One down, three to go:

We’re proud to present the following excerpt from Pete Dexter’s new book–his seventh novel–Spooner. This section picks up the story when Spooner is in high school. We just got through Spooner’s adventures on the football team where a sadistic coach named Tinker terrorized a fat kid, Lemonkatz. Spooner’s mother, Lily, is furious with the coach, as she is with many things in life, especially those things that are Republican. Then, young Spooner turns to baseball.

From Spooner:

By Pete Dexter.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Later that year Spooner began his career in organized baseball. The coach of the baseball team was Evelyn Tinker, who in addition to being held almost blameless in the Lemonkatz boy’s injury was now rumored to be collecting sixty bucks a week for the newspaper column, this in spite of Lily’s public campaign to have him fired, and being as Spooner was not old enough yet to have voted for Richard Nixon, this joining of Tinker’s team constituted the single most disloyal thing a child of Lily Whitlowe Ottosson’s had ever done.

How could he?

The question hung in the air at 308 Shabbona Drive, unspoken, like another dead father.

The answer—not that the answer mattered—was that Spooner had stopped at the baseball diamond on the way to the shopping center after school, and watched through the fence as Russell Hodge pitched four innings of a practice game against Crete-Monee, striking out twelve of the thirteen batters he faced. It was a tiny school, Crete-Monee, six hundred students, kindergarten through twelfth grade, and two of the players were only thirteen years old. The smallest one—who wore number thirteen, and was the only batter Russell Hodge did not strike out—was plunked between the shoulder blades as he turned away from an inside fastball, and cried.

Half a dozen times Spooner started to leave but couldn’t, waitingaround to see one more pitch, and in the end hung on the wire fence more than an hour, leaving diamond-shaped imprints on the underside of his forearms, wrists to elbows, taking the measure of Russell Hodge’s throws.

It came to him as he watched that Russell Hodge pitched in much the way he played linebacker, which is to say blind with rage. But it was more difficult in baseball, a game that had very little maiming, to sustain a murderous rage than it was in football, even for Russell Hodge, and after an inning or two Spooner thought he saw him working to conjure it up, sucking from the air every bit of resentment he could find. Giving Russell Hodge his due, even in a practice game against little Crete-Monee, he brought himself again and again to a state just short of foaming at the mouth—furious at the batter, at his own catcher, the umpire, who, behind the mask and protective vest was only Mr. Kopex the math teacher, furious even at the ball itself—and by the end appeared to have lost all his stuff.

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For Part One of this Interview, click here:

Bronx Banter:  A Day in the Bleachers. I just read this book for the first time, I want to say about six months ago. I think one of my favorite things about it – obviously I knew about the game, and I knew about The Catch and the other things that come to mind – but I think one of my favorite things was your description of the atmosphere of the game. Looking back fifty years ago, what was it like seeing a game in the Polo Grounds in the ’40s or ’50s?

Arnold Hano:  Well, what it was like seeing a game in the bleachers was the camaraderie. [Showing the covers of three different editions of the book.] When the book first came out, it was a book for fans, about fans. And then the next edition, it’s Willie Mays and fans. And then the next edition it’s just The Catch. But the cover of the first one is truer. This is truly what the book is about.

BB:  Right, right, definitely. It almost seemed like the book was about the fans, and, by the way, Willie Mays made a nice catch.

AH:  That catch, which I spent a lot of time on, took up nine pages in a hundred and sixty page book. And I don’t know if you know about the $700 edition of the book…

BB:  Yes, I read something about that. There was a limited print, and you had signed them all.

AH:  Four hundred copies.

BB:  The other thing, too, about this book is that now, that device that you used, using the game kind of as a prism through which to illuminate either a season or an era or a career, that’s a fairly common device now. But then, I don’t think so, is that right?

AH:  You’re telling me about devices. I wrote a book. I wrote a book about a day, and this is the day.

BB:  What I love about this book is that you’re writing the book and you’re telling what’s happening on the field, and Vic Wertz comes up to bat, and then suddenly you have a two-page segue on Vic Wertz.

AH:  Or on home runs hit by other people for long distances.

BB:  Exactly, exactly.

AH:  Well, I had to fill some space!

BB:  I think that now that’s pretty common. A lot of people use that.

AH:  Part of what E.L. Doctorow said yesterday on television is that writers don’t really realize what it is they’ve written. Critics tell them what they’ve written, but he said, “The result is I never read critics. They tell me things about the book…”

BB:  That perhaps aren’t there, or aren’t intended to be there.

AH:  So when you ask me about a device, I don’t know from the device in this case. I wrote a book about a day, and I filled it in with background stuff. I had to establish myself as writing a book with some reason, so I established myself as somebody who’d seen all these other things. And to that degree, I was an historian of this… thing. But that’s getting beyond where I wanted to go with it. I think of this as a nice little book. Other people think it was something else, but I think it was a nice little book.

BB:  Well, like I said, I don’t know if this was your intention as you wrote it – and it doesn’t sound like you had big intentions – but what I got from it is, I know about that catch, and I knew about that before I picked up the book. But your description of the fans in the bleachers, of what it was like on the field, in the stadium, that’s what I got out of it.

AH:  When I used to go to ballgames, of course, you don’t do this anymore, I used to go very early so I could watch fielding practice. And until a few years ago, I did not know they had suspended fielding practice. I bet the players’ union has done that because they don’t want somebody to break a finger.

BB:  Sometimes you hear people complain about that. You’ll be watching a game and someone will throw to the wrong base and someone will say, “Oh, well, they don’t have fielding practice anymore, and the only time they do that is in spring training…”

AH:  Although when you see a guy like Omar Vizquel pull a backdoor double play. Do you know about that at all? Kenny Lofton was at bat when he was with the Dodgers. Men on first and second and I think there was nobody out. They sent the runners and Lofton hit a one-bouncer to second base. Well, Lofton is about as fast going down from the plate to first base as almost anybody. So when Ray Durham fed Vizquel for the force play, Vizquel had Lofton in his sights, and he knew that he was not gonna throw out Lofton. So he whirled and he threw to third. The guy who had been on second base was playing his first game in the major leagues. He rounded third and goes two or three steps and there’s Pedro Felíz with the ball. The most embarrassed baserunner in the history of baseball – who was sent back to the minors that night! A backdoor double play! It was a 4-6-5 double play. I had never seen it before, and apparently he’s done it more than once. And apparently before that play, a few days before, he had reminded Felíz that this was something he might do. Television followed Vizquel off the field at the end of the half inning, and as he reached the first baseline he broke into laughter. He was so pleased and charmed with what he had just done. It was just a great moment. Now there’s somebody who didn’t need fielding practice.

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Looks like they will try to get the game in today.

Nevermind clinching the division at home against the Red Sox, the hope here is that should they play, nobody gets hoit.

Ya hoid?

Today’s game recap is brought to you in bits and pieces by the number one.

The number of hits given up by CC Sabathia… So this is what $161 million looks like.  Actually, we’ve been seeing this kind of dominance since the all-star break, but Saturday was special for CC.  Yes, the division is all but clinched, and the overall best record seems in the bag, but when you send your stud to the mound in the last week of September against your biggest rival and potential ALCS opponent and he shuts them down, you have to feel pretty good.  Sabathia set down the first eleven hitters he faced and didn’t allow a hit until the fifth.  He was so flat-out dominant (one hit, two walks, eight Ks) that even though the game was scoreless until the bottom of the sixth, it never once looked like the Yankees might lose this game.

The number of times Boston pitchers retired the Yankees in order… While Sabathia was slicing and dicing his way through the Red Sox, Daisuke Matsuzaka was walking a tightrope all afternoon.  The Yankees put runners in scoring position in each of the first four innings, but they failed to plate any of them.  So when they loaded the bases with no one out in the fifth and Rodríguez, Matsui, and Swisher due up, the dam looked ready to burst.  But then A-Rod dribbled a ball about six feet in front of the plate, Matsui popped one up about six feet behind it, Swish fouled out down the line in left, and the inning was over.  No need to fret, though.  Robby Canó led off the sixth by lining a ball that skipped off the top of the left field wall, giving Sabathia a 1-0 lead.  It was all CC would need.

The number of innings pitched by Phil Hughes… Can I tell you how much I love Phil Hughes?  He relieved Sabathia in the eighth, and after Mark Teixeira helped him out with a phenomenal play, diving to the line to rob J.D. Drew of sure double leading off the inning, Hughes did what he does, striking out Casey Kotchman and Josh Reddick to deliver the game to Mo.

The number of base hits the Yankees had with runners in scoring position… When Billy Wagner — yes, Billy Wagner — struck out Derek Jeter with the bases loaded and one out in the bottom of the eighth, the Yankees were 0-13 with RISP, and it looked like they might let another golden opportunity slip through their fingers.  But Johnny Damon worked the count full, then blooped a single into right, just over Pedroia and just in front of Drew, good enough for two runs and a 3-0 lead.

The number of wild pitches thrown by Mariano Rivera… Mo started off the ninth by inducing Jacoby Ellsbury to tap back to the mound and fanning Pedroia on three pitches, but then things got a bit interesting.  Victor Martinez singled to right, took second on defensive indifference, and then third on Rivera’s wild pitch.  (I note this because I couldn’t remember this happening very often.  Turns out it hasn’t.  It was only the twelfth of his career, and he actually had a four-year stretch (2003-2006) without a WP.)  Rivera plunked Kevin Youkilis a couple pitches later, but recovered to strike out Lowell to end the game.

Notes:

The number of hits Robinson Canó needs to get to 200… Canó’s homer was his 199th hit of the season.

The number of regular season games left with the Red Sox… The series stands at 9-8 Sox.  A win on Sunday would earn the Yankees a split of the season series, something which looked impossible at the all-star break.

The magic number…

And finally, because you knew it was coming, a little love from the islands.

We know from the Magic Number:

CC goes today (sweet); Game on Fox (frown).

Say Werd:

Got to have soul!

JOBA

This week, the Yankees secured a postseason spot, so they won’t be casual observers for a second consecutive October. It’s only right to want to project various playoff scenarios – who they will play, who will pitch, which division series they’ll choose, etc. – because with a week left in the regular season, there’s not much else to talk about.

That is … unless you follow the Yankees regularly and are tuned into the Joba Chamberlain situation. Despite the Nebraskan’s 6-inning, 86-pitch quality start last night, The Joba Situation is no longer at mission critical, but is still serious. Put it this way: there’s no reason to call “The Wolf.”

The commentary and range of quotes coming out of Seattle on Sunday were contradictory. On one hand, there was Joba, Clemens-like in denial that he had good stuff despite being shelled for seven runs int here innings. On another, there was the elephant in the room: the Rules that had the Yankees “building him up” to go six innings, so as not to exceed the limit of 165 innings set for him. Somewhere, Jim Kaat is railing this philosophy and not even icing his shoulder.

Looking at quotes from Joe Girardi and judging from the pundits’ assessment of the Yankees’ view, Joba was put to the coals. The “we want to see what you’re made of” rhetoric seemed to be coming a little late to have any kind of effectiveness. The tone, at least the way I perceived it, was a cover-your-butt for potentially mishandling him. The situation could have been avoided in two ways: 1) the Yankees could have kept him in the bullpen as the lead set-up man and eventual successor to Mariano Rivera, or 2) since making him a starter, unleash him the way Nolan Ryan is managing his young guns in Texas. In other words, let the opponent dictate when your starting pitcher should be removed from the game.

Prior to Friday night, the argument could have been made that Joba was put in a no-win situation, both literally and figuratively. He had either an inning limit or a strict pitch count, so there was no margin for error. Either way, if he was pitching well, he couldn’t lobby to stay in the game if he performed at an ace-caliber level. Jorge Posada’s quote following last Sunday’s debacle in Seattle, was telling, considering the source:

“It’s tough to pitch like that. It’s tough to pitch when you don’t know what’s going on … It’s just tough to pitch like that.”

Joe Girardi had a different take.

“I don’t think he can make that an excuse,” Girardi told the media. “You’re still getting the baseball and you still have a job to do.”

Could Joba have pitched better under those circumstances and restored confidence in the organization and the fan base? Absolutely. But he didn’t, and in so doing, put himself in a position where he was pitching for his future. Girardi made that clear in his pre-game press conference when he said – four times, per Daily News columnist John Harper – that he needed to “see Joba compete” and that there were “no guarantees” as far as Joba’s place on the playoff roster. Calling an athlete’s competitive fire into question is akin to emasculating him. That added more gas to a fire that was already smoldering.

What’s amazing about the Joba situation is that since the current rules were put into place (prior to the August 16th start at Seattle), the Yankees only went 3-4 . Save for the two forgettable outings in Seattle and the Toronto game where he pitched OK but Roy Halladay nearly no-hit the Yankees, they saved face.

So now what? We’re left with more questions, because we’ve seen this type of effort from Joba before. So much has been made about how the Yankees have managed Joba this season that after a while it all sounds like a test from the Emergency Alert System. That’s not to say every opinion offered has been bogus. ESPN Radio’s Don LaGreca made an interesting point Friday, when he noted that this type of procurement of pitchers is rampant among Major League teams, except it’s not seen at the top level. The only comparable example in the Majors, LaGreca said, was the Rays’ careful handling of David Price and the debate whether he should be a starter or a closer, based on his postseason success in 2008.

For now, Joba is a starting pitcher and regardless of what the organization is telling the media, he’s a better option than Chad “I can give you four innings of great stuff but then I’m going to implode” Gaudin. Banter colleague Cliff Corcoran nailed it in his game recap when he wrote:

“He … should be allowed to pitch without limits against the Royals in preparation for potential playoff work. His performance in that game could determine a lot, including which ALDS schedule the Yankees choose. If he’s similarly effective, the Yankees might prefer to let Joba start an ALDS game in order to keep him in the groove.”

We’ll see …

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Part One

You don’t know Arnold Hano. How could you? You live in a world of bullet points and exclamation points, a place where sports writers aspire either to the pomposity of ESPN’s Sports Reporters or to the cacophony of Around the Horn. Where once a journalist would worry about supporting an argument with keen observations or weighty statistics, all that seems necessary now is a good set of lungs to shout down dissenting opinions.

Arnold Hano is more than this. If you do know him, you’ve probably read A Day In The Bleachers, Hano’s account of the first game of the 1954 World Series, or you might’ve read some of the pieces he wrote for Sport Magazine or Sports Illustrated over the ensuing thirty years. If you’re a television watcher, you might have come across some of his profiles in TV Guide, and if you’re a fan of pulp fiction, you’ve undoubtedly read one of his dime store novels.

I knew all this about Mr. Hano before I met him this past February. In some ways, he was exactly what you would expect from an eighty-six year-old man. He was direct, and to the point, and didn’t bother with unnecessary chitchat. We spoke on the phone twice, and when I asked if he’d consent to an interview, he started out by interviewing me. He asked about my interest and questioned my intentions. He wasn’t suspicious, he was just wondering why I wanted to talk to him and if I would be worth his time. Even when we finally agreed on a date, he offered to give me thirty minutes or so, with an option for more “depending upon my ability.” We ended up talking for close to two hours, the greatest compliment he could’ve given me.

Mr. Hano and his wife live in the tiny town of Laguna Beach, a city best known for its art scene and a television series on MTV. I walked up the steps to the house on a crisp Sunday morning and was greeted by Mrs. Hano, who led me into a small study, one wall of which was packed with books from floor to ceiling. In the corner sat a small, thirteen-inch television set. Mr. Hano pointed towards it, saying, “You can see that we read a lot more than we watch television.” And with that, we were off.

BronxBanter:  I want to start at the beginning. Tell me about where you grew up. New York City, right?

Arnold Hano:  New York City. Mainly I tell people I grew up in the Bronx, and sometimes I tell people I grew up in the Polo Grounds, which is across the river in Manhattan, but I was born in Washington Heights, which is at the top of Manhattan. And then when I was about four years old we moved across the Harlem River and into the Bronx. I grew up in the Bronx and went to DeWitt Clinton High School, which is the high school at the north end of the Bronx, and we were there until I was maybe fourteen or fifteen when we moved into Manhattan. The formative years were those years between maybe four and fifteen.

BB:  You talk about those formative years. How important were sports, either playing sports or following sports, in your daily life?

AH:  Both, both, both, both. I played everything, and I read everything, and I followed everything. My father brought home two newspapers everyday. He brought home the Herald Tribune and the New York Sun. I said, “How come you read the Tribune and not the Times?” And he said the Tribune was better written. So I was reading sports pages in the Tribune and I started reading Bill Heinz in the Sun when Heinz was just breaking in. Do you know Heinz at all? Great writer. I played all the ancillary games. I played punch ball, I played stick ball, I played stoop ball… There was a game in the playground called box ball, that was a very good game that we played. And then I started playing baseball in sandlot games and Police Athletic League teams and stuff like that. I was a walk-on in my senior year of college as a pitcher. I know looking at me you don’t believe all this, but I was once actually tall. I’ve lost five inches of height to issues with my spine.

BB:  And what school was that?

AH:  That was Long Island University out in Brooklyn. I’ll tell you about the walk-on later. But I played basketball, I played football, all the sports. I ran, I did everything. I was very involved in sports. I remember when I was a kid we had a stickball league behind our house. There was a length of houses, lots of room. I hit fifty-three homeruns in one season, I remember that! [Laughing.]

BB:  That’s so funny, because I remember when I was a kid we had a field, a grass field – it wasn’t stick ball in the alley – but I remember keeping track of things like that, how many home runs we had hit in this make believe season that we played whenever we wanted.

AH:  That’s right… So I was very involved.

BB:  So did young boys in the 20s and 30s, did they dream of growing up to be sports heroes as much as they do today?

AH:  I did. I can’t tell you their dreams, but I dreamed of standing on the mound at Yankee Stadium and striking out Lou Gehrig. That was a dream of mine, to throw my screwball past Lou Gehrig. Carl Hubbell had been one of my heroes, so I learned how to throw a screwball. I could control a screwball better than I could control a fastball. When my brother and I – my brother was three and a half years older, he was my mentor, he was the greatest big brother anybody ever had. He and I would go to ballgames, and in those days at the end of the ballgame you could run out on the field. We would slide into the bases before the bases were uprooted, and we would stand in centerfield and see whether we could see home plate, because of the mound, and we were little kids. He could and I couldn’t, and that sort of stuff. It was just a wonderful growing up experience to have, especially to have the Polo Grounds and Yankee Stadium across the river from each other within spitting distance. My grandfather was a cop in the New York City Police Department, and he had year passes to the Polo Grounds and Yankee Stadium, and he left them to me, so I got in to see as many games as I could see every summer. I was a Giant fan more than a Yankee fan, but I was a Babe Ruth fan, so I would do both.

BB:  What was that like, growing up like that? You can’t really relate to that now. Even the Mets and Yankees are far apart, and the Dodgers and Angels here aren’t even in the same city. What was it like with those teams so close together?

AH:  I’ll tell you even how closer it was. We lived in an apartment building in Washington Heights – this was from the time I was born until I was four – where Bob Meusel and Irish Meusel lived. Bob Meusel played left field for the Yankees, Irish Meusel played left field for the Giants. One would be using the apartment while the other was on the road, so they shared that apartment. They lived one story above us. You can’t get any closer to baseball than to have as your neighbor Bob Meusel and Irish Meusel. I used to ask my father, “Who’s better, Bob Meusel or Irish Meusel?” And my father was very, very diligent about questions like that. He’d say, “Bob Meusel has a better arm, he’s a better fielding left fielder. Emil…” He never called him Irish. “Emil Meusel has more power.” I’d say, “Well who’s better?” And he’d say, “You have to decide that.” So having the two teams there, my brother was a Giant fan and I was a Yankee fan up to 1926 when Tony Lazzeri struck out against Glover Cleveland Alexander and the Yankees lost that ballgame by one run and the Series. My brother said, “See, I told you how lousy they were.” So I shifted in 1926 to the Giants, and 1927 began the Yankee dynasty that may have been one of the greatest teams ever. But I didn’t really care because I still remained a Babe Ruth fan. I loved watching him hit homeruns.

BB:  Now tell me about Babe Ruth, please. I know…

AH:  You know the fat guy.

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Okay, here’s the last of our extended riffing on Fat City. From John Huston’s autobiography An Open Book:

I had done bits of films in the United States, but it was a long time since I’d made an entire picture there. Ray Stark was responsible for my reappearance on the American scene with Fat City, a novel by Leonard Gardner. “Fat City is a term jazz musicians used to designate success with a capital “S.” It’s about people who are beaten before they start but who never stop dreaming. Its main characters are two fights: one aging, slightly paunchy, who’s had his moment of glory in the ring who whose next stop is Skid Row, and his younger counterpart who’s headed in the same direction despite the living lesson before his eyes.

We had hope to have Marlon Brando play the part of the older fighter. Ray and I ment him in London. He had read the script and liked it, but refused to be pinned down, saying that he would call us by the end of the week. The time passed, we heard nothing. I despair at chasing actors, so we started looking elsewhere. (Some time later I heard Marlon had injured feelings at having been “passed over.”) The man we found was another actor whose star was rising–Stacy Keach. I had never met him, but when I found that he was making a picture in Spain, I went over and paid him a visit. There was a quality there. I also saw him in a beautiful, sadly neglected little film called The Traveling Executioner. His performance was exceptional, and I knew I was lucky to have him in Fat City.

Most of the other actors–apart from Jeff Bridges, who had a few pictures to his credit, and Susan Tyrell, who’d done some theater–were non-professional. som of the cast came right out of my own past–fighters I’d known in my youth. Others turned up in Stockton itself. I remember particularly one black man we pulled out of the onion fields to try for a part. In the film he was to walk side by side with Stacy, hoeing weeds in a tomato field and telling a long story about the break-up of his marriage. This old fellow came to my apartment and read for me, his eyes glued to the pages of the script. He read as though the words were his very own. I asked him whether he tought he could learn the part.

“I already have,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“I can’t read. I was just pretending.” Someone had read the part to him a few times, and he had memorized it.

Then there was an arrogant sixteen-year-old black kid from the local high school. When Muhammad Ali saw him on the screen during a special showing I had for him, he stood up and shouted, “Stop the picture! That’s me up there! Listen to that…that’s me! you hear?” The kid was that good.

We shot most of the picture of Stockton’s Skid Row. It’s now a thing of the past; they’ve wiped it out. I wonder where all the poor devils who inhabited have gone. They have to be somewhere. There were crummy little hotels; gaps between buildings like missing teeth; people–blacks and whites–standing around or sitting on orange crates; little gambling halls where they played for nickels and dimes. Many of the signs were in Chinese because the area had a large Chinese population. The police were very gentle with the derelicts. As long as they stayed within the sharply defined boundaries of the neighborhood, they could sleep in doorways, win bottle in hand; if they wandered out, the police simply shooed them back. They were completely harmless, defeated men.

Fat City had a great reception when it was first shown, at Cannes in 1972. After the screening I walked into an adjoining hall to meet the press, and they gave me a standing ovation. When that happened, i was sure it was going to be a success. But no. Wherever it was shown, it was beautifully reviewed, but audiences didn’t care for it. It’s a fine picture, no question–well conceived, well acted, made with deep love and considerable understanding on the part of everyone involved. I suppose the public simply found it too sad. It has at least one devoted fan: Ray Stark considers it the best picture he has ever produced.

When I was younger I used to day dream about being the good samaritan hero. I’d save an old lady from being hit by a car, or take a bullet for my girlfriend. Then I’d be in the papers and I would be humble. It spoke to my sense of insecurity. I felt that if I could be a hero, if I could prove myself, people would recognize me as a good guy. They would appreciate me.

A spell of Indian Summer hit New York yesterday. This morning, the humidity covered the autumn chill like a heavy wet blanket. The sun was shining. I walked out of my apartment building, a block away to 238th street, and turned right. 238th street is a narrow block that runs downhill. I looked up and saw the fat bearded man that I see every morning on the far end of the block with his three small children waiting for the school bus. Today, he was in the middle of the block, having just walked out of his apartment building.

He walked to the curb and then crossed the street. His kids trailed behind him but didn’t go across the street. The smallest son, maybe five or six years old, was closest behind him. The boy wore a blue yarmulke that covered his head; he was weighed down from behind by his backpack. The boy stopped at the curb and watched his father. I was about thirty or forty feet away, looking downhill at them. I absent-mindedly watched the father and wondered what he was doing on the other side of the street.

The second son, taller, though not by much, than his brother, watched his father too but didn’t stop at the curb.  Out of the corner of my left eye, I saw a car coming down the hill. The boy didn’t stop so I shouted. I don’t remember what I said but I said it loudly enough for the boy to stop dead in his tracks. The car came to a halt too. And everything was quiet. It was like pressing pause on a VCR. It was about to happen and then it didn’t.

Everyone was awake now.

The father, standing on the other side of the street, looked at me and then at his son. “What is the matter with you,” he said in a thick accent that I couldn’t place. “I said to stay there.”

I looked at the driver of the car, a metallic-blue sedan. She was in her forties I guessed. She looked back at me, a flat expression on her face. I looked down and exhaled. I thought of the boy, seeing me tomorrow, and every day after that, mortified at my presence, a reminder of his carelessness. Then again, maybe he’d already forgotten about me.

I apologized to the boy. And then, to the father, “I just wanted to get his attention.” The father said something back but I don’t remember what it was. I looked at the driver again, she turned back ahead and the car rolled away.

She would have hit the boy if I hadn’t said anything. I thought about the anxiety that parents must live with every day and I started to sweat as I walked away. I imagined the impact, the reaction on the father’s face, the blood, screaming. I thought of the boy in rehab learning to walk again, a funeral.

I didn’t feel special. I felt unsure and insignificant. I had a thought to walk back home, wake up my wife and hug her but I kept walking down the hill. I thought about how safe and small my life is and how everything can change in a moment. I didn’t speak but I could feel my voice going away, like water down the drain.

I didn’t feel heroic. I felt like I was going to be sick.

So of course I knew things had been bad with the Angels, but I didn’t realize that the Yankees had not won a series in Anaheim since May of 2004. Judging from the hilarious “Yikes, really?” look on Joe Girardi’s face when Kim Jones asked him about this after the game, neither did he. But that streak ended today, and if the Yankees showed last night that they can win at Angel Stadium, today’s 3-2 squeaker showed that they can even do it with Damon, Swisher, A-Rod and Posada tied behind their backs. (Although I would prefer not to see them try it again, okay? Thanks!)

More important than the outcome of today’s game was A.J. Burnett’s solid start. True, he only went five and two thirds innings, but that was largely because it was 95 degrees today in Anaheim and Girardi, as he explained afterwards, wanted to err on the side of caution. Burnett allowed seven hits and three walks,  more than would be ideal, but he also had 11 strikeouts and just two earned runs. Not bad, and for my money far more impressive than his last start against Seattle, because the Angels are an excellent offensive team whereas most of the Mariners could not hit water if they fell out of a canoe.

Scott Kazmir started for the Angels, but since Al Leiter wasn’t in the booth today, Michael Kay was unable to ask him for the 73rd time about that rumor that the Mets traded Kazmir because he switched Leiter’s music in the gym one day without asking. With Swisher and Posada recovering from yesterday’s foul-ball bruises and Damon and A-Rod resting, the Yankees’ lineup was not exactly at its most ferocious; things got even rougher when Jerry Hairston Jr left the game with a wrist injury, resulting in a batting order that included Jose Molina, Shelley Duncan, and Ramiro Pena, along with both Melky Cabrera and Brett Gardner. Nevertheless they scraped three runs together – two on Robinson Cano’s lovely single in the fourth, another when Cano scored on Cabrera’s  subsequent double – and then hung on for dear life.

After Marte, Albaladejo and Coke had all flirted with disaster, Ian Kennedy got the call in the eighth inning, which was a nice moment on a purely human level. Baseball-wise it was a little strange, but I suppose the team needs to find out soon if Kennedy can help them in tense postseason situations or not, and this was probably as good a time as any to find out. Although since Kennedy first hit a batter and walked the bases loaded, then worked his way out of trouble for a scoreless inning, I’m still not sure what the answer is. Nature took its course in the ninth  as Mariano Rivera came in and worked his 42nd (nice) save of the year.

The Yankees are off tomorrow and hopefully will get some rest before this weekend’s series, the season’s last against the Red Sox — or is it? Dun dun dun. Friday night Joba Chamberlain faces Jon Lester, and I’m sure that will go absolutely swimmingly… now please excuse me a moment while I wipe the dripping sarcasm off my keyboard.

Finally, for those of you who are into this sort of thing, I just joined Twitter. My “followers” so far include Cliff, Diane, and about 17 porn spambots, so feel free to join the party.

After today’s game, the Yanks are done with the Angels and the west coast for now. 

AJ looks to put together another solid start.

Hell with the beach balls, let’s go Yan-Kees.

When I first saw that Brian Bruney had switched his uniform number to ‘99,’ I thought that he had become the first Yankee to sport the highest of the two-digit numbers. After all, the Yankees have always been a conservative organization. They would never let one of their players wear a number like ‘99,’ or ‘0,’ or ’00.’

As so often happens, the subsequent research did not support my initial instinct. While it’s true that no Yankee has ever worn ‘0’ or ’00,” the No. 99 has come into play once before. Former Yankee outfielder Charlie Keller, a mainstay of the forties and early fifties, beat Bruney to the punch by well over 50 years. During the 1952 season—his final year in the major leagues—Keller played in only two games as part of a late-September comeback, but wore different uniform numbers each time. In one game, he wore No. 28. In the other, he took the unusual route and wore No. 99, giving himself a strange milestone achievement in Yankee lore.

I have no idea why Keller wore 99 for that one game. Perhaps he sensed the end of his career was near and wanted to do something flashy before he stepped aside completely. That’s simply speculation on my part. What is not speculation is this: Charlie Keller was one of the more underrated Yankees of his era, a damned fine hitter who registered high OPS numbers before anybody knew what in the world OPS meant.

Just how good was Charlie Keller? For his career, most of which came in pinstripes, he compiled a .410 on-base percentage and a .518 slugging percentage, both lofty numbers. Like so many left-handed power hitters in team history, he made good use of the short porch at the original Yankee Stadium, all while displaying one of the keenest batting eyes of the 1940s. As a Yankee, he never struck out as many times as he walked in a single season. Not even close. When observed more broadly, Keller was a primetime player from 1939 until 1946, a period of time that saw him reach 30-plus homeruns three times, 100 walks five times, and 100-plus RBIs three times. For nearly a decade, Keller (who played mostly in left field), center fielder Joe DiMaggio, and right fielder Tommy “Ole Reliable” Henrich formed what might have been the greatest outfield of all-time.

Keller retained his standard of excellence in World Series play, even elevating his level of power. In 72 at-bats spread over four different World Series, Keller pumped five home runs to the tune of a .611 slugging percentage. He also batted .306 in postseason play, helping the Yankees to four world championships in five attempts.

All of these accomplishments would have formed a prelude to a Hall of Fame career, if not for a chronic back injury that rendered Keller a part-time player by the age of 30 and forced him to retire completely by the age of 35. Even given his shortened career, a few Sabermetrically inclined writers have made pleas for his case as a Hall of Famer, especially if he’s given credit for having lost all of 1944 and most of 1945 to military service in World War II.

Beyond the numbers, Keller also brought some distinct imagery to the American League landscape of the forties and fifties. With his dark, bushy eyebrows and solid-as-stone 190 pounds on a five-foot, ten-inch frame, Keller took on an intimidating stature at the ballpark and in the batter’s box. As physically strong as any player of the era, Keller found himself being called “King Kong” by members of the writing establishment. Reserved and serious, Keller hated the nickname—hey, being likened to a giant gorilla has never been a desired comparison—but it fit, both in terms of description and lyrical quality. For a good part of his career, he was known as King Kong Keller first, and Charlie Keller second.

Clearly, Keller deserves to be remembered, both for his numbers and his raw power. Like Willie Randolph, Hank Bauer, Eddie Lopat, and Vic Raschi, he remains one of the most under-recognized Yankees of all-time. So the next time you see Brian Bruney wearing his No. 99 in a game, think about Charlie “King Kong” Keller, at least for a little bit.

Bruce Markusen writes “Cooperstown Confidential” for The Hardball Times.

by Hank Waddles

I am optimistic to a fault. There are some things that I worry about, I suppose, but in general I assume that everything’s going to work out for the best. Perhaps that’s what drew me to baseball as a boy. Baseball is a game of hope, much more so than any other sport out there, in the long term as much as the short. If you’ve ever watched until the last pitch with your team down seven runs or thought about your team’s playoff rotation in the early days of March, you know what I mean. Baseball is hope.

Except when the Yankees are playing the Angels. I can’t explain what happens to me when these two teams hook up, especially when the games are in Anaheim. Take Tuesday night, for instance. A normal person would’ve looked at that early 5-0 lead and felt confident. The optimist would note that Ervin Santana was getting hit hard and that Chad Gaudin looked remarkably like a number four starter, but the pessimist would answer that Santana’s diving changeup had led to seven early strikeouts and that Gaudin was, well, Chad Gaudin.

The optimist would look at all those two-out, two-strike counts and head for the kitchen to grab a snack, but instead I sat nailed the couch, certain something bad was on the way. Sure enough, something bad usually was. It started in the fateful fifth, when an Angel hitter worked a full count after two were already out. (The name on the jersey said Figgins, but we all know it could’ve been any of a dozen pesky Angles, all cut from the same bedeviling cloth. In fact, I’m not sure why they don’t just stitch ECKSTEIN on everyone’s back and be done with it.) Rather than striking out and grabbing his glove, Figgins lofted a pop fly to right which slithered around the foul pole. It was cheaper than any Yankee Stadium home run, which seemed just about right. Damn those Angels.

Two batters later, our old friend Bobby Abreu earned another full count, but Gaudin walked him, and to borrow a phrase from Vin Scully, the Angels finally had a look at the game. Up next was Vlad Guerrero, who quickly hacked his way to an 0-2 count. If ever there were a time to throw a pitch about two feet off the plate, this was it, but instead Gaudin spun a little breaking ball belt high across the center of the plate. The only surprise was that the ball stayed in the park. Minutes earlier Gaudin had been a single pitch away from five shutout innings and a shot at a win; now he was walking slowly to the bench.

Vulture Aceves quickly got out of the fifth inning, but the Angels kept chipping away, scoring their third run when pinch hitter Gary Matthews, Jr., lined an 0-2 (!) pitch to right, and their fourth when Abreu drew a bases-loaded walk on a 3-2 pitch. In the eighth, Yankee-killer Howie Kendrick reached on an error by Canó, then took off for second on the first pitch and kept going to third when Posada’s throw sailed into the outfield. Moments later Kendrick was trotting in behind a Macier Izturis single, and the game was tied. Damn those Angels.

But then a funny thing happened. Brett Gardner walked up to the plate to lead off the ninth inning, and my optimism returned. “If Gardner gets on base here, the Yankees will win,” I told myself. “He’ll steal second on the first pitch and someone will knock him in.” I had it almost right.

Gardner singled and stole second on the secondpitch. The Yankees managed to survive some questionable bunting decisions (Jeter squared on a 3-0 pitch, but I have to believe he was taking all the way, and Damon followed with a risky two-strike bunt that pushed the runners to second and third) and A-Rod game up with a chance to win the game. He turned on the first pitch he saw from Darren Oliver, sending a sac fly to left and plating Gardner with the winning run.

Rivera closed up shop, and my optimistic heart started pumping again. Instead of worrying about a sweep, I was now expecting A.J. Burnett to bring home a series win with a good start on Wednesday. Instead of worrying about the division lead, I noted that the Yankees had clinched a playoff spot, ending our long national nightmare. Instead of obsessing on the Angels, I thought about the Twins and Tigers and a path to the World Series.

Is it too early for that? Of course not. Baseball is hope.

The Yanks are on the brink of clinching a playoff spot. Why not tonight? Yeah, I know Chad Gaudin is pitching but the Yanks have to pick it up one of these nights.

Why not tonight in the land of light and sun?

Go git ’em, dudes.  Let’s Go Yan-kees!

Last Friday night, Emma and I talked to Pete Hamill before a showing of Fat City at the Film Forum. I asked him about Pete Dexter (Hamill wrote the introduction to Paper Trails, a collection of Dexter’s columns and magazine articles). He said he’d gotten a copy of Spooner, Dexter’s eighth novel, but had not read it yet. Hamill told us that he’s got a couple of months left on a novel of his own and that it is his policy not to read anything by someone as good as Dexter while he’s writing.

And Pete Dexter is scary good.

Hamill’s story made me feel better about myself because a month ago, when I was working a story for SI.com, I picked up Dexter’s novel, Train, and read the first three pages. I put it down not knowing whether to be inspired or depressed. Of course it is crazy for a young writer like me to compare myself with a master like Dexter, but Hamill’s point is well taken–he only reads translations while he’s writing and will save the likes of Dexter for when he’s finished.

When I handed my SI piece in,  I landed a copy of Spooner. And I didn’t feel intimidated. I felt elated.

I rarely read fiction. I did read novels in high school and college–I remember my dad hipping me to John O’Hara. I read Brideshead Revisited to impress a teacher who refused to be impressed with me. I went through a Faulkner phase, a Graham Greene period, and I became familiar with writers and their place in history. But I haven’t been drawn to short stories or novels for the past fifteen years.

Lately, though, as I talk to writers about writing, novelists keep coming up, so I’ve made some attempts to get back into fiction. I started but did not finish five novels this summer. I forced my way through Fat City, which was not pleasurable even if I was happy that I did it. Recently, I spoke to a friend who has the same aversion to fiction and he said he’s just learning how to luxuriate in a novel.

Then I read Spooner, and I was entranced. I read it on the subway to work, walking down the street, waiting in line for lunch, and standing in the shower. In some ways, it felt like the first novel I’d ever read because I couldn’t help but look at it for the plumbing–the technique–as much as I did for the story.

I made many small discoveries for myself–how to transition from one time period to another, like Dexter does in Chapter 21, how to use evocative and clear images, like when Dexter describes the corpse of an obese congressman:

The congressman looked vaguely uncomfortable, his hair unmussed and perfect, decked out in a pinstriped Brooks Brothers suit which, truth be told, did him no favors, figure-wise, an effect enhanced perhaps by the fact that he was barefoot, his feet a color of blue similar to the hanging meat, and swollen well beyond the recognizable shape of human feet, as if they had been squeezed out of the pants’ legs like toothpaste.

Dexter’s voice is clear, true, and very funny. Reading the book reminded me of watching Mariano Rivera pitch. Dexter’s prose is seemingly effortless, it washes over you so smoothly, that it is easy to forget how much skill and craft are involved.

Spooner is an autobiographical novel. In the acknowledgments, Dexter writes, “The book by the way is a novel, not in any sense a memoir, but is nevertheless based loosely on the events and characters from my own life.”  Spooner gets into trouble often as a kid–he pisses in a neighbor’s shoes, sits on an ant hill, almost kills the star play on his high school baseball team during practice.

He grows up to become a reporter and then a columnist, like Dexter. He works in Philadelphia were he is involved in a brutal bar fight that leaves him half-dead. The heavyweight boxer, Randall “Tex” Cobb was Dexter’s good friend. He too was involved in that fight, and Cobb is fictionalized in Spooner.

A few years ago, Steve Volk wrote a good profile on Dexter for Philadelphia Weekly:

The way Dexter explains it, the beat down he suffered is an anecdote he feels personally if not publicly free from. “If I was going over the top 100 most important experiences in my life, that night would probably be somewhere in there. But it wouldn’t make the top 25.”

His brother Tom also thinks the event’s influence has been overstated. “When you look at everything in its totality,” he says, “what happened, what he’s done and everything since then–being married for almost 30 years, raising a child, all those things in life and all the achievements, I think that night was maybe a little turn in the road, but I don’t think it was formative or transformative. Everything since then is just stuff he worked for.”

The beating and its aftermath does play a critical part in Spooner. It is the incident that effectively sobers Spooner up. In the second half of the book, he is constantly holding himself back, trying to do the mature thing (he doesn’t respond to a provocative letter from his mother, resists the temptation to assault a thoughtless neighbor). Spooner doesn’t want his true nature to destroy his family, doesn’t want to push his wife to the edge like he did when he was beaten in that bar in Philly. When he realizes how much he loves his wife and their daughter, Spooner gets scared for the first time in his life–the thought of losing them terrifies him.

This turn of events really go to me. I feel that way all the time about my wife.

The narrative is sprawling, some characters that you think might play a more important part (like Spooner’s siblings), don’t. It doesn’t feel like a perfect book, and that’s part of what I like about it.  It is touching and hilarious and absurd, but it is never cheap. During some tense moments, I found myself skimming ahead just to make sure nothing horrific happened to any of the lead characters. When I was assured that there were no two-bit John Irving twists of fate, relieved, I went back and continued reading slowly again. How did my friend put it? I learned how to luxuriate in a novel.

In the end, the book is about how difficult it is for men to express their feelings of gratitude and love for each other. One time, Dexter wrote a column about sitting on an airplane next to a distraught ten-year-old boy. The kid’s mother had put him on the plane, and he was on his way to visit his grandparents. But he had forgotten to tell his mother that he loved her, and now he couldn’t stop crying. “And I knew what was pulling at him,” Dexter wrote. “The same thing pulls at me too. The worry that things have been left unclear.”

Spooner loves his step-father Calmer to no end, but is unable to tell him as much. And Calmer doesn’t give him an in. If Dexter was never able to express this to his step-father, I have no way of knowing of course, but the relationship he creates between Spooner and Calmer is a love story. The book is a love poem, a tribute to Calmer. Spooner is forever trying to find a way to draw closer to the man who showed him infinite patience and understanding.

He can’t bridge the gap. Dexter does–with empathy and grace.

He brings it all home.

Chyll Will makes Hank Waddles a star.