As of this writing, it’s January 26, and Johnny Damon is in free agent limbo. To date, t’s been a bizarre soap opera of power plays, hasn’t it?

Here’s the brief chronicle of events:

* Scott Boras sets Damon’s “value” at $13 million a year and states Damon won’t sign for less than a three-year deal. The Yankees were amused.

* Brian Cashman, after pulling off the three-team stunner that brought the Yankees Curtis Granderson, counters with two years at $14. Boras is amused and counters at two-for-20.

* Hideki Matsui signs with the Angels Who-Claim-To-Be-From-LA-Only-To-Boost-Marketing-Efforts for one year at $6 million. The Yankees are amused and silently gloat that they might have assessed the market correctly.

* The Yankees raise eyebrows by signing Nick Johnson to a one-year, $5M deal to be the DH, and a week later, swinging Melky Cabrera to Atlanta in a package that brought Javier Vazquez back to the Yankees. Amusement reigned in the sense of irony the Vazquez acquisition represented; here is the man who gave up the home run to Damon that effectively cemented the worst postseason collapse – or greatest comeback, depending on your perspective – in baseball history. As Daffy Duck once said, “Ho ho. That’s rich. It is to laugh.”

So here it is now that Damon, according to ESPN’s Buster Olney, has interest from the Oakland A’s (monetary value unknown). Meanwhile, Jon Heyman reports that the Yankees have $2 million left in their budget. Elsewhere, Marc Carig heard directly from the source that Damon expects to have a team within a week. If you believe Bill Madden, Damon overplayed his hand and the Yankees misjudged how much they need him.

That may seem dramatic. Michael Kay, on his afternoon show, discussed the Heyman and Olney reports. He wondered if the A’s are offering $5 million and the Yankees do in fact make a last-ditch, take-it-or-leave-it $2 million offer, will Damon swallow his pride, deal with the “emasculation” of an 85 percent pay cut and sign with the Yankees, or if he’ll take Oakland’s money, since that’s the best offer. Bonnie Bernstein opined that if Damon comes back, when he reports to Spring Training and is welcomed heartily, he’ll reclaim his status in the clubhouse. Kay wondered if the ego blow would be too much, noting that the Yankees management “keeps score” (Kay’s words), and would silently revel in their victory.

The Yankees have been known to wait until February to pull rabbits out of their hat. February is a week from now. There are still some pretty notable rabbits on the market. Judging from the flow of reports that surfaced over the last 24 hours, the Yankees might have smartly waited for the New York football season to officially end before breaking their silence.

One thing is certain: Brett Gardner will not be the Yankees’ starting left fielder in Spring Training. … Right?

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Want a good look at the original Yankee Stadium? Well, check out this scene from Buster Keaton’s first MGM picture–and arguably his last great one–The Cameraman (1928).

I walked down to Broadway Saturday evening to do the weekly shopping. The Uptown Sports Complex is across the street from the market so I stopped in to say hello. I wrote a piece about summer sports in New York last year for SI.com and featured a segment on the Complex which is owned by a couple of guys who went to high school with longtime Banterite, Dimelo. The owners and Dimelo (which is a moniker, Dominican slang for “What’s up?”) are part of a group of eight or nine guys who’ve known each other since they were kids. They call themselves “The Usual Suspects.”  

The place was jumping. Sixty, seventy people were crammed inside–most of them young men in and around the batting cages. This is peak season for the cages, when high school teams come to work out and prepare for the spring. I was pleased to see that business was booming.

I saw Ernies, one of the owners, and went to say hello. He had a mop in his hand and looked distracted. He was setting up for a memorial service. One of Ernies’ high school friends, guy named Manny, died earlier this month near his home in South Florida. He was 35. Manny played football with Ernies at JFK and had some talent. He went to Wisconsin, was the starting tackle for Ron Dayne and won the Rose Bowl withthe Badgers. He never made it as a pro and shortly after graduating, he moved to Miami, and had a child with one of Ernies’ great friends.

“We went down to see him every once in a while,” Ernies told me. “He was part of the extended crew. But we talked all the time. He wanted to open up a cage down there too.” Ernies finished mopping up a spill near the restroom and put the mop in a storage closet.  

“My man had South Beach locked down,” he said.  “Every place we went to down there, all we had to do is mention his name and we drank for free. He had it on lock.”

Manny worked twelve-hour shifts as a security guard and he’d been working a lot around New Year’s Eve. After one shift, he fell asleep at the wheel. The car crashed and caught fire. He was trapped inside and burned to death. He left behind four children and a wife.

The service began at six o’clock. I waited around for Dimelo to pay my respects but felt out-of-place–I looked like a scrub, not fit for a memorial–so I gave my condolences to Ernies and his partner Andy and went to the market. The service was conducted, attended by family and friends. Dimelo called me later and reported that only one cage still operated as the service began–Manny’s mother wanted it that way. The sound of the bat hitting the ball could be heard as they cried and hugged and remembered a man who died too soon.

I was across the street picking through the string beans when I saw Ralphie, the eldest member of “The Usual Suspects.” I watched five or six playoff and World Serious games with the crew last fall and met him on a few occasions. He is a dapper man. I held out my fist and we exchanged a pound as he moved past. He was talking on his phone, “Yeah, I’m just picking up some juice for the memorial,” he said as he turned the corner.

I thought about my wife and my friends. Then I went back to picking through the beans. Carefully.

I took a blues break and I broke it.

Diamond D

Dig this, from author and historian Glenn Stout:

Let’s try to do some good here. I don’t have to tell you what is happening in Haiti and how they are in need of everything, but I was looking around my office the other day and came up with an idea that might give a small measure of help.

Here’s the deal – I have extra copies of some of my books (see list below). In exchange for a donation to the reputable charity of your choice, I’ll send you copy of the book signed by me.

Today’s update is powered by Fats Domino (congrats to the Saints on their first Super Bowl appearance):

• A-Rod gets emotional, in a good way:

Alex Rodriguez looked at the award he just received from Babe Ruth’s granddaughter with big eyes and a broad grin. It was as if he almost couldn’t believe it was his. “Postseason MVP. Wow,” Rodriguez said Saturday night. Pausing for effect he added, “What’s next, the good guy award?”

. . . And after he told fans at the dinner that “he’d stick to the script of 2009 and keep it very, very brief,” he choked up, taking a long pause — save for a nervous laugh — to look down at the podium and smile awkwardly.

• Does the GM have a deadline for a deal with Damon?
• Bill Madden blames Johnny’s faith in Scott Boras for Damon’s dilemma.
• Dale Mohorcic (reliever for ’88 and ’89 squads) turns 54 today.
• Happy 92nd birthday to the legendary Ernie Harwell.

Back on Thursday.

J-E-T-S, Jets, Jets, Jets (but the pick here is Peyton).

I’m very much looking forward to the Jets game this weekend. New Yorkers under 40 have never seen this team achieve any greater success. But despite growing up in Northern New Jersey, I’m not a Jets fan (though I prefer them to the Giants if pressed). In fact, thinking back to my high school class of 1994, I can easily recall fans of the Cowboys, Redskins, Niners, Bears, and Dolphins, but no Jets fans. And I can’t seem to find any real enthusiasm for Sunday’s game in my contact list either. There are no group emails flying around, no shared experience of a weeklong buzz like there was in October. The only collective sense of excitement is centered around a handful of guys at my office who are all over 55.

Maybe it was just dumb luck that my high school friends had no particular allegiance to the local teams, but I wonder if the New York area fans that came to sports in the early ’80s formed their attachments based on a very unique set of circumstances: the advent of free agency and the relative vacuum of local championships. My teams as a young child of 5 or so were the Yankees, the Steelers, the Sixers, and the Islanders (surprisingly, this quartet remains intact 30 years later). But much more accurately, my loyalty was to Reggie, Mean Joe, Dr. J and Mike Bossy. I wasn’t old enough to be ashamed of picking the most successful teams over the local ones and my fandom centered on a dominant personality of performer. And, other than Bossy, these were the guys featured in national ad campaigns.

Though I wasn’t drinking Coke yet, I’m pretty sure the classic Mean Joe jersey commercial was a foundational plank in my relationship with the Steelers. Dr. J’s awesome Spalding cartoons were on the back of every Marvel comic my brother brought home and the Reggie bar was the greatest frigging piece of candy ever made (at least to that 5 year old). And when push came to shove and Reggie left the Yankees, so did I.

Is that a part of why I can’t find many Jets fans under 40? Or is it all about the trophy case? What are your teams? And how did you pick them? And will you be watching the Jets on Sunday?

Can you name all four members of the New York Sack Exchange?

This one comes from our pal Larry Roibal. Dig…

Foist:

His Way:

Interesting essay on boredom in the Times Book Review:

As a general state of mind, boredom is morally suspect, threatening to shine its dull light back on the person who invokes it. “The only horrible thing in the world is ­ennui,” Oscar Wilde once wrote, suggesting that boredom doesn’t feel much better in French. “That is the one sin for which there is no forgiveness.”

And yet boredom is woven into the very fabric of the literary enterprise. We read, and write, in large part to avoid it. At the same time, few experiences carry more risk of active boredom than picking up a book. Boring people can, paradoxically, prove interesting. As they prattle on, you step back mentally and start to catalog the irritating timbre of the offending voice, the reliance on cliché, the almost comic repetitiousness — in short, you begin constructing a story. But a boring book, especially a boring novel, is just boring. A library is an enormous repository of information, entertainment, the best that has been thought and said. It is also probably the densest concentration of potential boredom on earth.

Home Sweet Home.

Never gets old, does it?

Our man Cliff takes a look at the Felix Hernandez extension over at SI.com:

Save for brief a bit of elbow tightness in mid-2007 and fluky sprained ankle in 2008, Hernandez has shown no signs of fragility in his first five major league seasons, but any long-term pitching contract carries a significant injury risk, no matter what the pitcher’s previous medical history might be. Pitching is an extremely unnatural act that places enormous stress and strain on two major joints filled with delicate ligaments, muscles, and connective tissues. Even the healthiest pitcher’s arm can go pop at any time. Hernandez has proven to be durable thus far, but that has resulted in a lot of innings pitched at a very young age. Because young men’s bodies are still completing the growing and maturing process in their early twenties, any pitcher under 25 is automatically an elevated injury risk. That’s why an increasing number of teams have come to enforce pitch and innings limits on their young starters.

Hernandez was so good so young that he made his major league debut at 19 and has already thrown 905 major league innings at age 23, 820 2/3 of them over the last four seasons. The M’s did well to keep Hernandez below 200 innings pitched in his first two full major league seasons, and he topped out at 200 2/3 innings in his third season, but his breakout 2009 season saw him throw 238 2/3 innings, which is a ton for a 23 year old. The M’s have also been smart about Hernandez’s pitch counts, as he’s thrown 120 or more pitches in a major league game just once, that coming in his penultimate start of 2009, though, again, his pitches per start have increased annually over the last three seasons, reaching 107 in 2009.

Meanwhile, it appears as if the Mets have traded for Gary Mathews, Jr.  Okay…

First:

Famous:

“Arthur George, you’re on the air.” I can’t tell you how many times I heard those words during the early 1980s. With that unusual greeting, Art Rust Jr., who died earlier this month from Parkinson’s disease at age 82, welcomed his callers to the WABC airwaves to take part in his iconic sports talk show. This was before the inception of all-sports radio, first introduced by WFAN in 1987 and now a common format to most major markets. Prior to WFAN, Rust’s nighttime show represented the sum of sports talk radio in the tri-state area; it became a must-listen for rabid sports fans.

With his deep, distinctive voice, acute knowledge of baseball history, and willingness to interview beat writers and columnists, Rust provided listeners like me with an opportunity to dissect the controversial issues of the day, while also learning about some of Rust’s favorite old-time ballplayers, like Marty Marion and Terry Moore. The show was especially good during the winter, with Rust tending to baseball’s hot stove like a master chef. Ironically, the show achieved a huge jump in popularity during the baseball strike of 1981; with no games to be watched or heard, thousands of sports fans tuned in to WABC to hear Rust pontificate about the latest issue of the day.

Unfortunately, the show began to lose credibility with me one winter, when Rust made a series of predictions about the Yankees’ off-season plans. He stated plainly that the Yankees would make several blockbuster moves, including a trade that would send Willie Randolph to the Cubs for Bill Buckner and another deal that would land Buddy Bell from Texas for some unknown package of talent. Rust said the trades were “done deals” that would happen, without question. Well, none of those trades ever took place. Rust never apologized for being wrong–he made a backhanded excuse about why they didn’t happen–and with that, I began to lose a little faith in his on-air proclamations.

Nonetheless, Rust supplied baseball fans with plenty of entertainment during the 1980s. With all-sports radio and the Internet unknown concepts yet to be introduced to the public, Art Rust, Jr. made many winter nights far more passable. For that, I owe Arthur George Rust, Jr. a debt of thanks…

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Were you read to as a kid? And I don’t mean when you were three or four, but when you were seven, eight and nine? I have cousins who were read to by their parents–from Watership Down to Dickens–until they were at least ten, possibly older. I always thought that was cool; what an easy way to read by just listening! But it also encouraged their own reading because as far as I know these cousins are all avid readers as adults.

I thought about reading to children on the subway this morning when a mother came on the train with her son, who must have been six or seven, and started reading aloud. She was an older mom, in her Fifties, and she read from one of the Frank L Baum Oz books. The boy was distracted. I could see the pupils of his eyes quickly darting, like a gliched cursor on a computer screen, as he looked out of the window at a passing station.

I was distracted too. I didn’t want to hear the mother reading and wondered what does the subway etiquette manual say about this one? But not for long. So I put on my headphones and shuffled my i-pod. Talk Like Sex, an old pornographic and sexist record with a tight beat by Kool G Rap came on. I watched the mother read and listened to G Rap and smiled at the incogruity of it all. Then she stopped reading and talked to her son, who was pointing at the ads overheard, and they laughed together.

Well, these two were absolutely priceless, weren’t they?

[Here is another guest post by Jon DeRosa. Jon has previously written two pieces for Bronx Banter (here and here) and will be a semi-regular this season. Jon played ball at Georgetown and still has that sweet, lefty swing.–AB]

By Jon DeRosa

Of the 8 teams that entered the 2009 postseason, 7 teams saw their closer blow a save or lose a game. The 8th team was the Yankees. As they marched to the 2009 World Series Championship, much was made of Mariano Rivera’s fabulous and unprecedented Postseason career. And rightly so, because no pitcher has ever approached the same quantity of quality innings on the game’s grandest stage. But there are a few quirks of history from which Mariano has undoubtedly benefited that have enabled him to compile his mind-boggling numbers: He plays for the most successful team and his career began exactly at the introduction of the Divisional Playoff Round. He stands, not just alone, but so far isolated as to discourage any conceivable comparison. Nobody’s numbers compare. Nobody’s innings compare. It’s Mariano and then a Grand Canyon to somebody else. And that’s how I like my heroes and gods – unassailable.

But in 2008 didn’t Brad Lidge have a much ballyhooed “prefect” season and playoff run? And wasn’t Papelbon annoyingly brilliant the year before that? And Wainwright and Jenks? And most painfully, didn’t Foulke do a ballsy job in 2004? So then, isn’t the closer on the championship team likely to have pitched as well as Mariano has in any single year? Or do Mariano’s individual series stand out from the pack in the same way that his overall numbers do?

I looked at the closer on every World Series team from 1995-2009 (TB 2008 was the only team without a nominal closer) and compared their postseasons. I wanted to know which guys were the most dominant (K/9, K/BB, BR/9) which guys were the most effective (R+IR/G, WPA) and which guys shouldered the heaviest loads (INN, INN/G) and faced the toughest jams (aLI). I don’t claim to reach definitive conclusions, but I think there’s valuable information to be gleaned:

1) The highest WPA for any closer was 1.56 for John Wetteland in 1996. The lowest was Trevor Hoffman’s –0.35 from 1998.

2) Brad Lidge in 2009 faced the highest leverage situations at 2.90. And it’s no surprise he failed, since 11 of the 13 closers facing the highest aLI’s failed in the World Series. In contrast, 15 of the 16 lowest aLI’s saw the closer emerge unscathed. John Wetteland again distinguishes himself by facing the highest leverage situations without failure (and 4th highest overall): 2.36.

3) Memory matches the stats as Foulke’s change-up racked up 19 Ks in 14inn and Wainwright’s curve ball baffled more than just Beltran – 15 whiffs in 9.2 innings.

4) The Red Sox emulate the Yankees in at least one respect: they want to use Papelbon for multiple innings in the postseason. Other than Mo, Papelbon was the only pitcher to average more than an inning and a half per appearance in any single postseason.

5) Only 3 pitchers have kept a perfectly clean ledger – no runs inherited, earned or unearned. Papelbon, Wainwright, and Rivera (99).

6) Eight of the 15 World Series losers saw their closer blow a game (I am including Rocker in 1999) while only 3 of the 15 winners endured a meltdown. (For ranking purposes below, if he blew a game while losing the series, I didn’t consider him – both Rocker and Rivera version 2001 would have done well otherwise.) Regardless of your opinion on the value of closers, it’s hard to win a 4 game set when you cough up a lead in one of the games.

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Big Mama:

The King:

New York City is a Jets town this week. Lots of barking from players, columnists and the man on the street. I guess I haven’t been paying attention over the years–I was an avid NFL fan, a Jets fan, for most of the 1980s, but haven’t been emotionally charged about the game since–but I don’t understand why so many Jets fans are as brash as they are. I would be waiting for the other shoe to drop, waiting for the Jets to crumble. The older Jets fans I know will be watching Sunday’s AFC Championship game with one eye closed and their nerves decidedly clenched.

This morning, I talked to one of the security guards in my office building about the game. He’s a Mets fan and a Giants fan but he pulls for New York teams across the board. “The Jets are going to win, man,” he said. “I love Peyton, but this is the year for teh Jets.”

I asked if he was betting on the game. “No, I can’t do that, can’d do that. I bet with my heart. I can’t bet against the Jets. I go with my heart.”  Better not to bet at all.

I went upstairs and walked through the kitchenette on my floor. One of the kitchen staff was stocking the fridge full of milk. He is Haitian and has family back home, four brothers and a couple of sisters. He has heard from one of his brothers but doesn’t know about many of his cousins, especially after yesterday’s aftershock. One of his brothers’ wife is pregnant, due to give birth in a few weeks. His brother is trying to convince him to come back to Haiti to help out. But there is no place to live and it is dangerous. He has his own family and doesn’t have money to send. He is not sure what he is going to do. What he can do.

He is a powerfully built man with broad shoulders but has a gentle touch. His face is sympathetic.

I said good morning.

“Same old,” he said. “Same old.” He shrugged. The same thing he says all the time though it doesn’t ring true at the moment. “Same old, but it is good,” he said. “We have life.”