This is England weather. Cool, grey and rainy. It isn’t pouring but the water has been coming down steadily all morning. Wonder if they’ll get this one in.
Let’s hope they do. If they don’t, good day to curl up with a good book or watch a couple of movies.
Regardless, let’s go Yan-Kees!
Big Fan, the new movie staring Patton Oswalt, hits theaters today.
Cliff hipped me to this interview with Oswalt. Dig it.
Interesting piece on “walk-off” stats by Larry Granillo over at the Baseball Analysts.
Walk on by, keep it movin’.
I’m a bit out of the loop, since I just got back from a week in England – I apologize in advance. No cell phone or laptop, away from the internet, I completely missed all the baseball news… well, okay, I borrowed my friend’s computer a time or two during the Red Sox series, but just for a minute. So I’m still catching up on everything that happened while I was gone (did someone mention a timely bunt Tuesday night?). Ask me anything about England’s recent cricket victory over Australia, though!
The Yankees, as is their wont these days, bounced back from last night’s loss with a 9-2 win over the Texas Rangers. New York scored three in the second, then blew the game open with five more in the seventh, and every starter had at least one hit except Melky Cabrera (even he had a lovely bunt). The Yanks also got some reassuringly solid pitching after their recent rough-ish patch; Andy Pettitte went seven innings and allowed just two earned runs, with seven strikeouts and three walks.
Rangers starter Derek Holland actually pitched pretty well for someone who was charged with six earned runs, but he paid for just about all of his mistakes. The Yanks’ big blows were Jorge Posada’s three-run homer in the second, Jerry Hairston Jr.’s solo shot in the fourth, and the seventh-inning onslaught that began with a poor defensive play and a Robinson Cano double, and ended some time later with a Mark Teixeira single off of Jason Jennings. Brian Bruney’s eighth inning outing was good enough under the circumstances, and Phil Coke tied the bow around the night.
I found myself thinking today, reading about Oliver Perez’s season-ending trip to the DL, that I need to start writing more about the Mets, because their season has been so fascinating (in a horrific way, but still), while the Yankees right now are extremely pleasant to watch but just don’t give you a ton of juicy material. Don’t worry – as soon as the thought flickered across my brain I spat three times and knocked on all the wood in my apartment.
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Side Note: I had always previously assumed that cricket was at least somewhat related to baseball – since, after all, it involves a pitcher and a batter and fielders – and that I would therefore be able to follow it a little bit, even just vaguely. This turns out not to be the case at all. For example, this is what the scoreboard looked like at last Thursday’s club game at Lords:
The six in “308 for 6” refers to six wickets, in case you were wondering – I sure was. It took three or four different British friends and acquaintances explaining the rules to me before I began to get the idea, and I’m still fuzzy on a number of details. Also, the big England vs Australia game was a “test match”, which usually last five days, although this one only went four; can you imagine watching five straight days, nearly eight hours per day, of one Red Sox-Yankees game? Some of my favorite Banter commenters would have to be hospitalized.
The last two times the Yankees lost the first game of a series, they bounced back to win the next two and the series, doing so in Oakland and at home against the Blue Jays. The Rangers pose more of a challenge, but the Yanks hope to repeat the feat starting tonight as veteran lefty Andy Pettitte takes on 22-year-old lefty prospect Derek Holland.
Andy got smacked around a bit in his last start, but the Yankees scored 20 runs, so not many people noticed or cared. Prior to that he’d been awesome in the second half with five quality starts in six tries, a 2.04 ERA, and a 4.3 K/BB. Against the Rangers on June 3, he gave up four runs on seven hits and six walks in just five innings.
Holland started against the Yankees on May 27 and gave up six runs (five earned) on ten hits and two walks. He then gave up two more runs to them in relief the following week. Along the way, the rookie gave up homers to Derek Jeter, Hideki Matsui, and Kevin Cash (!). He’s come a long way since then, however, and has posted a 2.95 ERA in seven starts since returning to the rotation in mid-July. He’s been particularly sharp in his last four starts: 1.85 ERA, 0.91 WHIP, 3.5 K/9. The best of those outings was a three-hit, eight-strikeout shutout of the Angels, with his 8 2/3 innings of one-run, two-hit, ten-K ball against the Mariners finishing second.
Johnny Damon sits today. Nick Swisher bats second. Jerry Hairston Jr. bats ninth and plays left. Everyone else is in their usual places.
Bronx Banter Book Excerpt
The Greatest Pitcher of All-Time? Satchel Paige is in the discussion, and is also the subject a new biography by Larry Tye: Satchel: The Life and Times of an American Legend. Dig the prologue below and then check out the entire book.
Peep don’t sleep.
By Larry Tye
It was a fastball wrapped in a riddle that first drew me to Satchel Paige. I was an adolescent baseball fanatic and had grown up hearing that Satchel was the most overpowering and artful pitcher who ever lived. The stories were enchanting but they were not backed up by the won-lost records, earned-run averages, and other vital statistics that students of the game like me needed to decide for ourselves. I wanted to know more.
It was that same blend of icon and enigma that drew me back to Satchel thirty-five years later. I was writing a book on the Pullman porters called Rising from the Rails, and the venerable African-American railroad men I interviewed reignited my memories and my interest. They had watched Satchel play in his heyday in the 1930s, had talked to him when he rode the train, and told riveting tales of his feats on the diamond and off. Yet the more I probed, the clearer it became how thin their knowledge was of this towering talent. Everyone knew about him but no one really knew him.
That is understandable. Satchel Paige was a black man playing in an obscure universe. Few records were kept or stories written of his games in the strictly-segregated Negro Leagues, fewer still of his barnstorming through America’s sandlots and small towns. Did he really win three games in a single day and 2,000 over a career? Was he confident enough in his strikeout pitch to actually order his outfielders to abandon their posts? Could he really have been better than Walter Johnson, Cy Young, and the other all-time marvels of the mound? In a game where box scores and play-by-play accounts encourage such comparisons, the hard data on him was elusive. That helps explain why, while fourteen full-fledged biographies have been published of Babe Ruth and eleven of Mickey Mantle, there is only one on Satchel, who was at least as important to baseball and America.
To fill in that picture I tracked down more than two hundred veteran Negro Leaguers and Major Leaguers who played with and against Satchel. His teammate and friend Buck O’Neil told me about the Satchel he knew – a pitcher who threw so hard that catchers tried to soften the sting by cushioning their gloves with beefsteaks, with control so precise that he used a hardball to knock lit cigarettes out of the mouths of obliging teammates. Hank Aaron had his own Satchel stories, as did Bob Feller, Orlando Cepeda, Whitey Herzog, and Silas Simmons, a patriarch of black baseball whom I spoke with the day he turned 111. I talked to Leon Paige and other aging relatives in Mobile. In Kansas City, I heard Robert Paige and his siblings publicly share for the first time their recollections of their father. I retraced Satchel’s footsteps from the South to the Midwest to the Caribbean, visiting stadiums where he had pitched, rooming houses where he stayed, and restaurants where he ate in an era when a black man was lucky to find any that would serve him. I watched him in the movies and read everything written about him in books, magazines, and newspapers, thousands of articles in all. Researchers helped me recheck statistics and refute or confirm his claims on everything from how many games he won (probably as many as he said) to how many times he struck out the mighty Josh Gibson (not quite as many as he boasted).
Along the way I untangled riddles like the one about how old Satchel was. It was the most-argued statistic in sports. The answer depended on who was asking and when. In 1934 the Colored Baseball & Sports Monthly reported that Satchel was born in 1907. In 1948 he was born in 1901 (Associated Press), 1903 (Time), 1908 (Washington Post, New York Times, and Sporting News), and 1904 (his mother). The Cleveland Indians hedged their bets after signing him in 1948, writing in their yearbook that Satchel was born “on either July 17, Sept. 11, Sept. 18 or Sept. 22, somewhere between 1900 and 1908.” Newsweek columnist John Lardner took him back further, saying that Satchel “saved the day at Waterloo, when the dangerous pull-hitter, Bonaparte, came to bat with the bases full.”
The mystery over Satchel’s age mattered because age matters in baseball. It is a way to compare players, and to measure a player’s current season against his past performance. No ballplayer gave fans as much to debate about, for as long, as Satchel Paige. At first he was Peter Pan – forever young, confoundingly fast, treacherously wild. Over time his durability proved even more alluring. After a full career in the Negro Leagues he broke through to the Majors in 1948, helping propel the Cleveland Indians to the World Series at the over-the-hill age of forty-two. He still holds the record as the game’s oldest player, an honor earned during one last go-round at an inconceivable fifty-nine. He started pitching professionally when Babe Ruth was on the eve of his sixty-home-run season in 1926; he still was playing when Yankee Stadium, the “House that Ruth Built,” was entering its fifth decade in 1965. Over that span Satchel Paige pitched more baseballs, for more fans, in more ballparks, for more teams, than any player in history.
There is an interesting piece about Torii Hunter by Lee Hawkins in today’s Wall Street Journal.
The Yanks scored four runs with two men out in the top of the first inning against Kevin Millwood and it looked like it was going to be an enjoyable evening.
But Joba Chamberlain was not impressive. He could not locate his fastball and gave back two runs in the second as the Rangers staged a two out rally of their own. Millwood righted himself and worked a four pitch third. Chamberlain responded and got the first two men out in the fourth on seven pitches. Then he went to a full count on Pudge Rodriguez and walked him on a fastball off the outside corner. It was the kind of pitch that drives me crazy about Chamberlain. It’s as if he’s trying to be Mike Mussina, too fine. With Pudge up, why mince around–just go after him, baby. This is Pudge Rodriguez after all, a man who is allergic to the base on balls.
That was the start of the ending for Chamberlain as the Rangers hit five singles and took a three-run lead. Most of the hits were bloopers and bleeders–some bad luck for Chamberlain, but still, his propensity for two giving up two strike, two out hits continues. Chad Gaudin relieved Chamberlain, worked out of one bases loaded jam, but gave up two dingers, as the Rangers built a 10-5 lead.
The Yanks did make it interesting in the ninth, loading the bases and then scoring four runs to draw the score to 10-9 win nobody out. Crowd going nuts and smelling a comeback win. First and second, and Nick Swisher was asked to bunt. My wife didn’t think it was a smart move and said as much before Swisher popped out to Michael Young at third. Then Melky Cabrera lined into a double play and the Yanks lost.
Heart racing, blood-pumping—a blow-out turned into a heart-breaker. The game designed to bust your hump.
The lead is now six, as the Red Sox beat the White Sox again in Boston.
What is the best book about being a sports fanatic? Frederick Exley’s “A Fan’s Notes” is at the top of the list. I thought of Exley’s cult classic today when I read about a new movie starring the gifted stand-up comedian, Patton Oswalt.
The word “value” has numerous definitions and interpretations. The noun form, per dictionary.com, has 15 listed meanings. The first several apply to some kind of monetary distinction.
But if we’re looking at value in terms of a baseball player and a certain annual regular season award that’s handed out in November, we need to looking at the adjective, or maybe even the verb. The best definition of the three verb lines that apply here: “to consider with respect to worth, excellence, usefulness, or importance.”
Because of the way the MVP vote is constructed, the discussion surrounding the debate comes down to a subjective analysis of who should be considered the most worthy, excellent, useful, and/or important player in the league. The miracle of modern technology has made taken the level of debate to new heights. Please to enjoy, for example, Tyler Kepner’s tweet on August 14, moments after Mark Teixeira’s tiebreaking home run at Safeco Field:
“By the way, this is probably obvious by now, but Teixeira’s the AL MVP. ‘No question,’ as Joe Torre would say.”
The statements themselves seemed innocuous. They were an impulse reaction to a great moment among many that Tex, ye of the 8-year, $180 million contract, has provided in Year 1 of the megadeal. That was until you followed the thread to catch the jibes about Tex’s negative Ultimate Zone Rating (UZR) and the running joke it’s become, and scoured the Net to read criticisms from Rob Neyer, Joe Posnanski, and my esteemed former colleague Steven Goldman – although Goldman’s retort wasn’t immediately directed at Kepner.
The criticisms of Kepner, save for broader strokes from Goldman and JoePos in SI, read like they traded in the horses that were driving the Joe Mauer Bandwagon for rocket fuel.
Put bluntly, it was an all-out Internet war with Neyer wielding a sabermetric sword (yes, pun intended), Pos casting spells with his wizarding words, and Kepner responding with a gun that instead of bullets, fired the stick with the flag that reads, “BANG!”
From Neyer:
What inspired this particular post? An essentially meaningless home run, hit well after midnight (back in New York). I mean, I’m sorry, but the Yankees aren’t exactly in the middle of a pennant race anymore. They’ve got a huge lead over the second-place Red Sox. And if the Red Sox should somehow mount a late charge, the Yankees have a huger lead over the Rangers for that other postseason berth. … Joe Mauer currently leads the American League in batting average, on-base percentage, and slugging percentage. I don’t suppose anyone’s forgotten this yet, but he’s a catcher. Teixeira’s a first baseman. Are we really supposed to go for a power-hitting first baseman again, even when there’s a better-hitting catcher playing for a competitive team?” Neyer went on to say that he’s worried the writers are conspiring to rob Mauer of what should be a third MVP award for him.
He continued his fact-based rant 48 hours later, saying, “You know what? Let’s just be honest. The argument for Teixeira is an argument for doing it the way it’s always been done. Teixeira is just another big RBI guy on a team with a great record. If he were a Twin and Mauer were a Yankee, Teixeira would hardly be an afterthought. Some of you are OK with that. I’m not.”
Six days later, Neyer felt compelled to write about convincing Pete Abe on Super Joe. The goal, apparently, is to not only campaign for Mauer for MVP, but to have him win unanimously.
OK … now to Mr. Pos:
Look, could you make a case for Mark Teixeira over Joe Mauer? Well, you could make a case for anything. You could say that Mauer missed the first month of the season — so Teixeira has about 120 more plate appearances. You could say that the Yankees are going to the playoffs and the Twins are not unless they make a late season rush that looks more and more unlikely. But it sure seems to me that we need to start jabbing holes in this Teixeira MVP thing before it becomes a fait accompli.
Joe Mauer is having a much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much better season than Mark Teixeira. I’m not sure I put enough muches in there. Mauer is on pace to win his THIRD batting title as a catcher — and no other American League catcher has ever won even one. He leads the league in on-base percentage AND slugging percentage, the two most important stats going, and the only catcher to ever do that in baseball history was … oh, wait, nobody. He throws out base runners and hits .395 with runners in scoring position (hits .457 with runners in scoring position and two outs) and even runs the bases well.
And three days later, JoePos had this to offer: “Not to slam this MVP thing again, but we do realize that even forgetting all those kooky ‘advanced stats’ that seem to annoy people, even with Mauer missing a month of the season with injury — Mauer has now scored as many runs at Teixeira and he’s only 13 RBIs behind, and his batting average is 95 points higher. We do realize that the last seven days, while the Twins have been in desperate need of victories (and not getting many), Mauer is hitting .552 with three home runs and a .931 slugging percentage. And he’s probably the Gold Glove catcher.”
And finally, Goldman:
Unless Teixeira leads the league in home runs by a significant margin, or Mauer cools dramatically, it’s hard to see him emerging from the pack when his season is unremarkable by the standards of his position. Of the last 60 awards (both leagues), first basemen won only 11 times. No first baseman won without hitting .300 (I am treating the 1979 Keith Hernandez/Willie Stargell split like an honorary Academy Award for Pops). All but one, Mo Vaughn in 1995, were well over the .300 mark. An average of those 11 seasons comes to roughly .333/.428/.624, and many of them, like Don Mattingly and Keith Hernandez, both included in the 11, were fine defenders as well. Teixeira’s not having that kind of season.
Some harsh words in there. Kepner, following Posnanski’s initial commentary, issued a rebuttal at Bats, noting that “obvious” was a poor choice of words in his Tweet. In a way, he invited the storm and I thought he handled himself admirably among some respected, admired and talented industry heavyweights. I thought the degree to which he was made to be the piñata for “traditional baseball opinions” was a bit extreme. He’s entitled to his opinion, and opinions are subjective, just like the MVP vote.
It’s all about the secret sauce, don’t ya know.
When Josh Beckett allowed seven runs in his last start I thought, Drag: he got the egg out of his system. Beckett pitched eight innings against the Yankees on Sunday night, usually a sign that things are going right for the Red Sox. But he also allowed eight runs. The Yanks scored in the first five innings and smacked five home runs off Boston’s ace (Jeter, Matsui, Cano, Rodriguez, Matsui), the most Beckett has ever allowed in a game.
Derek Jeter swung at the first pitch he saw in the top of the first and deposited it into the bleachers in right-centerfield. It was the 2,700th hit of Jeter’s career (and, as Tom Boorstein noted, things are going well for the Yankee captain these days). Jeter should break Lou Gehrig’s mark for the most hits in Yankee history before the end of the season. If he remains healthy, he should reach 3,000 in 2011.
CC Sabathia wasn’t dominating but he delivered what is commonly known around these parts as a “gritty, gutty” performance. He gave up eight hits but only three earned runs (Robinson Cano made two errors), pitching until two men were out in the seventh inning. He also whiffed eight without walking a batter (Beckett didn’t issue a base on balls either). Phil Hughes relieved Sabathia, got out of the seventh, and worked around a lead-off single by Victor Martinez to toss a scoreless eighth.
Mariano Rivera, making his first appearance of the series, came on in the ninth and walked pinch-hitter JD Drew on four pitches. Catcher Jose Molina went to the mound. Drew took second on the first pitch–a called strike–to Jason Varitek. The next pitch was a cutter inside for a ball and Molina went to speak with his pitcher again. Rivera located a strike and then got a generous call on a back-door cutter for the strike out. Varitek waved his hand in disgust at Sam Holbrook, the home plate umpire and returned to the dugout (Holbrook had a wide strike zone). Casey Kotchman was next, also pinch-hitting, and after fouling off four pitches, he grounded out to Mark Teixeira. Rivera carved-up Jacoby Ellsbury on three pitches and the Yanks had the series, as well as a 7.5 game game lead over Boston.
Final Score: Yanks 8, Red Sox 4.
Let’s all applaud again, let’s all applaud again.
Sabathia v Beckett.
Should be a good one.
Let’s Go Yan-Kees.
My mother and step-father were over for a cup of tea late yesteray afternoon. When they left, I checked the score (okay, I checked the score before they left too), turned the TV off and took my wife into Manhattan. So I missed the whole damned mess. AJ Burnett got bombed by the Red Sox for the third time this season and this was the worst beatin’ yet as Boston rolled, 14-1.
According to Tyler Kepner in the New York Times:
“I didn’t have a lot of conviction behind some pitches today,” Burnett said. “I threw a lot of balls that I didn’t want to throw.”
Burnett stressed that he did not blame Posada, holding himself responsible for choosing each pitch. That is the job of the pitcher, he said.
“We throw what we want to throw; he’s there to aid,” Burnett said. “It’s definitely not him. I had a good hook today and I feel like I should have used it more.”
Burnett added: “He calls it fine back there. It’s just a matter of me throwing what I want to throw. You don’t throw a pitch unless you’re 100 percent behind it.”
Posada said the hitters seemed ready for Burnett’s curveball early, so he called different pitches to keep them off it. His signals are suggestions, Posada said, and it is up to Burnett to accept them or not.
“He was shaking me,” Posada said. “I tried to get on the same page. It seems like at times we were, and then we weren’t at times. It’s frustrating because obviously he wants to throw a certain pitch and I want to throw another one. When they hit them like that, it’s tough to get on the same page.”
So the Yanks and Sox have split the first two games with tonight hopefully giving us a real pitcher’s match-up. Andy Pettitte and AJ Burnett were awful this weekend. Time for CC to make like an Ace, wouldn’t ya say?
I said in my series preview yesterday that I thought taking two of three in Boston this weekend would ice the AL East title for the Yankees. All they need to do to reach that goal is beat 23-year-old Japanese rookie Junichi Tazawa in this afternoon’s FOX game.
Tazawa made his major league debut in the 14th inning of that 15-inning scoreless marathon between the Yanks and Sox at the new Yankee Stadium two weeks ago. The Yanks hit him hard in that inning, with both Eric Hinske and Melky Cabrera just missing game-winning hits down the right-field line with runners on first and second, but ultimately came up empty, only to finally tally off Tazawa in the bottom of the 15th via a Derek Jeter single and an Alex Rodriguez walk-off homer.
Tazawa pitched well at Fenway against the Tigers in his first major league start four days later, striking out six in five innings and allowing just one earned run on four hits and two walks, but his last outing, in Texas, was shakier as he failed to strike out a batter and gave up four runs on ten hits, two of them homers, in another five frames.
Today, he takes on A.J. Burnett, who was the Yankee starter in that 15-inning marathon. Burnett was awful in his first two starts against Boston this year, but came up huge in that game, pitching 7 2/3 innings of scoreless, one-hit baseball despite six walks. He’s turned in two more quality starts since then, giving him 11 in his last 12 outings dating back to his last start at Fenway, in which he failed to survive the third inning.
Jason Varitek, who homered of Sergio Mitre in then ninth inning last night, returns to the Red Sox lineup to face Burnett while Mike Lowell sits. Johnny Damon, who fouled a ball of his knee in the top of the first on Friday night, sits today in favor of Eric Hinske. Hinske plays left and bats eighth. Nick Swisher takes Damon’s spot in the two-hole. The Red Sox have reloaded their bullpen, demoting Michael Bowden, who threw 63 pitches in two innings while allowing seven runs Friday night, in favor of Enrique Gonzalez. Given Tazawa’s brief track record, the Yankees will likely bring the underside of the Boston pullpen into play today as well, which bodes well for the Bombers, as do most things these days.
When the Yankee bullpen struggled so badly during the first two months of the season, too many members of the mainstream media called for either Joba Chamberlain to be relieved of his starting duties or for Brian Cashman to pull off a trade that would reel in a veteran reliever. Well, those media members have grown silent over the last two months as the bullpen has achieved lofty status in the American League. Those writers and broadcasters turned out to be dead wrong in their assessments, largely for two reasons. First off, they forgot that the Yankees boasted one of the league’s most efficient bullpens just last year. And second, they didn’t stop to consider the depth of pitching in the organization, specifically the wealth of talent waiting at Triple-A in the form of Phil Hughes, Alfredo “Ace” Aceves, and David Robertson.
I had already counted myself as a believer in the talents of Hughes and Aceves, but I have to confess to knowing little about Robertson prior to 2009. Kudos should go to the Banter’s own Cliff Corcoran, who was one of the first analysts to sing the praises of Robertson. Cliff turned out to be absolutely right about the 24-year-old right-hander. With a consistent 93 to 94 mile-per-hour fastball and a terrific overhand curveball (reminiscent of Neil Allen in his hey day), Robertson has the stuff to be a reliable reliever for the foreseeable future. If he can improve his control sufficiently, he could be the much-celebrated eighth-inning bridge by 2010. For now, the Yankees have four different relievers (Robertson, Hughes, Aceves, and lefty Phil Coke) that they can feel good about in the seventh and eighth innings…
The Yankees have assembled one of their best benches in years, and it figures to get better whenever Brett “The Jet” Gardner returns from the broken hand that landed him on the disabled list. Gardner will not only give Melky Cabrera the competition that he seems to thrive on, but also one of the most explosive pinch-runners in the game. So here’s the question: whose roster spot will Gardner take? I’d vote for sinkerballing Sergio Mitre, who is still building arm strength after major surgery, but the Yankees have become as married to the 12-man pitching staff as they once were to left-handed hitting DHs. So that means that Ramiro Pena will become the odd man out once Brett the Jet returns. Pena has done well in spot duty this year, but he lacks the experience and versatility of Jerry Hairston, Jr., the power of Eric Hinske, and the ability to catch (the role filled by Jose Molina). When and if the Yankees send Pena down, they should give him as many at-bats as possible during the Triple-A postseason, with the idea of letting him compete for the utility role in 2010. Pena might not hit enough to play everyday at shortstop, but his glove, speed, and ability to work the count should merit consideration for a backup job…
Speaking of Gardner, I’m trying to figure out if he’s the fastest Yankee I’ve ever seen. Prior to Gardner’s arrival last year, I would have voted for Mickey Rivers, followed by Rickey Henderson and Alfonso Soriano. (Rickey was obviously the best basestealer of the three, but at his peak “Mick the Quick” was slightly faster.) Perhaps I’m missing someone else from the last 40 years, but I believe Gardner has to at least move into the top three of this list, bumping Soriano to honorable mention…
The staying power of the late Thurman Munson is eye-opening. Thirty years after his death, the story of the tragic Yankee captain remains a compelling and popular read. Marty Appel’s new book, Munson: The Life and Death of a Yankee Captain, has been the nation’s best-selling sports book for the last four weeks. That’s quite an achievement, considering that Munson is not a Hall of Famer and is generally not considered an all-time great. Furthermore, most Yankee fans 35 and under don’t remember seeing him play, except for the occasional replay of the Bucky Dent Game and the 1978 World Series. In an era when the Yankee dynasty of the 1996 to 2001 has overshadowed the accomplishments of the Bronx Zoo years, Thurman Munson’s story still manages to capture the sincere interest of so many lifelong Yankee fans.
Bruce Markusen, a resident of Cooperstown, writes “Cooperstown Confidential” for The Hardball Times.
There is a wonderful article about the Grand Concourse by Constance Rosenblum in the Times today:
You have to exercise your imagination to conjure the past; this part of the Bronx is in many respects a diamond in the rough. Many of the lustrous structures that defined life in these precincts have been irrevocably transformed, and even those that haven’t are Potemkin villages, their fine facades masking troubled lives: the Bronx, after all, is still a borough in which one of every three families lives below the poverty line.
But a trip down this particular memory lane has much to recommend it beyond pure nostalgia. As the boulevard nears its centennial in November, a journey offers a vision of its past, present and future — a chewy slice of urban history festooned with murals, mosaics and other Art Deco touches.
While you are at it, dig the nifty multi-media tour too.
