My boy Joey La P was at Shea last year when Tom Glavine got waxed and the Mets missed the playoffs.  He was back at Shea this weekend–on Friday night and, of course, yesterday.  He called to tell me about it from his stoop in Brooklyn.  He had just locked himself out of his apartment and his super wasn’t home.

Gotta feel for the Mets fans today. 

From Grantland Rice:

When the one Great Scorer comes/To mark against your name/ He writes not whether you won or lost/But how you played the game.

The status of Yankee General Manager Brian Cashman will reportedly be determined shortly.  So?  You think he stays or goes?  And, do you think he should stay or go?  I think he’ll stay and I’d be happy if he does.

By Will Weiss

Lasting Yankee Stadium Memories (Part One of Two): The Games

It is safe to say that most, if not all, of us who enter professions in sports media do so because at the very core, we’re fans. For those of us who grew up Yankee fans, covering the team and seeing games from the Yankee Stadium Press Area was the fulfillment of a lifelong dream.

In Part I of my portion of the Lasting Yankee Stadium Memory series here at Bronx Banter, I’d like to focus on the games that I was a part of during my five years at YES, both as an on-site reporter and an editor.

There are some honorable mention games, like July 7, 2003, when Pedro and Moose dueled and Curtis Pride won the game in the ninth. There was a September day-night doubleheader in which Mike Mussina pitched the first game in front of what seemed like 17 people. But after being asked to make a list of my favorite Yankee Stadium games in my tenure at YES, the games described below were the most memorable.

April 5, 2002: Yankees 4, Devil Rays 0

It was the Yankees’ 2002 home opener, complete with all the usual pageantry, pomp and circumstance. There was an air of anticipation and a sense of purpose among the fans, given the way the team had lost the World Series to the Diamondbacks a few short months before. But this was a different Yankee team. Jason Giambi had been signed in the offseason, as had Robin Ventura and David Wells. Gone was Paul O’Neill; Shane Spencer and John Vander Wal were platooning in right field, while Rondell White was patrolling left.

I was having my own issues. I didn’t have a seat or a phone line in the press box, but somehow finagled my way into the YES booth and sat right behind Michael Kay and Jim Kaat. Suzyn Waldman sat to my immediate left, fidgeting with everything from the phone to her makeup bag. Ten minutes of observing her nerves on display went a long way towards calming my own.

I’ll never forget the view, the relief of having a seat, and the feeling of being able to walk on the field at Yankee Stadium before the game. From that point on, YESNetwork.com writers sat in the booth.

As for the game, it was about 50 degrees and windy. The Yankees made two errors and left 11 men on base. The star was Andy Pettitte, who threw six shutout innings to pave the way for the first of 52 home wins that season.

May 17: 2002: Yankees 13, Twins 12 (14 innings)

After six weeks of struggling in front of the Stadium crowd, this was the game in which Jason Giambi "earned his pinstripes."

The Yankees and Twins combined for 25 runs, 40 hits, 3 errors, 10 walks, 27 strikeouts, and the Yankees hit 6 home runs. Bernie Williams’ shot into the upper deck in left off Eddie Guardado tied the game at 9-9 and sent the game into extras. Both teams had chances but no one converted until the 14th, when the Twins posted three against Sterling Hitchcock.

In the middle of the 14th, as the Twins summoned Mike Trombley to the mound, Jim Kaat looked at the Yankees’ upcoming lineup – Shane Spencer, Alfonso Soriano, and Derek Jeter — and said to broadcast partner Ken Singleton, "Trombley’s on the mound. I wouldn’t be surprised to see the first three guys get on base and Bernie end it with a grand slam." Spencer singled, Soriano flied out, Jeter singled and Bernie walked. The grand slam came one spot in the order behind Bernie. It was a classic finish, with his towering fly ball landing in the right-center field bleachers, and the rain pouring down as Giambi’s teammates mauled him at home plate.

This game would not have made my list had Kaat not predicted the ending. Before I headed down to the clubhouse, I asked him if he was clairvoyant. He just smiled at me and said, "I knew they’d get to Trombley – I was just one batter off."

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The Yankees ended the season on a good note, at least — I’m going to pretend the second game of the double header, started by the inimitable Sidney Ponson, isn’t happening; humor me — beating the Red Sox 6-2 and earning Mike Mussina his long-deferred 20-win season. It’s a statistical acheivement that I think we can all agree is an arbitrary and ineffective way of measuring a pitcher’s worth… but still pretty damn sweet. A few weeks ago I didn’t think he was going to pull it off, and I’m very glad I was wrong.

The Red Sox never mounted a sustained threat against Mussina, who allowed two walks — he didn’t allow even three in a single game this year –and three hits in six innings, using just 73 pitches. He left the game then, surprisingly, with a three-run lead, courtesy of a Xavier Nady fly ball that had bounced off the top of the wall by the Pesky Pole and into the stands for a home run. Mussina explained afterwards that his elbow was still sore from the comebacker it took in his last start; I figured that was probably the case, because otherwise you’d have expected him to lunge at Joe Girardi with a bat sometime during the eighth inning, when Joba Chamberlain, Brian Bruney, and Damaso Marte allowed two runs and looked like they might be about to collectively blow it. No jury would’ve convicted him.

But Mariano Rivera came to the rescue (of course), entering the game with the tying run on base and, calcified shoulder and all, nailing down a win for Mussina for the 49th time. And Mussina wasn’t sweating it, at that point: "I knew with Mo in the game, it was going to be all right." Me, I still half expected Carl Everett to pop out of the Fenway shadows and ruin everything. Instead, the Yankees tacked on three insurance runs off Jonathan Papelbon in the top of the ninth, and whatever else fell apart this season, at least this one thing went right.

After eight years with the Yankees, Mussina says he’ll take some time now to decide if he wants to keep pitching. Personally I’d be happy to see him back, but at the same time, it’s very rare for an athlete to walk away at the absolute top of their game; if Moose pulled it off, I’d have a ton of respect for that decision.

—

UPDATE: So the Yanks went ahead and played the second game of the doubleheader, despite my protestations, and it was actually somewhat dramatic — as dramatic as a meaningless late-September Spring Training game can be, anyway. All the scrubs were in, and Sidney Ponson pitched very well, I suspect just to spite me.

The Yankees were down 3-2 with two outs in the ninth when Robinson Cano drove in the tying run. But Jose Veras couldn’t stave off the Sox in the tenth; he loaded the bases, someone named Jonathan Van Every singled home Alex Cora, and the Sox won 4-3. I say we all just agree to consider Mussina’s win the end of the 2008 season and leave it at that.

You Gotta Believe. That’s the order of the day for the Mets who get to play an enormous game in the season finale at Shea. Talk about tension. For Yankee fans, there ain’t much at stake, but You Gotta Believe Moose can win 20 games for the first time in his career. Personally, I don’t think he’ll do it. Something will happen. He’ll pitch great but lose 2-1, or get bombed early or pitch well and have a 5-0 lead only to have the game called in the fourth inning. Something always happens. But even if he doesn’t get the win, Moose has been one of the best things about the Yanks this year and he gets props over here.

By Pete Caldera

We’ve talked and talked, and asked and asked about Yankee Stadium memories for months. What will you recall most? What will you take? And then Derek Jeter reminded us of an underrated – and unforgettable – treasure.

It’s the view.

From the batter’s box, for a thousand games, Jeter tapped home plate and stared straight toward the black batter’s eye – a perfect hitter’s backdrop. And from the front row of the press box, I was lucky to take in the whole panorama from behind home plate.

You couldn’t always see what was going on in the corners, but any member of the BBWAA was granted one of the best seats in the old house. The dugouts, the mound, the infield, the on-deck circle were all right in front of you. The battles in the stands – for foul balls, or for disputes – were in clear view. Occasionally, some daredevil drunk would even drop out of his box seat and land on the netting in front of us (happened twice).

The Bronx County Courthouse on a clear day. The moon rising from left field on a clear night. It was all right there. And then, of course, there was that grand, green field – and I’ll count myself forever fortunate to have witnessed some precious moments on that celebrated turf.

I was there for David Wells perfect game, on a cloudy May afternoon. Remember that backhand stab by Chuck Knoblauch, of all people?

Saw an unassisted triple play by Randy Velarde.

Saw David Cone’s perfect game, and remember telling a friend during a rain delay (33 minutes) that it was too bad – Cone’s slider was unhittable. He could no-hit the Expos.

Saw Mussina save the day in Game 7, the night Pedro was left to battle through the 8th inning, and couldn’t. Then, Aaron Boone. And bedlam.

Saw Pedro come within a Chili Davis homer of perfection, still the greatest pitched game I ever witnessed.

Saw the Red Sox win the pennant. Saw plenty of brawls – like the night Strawberry seemed to take on the entire Orioles team in the visiting dugout. Saw Jeter in the hole, whirling and throwing. And saw hundreds of his 2,000-plus hits. And saw go for that pop up, in fair territory, against Boston, knowing that his only landing area was full-speed into the stands.

Saw A-Rod make the Stadium small with those colossal home runs, and wished I could’ve seen Joe D. swing for the deeper fences – the original dimensions.

Saw the first Subway Series game, and the first Mets-Yankees World Series game. Saw Joe Torre do that slow walk to the mound. Saw DiMaggio wave from a convertible. Saw the Florida Marlins celebrate, and heard them too, in the silence. Saw the All-Star Game that never ended.

I witnessed all that from the press box, mostly from Seat 12, behind a red plate with ‘The Record’ in white lettering.

The Yankees are giving the writers those plates. And from where that plate once stood, I’ll never forget the view.

Pete Caldera covers baseball for The Bergan Record.

A Bronx Cheer for Paul Newman:

The game in Boston today was warshed out.  They’ll play two tomorrow.

Moose goes against Dice K in the first game.

It’s Sir Sid vs. Dice K in the rain today at Fenway.

Only two more left.  The only thing I care about it is Moose winning tomorrow. 

Man, I wonder what’s gunna happen with the Mets and the Brewers…Ted Lilly vs Ben Sheets today.  Santana on the hill for the Mets in the New York rain on three days rest.  Holy crud this is good.  Glad I don’t really have a rooting interest or I’d be on the verge of a nervous breakdown.   

He was one of the great movie stars of them all.

Newman was a guy that both men and women loved.  I loved him because he was a pretty boy star and a serious actor.  He did all of those big, splashy star vehicles and then stretched himself in smaller, character-driven movies.  He wasn’t always great, wasn’t always right for a part, but he made the effort, he put himself out there.  "Cool Hand Luke," "The Verdict," "Slapshot," "The Color of Money" are just a few of my favorite Newman movies.  

He lived a long, good life.  Did a lot of wonderful things with his name.

He will be missed.  He should be celebrated.

By Will Carroll

I am not sad to see it go. I really have no connection to Yankee Stadium and have only been to a handful of games there. I went once, back in the 80s when the team was just a shell of it’s previous self and New York seemed much more like what “The Warriors” made it out to be than it really is. Yankee Stadium and Times Square were similar in that they were places everyone said you had to go, but once you were there, you really didn’t want to stay. Kodak moment and move on before something bad happened. Like Steve Balboni.

The Stadium has two things going for it – history and the entrance. While it’s nice on the outside, somehow it doesn’t have the same flavor as walking up to Wrigley or Fenway; it’s more like old Comiskey where you went to a game, then got back on the train and got out of there. Once inside though, once you make it through the crush of the crowd and come out those narrow tunnels and pow, you see the green grass, those arches, you see YANKEE STADIUM in all it’s game day glory and you get it for a second.

When I covered a game there, I walked out of the dugout and it was nearly the same, just a different angle. I wondered if Jason Giambi gasped like I did when he walked out on the field. I watched Joe Torre and wondered if that’s where Billy Martin sat and answered questions. But it’s a different bench. The grass is not the same that Babe Ruth walked on and isn’t the same as what David Cone walked on. Time marches, right?

Time can also stand still. I have a tendency to wander at ballparks, rather than staying in the tight little area where press is expected. While the beat guys did their job on that May afternoon, I walked out to the monuments. I looked where the old fence line used to be. I touched the plaque of my father’s hero, Mickey Mantle, and realized that I remembered Mantle for the stories of skirtchasing, drinking, and his numbers while my father got to see him play.

The Stadium is like its players, more than just concrete, more than just numbers, more than dates in a book, more than grass and dirt. It’s a box of memories, open at the top so that the best float up.

Will Carroll writes about baseball injuries for Baseball Prospectus.

Wow, think the Yanks will save any runs for Moose on Sunday? They pasted the Sox in Fenway last night to the tune of 19-8. Welp, it’s better than losing, right?

By Ben Kabak

I bounded up the stairs of the Yankee dugout on a sunny August afternoon to acknowledge the roaring crowd. I landed on the top step, turned around and saw an ocean of empty seas. Row upon row upon row of those familiar blue seats were staring back at me, waiting for the next home game.

For a minute, I almost knew what Derek Jeter feels like when he turns to wave at the crowd. From the top of the steps, I could see just the box seats just behind the dugout, and even that view sent shimmers down my spine.

But I’m not on the Yankees, never was and never will be. My Yankee curtain call was, instead, just a part of the tour at Yankee Stadium. In mid-August, with the Yanks out of town, my dad and I went on the tour at Yankee Stadium. This excursion wouldn’t be our final visit to the House that Ruth Built, but it was our gesture of saying good bye on our time. We weren’t deluged with constant scoreboard distractions, yet another playing of the Y.M.C.A. or some guy in a hat dancing to that seminal New York song Cotton-Eye Joe. Instead, we walked on the field, sat in the dugout and soaked in the aura and mystique of the stadium in Monument Park.

While I’ve been on the tour twice before, I didn’t truly appreciate it in 1994 as an 11-year-old and couldn’t enjoy it in 2000 as a camp counselor overseeing a bunch of rowdy 10-12-year-olds. This time, though, I experienced the tour as it was meant to be. When 11 a.m. in the Bronx rolls around, Yankee Stadium truly feels like a Cathedral. The stadium is populated only by the grounds crew tending to the field, a few security guards and other tour groups. The grounds echo with the spray of water on the field and the history of eighty five years. The empty stadium bare witness to thousands of games and players long lost to the annals of baseball history.

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We lost one of the good ones on Wednesday, when Mickey Vernon passed away at the age of 90, the victim of a stroke he suffered one week ago. Ordinarily, most of us are not shocked when we hear of someone dying in his ninth decade. But this case is a little bit different for me. I saw Mickey this past June in the Philadelphia area, when he served as one of the featured speakers on a symposium about athletes in the military. Other than walking with a bit of a hunch, he seemed to be in excellent health, a 90-year-old man who had managed to shave years off his physical appearance. His mind and memory remained razor-sharp, with his wits, intelligence, and polite manner all still intact. In fact, this was what I wrote about Vernon at the time:

“As impressive as his personality, Mickey’s health and conditioning are just as striking. He just turned 90, but he looks more like 60, with a full shock of hair that might make some middle-aged men jealous. He remains extremely sharp, with an excellent recall of detail and little tendency to exaggerate accomplishments.”

Later that day, my wife and I, along with several other organizers of the symposium, enjoyed having lunch with Mickey at a local VFW. Not surprisingly, Mickey became the centerpiece of the table, not because he tried to dominate the conversation, but because everyone wanted to hear his stories and opinions. I was no different; I desperately wanted to know about his feelings toward the Yankees, who employed him as a scout and coach in the seventies and eighties—his final job in baseball. Half expecting to hear some grumbles about the ownership of George Steinbrenner (who could be particularly hard on coaches and scouts at that time), I was surprised to hear Mickey say that he loved working for the Yankees. As proof, he showed me the Yankee watch that he still wore, given to him by the organization for his years of service. Mickey might not have been remembered as a Yankee, but he truly considered himself one.

For me, this was my second experience with Mickey. In 2006, I met him for the first time, also in the Philadelphia area, as part of a program that celebrated accomplishments of Chester, PA native Danny Murtaugh. Like the more recent encounter, this occasion also proved uplifting, as I came away with the kind of graceful impression that Mickey had made on so many other people both during and after his career in baseball.

And let’s not overlook that career as a player, which spanned from the late 1930s to the early 1960s. Mickey Vernon was a tremendous ballplayer, a two-time batting champion and a seven-time All-Star who was once voted the greatest first baseman in the history of the Washington Senators’ franchise. Yet, his career was hurt by Washington’s home park, which tended to suppress home runs, making life more difficult for a mid-range power hitter like Mickey. He also lost some of his career to military service during World War II, which caused him to miss all of the 1944 and ’45 seasons.

In spite of the obstacles, Vernon played more games at first base than anyone during the 20th century. He was a slick defender, one of the finest fielding first basemen in the game’s history, along with being a productive line-drive hitter who flashed power at various times during his four-decade career. He was a smart hitter, too, the kind who almost always walked more than he struck out. From 1953 to 1956, he put up big numbers with both the Senators and Red Sox, highlighted by a ‘53 campaign that saw him register a .403 on-base percentage and a .518 slugging percentage while reaching career highs in runs and RBIs. He was good enough to have merited inclusion on the Hall of Fame’s Veterans Committee ballot, which features his name along with nine other players whose careers began prior to 1943. I know that more than a few of his fans in Philadelphia and his native Marcus Hook are crossing their fingers, hoping that the committee will finally call his name this December.

Even after all of these years, his friends still care about the Hall of Fame issue, in large part because of his character and charm. As fine a player as Vernon was, he was a better man. Likeable throughout his playing days, Vernon continued to spread the wealth of his amiable personality as a manager, coach, scout, and after his retirement, as a frequent guest at baseball-related functions. If you wanted to add a touch of gentlemanly class and quiet intelligence to your event, you just made sure to send an invitation to Mickey Vernon.

Jim Vankoski, who skillfully arranges a number of baseball-related events in the Philadelphia area, knew all about Mickey. He was the one who introduced me to Mickey, who told me what a wonderful guy that he was. Mickey certainly did not disappoint. He patiently answered questions that I interspersed throughout our conversations, while at the same time taking an interest in what I was doing. Thanks, Jim, for giving me the chance to meet this special man.

And thanks to Mickey for the way that he treated me—the way that he seemingly treated everyone. I only met him twice, but I feel like I knew him for a lifetime. 

Bruce Markusen writes "Cooperstown Confidential" for MLBlogs at MLB.com.

Over at Baseball-Intellect, Alex Eisenberg takes a look at the pitching mechanics of Yankee minor leaguer Brett Marshall. Don’t slumber.

Oh, and p.s. here is my favorite Yankee shout-out in a rap song. From Bronx resident, Diamond D, "the best producer on the mic":

It comes about two-thirds of the way into the song. It’s so cheap it’s great.

By Tim Marchman

When I was small, I didn’t understand the point of the Yankees. It wasn’t that I disliked them, but that they were irrelevant, the team of suburbs to the north and parts of the city that to me may as well have been. Even in deep Queens there were a few Yankees fans, usually Italians whose families raised them to think of Joe DiMaggio the way Catholics were raised to think of John F. Kennedy.* Those kids would taunt the rest of us odd moments. You’d be playing asses-up, dealing the ball in your best Dwight Gooden motion, when some kid would let on that two rings were nice enough and nothing to be ashamed of, but certainly not as nice as twenty-two, as if he’d been there in the stands when each of them was won. But mostly this didn’t seem to have anything to do with anything. They may as well have been Kansas City Royals fans.

It wasn’t until I was 22 that I understood the Yankees at all. My friend P. and I had upper deck seats for the Stadium, and two Snapple bottles full of liquor. We drank and watched the game and talked, convincing ourselves that we were much above everything that was going on around us: New York would never again be something it had stopped being around the time we were born; baseball had changed, with the money; capital had failed us; the electronic advertisements, greasy brokers on cell phones, cheap plastic, and loud music were an indictment; everything was at second hand and a great remove; the world was infinitely mediated and the city a sad, lonely and disfigured place in which great things were no longer possible; etc.

The score ran up early enough, and it was chilly enough, that the stands began to empty early, so we made out way down to field level, well toasted, and then worked our way from seat to seat until we were a row back of the home dugout. There was the field in total clarity: still and quiet, steam rising off the grass, the lights a half mile high, and Mike Mussina on the mound, curling up into his motion, in total control of events. At that moment it may as well have been 1946, 1977, or whatever moment P. and I had just spent so much time convincing ourselves we wished it was. The game seemed further away than it had seemed in the nosebleeds, but very much more peaceful, and at that exact moment neither Mike Mussina or all the ambitious people in the park seemed at all to inhabit a different city than I did, but just to be different parts of one raging engine—parts with which I may not have had much in common, but parts toward which it was somewhere between absurd and obscene to feel something just past distrust and shading toward resentment.

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Sidd Finch, eat your heart out.  It’s Jimmy Scott!

Andy Pettitte’s Yankee career could be over. Pettitte, talking to Mark Feinsand in the Daily News, was critical of his own performance:

"The biggest thing was me, personally; I just pitched terrible," Pettitte said. "I don’t think we played great, I don’t think we hit in some clutch situations when we needed to, but everybody pitched really well other than me down the stretch. If I don’t win one game out of my last 10 starts, I think the last couple days of the season, we’d be right there."

…But was it his last season in the Bronx? Pettitte will be a free agent at the end of the season, and while he said he would consider playing only for the Yankees next year, he hasn’t decided whether he’s prepared to take on the mental grind that comes with another season.

"I probably just need to get away for a while, but I don’t want to drag it out," Pettitte said. "They’ve pretty much already told me they’d like to have me back, so we’ll just have to see."

I wouldn’t be surprised to see Pettitte return but I’m not counting on it.

Nothing original here, but…Go Moose.

By Charles Euchner

I’ve seen a lot of great players at Yankee Stadium — Munson and Jackson, Catfish and Guidry, Jeter and A-Rod — but my most memorable moment came at my first game in the Bronx. The Tigers came to town in 1971, just a few weeks after my family moved to Long Island from Iowa. I was a Mets fan but wanted to see any baseball game. My dad got tickets from his job at Con Ed, one of the team’s sponsors. So off we went.

My most enduring memory is how empty the stadium was. About 12,000 went to the game, a quick check of Retrosheet.org tells me. Foul balls did not set off a mad contest of reaching, grasping hands. Foul balls bounced around empty seats while fans raced to retrieve them from other sections. Since it was a blowout — a 9-1 Yankee victory, which improved their record to 68-71, good for fourth place, 18 1/2 games behind the Baltimore Orioles — most people who came left early. Those who stayed sat around looking bored. I tried to convince myself I was watching something special. I wasn’t. The Yankees had only one superstar, catcher Thurman Munson. Roy White and Bobby Murcer were decent. Not much else.

In the next couple years, I experienced some real Yankees excitement during promotions like Bat Day that filled the stadium. I have always been amazed how great it feels to be in a stadium with 55,000 other people. Even when the team is out of the race, it can still feel like a playoff atmosphere. I also experienced how rowdy things can get during bad games. I never smoked pot, but I inhaled plenty when I went to Yankee games in the 1970s. At every game, fights broke out and fans got high and drunk. Then, in the late 1970s, the Yankees started winning. I guess George decided he could set some standards for fan conduct. Whatever happened, things didn’t get so ugly in the stands.

I have a funny kind of nostalgia for those bad old Yankee teams. I went to the stadium because baseball was fun, not because the team was the best. The Yankee dynasty teams of later years were obviously better “products,” as the number-crunching GM’s say these days. But I miss the bygone days when winning more than you lost was good enough, before failure was defined as not crushing everyone every day. I’d love to get in a way-back machine and watch that 1971 Yanks-Tigers game again. Maybe I missed something.

Charles Euchner is the author of The Last Nine Innings.