It’s cool and most cloudy here in the Bronx. Short week before Thanksgiving coming up. We should start to see some player movement around or just after the holiday.
In the meantime, hope you have a good one. And yo, remember: Do something nice for yourself…
I’ve seen Fran Lebowitz around. Lots of people have. I think a few times at Lucky Strike fifteen years ago. She’s famous for being a cool New Yorker. I don’t know too much about her and can’t tell whether she’s great or annoying.
Now, Martin Scorsese has made a documentary about Lebowitz called “Public Speaking.”
I’m game.
Nice post on the photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt’s work over at the New Yorker’s Photo Booth.
Here’s more:
From the New York magazine archives, here’s a 1969 piece by Nicholas Pileggi on the Renaissance of the Upper West Side:
Five years ago, the West Side of Manhattan bore the stigma of decline, to the point where understanding what is a grantee of a Riverside Drive property was more about liability than opportunity. Invitations to social gatherings there were often declined, large rent-controlled apartments were relinquished, and services like Chicken Delight would not dare to venture in. Today, the landscape has transformed. Despite lingering challenges, a palpable optimism has supplanted the old fears. Merchants, real estate professionals, bankers, theatre owners, city planners, restaurateurs, newsdealers, and trustees of private schools find common ground in a sentiment privately shared by Mayor John V. Lindsay: “The Upper West Side is probably enjoying more of a renaissance today than any other single neighborhood of our city.”
In the 64-block-long area west of Central Park between Columbus Circle to the south and Columbia University to the north, the evidence is visible. Not only are there new low-and middle-income housing developments now where the rubble of abandoned buildings and slums stood just five years ago, but hundreds of the area’s crumbling rooming houses have been renovated to accommodate increasing numbers of middle-class tenants, and even a few of the neighborhood’s middle-European rococo hotels have been steam-cleaned. The same kind of young, successful and relatively affluent middle-class families that moved to the suburbs 20 years ago and to the East Side 10 years ago are moving to the West Side today, and while the neighborhood still has an ample supply of teenage muggers, parading homosexuals and old men who wear overcoats in July, the over-all mood of the area seems to have changed.
…Statistically the West Side’s 1968 crime figures place the area in the unenviable top third of the city’s 76 precinct-house totals. The 20th Precinct on West 68th Street and the 24th on West 100th encompass most of the Upper West Side, and their combined records show 36 homicides, 86 forced rapes, 8,478 burglaries, 1,097 felonious assaults, 3,233 robberies (muggings and stickups) and 6,762 larcenies (mostly pocketbook snatches) last year. The bulk of the West Side’s street crime today is the work of roving bands of 14-to-20-year-olds who mug, jostle and threaten their victims around or near the neighborhood parks during the evening and early morning hours. The effect of these crimes, committed, it sometimes seems, on everyone, or at least a friend or relative of everyone on the West Side, has been to create an atmosphere in which sudden noises produce quick frightened looks.
Ah, the good ol’ days.
[Photo Credit: Christian Monotone]
Happy Sundaze to yas.
Flix by Bags.
The pull of home. From Sam Borden:
“Right now, I can tell you my heart’s right here in Deer Park,” [Andy] Pettitte told KHOU.com. “If something happens and I play one more year that would be it. It would be one more year and that would be it.”
I’m sure there are some Yankees fans who get frustrated by Pettitte’s indecision, but it’s obvious that his family is a big pull for him. In the same interview, he talked about how he feels like each year he returns to baseball is another year where he’s going to be missing important moments in his kids’ lives.
“My kids are getting older and one’s going to be out of high school real soon, and I’m not going to miss his whole high school,” Pettitte said. “I want to be able to be here and see some of his stuff and you can’t see his stuff playing major league baseball. I just feel like a have a big responsibility here. I have three boys. I feel like I need to be around and raise them and I feel like we’re getting to that point where it’s the crucial ages of their lives that I need to be around a little bit more.”
Happy Weekend.
Over at SI.com, Joe Sheehan offers up a savvy GM’s guide to free agency:
There aren’t many bargains in this year’s market; De La Rosa could be the best. The 29-year-old hits the market off a disappointing season by traditional metrics: 8-7, 4.22 ERA, just 121 2/3 innings in 20 starts after missing two months with a finger injury. Look deeper and you see a lefty who strikes out eight men per game, whose arm hasn’t been damaged by overuse and who has been coming into his own since the Rockies picked him up in 2008. De La Rosa has become a groundball/strikeout pitcher in his late twenties, peaking last year as more than half the balls in play off him were put on the ground. His ERA was higher than it should have been due to a fluky-high 15.8 percent HR/FB rate, against a career mark of around 11 percent De La Rosa is 2 1/2 years younger than Cliff Lee, doesn’t have Lee’s back problems and will provide at least 80 percent of the value for maybe 20 percent of the cost. You could blow out the field by offering three years at $8 million each and get the best deal of the offseason, something teams such as the Twins, Tigers and Brewers should be eager to do.
And this, from Mark Feinsand and Peter Botte in the News:
According to a source, the Yankees have expressed interest in lefthander Jorge de la Rosa, considered by many to be one of the top free-agent pitchers available after Lee.
De la Rosa, who turns 30 in April, went 8-7 with a 4.22 ERA with the Rockies last season, although he pitched well during the second half, allowing three earned runs or less in 13 of is final 14 starts.
De La Who?
Sunny day in New York, so…
Central Park, last Friday night.
Wallace Mathews has the scoop: the Yanks will overpay Derek Jeter.
Shocker, I know.
Some couple of few things:
Cliff Lee…it begins.
Jay Jaffe on the coming of Jesus Montero. (With more on Montero from Ben Kabak.)
That said, Jorge Posada still wants to start, according to Christian Red.
Steven Goldman on Derek Jeter.
Steve Lombardi dips into the new Bill James Handbook to see how the Yankees did in the field.
Clocks turn back, enjoy the extra hour…
[Picture by Bags]
I’m up and awake and it’s still early.
Anything going on today?
Some couple of few things to click on:
The first round of organizational meetings for the Yankees will be held today in Tampa. George King reports that Kevin Long will return as the hitting coach.
Ben Kabak on a certain former New York team…
Rebecca G takes a looks at the 10 best moments of the 2010 Yankee season.
Steve Lombardi serves up a dirty trick.
And over at The Captain’s Blog, William talks Core Four and “The Diplomacy of Saying Goodbye”:
The decline of legends like Derek Jeter, Jorge Posada, Andy Pettitte and Mariano Rivera (well, maybe not Mo) is inevitable, and at some point, the Yankees will have to move on. However, they don’t need to do it in such a cutthroat way. In the case of Bernie, there was no reason for not giving him a guaranteed deal. Even if the money was a concern, would the Yankees really have been worse off with Williams taking the roster spot of guys like Andy Phillips, Josh Phelps and Kevin Thompson? Luckily, Bernie’s relationship with the Yankees remains strong, but it would have been a shame had the result of the team’s decision been estrangement from one of its homegrown stars.
Do we really follow sports only to watch a winner? If so, why not jump from bandwagon to bandwagon? Although many casual fans do take that approach, the diehard’s attachment to a team stems more from its history than its prospects for future success. Because of their financial advantage, the Yankees can have their cake and eat it too. As a result, the team shouldn’t feel the need to abide by Branch Rickey’s famous advice about trading “a player a year too early rather than a year too late” when handling its Hall of Fame core. The Yankees can still win while catering to their stars. The end doesn’t always justify the means, and in this case, the cost of winning in the future doesn’t have to involve turning away from history.
[Picture by Richard Sandler]
Here’s some flicks from around town…
taken by Bags, our man in the street.
Happy Monday.
So I was down on Broadway looking for a parking space this morning and I couldn’t find one so I had to drive around for a minute. Dig what I found…baseball in New York! The Yankees’ season might be over, but the Whirled Serious is cookin’ down in Texas, and the Kingsbridge Little League is still in full effect.
Ya heard?
