It was pouring rain late Sunday morning down in Baltimore. It was so bad, Michael Kay later said on the YES broadcast, the Yankee players were sure that the game would be called. But they played ball after all and while the rain delayed the game in the late innings, the Yankees came away with a sorely needed win, beating the O’s, 7-1. Our boys are now 10-10.

The Yanks do not have an ace. Earlier this week, Howard Megdal, writing in the New York Observer, said that Josh Beckett, who is a true ace, is the difference between the Yanks and Sox. The Yanks didn’t have anyone that could match Curt Schilling for more than a minute before that. But I was confident that Andy Pettitte would go out and throw a good game today because he’s got a history of being reliable when the team needs to stop a losing skid. And just like an ace, that is exactly what he did. The Orioles didn’t have their first base runner until Jay Payton’s two-out infield dribbler in the fifth. Pettitte pitched seven shut-out innings, allowing four hits, striking out five and walking none. It gave me a peaceful, easy feeling to watch (speaking of which, Adam Jones is a pleasure to watch man centerfield for the Orioles).

Chad Moeller and Johnny Damon had a couple of hits, and so did Derek Jeter, including a three run double in the ninth inning that put the game away. Robinson Cano picked up a single and hit the ball hard in two other times with nothing to show for it. Jason Giambi wasn’t as fortunate, as he hit into a inning-ending double play with the bases juiced and went hitless dropping his average to .109. Alex Rodriguez picked up an RBI double but left the game early with a sore quad.

It wasn’t a dramatic-looking injury and hopefully it is not severe. Just a pull as Rodriguez ran up the line to first base. But dag, it’s hard not to hold your breath with Rodriguez. The guy has enjoyed such good fortune as far as his health his concerned so far in his career. Who knows how long a guy’s body will hold out before it starts breaking down? Could happen at any time really. Look at Junior, of course, but also, look at Chipper Jones. Dick Allen had monster years at 30 and 31 and was done by the time he was 35.

He could miss a few games.

In the meantime, the Yanks have a much needed day off before the road trip continues.

You can’t win if you don’t score. Last night the Yankees got ten men on base, but couldn’t push any of them across against the underwhelming duo of lefty Brian Burres and righty Jim Johnson. The Yanks have scored just two runs in two games in Baltimore, but the story last night was the failure of rookie starter Ian Kennedy to get out of the third inning.

Kennedy got into trouble right away, but was rescued from his first-inning jam when Melky Cabrera ranged deep into the left field gap to snag a deep drive for the third out with the bases loaded. (Likely encouraged by that catch Melky later misplayed two long drives which ricocheted off the wall and back over his head.) A nifty pickoff play at second base allowed Kennedy to escape a second inning jam with just one run allowed. In the third, he wasn’t so lucky.

After striking out Nick Markakis, Kennedy hung a slider to Kevin Millar, who deposited it in the left field seats to make the score 2-0. Kennedy then walked the next two men, his fourth and fifth walks of the game. That drew his manager out of the dugout, not for a pitching change, but for a stern lecture about the need to throw strikes. Kennedy’s first pitch to the next batter was a ball, but he proceeded to strike him out on three more pitches. He then fell behind the next hitter 3-0 before surrendering a two-run double. With that, Joe Girardi had seen enough.

Still fuming over Kennedy’s nibbling, Girardi gave a very aggressive post-game press conference. Some of the highlights:

“It’s hard to pitch the way he’s pitching. You have to attack the zone. Five walks in 17 hitters? You can’t pitch that way. You have to attack the zone and throw strikes. . . . You make all hitters better when you’re behind them. You just can’t pitch that way. To me, it looks like he’s not aggressive enough.”

“You have to find out what people are made of, and he has to make adjustments. He’s gotta fight his way out of it. I’m planning on him being out there his next start. He’s just missing. He understands. It’s a minor adjustment that he has to make for us, and he’ll do it.”

“I never lose patience. This game is hard. It was hard for me. It’s hard for all players. I’m never going to lose patience.”

Kim Jones: “Joe, you say you don’t lose patience, but it is obvious this is testing you.”
Girardi, angrily: “No. It isn’t testing me. I hate losing. That tests me. But I believe in my people, and you continue to encourage them, and you work with them, and they get better.

When asked about both Burres and the Orioles he mentioned specifically the things they did that his team isn’t right now, though he didn’t make the comparison explicit: “They’re playing good fundamental baseball. They’re throwing strikes. They’re getting hits with runners in scoring position. They’re not making errors [Robinson Cano made the game’s only error last night]. They’re not walking people.”

During the YES broadcast, Michael Kay, who has been covering the Yankees since 1987, spanning the terms of 8 Yankee managers, said the only Yankee manager he’s seen take losing as hard as Girardi was Billy Martin.

On the up side, Ross Ohlendorf saved the bullpen once again with three-plus innings of scoreless relief (though he was charged with two runs when Billy Traber plated both of his bequeathed baserunners in the seventh setting the final at 6-0 Orioles). Joba Chamberlain returned from Nebraska with good news about his father’s continuing recovery from what he described as “some respiratory stuff” and shook off the rust by striking out two in a scoreless inning. Jose Molina also returned to action. He went 0-for-3 and failed to catch the only man who attempted to steal against him, but if Molina can catch and Posada, who played first base, is almost ready, the Yanks should be able to farm out Chad Moeller and bring back Shelley Duncan, who has hit .342/.468/.816 with four homers in ten games since being optioned down to Scranton. Of course, the Yankee roster hijinx will continue with the Rodriguez family still expecting a new arrival and Kyle Farnsworth facing a suspension for throwing behind Manny Ramirez, but with an off day finally arriving on Monday and the weather heating up, things are starting to return to normal.

Exactly one year ago, Emily and I got married together in the Bahamas. After the ceremony, right when I had her on the five yard line, Alex Rodriguez hit a game-winning grand slam at Yankee Stadium. Today, another gorgeous spring affair in New York, we are headed off to a hotel in Manhattan to celebrate our first anniversary, so we’ll miss the game, though I’m certain there will be plenty of scoring. I know it’s too much to ask Rodriguez to perform those kind of heroics again, but a good, old-fashioned “W” would do just fine.

Let’s Go Yan-Kees!

Curses! Foiled again. Phil Hughes had it going on for a minute there and then by the middle of the game it all fell apart for him and the Yanks–hits, errors (I’m looking at you, Mr. Rodriguez), walks and more hits, and the O’s busted this one open like a split melon rotting in the sun. They scored seven runs in the seventh, and ruined a perfectly tolerable game. Still, I watched the entire thing. It was long, it was ugly, it was Baltimore, but fortunately, it was just one game. O’s 8, Yanks 2. Today is a new day.

Baltimore Orioles

2007 Record: 69-93 (.426)
2007 Pythagorean Record: 70-92 (.431)

Manager: Dave Trembley
General Manager: Andy MacPhail

Home Ballpark (multi-year Park Factors): Oriole Park at Camden Yards (101/102)

Who’s Replacing Whom:

Luis Hernandez inherits Miguel Tejada’s playing time
Adam Jones replaces Corey Patterson
Luke Scott replaces Jay Gibbons and some of Jay Payton’s playing time
Brandon Fahey inherits Chris Gomez’s playing time
Guillermo Quiroz replaces Paul Bako
Adam Loewen returns from the DL to replace Erik Bedard
Brian Burres takes over the starts of Garrett Olson, Jon Leicester, and Radhames Liz
George Sherrill replaces Chris Ray (DL)
Dennis Sarfate replaces Danys Baez (DL)
Greg Aquino replaces John Parrish
Matt Albers replaces Rob Bell
Randor Bierd replaces Kurt Burkins
Jim Jones replaces Paul Shuey

25-man Roster:

1B – Kevin Millar (R)
2B – Brian Roberts (S)
SS – Luis Hernandez (S)
3B – Melvin Mora (R)
C – Ramon Hernandez (R)
RF – Nick Markakis (L)
CF – Adam Jones (R)
LF – Luke Scott (L)
DH – Aubrey Huff (L)

Bench:

R – Jay Payton (OF)
L – Brandon Fahey (UT)
R – Guillermo Quiroz (C)

Rotation:

R – Jeremy Guthrie
R – Daniel Cabrera
L – Brian Burres
R – Steve Trachsel
L – Adam Loewen

Bullpen:

L – George Sherrill
L – Jamie Walker
R – Chad Bradford
R – Greg Aquino
R – Dennis Sarfate
R – Randor Bierd
R – Matt Albers
R – Jim Johnson

15-day DL: R – Chris Ray, R- Danys Baez, R – Fernando Cabrera, L – Troy Patton, R – Jim Hoey, R – Rocky Cherry, L – Freddie Bynum (UT)

Typical Lineup:

S – Brian Roberts (2B)
R – Melvin Mora (3B)
L – Nick Markakis (RF)
R – Kevin Millar (1B)
L – Aubrey Huff (DH)
L – Luke Scott (LF)
R – Ramon Hernandez (C)
R – Adam Jones (CF)
S – Luis Hernandez (SS)

(more…)

What do Don Baylor, Ron Blomberg, Jack Clark, Chili Davis, Jim Ray Hart, Glenallen Hill, Cliff Johnson, Kevin Maas, Ken Phelps, and Danny Tartabull have in common? Aside from being retired major league sluggers, they all spent significant parts of their tenures as Yankees playing the role of the DH. In many ways, it’s easy to forget about them, since some of them passed through the Bronx quickly and quietly, while others were well past their prime by the time they joined the Yankees. Besides, how many designated hitters become beloved figures? If you’re asked to name your favorite Yankee catcher of all time, Thurman Munson and Jorge Posada are names that might come immediately to mind. But who’s your favorite Yankee DH? That one is a little tougher to answer.

It seems that with each year we hear more and more disdain for the DH. Some fans don’t like it, because it destroys the symmetry of a game where every player is supposed to bat and play the field. Purists hate it, since it runs contrary to the idea of "nine men on a side." And plenty of owners and general managers don’t like it, because the DH invariably ends up making one of the largest salaries on the team.

It’s now been 30 years since the designated hitter rule first came into play in the American League, but the idea for a DH has origins that date back nearly 80 years. In 1929, a man named John Heydler proposed that pitchers, who carried reputations as weaker hitters, should not be allowed to bat. Although he actually never used the term "designated hitter," Heydler suggested that a "10^th man" be allowed to hit in place of the pitcher. Ironically, Heydler was the president of the National League, which historically has maintained staunch opposition to the DH, and remains the only professional league in North America not to employ the rule.

Heydler’s suggestion failed to gain acceptance during his lifetime, and the issue of the DH fell into the background. In the 1960s, at a time when pitchers were beginning to dominate the game, Kansas City A’s owner Charlie Finley pushed hard for the adoption of a designated hitter, a rule that he felt would increase the amount of "action" in the game by aiding each team’s offensive production.

At first, the other major league owners resisted Finley, whom they considered a brash and unsophisticated maverick. By January of 1973, a sufficient number of major league owners had come to see the potential benefits of the DH. The American League, which had seen its attendance decline in recent years, saw a particular need for the fan interest that the DH might spur. On January 11, the owners agreed to allow the American League to use the DH on an "experimental" three-year basis.

(more…)

Before yesterday’s game, Pete Abe posted the following tidbit:

Manny Being Manny is an insane 52 of 110 (.473) against the Yankees since the start of the 2006 season with 12 homers and 35 RBI in 32 games. He has 53 homers and 153 RBI against the Yankees in his career.

I asked Mike Mussina last week what the Yankees have done to try and stop this. “Everything,” he said. “Nothing works.”

You don’t say. Last night, Mussina didn’t feel “right” from the get go. According to the Daily News:

“I didn’t feel very good in the pen,” Mussina said of his pregame warmups. “I didn’t warm up very well. I got to the mound and the first guy (Jacoby Ellsbury) I got him 1-and-2, I think, and then I hit him. I squared him up and it’s 1-2. I mean, at that point I was still trying to figure out what was going to happen but as soon I did that I immediately knew it was going to be a real hard effort.”

Manny Ramirez popped two dingers off Mussina and Josh Beckett pitched eight innings as the Sox beat the Yanks, 7-5. New York scored two runs in the ninth against Jonathan Paplebon but still came up well short. The biggest excitement of the evening came when Kyle Farnsworth threw a pitch behind Manny’s back. Both teams were immediately warned and nothing more came of it, at least for the time being.

This, from Anthony McCarron:

“Well, you know, we hit one of their best players (Wednesday) night and I guess they wanted to send a message,” Ramirez said, referring to Alex Rodriguez getting one in the back. “They need to back up their players and they did.”

Asked if he was upset, Ramirez said, “Not really. I like to compete. I like that challenge. It’s part of the competition.”

Right now, between Manny and the Yanks, there is no competition.

Today was the first great warm spring day of the year. It was downright hot in the sun. Dude, there was a lot of giggling out there if you know what I saying. It was just great. Beautiful night for baseball. Best of the season so far. Let’s hope we get good Moose and not stewed Moose. And hope that Beckett isn’t killin’ it like he’s wont ta do. Irregardless, as they say in the Bronx, let’s hope they can get this in at a running time something this side of Shoah.

Let’s Go Yan-Kees!

From “The Crowd Sounds Happy” (due out May 6th)

By Nicholas Dawidoff

I acquired a clock radio of my own. It was a Realistic Chronomatic 9 model, low-built and squared-off at the corners like a shoe box, with a faux-oak plastic cabinet, chrome and clear-plastic control dials, and rounded hour and minute hands that in the dark were backlit a dim lunar orange. These features had aspirations toward sleekness, but only a few months of ownership made clear that my radio was drab in the way the design ideas dominating mainstream consumer electronics in the mid-1970s were all drab. It was a look that was somehow between looks, one in which everything resembled everything else and nothing so much as the dashboard on the clumsy, rowboat-like LTD station wagons Ford was then producing. But if I stared at my Chronomatic 9 long enough, in the right mood it could seem, if not beautiful, almost handsome. My attachment to what came out of the clock radio quickly grew so intense I wanted an appearance to match.

What I was listening to in my room were Boston Red Sox baseball games. I hadn’t been able to get the Boston games on my old transistor, and to discover now that reception was possible on the Chronomatic 9 was joy. By game time I would have spread my homework along my bed, distributing the books and papers lengthwise, so that when I positioned myself on the floor, knees to the rug, chest pressed against the edge of the mattress, head bent over my books, to Sally and my mother passing behind me, it must have looked as though I was supplicating myself to physics and Lord Jim. The radio was to my left, on the night table, and, as I worked, the team broadcaster, Ned Martin, said, “Welcome to Fenway Park in Boston,” and right then a part of me zoomed down the I-91 highway entrance ramp and lifted out of New Haven. Martin and his commentating partner would discuss the game to come, building the anticipation until Martin cried, “Here come the Red Sox!” As he introduced the players position by position—”Jim Rice left field, Fred Lynn center field”—it was like having the cast of characters read aloud to you from the beginning of a Russian novel. All quieted as the crowd rose to listen while an organist played the National Anthem, and I stood too, put my hand to my heart, and with no flag in the room to gaze upon, instead stared fixedly at a red, white, and blue book spine on my shelf for the duration of the song. My mother began to come in and watch me standing there in still, patriotic tribute. At first I wished she would just leave me alone, but over time I began to like her observance of my observance, and when the door didn’t open, I’d reach toward the radio and raise the volume to let her know she was missing the Anthem.

Early in the game, sometimes the reception would be erratic, clogged with static, and I’d have to jiggle the tuning knob, making such minute adjustments my hand trembled. It often helped if I stood near the radio in a certain position, invariably contorted, with one arm akimbo, another limb up in the air, a palm hovering inches over the speaker, trying to maintain position, barely breathing, as the sputtering details came out of the Chronomatic 9. Then the evening progressed, and the connection grew pure. Some nights when the Red Sox weren’t playing, around the fifth inning, I could even begin to pick up broadcasts from Philadelphia or Baltimore or Pittsburgh. That had the appeal of combining the pleasures of baseball with the exploring of distant, unknown places. Between the Red Sox and me it was about something more.

(more…)

Albert Chen visited Taiwan in the off-season and now presents this interesting profile of Chien-Ming Wang in the latest issue of Sports Illustrated:

Other than for the rare public appearance, trips to the gym are pretty much the only times that he leaves his apartment in Tainan, his off-season home. Some 7,800 miles from New York City, in his native country — where his famously stoic face gazes from billboards, ATMs, credit cards, cellphones, bags of potato chips, milk cartons; where the people call him, simply, Taiwan zhiguang (the pride and glory of Taiwan) — Chien-Ming Wang is everywhere and nowhere, a hero and a prisoner. For an intensely private, excruciatingly shy 28-year-old, being a national icon is a heavy burden. “It’s crazy,” he says in his slow and soft voice. “I think, This is strange. I’m just one man.”

Wang had little control last night in his worst outing of the young season. Still, don’t play yourself, Chen’s piece is worth checking out.

Chien-Ming Wang had his first bad start of the year last night, and Clay Buchholz had the first bad start of his major league career. Ross Ohlendorf and Julian Tavarez didn’t help out much in relief. LaTroy Hawkins (wearing number 22), Billy Traber (who got David Ortiz to pop up on one pitch), and Brian Bruney managed to lock things down for the home team starting in the sixth. As for the visitors, after a couple of decent innings from David Aardsma, Mike Timlin opened the spigot again in the eighth. The result was a nine-inning game that lasted four hours and eight minutes and saw 42 men reach base and 341 pitches thrown. After all of that, the Yankees emerged with a 15-9 win that put them two games over .500 for the first time on the season and evened their season series with the Sox.

As Kevin Youkilis popped out to shallow left to end the top of the eighth, I rolled over on my remote, accidentally hitting the pause button on my DVR and freezing a long shot of Hideki Matsui in the large, empty pasture staring up at the darkness, waiting for a ball that wouldn’t come down. That pretty much sums up my feelings on last night’s game. I’ll take the win. I just wish I didn’t have to watch it.

Unlike the Rays, the Red Sox haven’t changed a lick since the Yanks last saw them. Of course that was just two days ago in Boston. Both the Yanks and Sox swept two-game series on the road to start the week (the Sox doing so in Cleveland while the Yanks were in Tampa). The two rivals reconvene in the Bronx tonight with a rematch of the last series opener that saw Chien-Ming Wang outpitch and outlast Clay Buchholz as the Yanks won 4-1 behind Wang’s two-hitter.

The Yankee offense has averaged 5.17 runs over it’s last six games, but averaged just four per game in Boston. The last time through the rotation they allowed 4.6 runs per game. The Red Sox averaged 4.3 runs per game against the Yanks over the weekend and allowed 3.8 runs per game the last time through their rotation.

Joe Girardi posts his 16th unique lineup in 16 games tonight with Chad Moeller still catching and Jorge Posada back at DH at the expense of Johnny Damon, who yields left field to Hideki Matsui. Melky Cabrera leads off. Posada hits sixth between lefties Matsui and Jason Giambi.

(more…)

I am reading and thoroughly enjoying Nicholas Dawidoff’s new memoir “The Crowd Sounds Happy: A Story of Love, Madness and Baseball” (due out on May 6th). It is the first thing I’ve ever read by Dawidoff though I’m well familiar with his name. One of the first gifts my wife ever gave me was a book that Dawidoff edited–Baseball: A Literary Anthology, a fine collection. I’ve also long heard good things about his celebrated Moe Berg biography. Dawidoff, who began his career writing for Sports Illustrated (here is a brief sampler–pieces on Andy MacPhail, Sandy Amoros and Berg), has written several other books, including a memoir about his grandfather, a Harvard professor.

His new book is ostensibly about growing up as a Red Sox fan, but it’s not really a baseball book at all. It is about Dawidoff’s childhood, growing up in New Haven with his mother, a school teacher, and his sister. And it is about his father, who was mentally ill. There is so much in the book that resonates with me. Dawidoff, who is about eight years older than me, had a beloved aunt who lived in Croton, a New York suburb, the town my mother moved to when she and my father split up. I went to junior high and high school in Croton and my brother, sister and I would visit our father in Manhattan on the weekends. Pop lived on the Upper West Side. My grandparents’ apartment was on 81st street between Central Park West and Columbus Avenue, not far from where Dawidoff’s father lived (I actually took a handful of guitar lessons when I was in high school from Peter Tork who lived on the same block as Dawidoff’s pop). While my old man was not mentally ill, his alcoholism made him unpredictable, and at times, terrifying.

I can see myself in Dawidoff, a bright, careful, somewhat effete kid who constantly played sports, who was devoted to his team and who worked very hard at fitting in. His was a house without a TV, so Dawidoff was raised on Ned Martin and Red Sox radio. The descriptions of what the team and players meant to him, the order and companionship they gave him in a fatherless upbringing are wonderful. The book is permeated by sadness and yet it is hopeful too.

Dawidoff writes honestly and with empathy and is a true craftsman. For instance, check out this description of going to visit his father’s office in midtown:

If we were in New York on weekdays, my father might take us to the office. How transporting it was to be in the middle of everything in the center of Manhattan, moving alongside the early crowds going to work with my father. From the sidewalk outside my father’s building I saw the men in business suits surging uphill from Forty second Street, many of them carrying a folded-over newspaper and a briefcase as they went ducking into Chock full o’Nuts, emerging a minute or two later with a steaming paper cut in hand. They were all in a hurry. There was a delicatessen across the street, and at lunchtime through the window I could see them rushing in, yelling out their sandwich orders, and rushing out. It seemed to me that in these rhythms of the masculine professional day, I was watching how my father lived without me around.

My father worked on the eighth floor. Bolted to the wall in the corridor beside the entrance door to the suite were engraved and burnished nameplates for each of the lawyers in the firm. There was not a nameplate for my father. Inside were the firm’s lawyers with their suit jackets off and ties loosened, clients waiting to see the lawyers, a secretary, and the braying visitors paying calls to the other room that the firm rented out in the suite—a succession of enormously obese men rushing in and out from consultations with the tenant who turned out to be the parking garage tycoon Abe Hirshfield, a man so wealthy he could have bought an entire office building for himself.

My father was tucked in the back of the suite, near the emergency exit and across from a wall lined with shelves holding leather bound legal casebooks. He had a heavy desk, an extra chair, and one window with no screen that in summer was kept open a crack so that you could hear the M-1 Madison Avenue bus exhaling into second as it rumbled slowly uptown, could smell the city, which in those months had a pleasantly rank bouquet like the one that enveloped a kitchen when someone ran hot sink water into a pot after overcooking a meaty stew. Once the M-1 had crossed Forty-second Street, aside from the soft toots of horns and the anguish of a distant siren, it was quiet in my father’s office. The olive green rotary dial telephone seldom rang unless it was my grandmother checking in on us, and nobody came inside, though once in a while, if we’d closed the door, I’d open it to encounter a lawyer consulting a casebook. Those lawyers would seem startled to see me, and it would take a second before they said, “Well hi there, young feller.”

I love the clear and exacting image of the “rank bouquet” smell of New York in the summer, how he goes back-and-forth between long sentences and shorter ones. Dig this, from an on-line interview with Dawidoff:

I think the thing is, that part of the fun of writing books is experimenting with language. Although I don’t think anyone would call me a pyrotechnic writer. I try and put a lot in each sentence and spend a lot of time with each sentence. I want each sentence to sound like me. My grandfather’s hatred of cliches is definitely my hatred of cliches. I really like to play with language. I really like to see what language can do, and I like to be precise. I really want words to be active and be somehow the spirit of language to represent the spirit of the subject. That’s not in any way unique to me, but it’s something I think a lot about and I sweat a lot over. Each sentence I write, it seems to me I write more slowly. This is not because I am trying to be more complex. I see more and more potential for language. Maybe as you husband and compress all the potential into whatever you are going to make it just takes longer.

Any fan of good writing will appreciate this book. You don’t have to love baseball or even the Red Sox to admire it. But for Sox fans of a certain age it will be especially poignant.

So remember when, last week, I wondered about Jorge Posada and the importance of game calling? “Kyle Farnsworth is probably going to do some Farnsworthing no matter how meticulously you’ve planned your pitch sequence,” I wrote, “and Mariano Rivera could probably strike batters out if he threw to a lump of clay.”

Well, apparently the Yankees took that as a challenge.

In all fairness, sudden catcher Chad Moeller has done a good job so far under difficult circumstances, with a higher-than-expected VOLC (Value Over Lump of Clay). The Yankees scraped some runs together, Andy Pettitte didn’t let the Rays scrape together quite as many, and in the end it was a 5-3 Yanks win.

“Pettitte did a solid job despite not having great stuff”: I feel like I’ve written variations on that sentence about 30 times over the last year or so. Which means it’s probably time for me to adjust my idea of what Andy Pettitte’s stuff actually IS these days, huh? Clearly he can still be plenty effective, but it’s not 1997 anymore (thank god), or even 2005. Anyway, Pettitte had a rough few innings to start the game – allowing seven hits in the first three frames, some blooped and some smashed – but he got through it with only two runs scored, then settled in for the long haul, eventually giving up three runs in seven innings on exactly 100 pitches.

As for the Yankee offense, it wasn’t exactly a banner night – they left the bases loaded three times – but it was enough. Hideki Matsui started the scoring with a solo shot in the second, and in the fourth Bobby Abreu and Alex Rodriguez scored on a groundout and a wild pitch, respectively. (Rays pitcher Edwin Jackson, in his general demeanor on the mound, struck me as a bit of a Nuke LaLoosh “I want to announce my presence with authority!” type, but maybe I’m being unfair). The Yanks tacked on two more the next inning, when Jeter singled Damon home – one of his three hits on the night – and was then driven in by Abreu.

Mariano Rivera got the save with his usual panache, but with Joba Chamberlain still home with his father, Kyle Farnsworth pitched the 8th inning. And you might want to sit down for this: he set the Rays down 1-2-3. In a two-run game. Frankly, I’m paralyzed. Do I make a joke about the apocalypse and Revelations? Quote the old Ghostbusters “cats and dogs living together, mass hysteria!” line? Or should I reveal my suspicion that Farns has been replaced by a remarkably lifelike android/mutant/alien pod creature, which – even if it helps the team – probably ought to be stopped? I don’t know. I was not prepared for this contingency!

Finally, in other news, LaTroy Hawkins – on the advice of Jeter and Rivera – has apparently decided to give up #21. I think most Banter readers will agree that Hawkins did nothing wrong in trying to honor Roberto Clemente, and that booing him for his choice of uniform number was definitely uncalled for… but I have to admit that part of me is a little happy he’s switching. Not the smart, logical part, mind you*. But I do find it oddly touching that fans are still so devoted to O’Neill, even if they choose to express it a dumb, counterproductive sort of way.

*All together now: "What smart, logical part?"

I haven’t mentioned it yet, but I can’t let the seventh anniversary of Jay Jaffe’s seminal baseball blog Futility Infielder pass without comment. Jay was the first person connected with the blog world that I ever met in person. It was right around this time, the spring of 2003. We had lunch at Christine’s, a polish diner on Second avenue just south of 14th street that I frequented often as teenager with my friend Mary Lou, who lived right around the block.

Jay and I have remained friends ever since. We generally go to a couple of games at the Stadium every year, and we watch a handful more together at our respective cribs (Brooklyn, Bronx). Jay is one of the all-time baseball conversationalists. I always come away from our conversations knowing more, curiosities satisfied, others stimulated. And we never fail to have laughs. A spontaneous schtick that we did watching Paul LoDuca late last season has forever altered my ability to take LoDuca seriously ever again. I can’t not laugh at Paulie when I see him, read about him or hear his name.

And more than just that, respect due, cause Jay is strictly OB: Original Blogga. He’s one of a small group of guys, which include Geoff Young, whose Ducksnorts started in 1997, that is still around. And even if he doesn’t blog as frequently as he has in the past, Jay’s writing–particularly the work he does at Baseball Prospectus–is better and more prolific than ever. He’s polished when talking in front of audiences at bookstores, he knows his s*** when talking on the radio. He’s a pro.

Anyhow, I’m happy to call him a pal, and I’m really impressed with how he’s developed and honed his work over the years. And I wanted to say as much.

Now, come on you guys, let’s git ’em!

DISCLAIMER: Yankee Panky will be on vacation for the next two weeks, as the author will be sightseeing in Italy. Maybe a comparison to how the Italian media cover soccer to how our fine professionals cover baseball would be a good column. You can provide your thoughts below.

* * * * *

Nothing injects excitement, drama and absurdity into the New York media like a Yankees-Red Sox series in April. Last weekend’s series in Boston seemed to have snuck up on people — except we ever-observant schedule-hawking fans — whereas in years past the buildup was suffocating.

To me, the tipoff for this was the "Curse" story at the construction site of the New Yankee Stadium, where a worker who happened to be a Red Sox fan buried a David Ortiz jersey in the cement. It’s light-hearted and it’s funny. Yankees COO has said they’ll investigate the worker and potentially prosecute. On what charge? Vandalism? Does that apply?

With all the opportunities to go "Daily Show" or "The Soup" on this particular topic, I was surprised and disappointed that no Jimmy Hoffa jokes were printed anywhere, not even on Deadspin. Maybe it’s me, but I thought that was an easy one. Everyone swung and missed.

To the series coverage … There were the obvious angles of Joe Girardi’s first Yanks-Sox series as a manager, and the comparisons of the rivalry now to when he was embroiled in it as a player. Thankfully, the papers sounded the "Dead Horse Alert" on those stories early. The most striking articles were the commentaries on Girardi’s decision-making and overall demeanor with the media. It was presented as his first major test: How would he react to the intense scrutiny and second-guessing from the Fourth Estate? Newsday’s Ken Davidoff had an innovative take, intertwining Girardi’s Sunday pre-game powwow, in which he chronicled his media colleague’s interrogation of the Yankee manager, with a pining for the past. Davidoff opined that this arena was where Torre shined. Davidoff noted that Torre would have deflected the questions with humor, whereas Girardi visibly became agitated answering the same questions. An interesting read, to be sure. No Maas took a more pointed approach, superimposing a puffy white cloud in Torre’s likeness over Girardi’s right shoulder.

More than any series in recent memory, I noticed a heavy amount of overlap in the coverage. Mainstreamers on the print and TV side, and the non card-carrying observers in cyberspace peppered us with different takes on the same stories. It demonstrates how difficult it is to provide information that you can’t get anywhere else. The key is presentation.

ELSEWHERE…
• Is Joel Sherman angry? Are his comparisons correct in that Phil Hughes and Ian Kennedy are the second coming of Matt DeSalvo and Tyler Clippard? Or Sam Militello? I disagree with his opinion, but his statistical analysis of pitches-to-outs is eye-opening.

• Kim Jones’ quick-burst postgame interviews rarely unearth any information, but in the event they do, it restores faith that the right questions can elicit genuine answers. Following a 4-for-5 effort which included his 521st career home run, Kim Jones asked Alex Rodriguez about any specific adjustments he made during a pre-game batting session with hitting coach Kevin Long. A-Rod openly mentioned shortening his stroke and swinging with less effort; that he was getting ahead of himself and swinging too hard in Boston. It was refreshing to hear something other than "stay back," "stay inside the ball," or "let the pitch dictate the swing."

• I wonder if the Yankees-Red Sox game was earlier and had a more exciting finish — the Yankees coming back to win, perhaps — if that story would have trumped Tiger Woods’ second-place finish at The Masters.

Three of the first six Yankees to come to the plate against Andy Sonnanstine last night hit solo home runs, including one on the second pitch of the game by Johnny Damon (Alex Rodriguez and Morgan Ensberg, who got his second start of the year at first base, hit the other two). When the Yankees bounced Sonnanstine (“Sonny” per the inscription on his glove) in the midst of a four-run fourth inning, it seemed the Bombers would cruise to an easy victory.

Making just his second actual start of the season, Ian Kennedy held the Rays to two runs over six innings (7 H, 2 BB, 4 K) and came back out to start the seventh, but the first batter he faced in that frame, Jason Bartlett, lined a comebacker off Kennedy’s right hip. Kennedy emerged with just a bruise, but was in obvious pain, so with Bartlett on first and the three lefties at the top of the Rays’ order due up, Girardi called on Billy Traber. Traber got Akinori Iwamura to fly out for the first out of the inning, but gave up a two-run homer to Carl Crawford on a 0-1 pitch to make it 7-4 Yankees. Traber then hit Carlos Peña on the hand and was pulled in favor of Brian Bruney, who promptly gave up another two-run homer, this one to B.J. Upton, to make it 7-6, and then Even Longoria’s first major league tater to tie the score.

Facing Al Reyes in the top of the eighth, Girardi pinch-hit for Alberto Gonzalez, who had started at second base in place of the struggling Robinson Cano, with Robinson Cano and was rewarded when Cano hit a taser . . . er, laser out to right field to give the Yankees an 8-7 lead.

Brian Bruney, who had gotten the final two outs of the seventh after giving up the two homers that tied the game, got the first two outs of the eight, but the second was a long fly ball to left and, with those lefties at the top of the order coming back up, Girardi brought in Mariano Rivera for a four-out save, which is exactly what Mo delivered, along with an 8-7 Yankee win.

A few game notes: Derek Jeter went 2 for 5 and, though he didn’t run all-out, didn’t appear limited by his quadraceps. Gonzalez and Hideki Matsui were the only Yankees without hits, though Gonzalez drew a walk. Alex Rodriguez went 4 for 5 with his 521st career homer. Morgan Ensberg went 2 for 5 in his spot start and is hitting .385 as a Yankee despite his infrequent use thus far. The Yankees’ eight runs and 15 hits were both season highs.

Finally, while Cano’s homer was obviously the key hit in the game, my favorite might have been Chad Moeller’s first Yankee hit. With one out and Melky Cabrera on first base in the fourth, Girardi put on the hit-and-run. The Rays guessed correctly and pitched out, but Moeller reached out and slapped the pitch past Iwamura (who was heading over to cover the bag for the expected throw) picking up a single and moving Cabrera to third base. Both men ultimately scored on a double by Johnny Damon amid the Yankees four-run rally in that inning.

The Yankees wrapped up four-game split with the Rays just a week ago, but the Rays have undergone a lot of changes since then, most of them injury-related. Matt Garza didn’t pitch in the Bronx and wasn’t scheduled to pitch in the brief two-game set against the Yankees that opens at the Trop tonight, but it’s still worth noting that the team’s big off-season addition hit the DL with a nerve issue in his pitching elbow and is expected to miss at least four weeks (home-grown pitching prospect Jeff Niemann pitched well in his place last night as the Rays beat the O’s 6-2). In addition to Garza and catcher Dioner Navarro, who hit the DL in the Bronx after slipping and cutting his hand in visitor’s dugout, the Rays have also had to place DH Cliff Floyd and third-baseman Willy Aybar on the DL. Floyd, who is one of the most fragile players in the game, has a tear of the medial meniscus in his right knee. Aybar strained his left hamstring.

There’s irony in the latter injury as losing Aybar to the DL has forced the Rays to promote top prospect Evan Longoria and install him at third-base, where he’s likely to remain well into the next decade. Longoria should have opened the season in the majors, but, best I can tell, the Rays were hoping to delay the start of his arbitration clock. The Rays could have continued with that plan by installing Eric Hinske at third–Hinske did start two games at third in place of Aybar before the latter was officially placed on the DL–but it seems the Rays are quickly tiring of seeing Hinske in the field. Hinske started in right field in three of the Rays first six games, including two at Yankee Stadium, but hasn’t played the outfield in any of the team’s six games since. Instead, with Floyd on the DL and Longoria at third, it appears the Rays have adopted platoons in right and at DH with lefty Nathan Haynes and righty Justin Ruggiano splitting right field and the lefty Hinske taking Floyd’s place in the DH platoon with righty Jonny Gomes.

The end result is improved team defense, but a decrease in offense. There’s no comparison between Longoria and Aybar long-term, but Aybar was swinging the bat well in the early going, hitting .292/.370/.500 before hitting the DL. Longoria, who is 2 for 6 with a pair of walks after two major league games, could match those numbers, but as a 22-year-old rookie, he’d be hard pressed to surpass them. Hinske and Gomes are also swinging well, but squeezing them into one spot to make room for the punchless Haynes is sure to have a negative effect on the offense. What’s more, after a hot start, catcher Shawn Riggans isn’t hitting a lick. Still, the Rays have played .500 ball since leaving the Bronx and have scored 5.17 runs per game against the Mariners and Orioles while allowing just 3.83 runs per game.

(more…)

Shortly after Shaq Fu was traded to Phoenix a few months ago, the Suns were playing a nationally televised game against the Spurs. At one point, Shaq was lying on the ground and Tim Duncan offered him a hand. Shaq ignored him. Hey, just like the olden days, I thought. Which brought to mind a story that Jeff Pearlman wrote for SI on the changing nature of the Yankee-Red Sox rivalry back in 2002:

Like many notable encounters, this one was accidental—a simple, unexpected meeting of…well, rear ends. Really, it was perfect. How many times over the years had they crossed paths and thought of growling, Kiss my ass? And here they were, Dwight Evans and Willie Randolph, posterior to posterior on one of their old battlegrounds, Yankee Stadium.

This took place last Friday, roughly two hours before the first-place Boston Red Sox and the second-place New York Yankees, baseball’s greatest rivals, were to meet for the ninth of the 19 games that their fans are being blessed with this season. Randolph, the Yankees’ third base coach and their former six-time All-Star second baseman, was standing on the pitcher’s mound, gathering the balls left scattered from his team’s batting practice session. Evans, the Red Sox hitting coach and their former three-time All-Star rightfielder, was strolling toward the hill to begin tossing BP to his club. As he was chatting with Red Sox infielder Carlos Baerga, Evans accidentally backed into Randolph, who was bent over at the waist. The two men turned around, and for an instant their eyes met. Then they spoke.

Evans: “Hey, Willie, how’s it going?”

Randolph: “Pretty good…pretty good.”

And that was that. As Randolph jogged toward the home clubhouse, he was stopped by a reporter who had witnessed the scene. Randolph shook his head and sighed. “Man,” he said, embarrassed that there’d been a witness to the friendly exchange. “You saw that?”

From 1976 through ’88, when Evans and Randolph were principals in the great rivalry at the same time, the two teams detested each other. It wasn’t just that the clubs were routinely clawing for American League East supremacy. (Over those 13 seasons, the two combined for six division titles and five World Series appearances.) No, members of each team had a genuine dislike for the other. “It was hatred, no question,” says Randolph. “I’m sure they thought we all had attitudes, and we felt the same way about them. There was no talking before games, no hanging out by the batting cage. Just snarling.”

As Randolph was speaking, a familiar scene unfolded nearby that curdled his old-school blood. Two Yankees jogged alongside a couple of Red Sox, chatting like long-lost brothers. And in the outfield a gaggle of Boston pitchers exchanged pleasantries with their New York counterparts. There was laughter with backslaps and—egads!—handshakes, the byproducts of free agency run amok. “I guess it’s O.K. for me to say ‘Hi’ to Dwight because he’s a coach now,” says Randolph. “But as a player I wouldn’t even look at him. Nowadays you see Red Sox and Yankees running in the outfield, hugging each other. That bothers me, but what can I do? Nothing’s the same anymore. Everything’s changed.”

(more…)

It goes without saying that everyone here in the Bronx Banter community is sending best wishes to Harlan Chamberlain today.