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?
This is one of those fun games where all the analysis goes out the window because you can basically see any number of things happen. Pedro could get bombed, AJ could get bombed. Burnett could throw a gem. Pedro could be decent. He could maybe plunk somebody, just cause, you know? Homers and errors and relief pitchers and it’s past midnight and they are still playing. Or a pitcher’s duel. How about a so-so game, where they both allowe 3 or 5 runs in 5 or 6 innings. I can’t call it. And that’s the beauty part, right?
It’s one of those games that could be pedestrian but feels like it’s going to be surreal and nuts like so:
For pure theater, it should be good. Pedro Martinez has been a great bad guy in the Bronx and never fails to angry up the blood.
Pedro is one of the few players that draws upon the hatred of a crowd instead of needing to respond off the enthusiasm of a home crowd (and that’s the difference between Pedro and Cole Hamels according to the men that make the moves for the Phillies). Course I’d love nothing more than to see him get served, but with Pedro, you never know. Who’ll be shocked if he pitches a gem? He’s a great artist and you never know with those guys if they’ve got one last great flourish in them.
He’s never pitched in the new Yankee Stadium, that’s one thing. I’m sure the Yankee hitters will be happy to face him compared with Cliff Lee. Yeah, the offense should be fine tonight. Yes, Joe Girardi is already working hard starting Jerry Hairston over Eric Hinske or Brett Gardner. But the mashers are supposed to mash here, so, c’mon: mash dummies.
The $99,000 question is what it has been all season: Burnett.
We’ve said all year long around here, the Yanks win the World Serious if they’ve got Burnett pitching well.
Nu? So, C’mon Meat. You kin do it. We’ll be dying right with ya.
Bombs Away, Fellas.
Let’s Go Ya-Kees!
Jerry Hairston in for Nick Swisher; Jose Molina in for Jorge Posada.
Like the Hairston move, but as for Molina…Yipe!
Word-for-word, piece-for-piece, I think Lee Jenkins is one of the best writers at Sports Illustrated these days. His latest piece, previewing the Serious in this week’s issue, is on Blastmaster Ryan Howard:
Howard’s bat measures a stout 35 inches, 34 ounces, but in his hands it looks like a toothpick.
Those hands, big as a middle infielder’s mitt, are what former Phillies general manager Pat Gillick noticed the first time he saw Howard play six years ago in the Arizona Fall League. When Gillick is scouting a player, he looks forward to shaking the player’s hand. A strong handshake portends home run power. “That’s where the evaluation begins,” Gillick says. When he thinks back on the strongest handshakes he has felt in more than 40 years of scouting, he rattles off some formidable names: Eddie Murray, George Bell, Alex Rodriguez and Howard. (After shaking this reporter’s hand, Gillick said, “Didn’t hit many home runs, did you?” So true.)
Teammates compare Howard’s drives to golf shots because they backspin out of the ballpark and don’t stop rising until they’re out of sight. “When you hit one flush, you don’t feel a thing,” Howard says. “You just hear the pop.”
Speaking of Howard, I know I’ve mentioned this before, but man, does he ever remind me of the Boogie Down’s own, Kris Parker, KRS-ONE for short.
Okay, enough with the calmness. Time to start getting amped.
I was saddened to hear the news that Terry Miller, Marvin Miller’s wife, has passed away. Tim McCarver mentioned it during the broadcast last night.
I met her once, in their apartment, almost two years ago. It was the day before Christmas and they were celebrating their 68th wedding anniversary that day. I came on business and brought her flowers. She had short hair and wore a necklace that looked straight out of the Sixties. She was pleasent but tough. Not cold, just tough. Their apartment was bright and flooded with light (it is where the Miller interviews from Ken Burns’ Baseball were shot). It was clean and decorated in a minimal style. I imagined there would be more books. A copy of my book on Curt Flood was on one of their shelves which will forever be a part of my personal highlight reel.
I didn’t stay long. But it was a great honor to meet them both.
Terry Miller was 90.
So sayeth Pedro the Mouth, the man Yankee fans love to hate.
I was e-mailing with a friend this morning who played ball in college. He wrote:
I want to see a ton of hard hit balls tonight. I want LOUD outs when they make outs. Give AJ the lead, rip Pedro early, don’t let him sit there mugging for the cameras after 4 scoreless, reducing AJ to a supporting character in Pedro’s comeback drama. AJ will not react well to that, if it’s a staredown, AJ will blink first. Win tonight and any scenario is back on the table for the Yanks.
Pedro’s pitches are much slower and much less intimidating. He CANNOT throw the fastball by them, so he will try to get everybody out with the changeup. This is high school baseball strategy for the hitters: when the opposing pitcher canot throw the fastball by you, you adjust your approach. You try to hit the slow stuff up the middle and try to take the fastball the other way. If you gear your timing to the slow stuff, you can’t be fooled. I won’t be upset if they guess fastball while ahead in the count and take big swings and misses, but there should be minimal strikeouts and minimal weak shit induced by being way out in front of the changeup. With 2 strikes, stay back, hit the changeup back up the middle, fastball the other way.
Sounds like a plan.
No reason to get un-Dude, here. Lee was a sombitch, not much you can do about that (I couldn’t decide if I hated him or loved him for his deadpan Buster Keaton catch). We’ll have plenty of time to get amped about Mr. Pedro and Mr. Burnett as the day rolls along.
For now, how about a deep breath, and some lightness of being:
It is raining in New York City. The sidewalks are covered with leaves. But that can’t squarsh our excitement.
And more from us:
Over at Baseball Prospectus, Jay previews the Serious. Be sure to pop by Jay’s live chat this afternoon, starting at 2 p.m. est too.
The Yankees’ hard-fought six-game win over the pesky Angels has me thinking: this is the franchise’s second most satisfying American League pennant of my lifetime. Now I’m sure that a few Yankee fans will point to the 1996 Championship Series, which ended a 15-year World Series drought, or the 2003 pennant, capped off by the unlikely home run from a slumping Aaron Boone against the dreaded Red Sox. Without question, those two watershed postseason moments rate very near the top of the list, but in my mind, the 2009 pennant victory over the Angels ranks as second only to the satisfaction that came in the fall of 1976.
As a Yankee fan who was born during the winter of 1965, I had known only of mediocre baseball in New York, brief moments of unsustainable success, and a string of perennial also-ran finishes, a period of frustration that lasted through the end of the 1975 season. My early years as a baseball fan exposed me to the decline and retirement of Mickey Mantle, the unfulfilled promise of Johnny Ellis, the torn rotator cuff of Mel Stottlemyre, and the all-too-frequent domination by the rival Baltimore Orioles. By the summer of 1976, when I turned 11 years old, I was ready for some newfound success and an end to the nostalgic pining for the glory days of the early 1960s.
The bicentennial year brought not only a yearlong celebration of the country’s independence, but also the best Yankee team of my young life. Guided by a brilliant Billy Martin, who was in his vintage years as a manager, the Yankees won the American League East despite the lack of a legitimate cleanup man. A nice fellow named Chris Chambliss, a solid figure of a first baseman and a voice of reason in a chaotic clubhouse, occupied the cleanup role in caretaker fashion. He would serve the Yankees respectably as the No. 4 hitter (or the fifth-place hitter against left-handers), but fell several rungs short of stardom and was really only buying time in the middle of the order until the Yankees could acquire someone of more Ruthian quality. Or Jacksonian quality, as the case would be.
Playin’ Records.
This is one is so hype. (I dig it to death.)
This one is so sweet.
How about makin’ records? Like Pete.
Or using them to sell smokes. Like Fred.
Also…Hinske in, Guzman out.
According to Sam Borden at the LoHud Yankee blog, Pedro Martinez will start Game 2 in the Bronx.
That’s juicy, man.
Baby, baby.
I was not accepted into college. Didn’t have the grades to get in. I had planned to go to art school so I focused on my portfolio (sort of), and didn’t care about grades. Then, when I changed my mind about art school during my senior year, I was in a bad spot. Not getting into any school, was humiliating.
During freshman year of college when all of my friends were away, I lived with my father in my grandparent’s apartment in Manhattan, took three classes at Hunter college, and worked for a post-production company in midtown. Economics, Anthropology and a 400 level course on Samuel Beckett. I barely passed the first two, but tackled the Beckett class with enthusiasm and earned a B.
I didn’t understand a lot of what I was reading or what the professor was talking about. But I faked it well enough (I put a lot of effort into faking it.) I’ll never forget studying for the mid-term. I was sitting at the dining room table of my grandparent’s apartment, hand-written notes covering half of the table, when my father’s friend Jim Nolan dropped by.
Jim wore a leather bomber jacket and had the rugged good looks and easy charm of the kind of blue collar hard guy that Gene Hackman or Paul Newman played in the movies. Tough but tender. Funny, but in a sly way. Not an intellectual. Not from New York.
Jim sat down with me and asked what I was studying. I told him about the mid-term and Beckett and everything I had to study. I picked up a piece of paper and said, “Nothing is more real than nothing.” He looked at me waiting for more. “Descartes said that,” I added.
Jim thought for a long moment. “Nothing is more real than nothing.” He considered it some more. Then: “You know what? I wish that guy was sitting right here, right now cause…I’d…like…” Jim thought some more. “…to…punch him right in the mouth. Nothing is more real than nothing. Yeah, I’d like to punch him right in the fuggin face.”
That’s my favorite Jim Nolan story and it jumped to mind last night as I read an article in The New Yorker about Wes Anderson. I couldn’t figure out who I wanted to punch more–Anderson or the guy who wrote the article.
I just got a subscription (a birthday gift) and this was my first issue–I haven’t read the magazine on a regular basis since I was in high school and Pauline Kael was still writing for them. And it serves me right that an over-written and meandering profile of Anderson (with talk about “mood” and “tone”), who I find hopelessly self-absorbed and precious, was there to greet me.
Pow, right in the kisser.
Over at ESPN.com, Howard Bryant takes a look at a Boffo World Serious match-up:
This is the World Series everyone who cares about top-shelf baseball has been waiting for: a National League team that plays with an American League attitude — and actually has a power threat on its bench to play designated hitter — that features a comparable, fearsome lineup versus the pre-eminent American League team, with a $200 million-plus payroll in its inaugural year in its $1.3 billion stadium built for one purpose — to win the World Series at all costs.
How both teams arrived at the summit underscored the critical distance between each and its closest competitors, and neither has been challenged this postseason the way they will challenge each other during the coming week.
…Underneath the global issues lie delicious subplots: Pedro Martinez pitching once again against the Yankees in a pressure situation; Lee and Sabathia, the two former Cleveland aces, pitching against each other instead of as the front end of a pitching rotation as they once did. Two homer-friendly ballparks not necessarily favoring either home team will provide the stage, two rabid fan bases providing the acoustics. And there will be no shortage of stars: Cy Young winners Martinez, Lee and Sabathia; World Series MVPs Rivera, Cole Hamels and Derek Jeter; and regular-season MVPs Rodriguez, Howard and Rollins. If the World Series has been something of a dud this decade — three of the past five Series have been four-game sweeps and none has gone beyond five games, while the Series hasn’t reached a Game 7 since the Angels beat the Giants in 2002 — Phillies-Yankees portends to provide the antidote.
Game Six is a difficult to review because it seems to reach in so many different directions. Foremost is the action of the game, which carries the narrative momentum forward, and even constantly broken up by various back stories, manages to maintain coherence. Frost writes in enough detail, and with enough perspective, that even taken alone, the game sequences would never be mistaken for a newspaper recap. His description of Carlton Fisk’s famous twelfth-inning home run, allotted an entire chapter, merits a special mention for its lyricism.
Then there are the various back stories. If the action of the game is the book’s engine, then these histories are its cargo. They are what make Game Six valuable, but also at times what make it unbearably weighty. These are histories of commentators and coaches, players and owners, even of the franchises, their cities, and of baseball itself dating back to the 19th century. Their goal is a raising of the stakes. Framed by all these things, the game is meant to take on greater significance. But while none of the stories seem extraneous, their vitality and immediacy are inconsistent; some lend urgency to the action on the field, others are merely anecdotal.
These kinds of books, re-creating the past, are tough to pull off. Anyone read this one yet?
Yanks finally tame the Halos:
Larry Roibal, on-point once again:
Yeah, that was goodness all around last night, wasn’t it?
The Yanks have given us a wonderful season so far. It’s been as good as any in recent memory, really it has. Tonight gives the biggest game of the year, the first truly big game at the new Yankee Stadium. Here’s Cliff’s take, leftover from yesterday.
As you know, I’m generally a nervous fan, but after the Yanks lost Game Five I felt confident that they’d come back and close the Angels out in Game Six. Then there was an extra day off and now the butterflies have taken over and I’m Shook Bird like so:
I don’t remember the last time I felt this anxious.
I still say the Yanks find a way to win this series because I don’t want to fathom them not winning. As bad as things felt in 2004 I wasn’t surprised by it. The Red Sox were due. That they won in dramatic fashion made some kind of cosmic sense. I get that. But now, this is the Yankees’ time. Course the Angels won’t go out like chumps but it’s time for Good Andy and the Bombers to flex and be:
FRESH for 2009, you suckas!
Let’s Go Yan-Kees!
It is warm but raining in New York.
Bob…
Some laughs.
sss
