I received Sixty Feet, Six Inches for Christmas. In fact, the book is so directly in my wheelhouse, I received it twice. If you haven’t heard about it, it’s a book length conversation between Bob Gibson and Reggie Jackson, guided off-page by co-author Lonnie Wheeler,  about the duel the between pitcher and batter. They delve deeply into the mechanics and psychology, the preparation and the consequences, but mostly, they tell detailed anecdotes about the wily bastids that they couldn’t quite master and the poor stooges they could.

Upon first glance, they did not strike me as a natural pair. Reggie’s hunger for attention and approval seemed an odd match for Gibson’s stoic surliness. But at least some of each player’s professional personality was an act. And some of what remained has eroded in the years following their retirements and enshrinements.

So what we get in this conversation are two ballplayers who no longer occupy the exact personalities they made famous, but who can (and do) slip into those familiar characters when necessary – like putting on a vintage uniform for old-timer’s day.

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Don’t know what I’d do without Soul Sides:

I haven’t watched any spring training action yet.

Soon enough, the games will be real. In the meantime, here’s hoping the Yankees manage to stay healthy.

(Untitled) Soap Bubble Set, by Joseph Cornell (1936)

ss

Here’s a jernt where to have a hearty European-style breakfast in the Big Apple:

Count us as one of the million of cablevision customers who are not watching the Oscars tonight.

The wife is not amused. And, uh, you wouldn’t like her when she’s angry.

Update: Maybe the schmucky Big Wig Gods heard her cries. The Oscars are now on, and yes, she’s a heppy ket. Heppy like so:

It’s a beautiful day in New York. The wife and I are taking a drive to the country, don’t ya know.

Hope everyone is having a good one.

Very cool.

With the Oscars coming up on Sunday, the time is just right to bring up some Yankee-related movie news. Historically speaking, the Yankees and Hollywood have had trouble coming together and making good film partners, but that may be changing within the next few years. According to a recent Rush and Molloy article in the New York Daily News, a film called The Trade is in the planning stages. The movie would look at the “life swap” (including wives and children) engineered by Yankee pitchers Mike Kekich and Fritz Peterson in 1973, and would feature Ben Affleck and Matt Damon in the lead roles. Now how great would that be?

This revelation does bring me some momentary pause, however. Affleck and Damon are well-known Red Sox fans; I hope that they would not use this vehicle as a way of embarrassing the Yankee franchise. That said, I like both as actors, particularly the multi-dimensional Damon, and have enough confidence that their sincere interest as baseball fans would make them want to deal with this controversial subject matter in a serious and respectful manner.

For those who don’t remember the details of the story, Kekich and Peterson had been close friends since becoming Yankee teammates in 1969, but each man developed an affinity for the other’s wife during the summer of 1972. In the spring of 1973, the news became public that the two pitchers had actually traded wives, along with their children and family dogs. Commissioner Bowie Kuhn reacted to the news with disgust, claiming that he was “appalled” by what Kekich and Peterson had done, but that he was also powerless to do anything about it.

The Yankees reacted more humorously to the announcement, with general manager Lee MacPhail quipping that the Yankees would have to call off “Family Day.” (They actually did decide to cancel the promotion that summer.) Yankee teammates gave Kekich and Peterson their fair share of grief, but never to the point where it caused much dissension in the clubhouse. But the trade seemed to affect the two pitchers, both of whom struggled in 1973 and were subjected to routine booing throughout the American League. Both became ex-Yankees soon after, with Kekich traded in ’73 and Peterson dealt in ’74.

In terms of marriage, the trade produced mixed results. Peterson and Susanne Kekich had four children together and remain married to this day. The relationship between Kekich and Marilyn Peterson did not last. They soon broke up, with Kekich eventually marrying for a third time. To this day, neither man enjoys saying much publicly about The Trade.

It remains to be seen how cooperative Kekich and Peterson will be with the moviemakers. The more pressing question involves Affleck and Damon. Which actor should play which pitcher? Affleck strikes me more as the Peterson type, to the point that I could see some resemblance in their dark physical features. Damon does not look like either pitcher, but he has more comedic talent than Affleck. That might make Damon more appropriate to play the wackier Kekich, who was known as one of the flakiest left-handers of the sixties and seventies.

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Two Tahitian Women, by Paul Gauguin (1899)

Yeah, let’s cool out to the fine sounds of Mr. Hank Mobley:

Zell’s Pinstriped Blog has the upsetting images, taken by WCBS’ Tom Kaminski:

Here’s more from Albert Brooks’ comedy classic, A Star is Bought, his second album. It was a concept record. The idea was: Albert wants a hit record, so the album is made up of cuts that can be played on all different kinds of radio stations. Here is his talk radio bit, where he makes and receives all of the calls.

06 Phone Calls From Americans

Turk, turkey dinner.

At my grandmother’s apartment on 81st street, there were all kinds of foods to scare the living bejesus out of a kid–gefilte fish, pickled herring, cold beet soup, and greasy cheese blinzes. However, she did make a wonderful strudel–and there always seemed to be some on hand–as well as excellent apple, peach and blueberry pies.

One of the things she cooked that I liked best was cream of wheat. Nana made it with milk, cream, butter and sugar. Health, the old fashioned way! It was creamy smooth, no lumps (the lumps only started to appear in her later years). I never knew you could add salt to cream of wheat, and I didn’t have grits until years later.

Still, her cream of wheat is a rich, fond memory and I still make it every so often–no lumps, Snoops. Kind of like this one–that adds mascarpone!–from the food blog, Proof of the Pudding:

This was a great debut for Michael Keaton. Dig Zabars in the background at the head of the clip:

La vase paille, by Paul Cezanne (1895)

One goof deserves another…

This is the spot to get the good fresh horseradish for Passover. It’s also the place for all things pickled:

Say Werd.

Here are a couple of articles on Clint Eastwood as Warner Brothers releases a massive box set of all things Clint. One, a loving appreciation by David Denby in The New Yorker:

Indifferently reviewed when it came out, “The Outlaw Josey Wales” received a stunning compliment six years later. Orson Welles, who had seen the movie four times, said on “The Merv Griffin Show,” “It belongs with the great Westerns. You know, the great Westerns of Ford and Hawks and people like that.”

Welles’s invocation of names from the past is a reminder of the singularity of Eastwood’s path. John Ford appeared in just a few silent films; Howard Hawks never acted in movies. Clark Gable, Gary Cooper, Spencer Tracy, James Stewart, Cary Grant, Humphrey Bogart, William Holden, Steve McQueen, and Sean Connery never directed a feature. John Wayne directed only twice, and badly; ditto Burt Lancaster. Paul Newman, Jack Nicholson, Warren Beatty, Robert Redford, Robert De Niro, and Sean Penn have directed a few movies each, with mixed commercial and artistic success. The comparison with Beatty is irresistible and telling. Both were pretty boys who emerged from television in the nineteen-sixties. Both were casual piano players, catnip to women. Both cast actresses they were involved with. Both were extremely ambitious, and engaged seriously in politics. Beatty has had a fascinating career as a producer and a hyperenergetic stimulator of persons and projects, but, along with his genuine achievements, the principal activity of his professional life for considerable stretches has been getting people excited about what he wants to do, rather than actually doing it. He holds endless meetings, fusses over details, keeps people waiting for years.

If Eastwood likes a story, he buys or commissions the script, moves rapidly into production, shoots the film on a short schedule and, until recently, on a modest budget. If he knows an actor or an actress’s work, he doesn’t ask for a reading. He casts quickly and dislikes extensive rehearsals and endless takes. If someone else is supposed to direct, then falters or becomes too slow or indecisive for his taste—as did Philip Kaufman on “Josey Wales,” and the writer Richard Tuggle on “Tightrope”—he pushes him aside and takes over. Like Bergman, Godard, and Woody Allen, he works hard and fast, an impatient man who likes calm and order, and relies on the same crew from picture to picture. As a professional code, this seems obvious enough, but, in recent years, who else in big-time American filmmaking but Eastwood, Allen, and, more lately, the Coen Brothers has practiced it?

Meanwhile, over at The Daily Beast, Allen Barra thinks Eastwood is ridiculously overrated:

Most of the films in the collection—including those Eastwood directed as well as those in which he appeared as an actor—are notable only for being mind-numbing and calculatingly risk-free. I won’t waste time discussing Eastwood as an actor, but will simply say that the man who made him a star, Sergio Leone, had it right more than four decades ago when he compared Eastwood to Robert De Niro: “They don’t even belong in the same profession. De Niro throws himself into this or that role, putting on a personality the way someone else might put on his coat… while Eastwood throws himself into a suit of armor and lowers the visor with a rusty clang.” Eastwood, said Leone, “Had only two expressions: with or without a hat.”

It might be argued that scarcely anyone but his most fawning admirers has ever taken Eastwood seriously as an actor and that it’s as a director that he has made his real statement, but what if it’s true, as David Thomson argues, “As a director he matches his own work as an actor?”—which Thomson intends as a compliment. What is one to make of the score of lead-footed clunkers he has directed over the last four decades? To name just a few (most of which are in the Warner Brothers collection), Breezy (1973), The Eiger Sanction (1975), The Gauntlet (1977), Firefox (1982), Sudden Impact (1983), Heartbreak Ridge (1986), The Rookie (1990), White Hunter, Black Heart (1990), The Bridges of Madison County (1995), Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (1997), Absolute Power (1997), True Crime (1999), Space Cowboys (2000), Bloodwork (2002), Flags of Our Fathers (2006), and Changeling (2008).

Really, how many of these films would you ever want to see again? How many of them did you really think were all that good the first time you saw them, if you saw them?

Next up, Matt B will leave entertaining and informative comments about why Denby nails it and Barra misses the boat completely.