by walking him and facing the lefty Lind.  Hill promptly ripped a hanging slider to plate the winning run in an excruciating 3-2 game.

(photo credit:  RoyalsReview.com)

Let’s try that again, shall we?

The Jays beat up on the Yanks last night. Here’s hoping the Yanks have a little something for that ass this afternoon. Go git ’em, boys.

Let’s Go Yan-Kees.

[Picture by Bags]

We Like Ike..