I met Pete Dexter last fall when he was in New York promoting his seventh novel, Spooner. Dexter was a wonderful newspaper columnist and is now one of our greatest novelists. First thing I noticed about him was that he was wearing a pink Yankees cap. So when I had a chance to interview him the Yankees were the first thing we talked about.

Here is our chat, which covers a lot more than the Bombers.

Enjoy.

Bronx Banter: I had no idea you were a Yankees fan.

Pete Dexter: No, it’s true. I’m a big Yankee fan. It started out as a way to irritate Mrs. Dexter who is a Yankee fan from way back. And so when they’d win I’d get into it just because it irritated her so damn bad, but then I started to look at them and–

BB: When was this, during the ’90s?

PD: Yeah. So when I found out that it irritated Mrs. Dexter I did it more and more. There have been a lot of teams in my life that I’ve rooted against, but I have never rooted for a team in my life before I rooted for the Yankees, including teams I played on.

BB: And the Yankees of all teams.

PD: Yeah, strangely enough. I didn’t even like baseball until the mid-’90s. And I enjoy it more every year. We get all the games on the cable. It’s the only thing that’s worth all the money I spend on cable.

BB: So can you deal with Michael Kay?

PD: Is he the “See Ya” guy?

BB: Yup.

PD: He’s okay, it’s the other two guys from ESPN that drive me crazy.

BB: Joe Morgan and Jon Miller.

PD: Jesus, the go on for hours and hours. Morgan was one of the most exciting players I ever saw and just absolutely the most boring human being on the face of the earth.

BB: Just goes to show there’s no correlation.

PD: Yeah, none at all.

BB: So, did you want to be a writer when you were growing up?

PD: No, never. I took two writing classes at the University of South Dakota but it was just because I found out that I didn’t want to be a mathematician. I started looking through the student book there and saw Creative Writing and figured if I can’t bullshit my way through that then I don’t deserve to graduate, even from the University of South Dakota. But I never took it even semi-seriously. I mean I didn’t read anything until…it’s a true story than when I wrote Deadwood [Dexter’s second novel], my brother Tom called me up and said, “You’ve now written a book longer than any book you’ve ever read.” And that was absolutely true. I stumbled into a newspaper office in Fort Lauderdale. I was 26 or 27 years old and in those days you could actually stumble into a newspaper office and get hired as a reporter. But I don’t have to tell you what it’s like now.

BB: Did you take to reporting pretty quickly or was it just another job?

PD: I hated it. They had me doing–I thought it was a joke actually at first–they came over the first day and gave me a list of seven or eight things and said, “These are your beats.” And I thought it was some kind of initiation rite. You know, juvenile court, the hospital district, poverty programs and tomatoes. There was agricultural products—tomatoes was a separate category. But there were literally seven or eight of them, none of which interested me even remotely. Hell, they gave me a county health thing and there was a doctor who ran the county health department. He was a nice guy and I’d call him up every Sunday night when I came in and ask him if he could stretch something into an epidemic. And he’d say, “Well, we’ve got four cases of measles…you could call that an epidemic.” So every Monday I’d have a story in the paper about a new epidemic. The bigger paper down there was the Fort Lauderdale News. It got the big guy there fired because I kept coming up with new epidemics and he couldn’t come up with any.

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Joe D, By Jason Kasper

Since we’re in battle mode and all, I figured I’d drop this classic diss record on you. From Sun Dullah, formerly King Sun, produced by Doo Wop, this record took aim at Tupac Shakur during the height of the East Coast-West Coast nonsense in the mid-’90s. Three verses, one better than the next, and a bumpin’ beat. I first remember hearing this on late night college radio–Stretch and Bob–and it still holds up as a banger:

I think Alex Witchel is a terrific writer. I’m not overly familiar with her work but Witchel’s profiles for the Times magazine are generally wonderful. Last fall, I was struck by a piece she did on the Irish novelist Colm Toibin, and this past weekend she wrote a lovely article on Norris Church Mailer.

Dig the lead:

It is 1975, and you are a 26-year-old high-school art teacher, the divorced mother of a 3-year-old boy, living in Russellville, Ark. You hear that a world-famous novelist is in town for one night, so you wangle an invitation to the party in his honor, hoping he’ll autograph your book. You find yourself smitten with this 52-year-old man — as he is with you — and at the end of the evening you go home together. After he leaves, you pour out your heart in a love poem and mail it to him. He mails it back — copy-edited, in red pencil. Do you:

a) Hop a plane to New York and strangle him with your bare hands?

b) Quit your job, move to New York with your son and become the guy’s sixth wife?

Reader, she married him. Not only that, she became stepmother to the seven children he fathered with his five other wives and had another son with him. Still with me? That makes nine children and Norman Mailer for a husband. As she has said herself: “Well, I bought a ticket to the circus. I don’t know why I was surprised to see elephants.”

It is not a long profile but it is written with compassion and an eye for the telling detail. Norris Church Mailer is a pretty nifty lady too.

Check, check it out.

Before I left New Mexico, I watched my sister-in-law make a simple red chili sauce. She put a selection of chiles in boiling water, covered them, turned off the heat and let them sit for close to an hour to reconstitute. Then, she removed the chiles from the water, cut-off the stems, and got rid of any seeds. She put the chiles in a blender, along with a little bit of onion and garlic–enough for flavor but not enough to overpower the chiles. Then salt, and a small amount of the water to help blend. Finally, she strained it, and man, it was lovely.

The first day back in New York is never easy. Things move too fast, the space is too tight, people’s attitudes too sharp. I was struggling to adjust this morning when I crossed Broadway in midtown and saw a small woman with a black felt riding helmet, large sunglasses, and a gold coat riding in a motorized scooter, a pole with a red flag at the top, mounted on the back. She was in the street and stopped at a traffic light. I told her that I liked her style.

“Morning,” she sang out.

That helped. Ah, now I’m back.

My mind is still stuck somewhere between here and New Mexico, though. Here’s the wife soaking in the sun. Man, love that wife o mine.

So the Red Sox went ahead and signed Josh Beckett to a four-year extension.

Meanwhile, the New York papers all cover the relationship between AJ Burnett and Jorge Posada this morning. Here’s Ben Shpigel’s take in the Times:

“For me, I think it took on a bigger picture because we’re in New York,” Girardi said of the bumpy ride Burnett and Posada experienced as battery mates. “It was an emotional time, and we’re fighting for the division and we’re nearing the playoffs. It seemed to take on — it became a big story. As far as them having a problem, I wasn’t concerned about that.”

Every chance they could, Posada and Burnett worked together this spring. After his March 11 start was rained out, Burnett was particularly grateful that Posada stayed late, past 9:30 p.m., to catch his simulated game. Burnett is polishing a changeup, and Posada guided him through his March 27 start against Detroit when he did not have a good curveball.

“I noticed he’s been a lot more confident and comfortable back there,” Burnett said of Posada. “Obviously, that makes me confident.”

Burnett goes against the formidable Jon Lester tonight in Boston.

Problems of Being Left-Handed, By John Robertson (acrylic on unstretched canvas)

It sure was nice to be in New Mexico for a minute. Big sky, cool, crisp air, hot sun.

Got home in time to see the kid Jason Heyward hit a dinger in his first major league at bat for the Braves. And it was a blast.

Welcome. And Happy Baseball.

Got to give it to this kid. He knows how to spread the mustard on the ol’ Hammond:

Happy Opening Day!

Ballpark favorites…

…Curtis Granderson.

Curtis Granderson’s 2007 numbers read like fiction. It’s hard for me to imagine a player with 38 doubles 23 triples who stole successfully 26 of 27 tries, and still managed to insert 23 homers into his statline. And for good measure, one of those homers was an inside-the-park job versus the Yanks. You’d feel ashamed to create such a player’s strat-o-matic card or video game profile because you know you’d be cooking the books.

Curtis bats with an exaggerated squat, open hips, and active hands. His long swing is powerful but imprecise and finishes high, with only the bottom hand left on the bat. I remember thinking he was an easy whiff in Game 2 of the 2006 ALDS when Mussina faced him in 2 crucial need-a-K-here at bats. Granderson, who whiffed 171 times that year, responded with a sacrifice fly and a triple in those trips and swung the series for good. Perhaps that says more about Mussina’s stuff in 2007 than Granderson’s ability to make solid contact when necessary, but I left the Stadium day impressed with the young left hander (and of course, extremely pissed off).

This player is donning pinstripes for the upcoming season and I’m thrilled. But between 2007 and Sunday night, a few things have transpired to temper expectations for score-sheet-stuffing. 1) Granderson turned in a 2009 performance that reads like a speedier Nick Swisher without the walks. 2) The Yankees have choses for Granderson to replace Damon in the matrix rather than the Melky/Gardner combo. It was inconceivable to project a Melky/Gardner platoon as superior to even a diminished Granderson. But the Yankees are now relying on Curtis, who is 2 years removed from the sublime (but only one removed from the very good), to be a big bat. When first acquired, I thought of Granderson as gravy. Now he is meat.

But even with expectations tempered, there are a lot of great reasons to expect Granderson to thrive in Yankee Stadium. His doubles and triples will never recover to 2007 levels in Yankee Stadium, but, much to the chagrin of the Ken Burns commentator who longs for the “old fashioned batter who doubles to left and triples to right,” a substantial number of them should turn into homeruns. And when he hits the roads, I expect Granderson to put up crooked numbers in often neglected corners of the scoresheet.

Aside from needing for Mariano to be perfect and hoping for Jeter to continue his march toward 3000 hits (with power please), there’s no player I’m looking forward to watching in 2010 than Curtis Granderson. Which player(s) will you be focusing on when the season starts tonight?

Happy Easter y’all. This was always one of my favorite holidays as a kid (one of the benefits of having a Catholic mother and a Jewish father–double holidays!). My mom was big on painting eggs the night before; we’d wake up Easter morning and have an Easter Egg hunt (and if the weather was lousy we’d have it inside).

Welp, today Easter falls on Opening Day, or Opening Night of the 2010 baseball season. It’s the 8th Opening Day for us here at the Banter and we’re thrilled and delighted to have you guys along with us for what promises to be another absorbing season of Yankees baseball.

Let’s do this like Brutus.

Butler just beat Michigan State to reach the NCAA finals with Duke and West Virginia set to tip off in a few minutes.

Opening Day 24 hours away.

Anyone eager to start another season root-root-rooting for the Whirled Champion Noo J’ork Jankees?

Bring it…

The classic routine…

Back to Peter Sellers singing from the Beatles song book.

According to a report by Michael Schmidt in the New York Times:

Alex Rodriguez told investigators and lawyers for Major League Baseball on Thursday that he was treated by a Canadian-based doctor now under investigation by federal authorities but that he did not receive performance-enhancing drugs from him, according to two people in baseball with knowledge of the meeting.

In meeting with the Yankees’ Rodriguez for a three-hour interview Thursday night in Florida, baseball officials ended up beating the federal authorities to the punch. The authorities have sought to interview Rodriguez for weeks but have not yet done so. Baseball officials and the federal authorities want to know what interactions Rodriguez had with the doctor, Anthony Galea, who has stated that he treated him in 2009 with anti-inflammatories after Rodriguez’s hip surgery.

Tell ’em what to say, Mase:

Stories involving players like Jon Weber are what I love about spring training. Let’s be honest. Prior to this spring, most Yankee fans had never heard of Jon Weber; I certainly didn‘t know him. Yankee management had only a slightly higher opinion of Weber, giving him a spring training invite as a non-roster player.

At the start of the spring, the 32-year-old Weber had no chance of making the Yankees’ Opening Day roster. Less than zero. A career minor leaguer, Weber had spent his first 11 seasons of professional baseball playing in towns and cities like Billings, Fargo, Bakersfield, and Durham. So once the Grapefruit League season began, Weber began hitting the baseball like he had been facing major league pitching for 11 seasons. For the bulk of the spring, Weber’s average surged above .500, despite the fact that he had failed to draw a single walk. Impressed by his picturesque left-handed swing, a choir boy attitude, and a flawless work ethic, the Yankee brass began to consider a scenario in which Weber would make the team as a backup outfielder. Yankee executives pondered the possibility of carrying Weber and cutting Marcus Thames, despite the fact that Thames fills the greater need of a backup outfielder who can hit right-handed.

Weber’s impossible run to Opening Day ended on Tuesday. That’s when the Yankees announced that they had reassigned Weber to their minor league camp. Weber will start the season at Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes Barre, where he is expected to serve as manager Dave Miley’s starting right fielder. The dream of playing in a major league game will have to wait a little bit longer for the man who started his career in the Reds‘ minor league system way back in 1999.

On the surface, this might sound like a resounding defeat for Weber, a rude ending to a potential baseball fairy tale. I don’t look at it that way. Within the matter of six weeks, Weber managed to raise his value from a minor league journeyman who had no chance of cracking the major league roster to being potentially the first man in line once one of the veteran outfielders goes down with an injury. Prior to this season, the knock on Weber had involved a lack of big-time power, usually a prerequisite for a corner outfielder. But Weber did slug .497 for Triple-A Durham (the Rays’ farm team) last year, so it’s not as if he is merely a singles hitter. The Yankees now recognize Weber as a line drive hitter who can reach base consistently, keep his strikeout totals relatively low, and hit the occasional home run. He can do all of that while sporting one of the best attitudes around. If the need arises, and if Weber can show a little more patience at the plate than he did this spring, he could fill in quite capably as the No. 5 outfielder.

I’ll be keeping an eye on Weber at Scranton/Wilkes Barre. I hope he gets off to a good start. Inevitably, one of the major league outfielders will end up hurt. They always do. And that’s when Weber might finally get his chance to pounce–after 11 years of bouncing along the minor league highway…

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I don’t know from wide variety of chiles and peppers that exist in the world but out here they reign supreme. I’ve heard that chile can be addicting and after trying my sister-in-law’s Chilaquiles yesterday I think I understand why. The dish is simple–toasted corn tortillas covered with a radiant-looking sauce of New Mexico Red Chile covered with grated cheese and some raw onion and served with eggs and re-fried beans.

The chile sauce had some spice to it but not overwhelming heat–instead, I really tasted a deep, complex flavor. The addiction part is no joke because my mouth is watering just thinking about it.

Em’s sister has bags of chiles in her freezer. The chiles are reconstituted in hot water before pureed into a sauce.

Happy Eats with my brother-in-law…with a side order of Matzoh.

I saw an interesting show of photographs–mostly by Man Ray, some by Walker Evans and others–of African Art yesterday at the University of New Mexico’s art museum.

Photograph by Walker Evans. Africa, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Luba peoples, Gelatin silver print; 7 x 9 3/8 in. (17.8 x 23.8 cm)