Morning Sun, By Edward Hopper (1952)

Okay, so it’s the late afternoon, not the morning; the sun is still out, and this picture still sings.

I got it figured out:

Mr. Jordan goes to Spring Break for Deadspin (Part One):

So, the boys at Deadspin had this idea. Brilliant, really. Hilarious. They were sitting around the office one night, throwing out story ideas, coming up with nothing, getting frustrated, or maybe there isn’t actually a Deadspin office, and they really are just a bunch of guys hunched over their computers in the darkened basements of their mother’s houses, surrounded by boxes of cold pizza crusts and empty beer cans, emailing each other with one idea after another when one of them came up with this truly brilliant idea after having seen Jeff Bridges in “Crazy Heart” too many times. “Let’s throw the Old Man at Spring Break!” The Old Man with his white beard, threadbare thrift-stop Hawaiian shirt with the pink flamingos, OP shorts, Publix flip-flops, looking like a Florida derelict wasting away in Margaritaville, smoking his cigar as he tries to chat up some co-eds from Ann Arbor and Iowa City in Froggy’s and Razzle’s and the 509 Lounge with some pitiful, dimly remembered barroom rap that used to work for him 40 years ago, the co-eds thinking he’s a harmless old man, at first, like their grandfathers, until, after enough questions, they begin to think, maybe not so harmless after all, maybe a dirty old pervert actually, and they glance around the bar for a bouncer or a cop, which is why the boys at Deadspin told me, “We’ll have a lawyer on call 24 hours a day in case you need one.”

But what the hell, I’ll do anything for a story, and a check, small as it may be. What did Voltaire say? A friend asked if he’d ever had a homosexual experience. He said, yes, once. The friend said, then you’re a pervert. Voltaire said, no, “Once, a philosopher, twice, a pervert.” Which is why I drove south out of Abbeville, S.C., where I live now, in the up country, on Secession Hill in the Land of Cotton, on March 12, driving over two-lane country roads through Ninety Six and Newberry until I hit I-26 and then I-95 and headed south toward Savannah, Jacksonville, and my Spring Break destination, Daytona Beach. I had rented a white cargo van, stripped of seats in back, like a cave, threw a pillow and mattress on the floor, threw a bottle of Jim Beam Black in my duffel bag, my notebooks, pens and tape recorder in my man bag along with a 9-millimeter CZ 85 semi-automatic pistol with 15 hollow points in the clip and one in the chamber because, as Christian Slater said in True Romance, “It’s better to have a gun and not need it than to need a gun and not have it.” What the hell! I was going to sleep in my van, unless I got rousted by the cops in a motel parking lot at 2 a.m., the cops checking out my CZ, my CWP, then running my ID through their cruiser’s computer, looking for outstanding warrants, priors, coming up with only one — a firearms charge at Fort Lauderdale Airport in the late ’80s, a chickenshit charge, really, but a long story, the third-degree felony knocked down to a misdemeanor, adjudication withheld — and me in the backseat of their cruiser at 2 a.m., my hands cuffed for only the second time in 68 years (OK, third, if you insist on counting that barmaid in my St. Louis hotel room in the ’70s), trying to remember the telephone number of that Deadspin lawyer.

Bronx Banter Book Excerpt

From 90% of the Game is Half Mental

By Emma Span

Many studies over the last decade or so, of varying reliability and scientific soundness, have attempted to find out just who baseball fans are. One found that 37 percent of American women identify themselves as baseball fans (compared to 49 percent of men); another poll had it at 44 percent to 66 percent but included those who said they “somewhat” followed baseball, which could mean just about anything, including vaguely noting the back- page headline of the New York Post on the subway each morning. Yet another study showed 51 percent of women calling themselves fans. Even if we assume for the sake of argument that the lower number is closer to the truth, 37 percent is nothing to sneeze at.

Meanwhile, a Scarborough Research report back in 2004 found that 42 percent of all baseball fans are women. And a 2002 Gallup poll found that while the percentage of men who call themselves baseball fans has been decreasing for decades, the percentage of women who say the same is holding steady. So yes, there are certainly more male than female baseball fans, but the chasm isn’t as wide as it’s usually represented to be.

You can tell a lot about what kind of audience a given TV show expects by paying attention to the commercials. I’ve spent thousands of hours watching baseball, which means I’ve sat through countless thirty- second spots for razors, hair regrowth serum, erectile-dysfunction pills, and beer ads showing guys choosing Coors Light over women. There must be nearly an hour of ads during a typical Mets or Yankees broadcast, if not more, and often not a single spot is targeted at me. I used to get a small pseudo- subversive kick out of how I was throwing a wrench into all these marketing strategies—Ha! I am immune to your marketing efforts, motherfuckers! I will not ask my doctor about prostate enlargement!—but then I just bought a TiVo, which is better.

Lest you think I’m being too hard on the Savvy Girls and their pink-splashed Guide to Understanding and Enjoying Baseball, it’s indeed occurred to me that maybe men and women do tend to watch the game a bit differently. For one thing, I’ve never played baseball, not even softball. So I don’t have that kind of connection to the game, which many guys I know seem to feel, even if they never got past Little League. And I’ve become plenty interested in statistics, but there’s no pretending that was any large part of what drew me to the game initially, or that it has much to do with why I keep watching (though the same could be said of plenty of men). I do accumulate baseball numbers in my brain, like most fans, and I enjoy doing so. I have a recurring fantasy in which someone desperately needs to know, say, the modern record for most wins by a pitcher in a single season, he’s absolutely frantic about it, and I get to finally use the information that’s been rattling around in my head for years and years: I turn to the guy and calmly inform him it was 41 Ws, Happy Jack Chesbro, 1904. (It’s going to happen any day now.) But no, numbers aren’t what sucked me in and they’re not what keep me here.

When I first got interested in baseball, and stopped treating it as background noise and actually focused on it, it was the characters that drew me in, the personalities, and the drama, more than any inherent beauty of the game. I didn’t really care what kind of pitch someone threw or whether a batter had shortened his swing; I just wanted to see if Paul O’Neill was going to be beating himself up all night, cursing his perceived failures in the dugout, terrorizing innocent water coolers. I wanted to see how the rookie replacing Tony Fernandez might overcome what I assumed had to be a bad case of nerves and succeed in the big leagues. I wanted Bernie Williams to do well because I wanted a shy, awkward dude with glasses to win one for shy, awkward people with glasses everywhere.

Jerry Seinfeld famously said that rooting for a sports team in the modern era is “rooting for laundry”—players come and go so frequently, and are so often mercenary dicks while they’re here, that we end up just cheering for the team as an entity, as embodied by whoever happens to be wearing its uniform at the time. It’s hard to argue with the basic truth of that (Johnny Damon in a red and white jersey is loathed; six months later he puts on a blue and white shirt and is hailed as a hero). But for me, especially in the beginning, it wasn’t the case. I was very much rooting for the individuals.

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I love coleslaw because its one of those salads that can be prepared in a seemingly endless variety of ways. I especially enjoy cabbage with caraway seeds or flipped with Asian spices and flavors. Or at a barbeque shack or a Jewish Deli. 

Oh man, I just dig me some coleslaw, period.

According to Joel Sherman, Phil Hughes will be the Yankees’ number five starter to begin the season:

In the next few days, Joe Girardi will make it official that Phil Hughes is the Yankees’ fifth starter.

There are still meetings this week, still final statements that could be offered, still an injury that can change minds and needs. But this was a competition in the faintest of ways. As I reported in early February, the Yankees brass was going to enter spring privately viewing Hughes as the clear fifth starter frontrunner.

The reality is that no one else could win the job. Hughes could only lose it.

Wyatt Mason had a long, and sometimes over-written, profile of David Simon, creator of “The Wire,” and the forthcoming “Treme”, in the New York Times Magazine last weekend. I still haven’t watched “The Wire,” but Simon’s new series looks compelling:

“There’s a thing about being capable of a great moment,” Simon told me on a break from shooting. “This city is capable of moments unlike any moments you’ll ever experience in life. To see an Indian come down the street in full regalia on St. Joseph’s Night on an unlit street of messed-up shotgun houses and one burned-out car, and he’s the most beautiful thing on the planet, and everything around him is falling down. It’s a glorious instant of human endeavor. It’s duende from the Spanish, chills on the back of your neck, and then the next minute it’s gone. Lots of American places used to make things. Detroit used to make cars. Baltimore used to make steel and ships. New Orleans still makes something. It makes moments. I don’t mean that to sound flippant, and I don’t mean it to sound more or less than what it is, but they’re artists with a moment, they can take a moment and make it into something so transcendent that you’re not quite sure that it happened or that you were a part of it.”

Nijinsky, by Franz Kline (1950)

These babes were bitchin’.

Momofuku’s famous pork buns:

Yeah, they are worth the trip. And if you are on the go, pop into the Milk Bar for ’em. You won’t be sorry.

[photo credit: Amuses Bouche]

When I was in fifth grade a classmate sold me his used Intellivision system. I’m sure he ripped me off–I’ve never been much of a haggler–but it was worth it even if the machine was half-busted. Those sports games were so much better than the ones for Atari.

Hey, even George Plimpton said so:

MLB Rumors posts the latest from Ed Price…the scoop? The Yanks have placed Chad Gaudin on waivers.

Paul Blair is fast becoming one of my favorite people in baseball. Why’s that? First off, he’s a former Yankee who was a supplementary part of two world championship clubs in the 1970s. Second, with apologies to Devon White and Ken Griffey, Jr., he’s the best defensive center fielder I’ve seen over the past 40 years. And finally, he is one of those former major leaguers who is making a habit of coming to Cooperstown, a fact that is especially appreciated during the pre-season days of March.

Blair paid his most recent visit to Cooperstown last Saturday, as part of the effort to promote the second annual Hall of Fame Classic old-timers game. Blair, who will be playing in that game on Father’s Day along with former big league standouts like Bill Madlock and Lee Smith, greeted a number of fans as they waited in line to purchase tickets for the event. Acting as a personal greeter is an ideal job for Blair, who was nicknamed “Motormouth” during his playing days because of his willingness to talk to anyone–at any time.

Born in Oklahoma but raised in Los Angeles, Blair started playing baseball at the age of eight and developed an early appreciation for Jackie Robinson. “Jackie was the hero, the man who broke the barrier,“ Blair told the audience in the Hall’s Bullpen Theater. “He gave you a sense of hope.“

Blair had originally hoped to sign with the Dodgers in 1961, but instead settled for a contract with the expansion Mets. He played poorly in his first season, batting .228 in the California League while piling up 147 strikeouts at a time when K’s were far less tolerated than they are today. Left unprotected by the Mets–a decision that the New York brass would come to regret–Blair was drafted by the Orioles that winter. He went back to the California League, batted a cool .324, slugged .506, and began a steady climb through the Baltimore system.

It was during his minor league days that Blair picked up his memorable nickname. A recent slump had quieted the usually talkative Blair. After he broke out of the slump with a hit, a teammate needled him, asking if he would start talking again. The team’s manager, Harry Dalton, gave the players a quizzical look before saying, “Don’t get that Motor started.”

With the Orioles on the verge of championship greatness, Blair’s arrival in the major leagues timed out perfectly. He arrived in time to contribute to the 1966 world championship team and remained with the organization through its run of three consecutive World Series appearances, including the title year of 1970. So which of those Orioles teams was the best? “If I have to pick one, the ‘66 team was the best team,” Blair said before elaborating. “But I’m most proud of the 1970 team, which bounced back after losing to the Mets the previous fall. [In 1970], we won 108 games. We turned the ‘Big Red Machine’ into the ‘Little Toy Wagon.’ I was proud of that team because we came back from the loss to the Mets.”

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Broadway Boogie Woogie, By Piet Mondrian (1942-3) 

I always hear this song in my head when I look at this picture.

Chad Jennings has the skinny on today’s exhibition game; Joe Posnanski has the latest on Joe Mauer, the Twinkie Kid.

To fantasize, or not to fantasize?

I have an on-again, off-again relationship with fantasy baseball. The first few years I did it – 2003, 2004, somewhere around there – it was downright valuable; for someone like me who was used to just watching the Yankees and Mets, it forced me to familiarize myself with the mid-level players on other teams that I otherwise wouldn’t have known much about. Willy Taveras, whatever his flaws, will always have a place in my heart thanks to his unexpectedly non-sucky 2005 season; Aaron Harang remains a target of my misplaced resentment ever since his 6-win, league-leading 17-loss 2008 season crippled my Brooklyn Excelsiors. (Pretty much my favorite part of fantasy baseball, of course, is naming my team. My Little Lebowski Urban Achievers had a particularly successful run in the middle of the decade).

Too often, though, I’ve been That Person: the one who gets busy or forgetful or just frustrated with a lousy roster or bad luck, and abandons her team sometime in late July, allowing it to float gently to the bottom of the standings. Nobody likes That Person. But when I get stressed out, or just distracted by a shiny object, my fantasy team will be the first thing jettisoned. So perhaps, this year, I should leave it to those with more devotion, or at least longer attention spans. Maybe I can convince someone else to let me name his or her team.

Even if it may not be for me anymore, it would seem to go without saying that there’s nothing wrong with fantasy baseball. And yet, last night I came across Ron Shandler’s Huffington Post piece about a new fantasy baseball documentary:

There is a segment in the new documentary film, Fantasyland, when several esteemed baseball media veterans rail against fantasy baseball….

Mike Francesa of WFAN, Phil Mushnick of the New York Post and Hall of Fame writer Murray Chass are classified as “The Naysayers.” They think fantasy baseball is “foolish” and “ridiculous.”

(Mike Francesa, Phil Mushnik, and Murray Chass. You know that popular interview question, “Name the three people you’d most like to have dinner with”? This reads like the answer to the opposite of that question. Welcome to Brunch in Hell.)

Is fantasy baseball “foolish” and “ridiculous”? Maybe, but then, isn’t baseball itself? It’s no sillier than most of the things we do for fun. (Let’s pause here for a moment to allow Murray Chass time to Google the word “fun”). Obviously you can take a fantasy fixation too far – one of the cardinal rules of sports blogging is: No one cares about your fantasy team. But no one cares about the dream you had last night, either; that doesn’t mean it has no meaning for you.

Anyway, this got me thinking: is baseball really so different from fantasy baseball? I may not have a team this year, but I’ll watch a collection of players perform, and I’ll hope that they hit well and pitch well, and if they do better than another collection of players, it will make me happy, even though the tangible benefits to my daily life are nonexistent. Obviously, given the choice, I’ll choose flesh-and-blood baseball over fantasy baseball any day of the week, but let’s not kid ourselves: fandom is essentially irrational, except insofar as it gives us pleasure. Hell, at least in fantasy baseball, you can win some money.

I really dig this lady (and her cookbook too).

Jules Feiffer

From David Carr’s review in the Sunday Book Review:

Truth in the matter of memoir has always seemed evanescent and, more often lately, either elusive or absent. Memories of the self are often in service of other agendas, including the settling of scores and the creation of a hero where a mere man once stood.

Those questions, and the recent travails of the genre, seem at great remove to the reader of “Backing Into Forward,” by Jules Feiffer. Reading Feiffer, you know where the truth lies because it is there on every page — resonant, self-­lacerating and frequently hilarious. How else to explain Feif­fer’s frank admissions that he could not stand his mother, even dead; that he coveted the success of peers; that he reflexively courted fame and the famous; and that the mysterious Woody Allen was not really so mysterious to him?

Ostensibly the memoir of an acclaimed cartoonist, “Backing Into Forward” is a portrait of a certain kind of New York during a specific era: the cultural and political foment of the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s.

Last week, also in the Times, Michiko Kakutani wrote:

“Backing into Forward” provides the reader with a sharply evocative portrait of the author’s youth in the Bronx, where he says he grew up a terrified, cowardly child, who “sidestepped arguments, fled confrontations, pedaled away from fistfights.” And the book proves just as nimble at limning the literary world of Manhattan, where this “wry, self-effacing, hard-hitting lefty” soon made himself at home, and realized he could “hold my own with Alfred Kazin, Dwight MacDonald, Lillian Hellman, Kenneth Tynan, Robert Lowell, Elizabeth Hardwick, Philip Rahv,” to drop just a few household intellectual names.

Perhaps funniest of all is Mr. Feiffer’s self-deprecating, self-pitying account of his Catch-22-like stint in the Army during the Korean war: after faking a breakdown, he says, he managed to get himself appointed to the Signal Corps Publications Agency, where he spent all of his free time working on “Munro,” a long cartoon narrative about a 4-year-old boy who is drafted — a project, he now recalls, that “was to determine the direction of my work and my life over the next 50 years.”

To what does Mr. Feiffer, 81, attribute his long and varied career? His success, he writes in these pages, came from “lucking into the zeitgeist,” from the happy coincidence that the personal subjects of his Voice cartoons — anxiety, confusion, anger — resonated perfectly with the concerns of his audience: young urban hipsters, alienated by the repressive mores of the cold war years and unmoored by the tumult of the counterculture decades.

I’ve admired Feiffer’s work all my life without being a huge fan. But this book looks like a fun read.