“What can I tell you?” Royals DH José Guillen said. “That was the kind of game you haven’t seen from us in a while. We didn’t do any of the little things. A lot of wasted opportunities. Both sides, too. They were the same.”

It was a gorgeous afternoon in New York, unseasonably reasonable. The sun dipped in and out of the clouds but it was a terrific day to be outside. The Yankees and Royals played a long game, close to five hours, that lasted thirteen innings. It was another Yankee game filled with aborted offensive rallies, strange managerial moves, good starting (Sir Sidney, once again) and relief pitching, and plenty of frustration. The crowd was mostly silent for the last hour or so; I was fighting off sleep watching from the comfort of my couch. In the end, Brett Gardner slapped the game-winning single to left giving the Yanks a 3-2 win.

According to the Times:

“To be quite honest with you, I don’t care who ended it,” said Derek Jeter, the Yankees’ captain. “We needed to win a game. This would have been a rough one to lose, with so many opportunities.”

“It doesn’t matter how we win as long as we win,” Manager Joe Girardi said. “This was a big win for us today because we’ve been scuffling, and scuffling to score. Maybe this is the game that gets us back on the winning track and we win a bunch in a row.”

The Yankees are going to have to start playing a better brand of baseball to generate any kind of winning streak. They were fortunate to win yesterday. Let’s hope the bats finally bust loose today.

The Bronx Bummers are at it again this afternoon. At this pernt, you’ve got to laugh to keep from cryin. Here’s hoping they give something, anything to cheer for today.

Let’s Go Yan-Kees!

It’s been a weird season; I’ve only recently begun to adjust to the fact that the Devil Rays are 10 games ahead of the Yankees in mid-August. But I thought if there was one thing we could count on in this life, it was Kansas City sucking worse than New York… they’re not trying to take that from us, too, are they?

The Royals beat the Yankees 4-3 Friday night in a game I would’ve called a heartbreaker if everyone’s heart hadn’t already been broken a week or two ago. I missed staring at Michael Phelps’ torso for this? Gil Meche pitched pretty well, but not so well that he would necessarily have won if the Yankee offense wasn’t still acting like RBIs cause gonorrhea.

Andy Pettitte wasn’t at his best but minimized the damage: seven innings, three runs, it could easily have been worse. Meanwhile the Yankees stranded 11 men and, during the game’s first three innings, went 0-for-8 with runners in scoring position. Still, the game was tied at three in the ninth inning when… wait for it… Mariano Rivera threw a wild pitch that allowed the Royals to score what would prove to be the winning run. Rivera blowing games with wild pitches — I had to pause the Tivo and check to make sure the universe hadn’t just collapsed on itself. If that’s not a sign that this just ain’t their year, I don’t know what is.

Because we’re now at the point of the season where you have to take your entertainment where you can, I’m absolutely thrilled that Cody Ransom has been called up, one of my favorite names of the spring. I actually actively avoided reading about him in Cliff’s farm report and elsewhere, because I want him to remain, in my mind, just the fastest gun on the cattle ranch. I’m trying not to get too good a look at him on TV, either, since it’ll just spoil the image. Cody Ransom, if it isn’t already, needs to be the name of a tough, reluctantly violent man of few words with a mysterious past who brings harsh justice to a wild border town in an old school western. Or I can see "Cody Ransom" as a full-on John Wayne* in Rio Bravo type; Don Zimmer would be the old coot sidekick – the Walter Brenner role – and Sidney Ponson can play the once-great drunkard pal. "A game-legged old man and a drunk," the Kansas City pitcher will say, "That’s all you got?" And Cody Ransom will stare him down and reply, "That’s WHAT I got."

…What? We’ve gotta make our own fun these days.

—
*Wayne has played characters with names including, but not limited to, John T. Chance, Chance Buckman, Rooster Cogburn, Lon McQ, George Washington McClintock, Cord McNally, Taw Jackson, Cole Thornton, Matt Masters, Ranger Captain Jake Cutters, Nathan Cutting Brittles, Joe January, Quirt Evans, Rusty Thomas, Rusty Ryan, Wedge Donovan, Duke Fergus, Duke Hudkins, and Stony Brooke. Has any actor ever had a better body or character names? I don’t think so.

Over at SI.com, John Rolfe revists a world without the Yankees in the post-season.  I consider the possibility of a silent October in the Bronx at The Hardball Times.

With the season on the brink of extinction and with one eye focused on next spring, there’s a lot of ground to cover in Yankeeland. What’s wrong with Robinson Cano? What’s right with Xavier Nady? And why do the Yankees have the most fragile young pitchers? Here’s a smattering of opinions coming from Cooperstown:

*Robinson Cano might not be the biggest individual disappointment in major league baseball this year, but he has to rank among the top five failures. On Wednesday afternoon, he hit rock bottom. Cano went hitless at the plate and committed three mental mistakes in the field as the Yankees fell to the Twins, 4-2, to close out a miserable 3-and-7 road trip. Without those mistakes, the outcome of the road trip finale could have been different.

The Yankees envisioned Cano having a breakout season in 2008, hitting .315-plus with power and playing Gold Glove defense at second base. Instead, they’ve watched Cano sink to his lowest major league levels, as he struggles to hit .265, shows no additional patience at the plate, and waltzes around the infield, playing the position without passion or hustle. The regression is so stunning that I have to believe Cano misses the influence of Larry Bowa, the Yankees’ former third base and infield coach. Bowa, with his relentlessly aggressive style, had a way of lighting a fuse under Cano; without Bowa, Cano plays too often as if he is sleepwalking.

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I got off work and headed downtown yesterday evening just as it started to pour.  By the time I reached Union Square, the stairwell leading the street was crammed with people.  Some were just waiting for the rain to let up, others were soaking wet.  At the top of the stairs an African woman chanted, "Umbrella, umbrella, umbrella."  I smiled at her and said, "How’s business?"  She titled her head at me, paused and then went back to her mantra. 

I braved the elements until I got to Fourth avenue and 12th street, where I stopped underneath an overhang, where several people were huddled.  I sat and watched the traffic pass.  It’s funny, the rain.  Some people are completely unfazed by it.  Others will wait it out cause they can’t stand getting wet.  A kid in his early twenties passed me, no umbrella, drenched, his t-shirt sticking to his long torso.  I remembered being in my early twenties seeing this kid and I smiled at his carefree manner as he strutted by.

Then a familiar face passed.  As I thought about who it was, I said, "J?"  The dude stopped and sure enough it was J-Live, the MC and record producer.  Back in the summer of ’01, the year before I started Bronx Banter, I conducted a long interview with J in the basement of The Sound Library, an upscale record shop, when it used to be on Avenue A.  This was just after J’s second full-length album, All of the Above was released.  Although it took some time to pin him down once we spoke, J was insightful and a thoroughly decent guy.

I’ve drifted from the music scene in recent years though I did hear that J put out a new record earlier this summer.  I congradulated him on the new joint (which I haven’t heard yet), told him what I’m up to, and then let him go.  If it hadn’t been raining, I would have never run into him.

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Fat and Skinny works in comedy partnerships: Laurel and Hardy, Abbott and Costello, Siskel and Ebert. The Yankees didn’t get the memo when they hired Charlie Steiner to work with John Sterling–it was like Hardy and Hardy.

Mike and the Mad Dog have been the most successful fat and skinny radio duo in sports radio history and now, a few weeks shy of their 19th anniversary at WFAN, they are splitting up. Mike will stay at the FAN. Russo is reportedly going to Sirus.

Like them or not–I found them entertaining in measured doses–they were an institution in New York sports coverage and this is certainly the end of an era.

Here is one of the best Russo rants of them all:

The FAN won’t be the same without the Angry Puppy.

"Bill Heinz is a walking contradiction of the stereotype of the phlegmatic Teuton. He is emotional and demonstrative. He can sink into depressions so deep they would give a sandhog the bends. His highs are several stories high. As cityside reporter, war correspondent, sports columnist, freelance journalist, and novelist, he was and is a dedicated craftsman and a penetrating observer who never gives half measure.

‘Bill,’ his doctor once told him, ‘if you don’t stop trying to be the greatest writer in the world, you’re going to kill yourself.’

‘I’m not trying to be the greatest writer in the world,’ Bill said, ‘I’m only trying to be the best writer I can be.’"

Red Smith, from the Introduction to Heinz’s collection, American Mirror.

W.C. Heinz, one of the finest journalists this country has ever produced, died earlier this year. A few months ago, a tribute was held in Vermont in his honor, and Adam White wrote a fine piece on the event for the Bennington Banner. In it, he quotes Bob Matteson, who was the editor-in-chief of the Middlebury College newspaper when Heinz was sports editor in 1936-37.

"He could spot make-believe – or phoniness – right away in a person," Matteson said. "And he wanted no part of it."

White continues:

Therein would seem to lie the key to Bill Heinz’s writing, his true method for distilling parable from the mundane. There is a sort of universal admission among those who were close to Heinz that he could be averse to, even dismissive of, certain people and personality types – but there is equally compelling evidence that such an attitude stemmed from his heightened sense of intuition regarding truth. Without such intuition, it is unlikely that he could have even recognized – let alone captured – the majesty and romance that pervades so much of his work.

"The secret is love," (Jeff) MacGregor said. "It’s his empathy, [though] not for individuals; I don’t know that [Heinz] even liked people. His genius was his empathy for the situation that we all share, that common cause of human enterprise. The truth that [Heinz] wrote about is the struggle that we all face, every day, when we get out of bed – and how good a fight we put up before the end of the day."

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In the New York Sun, Tim Marchman wonders if next year’s Yankees won’t look an awful lot like this year’s edition.

Is there anything more New York than the sight of kicks hanging from a wire?

In a conversation with our Banter host Alex Belth over the weekend, I said, “I haven’t seen it written anywhere, but how good does Ian Kennedy, Phil Hughes and Melky Cabrera for Johan Santana look right about now?”  Alex’s response (and I paraphrase): “Dude, don’t even say that. Oh, man.”

Well, I’ve seen it written somewhere, but I had to do some searching. My fellow Ithaca College alum, Andrew Marchand of 1050 ESPN Radio had a similar nugget in his Tuesday blog post. He did not tap my phone.

If the Yankees don’t make the playoffs, Kennedy could be the most to blame. He is one of the guys whom the Yankees decided to keep instead of getting Johan Santana.

If the Yankees had dealt Kennedy and Phil Hughes to Minnesota then Santana would likely be a Yankee. Instead Kennedy’s teammates are raising their eyebrows over his words and lack of success. He is 0-4 with an 8.17 ERA.

Kennedy’s lack of development, along with Phil Hughes’ incomplete for this year, is going to make CC Sabathia richer.

Kennedy’s post-game comments after Friday’s debacle in Disneyland led the Yankees to send him to Scranton on Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride for the third time this year.

_______________________________________

The Yankees are off today. Perhaps they will rest as they prepare for the short weekend series with the Kansas City Royals. Perhaps they will reflect on a dismal 3-7 road trip that has them in danger of missing the playoffs for the first time in the post-strike, Wild-Card era.

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The Yanks lost again yesterday, finally ending what Pete Abraham aptly called their 3-7 "stumble across America."  It was more of the same–no hitting, and poor, sloppy fielding.  Hard to tell where the Yankees’ heads are at.  Sure ain’t in the game. The final was 4-2.

Back up the bugle folks.  This team looks out of life.

D. Rasner is back on the hill this afternoon out in Minnie as the Yanks go for the series win. Pete Abe’s got the line-ups.

Last night was exhausting. Let’s hope for better things this afternoon.

Bombs Away!

Alex Rodriguez is having another fine season, but his lack of production with runners in scoring position has been a glaring weakness (a couple of days ago, SG had an informative post on Yankee clutch-hitting). For his career, Rodriguez is .302/.403/.553 with runners in scoring position. Still, over at Dugout Central, John Paciorek has some thoughts as to how Rodriguez can be even better:

Let’s compare Rodriguez to Barry Bonds and [Albert] Pujols and see if we can figure out what’s going on.

Rodriguez does something that the other two don’t (or potentially in the case of Bonds “didn’t”) – and the result is that he has a larger margin for error. This error margin is what holds him back from being even better.

When Bonds bats, his front foot hardly lifts off the ground. It moves just slightly forward while Bonds keeps his head and eyes perfectly still and maintains a low center of gravity. Pujols only lifts the heel of his front foot, while staying balanced and low. One result is maximized visual acuity. Another is the ability to get the front foot properly planted when it’s time to attack the ball with the synergistic forces of the legs, hips, shoulders, arms and hands. Very seldom can a pitcher catch either Bonds or Pujols off balance enough to disrupt their swing.

Rodriguez is different. His stance begins balanced, low and stable. But as the pitcher releases the ball, Rodriguez starts an obtrusive attack with what I’m sure he thinks is a precise timing mechanism to generate a power surge. It isn’t and it doesn’t. What happens is that Rodriguez lifts his front foot high off the ground while he waits in suspended animation to detect the speed, direction and nuances of the pitch before he abruptly lunges forward and down to plant the foot so as to begin the swing. If the plant is too early, he’s out in front of the pitch and loses much of his power. If he is late with the plant, the fast ball is by him.

There wasn’t anybody on last night in the 12th inning when Rodriguez hit the go-ahead homer. No matter, it was a much-needed shot in the arm for both the team and Rodriguez, especially on a night when Mariano Rivera blew his first save of the year and Hank Steinbrenner all but conceeded the season.

Jonah Keri reminds us of a painful moment in baseball history.  (Thanks to Repoz for the link.) How about a pouring vinegar on a paper cut while you are it, bro? 

Ah, late summer, ’94.  I had just been kicked out of my dad’s apartment–or was just about to be kicked-out–and my one-year stint as a waiter was about to begin.  I had spent the first six months of the year working on Ken Burns’ "Baseball" series (my first post-college job) which was the only thing about baseball that kept me going that summer–that, and oh yeah, a pretty swell season by our New York Yankees.  

It was a drag for Yankee fans, yet the start of beautiful things to come.  The Expos on the other hand…the vinegar still stings… 

As our friends round the way have noted, the Ship be Sinkin.  Meanwhile, Steven Goldman, writing in the New York Sun, has more:

This might have been a championship-level lineup a few years ago, when Jeter still had his speed, Abreu and Ivan Rodriguez were still .300 hitters with power, and Sexson could be counted on for 30 to 40 home runs a year. Now it represents only the compromises that injuries and a lack of vital youth can force on a team. Worse, it’s not even the best lineup the Yankees can play.

The lineup represents Girardi’s worst quality. An affable and intelligent manager, Girardi can be headstrong in his choices, sticking to his guns in the face of evidence that his tactics aren’t working. This can be seen clearly in his decision to push Damaso Marte into a second inning of work twice in one week, resulting in losses both times. That’s just two games. His wrongheaded embrace of platooning provides a more protracted example of a decision that hasn’t paid off. For all his machinations, the Yankees remain a game under .500 when a left-hander starts against them.

Feelin’ blue, Yankee fans?  We could be in a rage, but that’s exhausting, and anyway, we can save our Fists of Fury for game time.  For the moment, I’m resigned to what is, and this beautiful song by the Kinks sums up my mood perfectly:

Tyler Kepner has a nice piece on tonight’s starter, Mike Mussina, today in the Times:

The question now is what Mussina will do next season. He said he would wait until November to decide if he wanted to keep pitching, if he had the patience to deal with the struggles that might come up. Not knowing the answer, he said, is one reason he is having more fun than ever.

“Before, there was always some future in front of you,” Mussina said. “At 39, I don’t know what it’s going to be. It’s like being a senior in high school. You enjoy it because you don’t know what the next year’s going to bring.”

Mussina is 22-6 lifetime against the Twins. With the Yanks desperate for a win, they’ll need another strong outing from Moose tonight.

The pressure is on the Yankees and it shows.  Our boys are cracking.  They are flat, they are pressing.  Pick any cliche you like.  Most any one will fit.

Against Glen Perkins, a soft-tossing left-hander (okay, he can throw 92-93, still, he’s not throwing cheese), they were hacktastic, seemingly without an offensive game-plan.  As John Flaherty mentioned time and again on the YES broadcast, the Yankee hitters looked frustrated as they swung early and often, putting themselves in the hole, before Perkins put them away.  The Yankee hitters just missed a host of pitches–Nady, Sexson, Cano…Pudge Rodriguez had at least three good hacks at fat pitches that he couldn’t put in play.  Perkins threw eight shut out innings; while stuff is not overly impressive, he worked quickly and threw strikes.  Joe Nathan struck out the side in the ninth.

The Yankees had four cruddy hits as they lost 4-0.

The closest thing they had to a rally came in the second when Cano singled to start the inning and then advanced to third on a wild throw by Perkins.  Sexson walked but Pudge Rodriguez popped out and couldn’t bring the run home.  Melky Cabrera swung at the first pitch he saw and bounced into a 6-4-3 double play. 

The futile offensive showing stings even more when you consider that Sidney Ponson actually threw a nice game.  He gave up a two-out walk in the second and then a two-run homer to Adam Everett.  The Twins manufactored another run in the sixth (double, sacrifice bunt, sacrifice fly), and then hustled another one across the plate in the eighth.  Otherwise, Ponson worked quickly and efficiently.

Joe Girardi’s decision to sit Johnny Damon in favor of Justin Christian (0-4), a move that was openly questioned by the Yankee broadcast team of Flaherty and Michael Kay, will be fodder for blogs, tabloids and talk radio tomorrow.  "It’s getting hard to explain what’s going on," said Kay when it was all over.

Honestly, there is plenty to be vexed about if your team is the Yanks.

At least it was brisk.  The game took two hours and fourteen minutes to complete.  I can’t tell if that’s a good thing or just something else to be furious about.