Home is where I want to be
Pick me up and turn me round
I feel numb – born with a weak heart
I guess I must be having fun
The less we say about it the better
Make it up as we go along
Feet on the ground
Head in the sky
It’s ok I know nothing’s wrong . . nothing

—The Talking Heads

I just had to share this e-mail from longtime Banterite, Jon DeRosa:

On the night the Yankees lost the 2001 World Series, I was watching alone in my apartment on 90th St and 1st Ave, in a building that housed a “Checks Cashed” franchise in the ground floor. I couldn’t eat, though I made myself some Kraft Velveeta and Shells and poked at it. To this day, I can’t even think about Kraft Velveeta and Shells without tasting bile. For about an hour or two after the loss, I sat in stunned silence and absorbed the pain. My girlfriend (and now wife) is a pediatric oncology nurse and was working the night shift at the time so I was free to kick and scream a little bit – which I usually did anyway regardless of her whereabouts.

A comedian and former classmate Mike Birbiglia has a great joke about his tiny Manhattan apartment: he sees a mouse one night and asks, with pragmatic concern, “Where are you going to sleep?” This apartment was designed on those same specs, so even if I could summon the impetus, there was no place to move around and dispense the huge ocean of emotion that had collected in my guts. I went to the computer and began hammering out an email to all the Yankee fans in my distribution list. I don’t remember if I sat down with a theme in mind or if it just formed as I wrote, but what I came up with was not negative, was not bitter, was not even that sad.

I felt proud of a team running on fumes, pushing things to the brink. I felt loyalty to everyone, especially Mariano, whom we needed to be perfect, and for once, wasn’t. And I expressed my desire to see the same team back again next year, supremely confident they could become champions again. I wrote something like, “this won’t be the end or a period, merely a comma in a long line of championships.”

I never, ever, even once that night or in the following few years, considered they would not get that close again. I never thought about Mariano Rivera retiring or Derek Jeter declining. Inconceivable to me as I wrote, but since that night, Andy Pettitte went to the World Series – with ANOTHER team. I was so sure they would be back that the worst case scenario never occurred to me (and the worst case scenario always occurs to me, it’s in my genes): these young, core Yankees would never win a World Series together again. Cone was gone, O’Neill and Brosious were set to retire. Nobody even knew how old El Duque was. Tino was clearly going to be replaced by a big hitter – Giambi would have been signed right after the ALDS if it was allowed! But Bernie had time. Jeter, Mariano, Posada and Pettitte were young and had the majority of their careers left. They were the best; they were battle tested. They would be back and they would erase this awful feeling – it was not a matter of if, or even when, but how quickly? Mussina and Giambi and Soriano were not only superior players to the ones they had employed during the title years, but they were hungry and focused on winning their first ring – an infusion of new blood without disturbing the experienced spine of the team seemed like just the right approach.

Well, obviously, there is no need to re-hash the intervening years and catalogue the disappointments. On 2 or 3 separate occasions, the Yanks took the undisputed best team in baseball to the postseason and failed to return with a championship. In only one of those years did they advance as far as the World Series, and the ensuing 6 game defeat felt perhaps more like the end than that night in Arizona. They lost to such an inferior team in such an ordinary way. They would quickly (hastily?) allow Andy Pettitte to leave for Houston, and then before even a blink of an eye, Bernie diminished and retired and there were 3 left and they were fading too. Not in terms of talent and performance, but in terms of their position as THE stars at the center of the baseball universe.

After 2003, each year felt like opportunity lost and an approaching reaper edged ever closer. The worst case scenario that didn’t even take shape in my brain in 2001 was now hardening into reality. When they shut down Yankee Stadium last year, there wasn’t a parade. There wasn’t even one inning of baseball in October. How could that be anything but the definite and absolute end?

Yet, tonight, after 7 years of constant assault from the finally fully operational Boston Red Sox organization, half a roster of all stars and possible Hall of Famers come and gone, and the departing of the manager perhaps partially responsible and definitely present for the dynasty years, the Yankees have returned almost to where they were in 2001. They are not yet 3 outs away (and may not ever be, the pessimist gnawing on my brain stem reminds me), but they are 1 win away. They may be in a brand new home, but pitching tonight’s game is Andy Pettitte. He’ll be throwing the first pitch to Jorge Posada. Derek Jeter will be the first Yankee to bat, and I am hoping with every fiber of my being, Mariano Rivera will throw the last pitch.

I am not a fatalist. I don’t think the above circumstances give the Yankees any special advantage tonight or that they are destined to win in this fashion, and though likely, it’s possible that none of these 4 guys will even factor heavily in the outcome. But the fact that they could win this way, that they have improbably, at these advanced baseball ages of 35, 37, 38 and 39, formed the heart of yet another championship quality effort, is staggering me as I await tonight’s game.

I am going to watch tonight in my apartment, probably alone, though my wife might make it through 2 innings or so. My 2 sons will be asleep (or at least in bed) by the time the first pitch thrown. Like the Yankees, I live in a new place, a different part of town now, in a slightly bigger living room, with more roaming space and more things to break in frustration and anger – though I’ve acquired enough discipline to only attack the soft, silent couch cushions. But tonight I will be at peace (nervous, anxious, impossible for my wife to deal with, possibly immeasurably disappointed or elated, but at peace).

The Yankees have returned to the place I needed them to be. They have given themselves the chance to be world champions. I thought these 4 players would never be in this position again, and tonight, it’s largely up to them to determine their own fate. I aged along with the team. Thanks to my wife and sons, I have experienced higher highs than world series titles and thanks to life being what it is, I’ve experienced lower lows than blown game 7s or 3-0 leads, but with age comes the feeling that career paths, friendships, and relationships that were lost are never coming back. And that once that decay sets in, it forms an irreversible death spiral. But that doesn’t have to be true does it? Because here they are again – and it’s up to them.

I want it for them. I want it for me. I want it for them for me, if that makes any sense. But most of all, I want it for us as one collective thing, the group of players and fans that have been together from these guys’ debuts and who will be there to see their numbers retired. If we get beat, we get beat together, and that’s the only way to get beat. If we win, we win together, and that’s pretty frigging amazing.

Let’s Go, Yank-ees.

The talk over the past four days of the World Series has been starting pitching, or rather, the managers’ decisions on who to take the hill. For Game 4, Charlie Manuel was excoriated for selecting Joe Blanton over Cliff Lee on short rest. When the Yankees took the 3-1 lead, the Philly media all but blamed Manuel, seemingly forgetting that Blanton pitched well enough to win, and save for a Brad Lidge meltdown, the series might have been tied at that point.

At the same time, the choice of Joe Girardi to start AJ Burnett was being put under the microscope, run through a centrifuge, and measured by any other number of scientific devices. “Why start Burnett on short rest?” The experts on MLB Network claimed. “With the lineup shaking out, Melky Cabrera being out, Jose Molina catching, this favors the Phillies,” to paraphrase Harold Reynolds. “Chad Gaudin can give five innings and then make it a bullpen game,” said Mitch Williams.

Tim McCarver, pleasantly old school, lauded Girardi’s choice to stick with three starters.

The most sane MLBN analysis came from Dan Plesac, who noted that the Yankees didn’t have a fourth starter as an option due to the way they (mis)handled Joba Chamberlain during the second half of the regular season. Thus, Girardi’s options were limited.

(more…)

We started this year talking about the new Yankee Stadium. How fitting then that the season ends in the new jernt. And what a way it’d be to break it in–with a championship. Two possible games left, Yanks need just one…more…win.

The anticipation is palpable.

I wish Todd Drew was here, but in some ways, he’s really never left. I think about him almost every game. And he’ll be front and center in my thoughts tonight as the Bombers go for it all.

Tomorrow night at this time…Showtime!

Hard to imagine how to fill all those minutes an hours ’til then.

Be like Reggie.

Leigh Montville edited this year’s edition of The Best American Sports Writing. If you’ve got the extra scratch, pick-up a copy to see Todd Drew’s terrific Yankee Stadium memory in print. It’s one of the great moments in this site’s history.

WEEI in Boston ran a short interview with Montville who has some interesting thoughts about the newspaper business, Sports Illustrated, and the nature of sports writing today (thanks to the Think Factory for the link).

Also, there’s this on the Babe:

What’s the most surprising thing you learned about Babe Ruth when you wrote that book?

“I think he was smarter than most people think he was. He grew up without much education. He came out of an orphanage. He had that reputation, and it was well-deserved of being a late-night guy, a carouser who ate a million hot dogs and all that stuff. But he was very smart in lining up his career. He had the first real business manager of any athlete. The guy took care of him and his money. Babe Ruth had money until he died and lived a good life. He made sound decisions in the people he enlisted to help him. He got a personal trainer back when nobody had personal trainers, when he was starting to fall apart. The personal trainer got him on the road and got him hitting again. He had the knowledge to straighten himself out. A lot of guys don’t have that — Antoine Walker being the latest one. He had more self control that I think most people give him credit for.”

The sun is shinning in New York. It is a beautiful autumn day.

Last night was a drag but it’s over and done with. Nothing to do but wait for tomorrow. Sure, there is plenty to worry about if you like to worry. But there is this too: the Yanks have two chances to win one game. I thought Robbie Cano had his best at bats of the Serious last night and I expect the offense to be a Bomb Squad tomorrow night.

Whadda ya say?

Alex Rodriguez and the Yanks are shooting for one…more…win.

Do it.

If the Yankees hold on to win the Serious, Johnny Damon’s at bat and stolen bases in the ninth inning of Game Four will be a major reason why. Duh, I know. But still, it’s hard not to linger on Damon for a moment this afternoon as we gear up for Game Five.

Whew.

After a tense, up-and-down (and-up-and-down-and-up) game, with some smart batting and quick thinking from Johnny Damon, and yet another monster (centaur-ish, even?) Alex Rodriguez hit, the Yankees beat the Phillies 7-4 and took a 3-1 lead in the Series. Now they’ve got three more chances to get that 11th postseason win… but for the sake of older Yankees fans and those with hypertension or weak hearts, let’s hope this thing doesn’t go to Game 7.

For one thing, while CC Sabathia came through and pitched a solid game tonight, he wasn’t quite the dominant force he was against the Angels; he’s now thrown 266 innings this year, so it would hardly be shocking if he was getting a little worn out. The Yankees staked him to a 2-run lead right away, on Jeter’s single, Damon’s double, Teixeira’s RBI groundout, A-Rod’s third HBP of the last two games, and Posada’s sac fly; for a little while, it looked like Blanton might implode. But either he got it together or the Yankees let him off the hook, depending on your point of view, and in the bottom of the first Sabathia gave back a run on two doubles – the second hit by Sabathia’s current arch-nemesis Chase Utley (who now, with that hair, looks like the sidekick to the snobby frat-guy villain of a Revenge of the Nerds sequel).

Both pitchers clamped down after that, until the bottom of the fourth, when Ryan Howard – you remember Ryan Howard – singled and scored on Pedro Feliz’s hit to left, tying the game. It didn’t last long: the Yankees rallied right back in the top of the fifth, with Jeter and Damon coming through again, knocking in Nick Swisher and Melky Cabrera respectively, and making it 4-2 Yankees.

Since it was That Kind of Game, that score didn’t last, either. In the seventh Utley destroyed yet another Sabathia slider,  pulling the Phillies to within a run, and ending Sabathia’s night at a workmanlike 6.2 innings with three earned runs, six strikeouts and three walks. The Phillies went on to tie it up the eighth, when Pedro Feliz of all people rudely interrupted an otherwise-excellent Joba Chamberlain inning with a big blast to left: 4-4.

Charlie Manuel brought in Brad Lidge for the ninth, and the Philly closer made pretty quick work of Hideki Matsui and Derek Jeter. I admit that at this point, I was trying and failing to imagine the Yankees surviving an inning of Phil Coke. Johnny Damon’s two-out at-bat, though, turned everything around, not just for Lidge but very possible for the Phillies. It took nine tense pitches, as Damon fouled off several sliders and fastball after fastball, looking for something he could hit – and when he finally got it, he dumped it into left field.

With Mark Teixeira up, Damon immediately took off for second base, slid in with a little room to spare… then popped up, paused for just a fraction of a second, and took off for third. “I was like, ‘Where is he going?!'” said Jorge Posada after the game, and that makes two of us. Joba Chamberlain said he had “a mini heart attack” watching the play, while Brett Gardner’s initial reaction was “Uh oh.” I think most Yankee fans could probably relate to one if not all of those responses, but in fact, Damon simply realized that because on the shift on Teixeira, no one was covering third base – no one was even close to covering third base – and that given where Pedro Feliz had caught the ball, he wasn’t in any position to outrun Damon. Hence, two stolen bases on a single pitch.

Teixeira was hit by a pitch – I’m sure it wasn’t intentional, but still, Phillies pitchers: if you can’t pitch inside without hitting people, maybe don’t throw inside so much – and that brought up Alex Rodriguez. Of course. Lidge seemed rattled by then, and his second pitch to Rodriguez was a fat fastball that was promptly redirected towards the left field wall. The Yankees went up 5-4, and then up 7-4 on Jorge Posada’s two-run single. That was all they’d get, but not once in Mariano Rivera’s postseason career has three runs not been enough, and tonight was no exception.

(Incidentally, I love how Yankee fans have embraced the whole centaur thing. Personally, I think it’s hilarious if true – and it’s almost too weird to be invented – but anyway, Rodriguez has hit so well for most of this postseason, it would take a pretty serious felony for anyone to be bothered at this point).

Needless to say, the Series ain’t over til it’s over, as someone who’d know once put it, and you don’t have to try too hard to imagine ways in which the momentum could shift – Cliff Lee tomorrow, just for instance. But the Yankees are awfully close now… so stock up on the self-medication of your choice and get ready for another wild night.

World Serious Game Four.

The Big One.

Let’s Go Yan-Kees!

Trying to keep busy as the hours creep along. Man, tonight is the game of the year for CC and the Yanks. This is what it is all about. Meanwhile, there’s this thing called football on TV, and why not? It is November, after all.

Time for some soup. See you in a little bit.

Trick

or Treat?

I worked for the Coen brothers for a little over a year, first as their personal assistant and then as an assistant film editor on The Big Lebowski. I didn’t become lasting friends with them but I got to know them some and had as good a time working for them as I did for anyone else in my short career in the movie business. They were definitely Jewish and definitely New Yorkers but they weren’t Jewish New Yorkers, not like any of the Jews I grew up around. They were from somewhere else, no place I knew from, a place with space and open sky. A place where there was a lot of silence and even more time for thinking.

I remember being in Joel’s apartment one time when I saw a small black-and-white photograph hanging on the wall. The picture, which must have been taken in the late Fifties or early Sixites, was of a man wearing slacks–pulled up high, a buttoned-up shortsleeve shirt, tie. But the photograph turned foggy at the man’s neckline and you could not see his head at all. Eraser head. It was a striking image but one that happened by accident–one of those in-camera mishaps, or maybe a screw-up at the developers.

Joel told me that he had taken the picture and the man in it was his father.

I looked at it was thought about what an artist friend once told me about the Coens. “They make pictures,” he said.  Their gift for the arresting image developed way back.

I looked at  the picture of Mr. Coen and Joel said, “Yeah, this pretty much says it all about my dad.”

A Serious Man is the Coen’s latest movie and it is the most personal movie they’ve ever made and one of the most Jewish movies I’ve ever seen. I don’t know that it is autobiographical in any literal sense, but it feels knowing in a special, intimate way.  In a fine review for the L.A. Times, Kenneth Turan writes:

Writer-directors Joel and Ethan have seized the opportunity afforded by the Oscar-winning success of “No Country for Old Men,” to make their most personal, most intensely Jewish film, a pitch-perfect comedy of despair that, against some odds, turns out to be one of their most universal as well.

Set in a very specific time and place — the Jewish community in suburban Minneapolis circa 1967 — that closely echoes the Coens’ own background, “A Serious Man” is a memory piece re-imagined through the darkest possible lens.

Yet the more the man of the title suffers the torments of Job, the more he tries to deal with the unknowability of the usual willfully absurd and decidedly hostile Coen universe, the more we’re encouraged to wonder if this isn’t just the tiniest bit funny. And the more real the pain becomes, the more, in a quintessentially Jewish way, laughter becomes our only serious option.

The movie is full of Jewish tradition and detail. And while it can be grotesque it isn’t mean-spirited or self-loathing. It is about passive-aggresive Jewish men and over-bearing Jewish women. It is about how important thinking, being a thinker, is for Jews, about having a moral center, about questioning the universe, and how in the end, none of the big, existential questions really matter. Unless, of course, they do. It is about dreams and the unconscious and mystery.  

My father’s family is Jewish but I never had a bar mitzvah and the only time I went to Temple was once a year to visit my grandparents on the high holidays. I can’t relate with much of the spiritual and moral questioning that defines many Jews, like my grandfather for instance.  When I think back on this movie I’m not drawn to trying to figure any of it out, necessarily, though I could see why some people would. Still, I feel eager to talk about it. It’s of those movies that you just want to talk about when you leave the theater.

I think it is one of the most successful movies the Coen’s have ever made. It is beautifully realized, disturbing, and often hilarious. The performances, the writing, the pacing, the images, are all wonderful. The Coens have rarely been integrated high and low culture as seemlessly as they have here. The movie feels fantastic and surreal, rational and irrational: completely authentic.

When it was over, I felt happy and content, even though the ending is a doozy. After the credits finished rolling (one of the last credits read, “No Jews were harmed during the making of this film”), an old woman who was sitting in front of me said, “Marvelous,” in a husky New York accent. The lights came on and I saw her face. “Simply marvelous.”  She was wearing a blue wrap around her head and couldn’t have been more than five feet tall. She turned to her friend and said, “That might be the sadest movie that I’ve ever seen, don’t you think?”  And it was sad in a way though I didn’t feel sad or depressed. I felt satisfied.

The pictures and sounds and stories in the movie were stimulating, and I felt like staying put and watching it again.

Joe Blanton will start Game 4.

Read the news over at River Avenue Blues, who picked it up from Joel Sherman.

There has been a lot of talk about the lame the vibe at Yankee Stadium in the first two games of the Serious. This is nothing new. Back in 1962, Roger Angell wrote about the “ignorance and moneyed apathy” of a World Series crowd in the Bronx:

This jet Subway Series moved three thousand miles east last Saturday, but in watching the reactions of the local crowds to the first of the three marvelous games in Yankee Stadium this week I had the recurrent impression that the teams’ planes had overshot their mark, and that the Series was being continued before a polite, uncomprehending audience of Lebanese or Yemenis. New York is full of cool, knowing baseball fans–a cabdriver the other day gave me an explicit, dispassionate account of the reasons for the Milwaukee Braves’ collapse this year–but not many of them got their hands on Series tickets. Before the first game here, on Sunday, the northbound D trains were full of women weighted down with expensive coiffures and mink stoles, not one of whom, by the look of them, had ever ridden a subway as far as the Bronx before. There was no noise in the stands during batting practice, and the pregame excitement seeemed to arise from the crowd’s admiration for itself and its size (a sellout 71, 431), rather than for the contest to come; ritual and occasion had displaced baseball.

…By the sixth inning, when the game was still scoreless, spectators had begun walking out in twos and threes, surrendering their tickets stubs to the perserving verticals; the departees had accomplished their purpose, which was to be able to tell their friends they had been to a Series game.

Now, the schmucks and schmuckettes behind home plate wave, talk on their phones, and spend more time texting than watching the game.

Philly it is.

Poster can be found at Sports Propaganda.com.

They are as different as you can get, but last night Pedro Martinez and Mariano Rivera showed us once again that baseball is more about art than science. Both pitchers are great competitors, great performers–not only craftsmen, but true artists.

We are lucky to watch them work.

A.J. Burnett had a terrific start last night, as if unaware that millions of people were completely freaked out about his ability to do so, and a few of the Yankee hitters recovered from Wednesday’s Cliff Lee-induced  trauma, and so New York beat Philly 3-1 to even the series. And yet, naturally, the first thing I want to write about is Pedro.

“I know they really wanna root for me,” said Pedro of Yankees fans, smiling in what appeared to be a zoot suit stolen from the Mighty Mighty Bosstones, shortly after (he claims) lecturing a man in the front row about using foul language in front of his daughter. “It’s just that I don’t play for the Yankees. That’s all. I’ve always been a good competitor, and they love that… You know, I’m a New Yorker as well, so – if I was on the Yankees, I’d be a king over here.”

He’s right, of course. Personally, I always appreciate athletes who understand that they’re also entertainers, and nobody gets that more than Pedro. He gets the fans, he gets the media, he plays his part with flair – he was a great villain; his ego is, to put it politely, healthy, but he’s backed it up often enough. By the end of 2003 I disliked him about as much as I’ve ever disliked a player (at least, a player who hadn’t committed some actual crime), but I’ve long since come around. It was seeing him on the Mets that mostly did it, watching him pitch smarter as he got slower, loved by the fans and his teammates no matter how often he was injured, and of course always good for a quote. And I suppose it was also realizing that he would be retiring soon, if not this year, and you won’t have Pedro to kick around anymore. I can’t wait for his Hall of Fame induction speech.

Pedro was going to be the story tonight no matter what he did, which is probably fine by him, and he pitched very well – but as far as the Yankees are concerned, the bigger news was A.J. Burnett’s excellent start. I think most fans knew he was capable of it, but didn’t dare to expect it. His curveball was a knockout punch, and he was refreshingly free of control issues: seven innings pitched, nine strikeouts, only two walks. There were moments in the game’s first half when he seemed like he might be teetering on the brink of chaos, but he never quite lost control: one second-inning run on a blooped ground-rule double and a single that probably should’ve been an E5 was all the Phillies got.

That was a good thing, too, since for the first chunk of the game, the Yankee bats were becalmed and the Stadium was way too quiet. Pedro and his sneaky stuff deserves the credit, but I wonder if he got any kind of assist from a Cliff Lee hangover. In the fourth inning, though, Mark Teixeira (it’s aliiiiiive!) whacked an 84 mph changeup over the right field fence to tie the game.

Hideki Matsui gave the Yankees the lead with another solo shot in the sixth, and I never call these things, but I have to say: I called that one. The Phillies got five-plus excellent innings and 90 pitches out of 2009 Pedro, against the Yankees no less, and I thought to ask for too much more than that was to push their luck.

Then in the seventh, a funny thing happened: Pedro Martinez stayed in the game. Stop me if you’ve heard this one. Even six years ago, everyone watching the ALCS at home knew that after about 100 pitches, give or take, Pedro’s effectiveness took a nosedive – as great as he was then, he didn’t have a ton of stamina. Everyone knew it, and everyone was screaming it at Grady Little’s impassive face on their TV, yet here we are many years and multiple Martinez surgeries later… I don’t mean to make too much of it, probably the Yankees win this one anyway, with that Burnett start and Mariano Rivera. It’s just that if you pulled some random casual baseball fan off the couch and put him or her in a dugout, this is probably the one mistake they would absolutely know not to make.

Anyway, the much-maligned Jerry Hairston Jr. singled, and Brett Gardner ran for him, advancing to third on Melky Cabrera’s single. Jorge Posada came up to pinch-hit, but we were all denied the drama of that matchup when Manuel finally strolled to the mound and summoned Chan Ho Park. Posada singled anyway; 3-1 Yankees. Derek Jeter then struck out on a foul bunt. That’s right, he was bunting with two on and no outs, Yanks up by two in the seventh, and he kept bunting with two strikes, and then he struck out on a foul bunt, and I don’t want to talk about it.

In other Bad-For-Baseball news, the umpires then blew a call when Johnny Damon’s line drive was called an out in the air, though it looked like in fact it had hit the ground before Ryan Howard caught it, and so Posada was called out too, doubled off. I have run out of umpire jokes. The Phillies got screwed the very next inning, when Chase Utley and his hair were called out at first to complete a DP against Mariano Rivera; it looked on replays like he was most likely safe. Ragging on the umps is an ancient and respected part of baseball tradition, but things are getting out of hand.

Mariano Rivera had a choppy eighth inning, but persevered, and the ninth was more like it. The Yankees now head to Philly, and to paraphrase Ol’ Blue Eyes, if you can’t hit a ton of home runs there you can’t hit a ton of home runs anywhere.

Discussion question: if you were picking a baseball-related Halloween costume, what would you pick? And is there any way to go as an umpire without being insensitive to the visually impaired?