Yanks face Doc Halladay tonight in Toronto. A formidable task for sure. But who knows? Stranger things have happened. Maybe they get him on an “off” night. Maybe Sir Sidney Ponson has another good outing. Maybe pigs will fly.
Either way, Let’s Go Yan-Kees.
The Red Sox are clearly the third most popular team in New York these days. Ten years ago you’d rarely see someone wearing a Red Sox hat, and when you did, it was hard not to have some grudging admiration for the brave soul. Now that the Red Sox are a success the bandwagon is full and Sox fans can rock their gear without shame. They are a dime a dozen. This trend will eventually pass but not anytime soon.
And so long as the New York Times owns a piece so the Red Sox we’ll continue to see features in the sports page like Jack Curry’s piece on Jed Lowrie. Curry has been with the Sox in Baltimore the past couple of days.
Why would the Times assign their lead baseball feature writer to follow Boston? They aren’t playing the Yankees until next week. Because at the Times, the Sox matter almost as much as the Yankees or the Mets.
It’s a sorry state of affairs but that’s the way it is.
Meanwhile, in more regional affairs, Tyler Kepner has a nice post over at Bats, and asks the question: Should the Yankees re-sign Bobby Abreu?
Steven Goldman, writing in the New York Sun, thinks 2009 might be more of the same, or worse, for the Yanks. His suggestion? Bust ’em up, baby:
With next year’s pitching staff likely to be at least as unsettled as the current edition, the Yankees are in a difficult spot. If baseball teams don’t decide when to rebuild, the gods of baseball tend to decide for them. There’s a penalty to holding on too long, to having the issue forced: Your team might turn into the Baltimore Orioles (in the Yankees’ case, Jeter standing in for the aging Cal Ripken). Hence, the Yankees should be broken up now, by Brian Cashman, with the veterans sent out of town by August 31 for the best offers available.
That’d be a bold move. Doubt it’ll happen though.
Over at Baseball Intellect, Alex Eisenberg takes a look at Joba Chamberlain’s mechanics.
Fun, thought-provoking stuff. Excellent job by Eisenberg.
I was downtown last night near Washington Square Park, crossing Fifth avenue, when I saw a black kid on a skateboard gliding up the street. He was listening to music and singing loudly. I smiled and thought, man, I really don’t get around downtown much anymore. You just don’t see people uptown expressing themselves with such theatricality–here I am, hear me, love me or screw off, I don’t care.
I couldn’t make out what he was singing until I heard, "I live by the river."
Ah-ha. That made me smile even more. Wouldn’t have pegged him for a Clash fan.
I got caught up working late last night and didn’t catch a single pitch of the Yankee game. By the time I got home, shortly before ten, it was over. I turned on Baseball Tonight and waited for the score to appear on the crawl. Wouldn’t you know it, the Yankee-Toronto game was the last of the AL scores to appear. While I waited I felt sure that the Yankees had won and for a few moments I thought about sure things. Mariano Rivera is as sure as you get, though he’s not perfect of course. The Yankees themselves have been a sure thing for a long time too. That isn’t the case this year, sure-things don’t last forever, but the fact that you can have them, even for a little while, is something to savor.
Still, the longer it took to get to the score the more I started thinking, maybe they lost again.
But they didn’t. Andy Pettitte pitched a nice ball game and Derek Jeter had three hits, including a two-run dinger as the Yanks beat the Jays, 5-1. His batting average is up to .298. The Yankee captain is also two hits shy of 2,500 for his career. Even though he’s shown signs of decline this year, unless Jeter gets hurt or starts to deteriorate rapidly, he’s virtually a sure thing to reach 3,000. If all goes well he could reach the milestone in three more seasons.
Pretty cool, huh?
…The Yanks will serve the Jays up like Stove Top Stuffin’ tonight. And if they don’t, if we see Bad Andy, if the Yanks get rocked, well, then I just don’t know what.
Let’s Go Yan-Kees.
Diane Firstman offers this video look at the Yankees playoff drive:
I realize these are truly the dog days for Yankee fans. With each passing day it appears increasingly unlikely that the team will qualify for the playoffs. Not only that, but they are just a tough team to watch in so many ways. This morning I saw two Yankee fans at work and the first thing they did was hide their face as if they were Dracula meeting the morning light. They hung their heads. One of them told me he’s not watching anymore. And he’s not the first one I’ve heard that from over the past few weeks.
These are tough times, relatively speaking, and if you’ve got better things to do with your time than watching a lousy team, that is understandable. But this idea of forgetting your team or giving up on them when they don’t live up to our collective expectations really seperates the true fans from the causal rooter.
We’ll be here at Bronx Banter win or lose, and that’s that. Even if they play like a bunch of bums, we’ll be here. We were here when they were winning and we’ll be here when they stink. That’s a promise.
Ponson, Pavano and, would you believe, Zambrano. Yup, Joel Sherman mentions Victor Zambrano today in the latest edition of his Hardball blog.
Andy Speaks:
“Do you feel like at some point they didn’t go out and try to get a pitcher this year because they didn’t want to lose some (young) pitchers? That’s what it seemed like. They’ve invested a ton in these guys and, to a certain extent, you can’t blame them for doing that.
“Hopefully it works out and hopefully these guys are all great and they come up here and have wonderful big-league careers. Also, the budget isn’t endless – you have to draw a line.
“At some point, you’ve got to go with the team you’ve got and players have to perform. The bottom line is, it comes down to us and we haven’t played well enough so far to say we’re a playoff team right now.”
Tonight, our favorite nemesis, AJ Burnett.
How do the Red Sox, Yankees and other teams fare against good pitching?
Here’s an excellent look…
And just cause, here’s my favorite low budget music video of all time:
Rob Trucks has a good interview with my man Steinski over at the Voice today.
I don’t know about you guys but I find ESPN’s wall-to-wall coverage of the Little League World Series to be more than somewhat disturbing. I’m generally not a moralist by nature but I’m just so turned off by watching kids televised as if they were professionals. It doesn’t seem right to me, it feels like too much pressure is being placed on them too soon. How can they just kick back and have fun?
This year, the coverage is more pronounced than ever as highlights make their make nightly onto Sportscenter and Baseball Tonight. I simply turn the channel. I just won’t watch it.
Anyone else have any thoughts on this?
According to Bryan Hoch at MLB.com, either Carl Pavano or Phil Hughes will be called up to start on Saturday. Carl Pavano. Jeez, imagine?
Caught this link over at Rob Neyer’s blog. Has to do with Mariano Rivera and wild pitches. Interesting stuff…
