I checked in with the baseball journalist Pat Jordan yesterday. Pat lives in Florida with his wife and their dogs. I wondered how theyíve been holding up under all the brutal weather. Pat replied, “Susie and I and the dogs drank a our way through Frances and are going to drink our way through Ivan. The shutters have been up for two weeks now and it’s like living in a cage. Still, a small price to pay for Paradise.” Jordan is a huge fan of Miami football and is still riding high since the Caines beat Florida State last weekend. I can hardly relate since Iím not a college football guy. Instead, I pressed him for his take on whatís wrong with Javier Vazquez. As usual, Pat, a former pitching prospect for Braves, pulled no punches.

Pat Jordan: Vazquez is throwing across his body, like many left-handers do. He’s following through towards third base and not first base. When a righty follows through, his left leg and left shoulder should be pulling toward a left-handed batter, which generates power with his right arm. When a righty follows through towards a right-handed batter, all his power is spent and he’s just flinging the ball with his arm.

BB: Three starts ago Jim Kaat spoke about balance on the broadcast. He said one simple exercise for a pitcher is for him to look at himself in the mirror and balance himself on his back leg for as long as possible. YES then showed a replay of Vazquez who looked like he was leaning about a foot forward off the mound. Are these kind of mechanical problems a result of anything mental? For instance, is Vazquez trying too hard and therefore rushing himself?

Jordan: Kaat is absolutely right. If a pitcher has proper balance he can stand in that one-legged Flamingo pose all day. Vazquez, can’t because his body is already leaning toward third base or a right handed batter, and he’s rushing to throw the ball before he falls to his right. It took me months when I was coming back to pitch at 56 to be able to stand on one leg without wobbling. Your weight has to be perpendicular, going down from head to toe. If your weight is off, like Vazquezís is, leaning to his right, you can’t sustain your motion and you rush your pitch. These problems are not mental, simple to correct. I’ve done it with l4 year old kids. It’s not a case of trying to hard it’s just bad mechanics obvious to anyone except the Yankee brain trust.

BB: Also, I’ve noticed that Vazquez just can’t put guys away. It seems that he gets hurt–especially with the long ball–when he’s ahead on the count, 0-2, 1-2. Is that a case of him trying to make a perfect pitch or what?

Jordan: The reason Vazquez gets hurt 0-2 is cause he can’t generate best stuff by pulling his upper body to his left, where his shoulder, not arm, generates speed. It’s the shoulder where the power comes from. No one throws hard who uses only the arm. Go look at old photos of Koufax in his motion. As a let, his right shoulder is pulled far to his right and almost touching the ground, which, in turn, elevates his left arm and gives it speed. But what the fuck do I know? I’m only a half-ass writer.

BB: How much influence does Mel Stottlemyre have on his pitching staff? As much of a Yankee icon as Stottlemyre is, heís been criticized for not getting the most out of his pitchers.

Jordan: There, my diagnosis. I could do a better job than Stottlemeyre. If he’s such a great pitching coach why do the Yankees send their troubled pitchers to Tampa to work with Billy Connors? The only reason Bill Connors is not the Yanks pitching coach is because he’s too fat, not the proper Yankee image. Iíve forgotten more about pitching that Stottlemeyre will ever know. I was the one who wanted to raise Weaver’s arm motion about 30 degrees so his fastball would sink more to lefties. The Dodgers did it and he’s having a good year. Why didn’t the Yankees do it? Cause they’re lazy. They buy guys and let them play. The have no concept of teaching or refining talent. They’re stagnating. Torre could let the Paul OíNeill guys just play because they were smart and corrected their flaws themselves. These guys are clueless, and need help. But again, what the fuck do I know?

Every time I ride out to Brooklyn to visit my old barber I get this feeling that once I get there, he won’t be around anymore. It is not only because he’s getting older but because the Carroll Gardens-Cobble Hill neighborhood has become so gentrified that the older shops along Smith street are regularly replaced by chic boutiques, hip bars and trendy new restaurants. I lived in Brooklyn for five years (1995-2000) and loved my barber, Efrain Torres, a soft-spoken Puerto Rican man who lost the lease on his barber shop four years ago. Since then, he has a chair in another shop on Smith street, and still happily works six days a week.

It may seem like a long way to schlepp for a haircut. After all, I live in the Bronx now. But Efrain approaches his work with great care and respect for his craft. The barbers around my way are a good bunch of guys, but they cut hair like they are late for dinner. And not only do they rush, but their movements are coarse and violent. Their work is often sloppy. I’ve got a hard cut to screw up–a conservative fade (1 1/2 on the side and 2 on the top with a straight razor to clean up the lines). But I usually come home with small nicks from the razor with random little hairs sticking up from the top of my head.

Emily, who loves my hair short, will inspect their work and usually has some cherce words for their craftsmanship. “You should go back down there and have them get it right.”

“Ahh, sweetie, it just doesn’t work like that. It’s fine, whatever.”

I know I’m getting a second-rate cut but it’s depressing trying to find a new shop. I always know that I’ve got Efrain, who I visited last Friday afternoon. (I’m not the only one who will travel a ways to see him either. He has regulars that come in from Long Island and Weschester as well.) A father and son–also Puerto Rican–own the shop and cut heads too. They will be silent for long periods of time and then suddenly come to life with tall tales of fighting and “How to be a man.” They speak a mixture of Spanish and English, usually depending on who is in the shop. A heavy-set Spanish woman has a corner area where she cuts women’s hair. A glass statuette of a dolphin sits on top of a can of hairspray next to her. I’ve rarely seen her with any clients. She spends most of her time rummaging through her bag or through the drawers of her table looking for make-up. You’d think her bag was a clown’s prop. She’s in there forever. Then she applies more lipstick, eye-shadow. She is comically vain. When she’s left with nothing else to do, she will take a hot-iron and touch up her big, orange hair.

Efrain speaks with a heavy Spanish accent, but has a gentle voice and is unhurried in virtually all of his movements. It is always comforting to see him. He works in a predictable, almost robotic manner. Always the same routine. It’s one that I’ve come to forget. I used to get impatient waiting for him to finish, but now, I appreciate the pace. His hands are soft. When he wipes away small hairs that have fallen in my face with a brush, he does it as if he touching somebody who is asleep, afraid to wake them.

He’ll tell me stories that have no punchlines. He’ll stop what he’s doing at one point for the payoff. I sit there with a frozen smile on my face waiting for the kicker which never comes. So I keep smiling and offer a laugh which prompts him to laugh back, pleased that I’ve enjoyed his story.

When he’s finished with the straight razor and everything is done, he’ll take a pair of sissors and snip behind my ears or on the top of my head. As he was doing this last Friday he stopped and told me, “I’m sorry it takes so long, but you have to pay attention to the details. It’s the small details that make the difference.”

Ain’t it the truth. The telling detail. It’s hard to find people who take their craft seriously, but when you do find them, they are worth their weight in gold. Am I right? No matter what they do. If they drive a bus, or cut heads or write for a living. Pat Jordan is a throwback baseball writer. He is a journalist who writes “straight” stories in a style that pre-dates New Journalism or Gonzo writing, though he came of age in the era of Tom Wolfe and Hunter Thompson. His best pieces are long profiles, but he doesn’t get to do much of them anymore. His most recent baseball piece for The New York Times Magazine wasn’t longer than 2,000 words. He used to write 6,000 word articles regularly.

It’s hard for a writer like Jordan to thrive in the today’s magazine culture, which is a shame for someone who takes his craft seriously. He writes clearly, and has a keen eye for observation, not to mention human behavior. He respects the language and doesn’t let cute language or gimmicks get in the way of the story. But even if he doesn’t get the opportunity to pen longer pieces anymore, he is now offering a look at some of his best unpublished work. Jordan recently launched a website which posts a new story every month. They are no baseball pieces yet, but a sampling of all kinds of work: a piece about a healer, an expose on the porno industry. Jordan is charging up to four bucks per story. The shorter stories are only one or two dollars.

Anyhow, they are worth the money if you appreciate honest and unpretentious craftsmanship. Jordan writes like Efrain Torres cuts heads: with sensitivity and discipline. His work also suggests that he is doing exactly what he was meant to do on this earth. He cares about his craft which makes the visit well-worth the trip. Tell him I sent you.

As I uncomfortably wait to see just how long the Yankees’ afternoon will be with Victor Zambrano going up against Jose Contreras, here are links to several articles that I’ve read over the past 24 hours:

Jay Jaffe and King Kaufman on Roger Clemens.

The Athletics Nation interview with Michael Lewis.

Brian Gunn’s excellent account of clown-town last night in Chicago.

Aaron Gleeman’s account of the recent SABR convention.

The latest edition of the Pinstriped Bible by Steven Goldman.

Pat Jordan on guess what, a pitcher who never made it.

More rumors and gossip from Peter Gammons.

While I was doing research on Curt Flood up at the Hall of Fame library last week, I took the opportunity to look up some of my favorite baseball writers. Pat Jordan, Lee Allen and Ed Linn were just a couple I had time to get to. In Roger Angell’s file, I found a lengthy interview that appeared in a literary publication called “Writing on the Edge.” Conducted in July of 1993 by Jared Haynes, Angell talked about writing and baseball of course. Here are some words of wisdom then from one of the true masters of baseball writing:

Good writing is based on clear thinking, which is the hardest thing we have to do. Itís as plain as that. Itís hard to start to write because what you have to do is start to think. And not just think with the easy, up front part of your brain but with the deeper, back parts of the unconscious. The unconscious comes into writing in a powerful way.

I know I’m a couple of days late on this, but Pat Jordan had a piece on flamethrowers in The New York Times magazine last Sunday. I don’t think the article was one of his best—it felt slight—but it is still worth reading. I was, however, taken with Jordan’s portrait of Houton’s Billy Wagner. While interviewing the diminutive southpaw in the Astros locker room, Wagner’s two young boys sat in a nearby chair watching TV:

Wagner is obviously a caring father — as he talked to me his eyes kept flitting toward his sons — in the way of men who experienced difficult, disruptive childhoods. His parents married young in a small Virginia town. They fought a lot and shuffled off their son to live with various relatives. Wagner lived with his grandfather, who used to whip him with a switch, and then his aunt and uncle. No matter where he lived, however, he lived in poverty (food stamps were not unknown) and anger. He remembers as a boy standing outside the home of his aunt and uncle, picking up a baseball and firing it at the house in anger.

”It was the only way I could express myself,” he said. ”I used to rage and explode; now I channel it to aggressiveness on the mound.”

Despite his success, he said, he’s still insecure about it. ”There’s no way I should throw a baseball 100 m.p.h.,” he said. ”I’m small. I see guys 6-foot-8 throwing 88. There’s nothing I did to get it. Maybe throw a football a lot. I have the short, quick arm motion of a quarterback. Some say it’s in my legs, or my wrist. But I don’t know why.”

Jordan has always been able to find the tremendous vunerability in the athletes he writes so well about. That’s probably due to his own experience as a bonus baby prospect, who never made the major leagues. It’s certainly why I find him to be one of the best baseball writers going.

Pat Jordan was a bonus baby for the Braves in the late ’50s and early ’60s. He threw gas, but never made it to the majors; eventually, he became an accomplished journalist. His first memoir, “A False Spring” is considered a baseball classic. I think that the sequel, “A Nice Tuesday,” is a better book, even if it is more about Jordan’s personal life than it is about baseball.

Jordan still writes for The New York Times magazine, and it is always a treat to read his work, especially if it is about a pitcher. Before “A False Spring” was released in 1974, Jordan published a collection of stories he had written for Sports Illustrated called, “The Suitors of Spring.” All of the articles in this collection are about pitchers, including the likes of Tom Seaver, Bo Belinksky, Bruce Kison, Steve Dalkowski and Sudden Sam McDowell.

I buried myelf in the book last night after suffering through the Yankees game, hoping to take my mind off the pain of the here-and-now. Jordan describes McDowell and Dalkowski as young men who were possessed by their talented; Seaver, on the other hand, was a late-bloomer with less natural talent. Of course, Seaver became on the great pitchers of all time. Dalkowski never made it passed triple A and McDowell never became the great pitcher he was expected to become.

Here is a healthy excerpt from the article on Sudden Sam, “A Talent for Refusing Greatness:”

Like many extremely talented people, Sam McDowell does not judge his accomplishments by conventional standards. His challenges, and their eventual resolution, are very private affairs independent of either the approval or disapproval of anyone else.

…”The only thing I get satisfaction from,” he says, “is accomplishing something I’m not supposed to be able to do. I live for challenges, and once I overcome them I have to go on to something new.”

…It is obvious that McDowell takes great delight in watching his pitches behave even when he’s only warming up. And he admits to often concentrating so much on his individual pitches and their perfection that he loses sight of everything else. His individual pitches then become his goal rather than simply the means of attaining some larger goal–a victory, for instance.

“I try and break things down to their simplest element,” he says, “and sometimes I guess I do it to an extreme. For instance, a game to me is just a series of individual challenges–Me against Reggie Jackson or Me againt Don Mincher. If I find I can get a guy out with a fastball it takes all the challenge away, so next time I throw him all curveballs. If I don’t have a challenge I create one. It makes the game interesting.”

…”No, I wouldn’t say Sudden is the toughest pitcher I ever faced,” says Reggie Jackson. “Now, don’t get me wrong. I like Sudden and I think he’s got the greatest fastball, curveball, slider and change-up of any pitcher I ever saw. I call him ‘Instant Heat.’ But still, I don’t mind facing him. That’s not because I hit him so easy, either, because I don’t. It’s just that Sudden simplifies things out there. He makes it like it used to be when we were kids. You know he’s going to challenge you, his strength against yours, and either you beat him or he beats you. And if you do beat him with a home run or something, hell, it don’t bother him that much. He’s not greedy. He lets you have a little, too. And he won’t throw at you, either, because he’s too nice a guy. He knows that with his fastball he could kill you if he ever hit you. You see, baseball’s still a game to Sudden, the way it should be to all of us. Hell, I’d pay to see him pitch because I know he enjoys himself so much. Do you know he’s got 12 differenet moves to first base? That’s a fact! When he was going for his 1500th strikeout he was trying so hard he fell down on a pitch to me. I took it for a third strike. I loved that, though. That’s why I look forward to facing him even if I don’t hit him a helluva lot. But someday I will. Me and Sudden will be around for a long time, and one of these days I’m going to connect with one of his sudden pitches and watch out! But still, I have to say that Sam McDowell isn’t the toughest pitcher I ever faced. As a matter of fact, I think he’d be tougher if he had less ability. Sounds crazy, huh? But it’s true. Sudden’s just go too much stuff.”

I don’t think that Jeff Weaver is nearly as gifted as McDowell was, and perhaps he isn’t even as interesting a person. But I thought about Weaver after reading this article last night, because he’s a pitcher with great stuff who hasn’t been able to put it together. Of course, you can replace Jeff Weaver with your favorite talent who hasn’t lived up to expectations. The point is, all the talent in the world doesn’t mean spit if you don’t thrive as a competitor.

Anyhow, there isn’t a baseball writer I enjoy more than Pat Jordan. Next time you happen upon one of his books, pick it up and give him a try.

SWEET LOU

Pat Jordan is one of my favorite baseball writers, and I think he’s surely the best former-player turned writer. Jordan contributes pieces to the Times magazine several times a year, and his latest is on our man in Tampa, Lou Piniella. Worth taking a look at.

The Fan Who Wasn’t There

I worked for Joel and Ethan Coen from the late summer of 1996 through the fall of 1997. I had been working as an apprentice film editor in New York when I went to work for them, first as their personal assistant and later as an editing room assistant on their movie, The Big Lebowski.  We were in Manhattan, at their office for the first six weeks; in November we went out to Los Angeles, where Lebowski was shot on location. After the film was in the can, Joel and Ethan returned to New York to cut the film.

In October of 1996, when the Yankees won their first title since 1978, we were still in New York, so the Coen brothers are tied up in my baseball memories. Joel had no interest in the game at all, but Ethan seemed vaguely aware of what was happening. His wife Tricia, who was the co-editor of Lebowski, as well as the script supervisor, was the sports nut. We stood on line outside of the Yankee clubhouse on 5th avenue to try and get World Serious tickets to no avail.

Ethan Coen’s favorite player on the Yankees was Kenny Rogers. “The Gambler” was like some half-wit out of one of their movies: well meaning, but hapless. The worse Rogers performed for the Yankees, the more shit he got from the fans and the media, the more Ethan liked him. We used to call him “Kenny Everyman” cause Kenny kinda looked like he could be just about anybody. A schmuck.

Nowadays, Tricia is in a fantasy league and Ethan likes to play the guitar. (He yodels too; in fact, one of the best parts of hanging out with Eth and Trish was that they turned me onto Jimmie Rogers, Hank Williams, Webb Pierce and George Jones.) I’ve spoken with Trish several times recently about her league, and she’s taken to it like a bee to honey. Ethan and Joel were been busy mixing the sound to their latest movie this spring, a big-budget studio comedy—a romantic comedy—fittingly titled Intolerable Cruelty. (George Clooney and Catherine Zeta Jones star, and the film will be released in October.)

I finally caught up with Ethan on the phone last week. But first, Tricia and talked some baseball. She was indignant that Torre had been starting Jason Giambi at the DH when he hits better when he plays in the field. Ethan was picking a guitar in the background, noodling around.

“It’s bullshit, man. He’s messing up my fantasy league team,” Tricia told me.

I tried to reason with her but she wasn’t having it, so she passed the phone to her husband, who momentarily stopped playing his axe. Ethan can be a man of few words. It’s not that he doesn’t like talking; it’s just that sometimes he’d rather not be bothered (especially when he’s dicking around on the guitar). Although both Joel and Ethan are definitely Jewish, and definitely New Yorkers, they are definitely not Jewish New Yorkers. There are a lot of meaningful silences; a lot of pregnant pauses that I assume has something to do with growing up in the middle of the country.

Here is an excerpt of our conversation:

Eth: Al?

BB: Eth.

Eth: How are ya?

BB: I’m good. Nu?

Eth: I’m good. You know, I don’t have any thoughts on baseball, though. I quit following it.

(Starts playing the guitar again.)

BB: You quit?

Eth: Ya.

BB: Completely?

Eth: Ya.

(Guitar playing stops.)

BB: Wow. That’s no good. Where did it all go wrong? I mean didn’t you play as a kid?

Eth: No.

(More guitar.)

BB: Did you want to play as a kid?

Eth: I went to games as a kid.

BB: Zolio Versalles.

Eth: Yeah, Zolio. You know. Harmon Killebrew. Rod Carew was with the Twins then. Tony Oliva.

BB: Oliva was good.

Eth: Yeah.

BB: Did you like baseball movies as a kid?

Eth: No.

BB: Do you like them now?

Eth: No.

BB: Has there ever been a good baseball movie?

(Long pause.)

Eth: No.

BB: Really?

Eth: Is there? I don’t think so.

BB: Bad News Bears?

Eth: Bad News Bears: Excellent picture! Yeah, yeah. You’re right. But just that one.

(More guitar.)

BB: Most of them bite. Field of Dreams was painful. The Natural was wack.

Eth: Yeah.

BB: You guys would make a good baseball movie.

Eth: I don’t think so. No, you know, Bad News Bears: you’re right. It’s a really good movie.

BB: Well, that was a great interview man.

Eth: You know what you can put down? You can say that I quit being a baseball fan when the Yankees traded Mickey Rivers.

BB: What the hell kind of thing is that to say? What about your boy, Kenny Rogers?

Eth: Is he still playing?

BB: Yeah, he’s still playing. He plays on your hometown godamn team for crying out loud. He’s on the Twins.

Eth: Shit. (Laughs) “Kenny Everyman.”

BB: Mr. Square Jaw himself. Kenny Everyman is as good as he ever was, and he’s even funnier now cause he’s older, and more mulish than ever.

Eth: Yeah, I should see the Twins the days that he pitches.

BB: The best thing that guy ever did on the Yankees was when they had the World Series parade, and after stinking up the joint all year long, he was up on top of the float hooping and hollering louder than anyone.

Eth: Yeah, he was waving a flag. Pleased as punch. with pride. (Laughs) That’s really funny. That’s good.

BB: Mick the Quick, huh?

Eth: Yeah, I quit being a fan when the Yankees traded him.

Well, there you have it: Ethan Coen is not a baseball fan. But that doesn’t prevent him from making good movies, or giving one hell of an interview.

Hope everyone has a great Memorial Day Holiday.

P.S. Joel and Ethan left for Los Angeles last week to begin their next show–a remake of the old Alec Guiness comedy The Lady Killers. It’ll star Tom Hanks, and according to Joel, “you know, well, a whole lot of other people.”

This interview originally appeared at BaseballProspectus.com.

Roger Angell, The New Yorker’s celebrated baseball writer, has a new compilation out titled “Game Time”, which contains many new pieces along with some previously published ones as well. BP correspondent Alex Belth caught up with Angell last weekend and talked about growing up a New York Giants baseball fan, the present-day Yankees, plus other topics New York baseball-focused and otherwise.

Bronx Banter: How did you get your start as a baseball fan, and as a writer?

Roger Angell: I got my start as a fan in the most traditional way possible: My father was a big baseball fan. My father had grown up in Cleveland, and when I was a kid, we would be going to Giants games here in New York, and Yankees games. As I’ve written, I think it still works with kids under 10 that their first big obsession is with baseball. They become aware of this gigantic lore. Some of the first players that I saw were people like Babe Ruth, and Carl Hubbell and Lou Gehrig, and I remember when Joe DiMaggio first arrived in my teens. So it goes back a ways.

BB: Where did you grow up?

Angell: I grew up close to where I live now. I grew up on 93rd Street, and on the way to school, my school bus which went up 5th Avenue when 5th Avenue went both ways, sometimes in the morning I would meet Col. (Jacob) Ruppert on his way to his brewery on the east side. He owned the Yankees. By that time I was 10 years old, so I would have a mitt, and I would give the mitt a whack and look at him, and expect him to stop and say: ‘Young man, here’s my card, take this up to the Stadium for a tryout.’ It never happened. My father was a real fan, and he told me what to watch for. He had grown up in Cleveland in the Cy Young, days, and uh, his heart was broken for the rest of his life (laughs).

BB: So did you grow up as a Giants fan or a Yankees fan?

Angell: Both. I think I was more of a Yankee fan at first, but the Yankees were winning so often…that I discovered along the way that I was more a Giants fan than a Yankees fan.

BB: (Did you pull for the Giants) strictly because they were the underdog?

Angell: Cause they were the underdog, sure. And naturally you attach yourself to the underdog. But I think I enjoyed the Polo Grounds more than Yankee Stadium because it was such an eccentric and interesting park.

BB: Were most of the Giants fans of an older generation, because they were the dominant New York team before the Yankees?

Angell: Yeah, it’s true. But I think if it had been some other city like Pittsburgh, I would have been a Pirates fan. It was just local. I was not a Dodgers fan, because the Dodgers always meant trouble for the Giants. I didn’t actually go to a game at Ebbets Field until I was almost grown up.

BB: When did you want to become a writer?

Angell: My parents were divorced and I was living with my father during the weekdays. My mother was an editor at The New Yorker, was one of the first editors of the New Yorker. So it was sort of a family business. And she was married to E.B. White. So there was a writer close at hand. I think the aspirations came naturally.

BB: Did your mother write herself?

Angell: No, she was a famous fiction editor and early art editor. Famous figure in the family of The New Yorker, Katherine White. She was head of the fiction department, so I wound up in the fiction department myself many years later. But I remember watching E.B. White write, and I was a great admirer of his stuff because it looked so effortless and at the same time I could see how much effort had gone into it. He used to write the Comment Page, in the first page of the New Yorker. Every week. And that day, up in their place in Maine, he would close himself in his office and he would come out for lunch, and not say anything, and then you’d hear the sounds of sporadic typing in there, and then he’d mail it off and the end of the day and say it wasn’t good enough. He was always saying that writing is hard, which is true.

BB: So writing was the family business.

Angell: The New Yorker was the family business. There was endless talk about The New Yorker all the time. Harold Ross, and all these people. I knew these people when I was young. Sure, it was an everyday sort of thing. My father was a lawyer, and I saw a lot of him, but he never begrudged me going into writing; in fact he encouraged me. So it was a natural sort of thing, and I grew up thinking I was going to do something in publishing. I had no idea I’d end up at The New Yorker, and I had no idea that I’d end up writing about baseball.

BB: When did you arrive at The New Yorker?

Angell: Well, I graduated from college, went overseas in the Pacific and became the managing editor of a G.I. weekly out there. Air Force. A magazine called “Brief.” I had amazing preparation for what I would do later on. After the war, by this time I had begun to publish in The New Yorker, when I was quite young, publishing fiction. I wrote an article about a bomber mission in the Pacific. I didn’t want to go to work for The New Yorker because it was the family business and you know you want to do things on your own. I went to work for a magazine called “Holiday,” a new monthly started up after the war by Curtis Publishing. It was a famous travel magazine; it was a wonderful magazine that produced great writers, and artists and photographers from around the world. And I had a lot of fun doing that. I went to The New Yorker in the fall of ’55. My parents were living in Maine. E.B. White was writing other stuff and my mother had retired by this time. It was a natural thing for me to do since I was a writer and editor and contributor to The New Yorker.

BB: When did you first write about baseball?

Angell: In ’62. I had written some sports pieces, I had written a piece about the New York Rangers. I was a hockey fan; I was a sports fan. I did a couple of other things. And I had written a baseball piece for “Holiday,” sort of a generic baseball piece. I said if you want I could go down to spring training. I certainly did not have it in mind to write a lot about baseball. The thing was, (my editor) didn’t want sentimental writing about sports and he didn’t want tough guy writing about sports, which were the choices back then. You were either weepy, or you were tough. The first year I went to spring training I found the newborn Mets in St. Petersburg. This is 40 years ago. I didn’t think of myself as a sports writer so I didn’t dare go in the clubhouse or sit in the press box. I sat with the fans. And I realized that the stuff that’s ignored and never gets reported on is the fans. Nobody ever wrote about the fans. So I wrote about the fans, and I’ve continued to do so. I’ve continued to write in a form that allows me to write in the first person. And that allows me to say I am a fan of this team, or react to things as a fan as well as a baseball writer that now knows something about the game. The Mets were just a great fan story when they arrived. They played in the Polo Grounds and they were one of the worst and most entertaining teams that ever played. And that was a terrific story. And New York was used to the Yankees, winning all the time. Somebody said they had become like General Motors. And here was a team that was just terrible, but large numbers of people turned out to cheer them on, and if they won a game there was wild excitement. So I wrote that. They were something like anti-matter to the New York Yankees. I remember sitting there at the Polo Grounds, and there was a guy sitting near me in the stands blowing this mournful horn. TWUUUHH-TRUUUHP. And I wrote that there is more Met than Yankee in all of us, because losing is much more common than winning. When I heard that horn blowing I realized that horn was blowing for me. In some way, I began to settle into the kind of writing that I would do later on. They call me a “baseball essayist,” or a “baseball poet laureate,” and I hate that. I’m not trying to write baseball essays, and I’m certainly not trying to be poetic. I try to avoid it. I’ve been able to find myself and baseball a natural fit, and everybody wants to write about himself. That’s why we do it (laughs).

BB: When were you aware that this was going to be something you were going to be doing regularly?

Angell: I think what happened was, I went to the World Series every year, again keeping my distance. But what happened in the 60s was that there were three great World Series and pennant races in a row. In ’67, there was a four-way race in the American League between the White Sox, Twins, Tigers and the Red Sox. The White Sox went out first, and the Tigers were in it until the last day. The Sox had won and I was in the Red Sox clubhouse when news came that the Tigers had lost, and the Red Sox were in.

BB: The Impossible Dream Team.

Angell: Yeah, there was a great World Series that fall. Carl Yastrzemski was an extraordinary player, carried that team all the way through September. The Red Sox lost of course. And the next year was the Tigers and the Cardinals, and Bob Gibson struck out 17 batters in the first game. Something that never had happened before. And the year after that was the sudden arrival of the Mets: The biggest upset in modern times. These were three great late seasons and post seasons in a row, and by that time I was there writing about this first-hand. I was involved in some way. I felt involved. I learned how to attach myself to teams and I learned how to ask the right questions. It was a lot of fun. And the readers liked it so I went on doing it.

BB: When did you start approaching the locker room and the press box?

Angell: I did that in the sixties. I began to sit in the press box. I remember following the Red Sox around and sitting in the Press Box at Fenway Park, Tiger Stadium. A lot of writers were very good to me, and Cliff Keane one of the old Red Sox writers, famous guy for needling people, would make fun of me for taking so many notes. I’d fill up my notebooks, because I knew I was going to be writing much later, and I didn’t know what would be useful at that time. So I would take notes and take notes. Keane would say to me, “How many pages today Rog, 20, 30?” I remember Keane trying to be cynical about Yastrzemski because Yastrzemski was such a great star. There was a game in Tiger Stadium where the Sox were behind a couple of runs, and Yaz came up and he said: ‘OK Yaz, prove you’re the MVP: Hit a home run.’ And he hit a home run (laughs).

BB: What was it like in the locker room during that period?

Angell: Well, it wasn’t nearly as crowded as it is now. The masses of TV people weren’t there. You didn’t have every local television channel in the land trying to represent something in the clubhouse. I think players were a little more accessible. And they were different, they were different. The great example that comes to mind right away is [Bob] Gibson after that 17-strikeout performance. He stood in front of his locker; writers were four and five deep at this point. And all of us had our pencils poised. This was in ’68, and racially things were very uptight still. Someone said to Gibson: ‘Were you surprised at what you did today?’ Gibson looked at him and said: ‘I’m never surprised by anything I do.’ You could see this going through the writers like: ‘What did he say? What did he say?’ I hung around, after the crowds had left, and I was talking with Gibson a little bit, and I said: ‘Are you always this competitive?’ He said: ‘Oh, I think so. I got a three-year old daughter, and I’ve played about 500 games of tic-tac-toe with her and she hasn’t beat me yet.’ And he meant it. He meant it.

BB: What were your impressions of the Cardinals in the 1960s?

Angell: You have to remember that when Gibson joined the Cardinals, he had played with the Globetrotters, as a second team. Many people forget this. But they played in the South and the black players would have to stay with black families when they went down there. Gibson hated this. Those were tough times.

BB: What was Bill White like in those days?

Angell: I didn’t get to know him until later. He was a roommate of Gibby’s at one point. He reminded me that when he changed clubs–he went over to the Phillies, I think the first at-bat he had against Gibson, Gibson hit him. He said: ‘We’re no longer roommates.’ And of course that has really changed. This business of knockdown pitches and fighting for the inside part of the play has gone by, and if anybody gets hit now they look deeply insulted. It’s too bad, because I really love the inside pitch, and the struggles of the batters to establish themselves.

BB: Those Cardinals were known for being a very racially integrated team. Did you get that impression from them?

Angell: Yeah, I think so, but the team I remember for that was the ’79 Pirates. The greatest racial mix that there has ever been. Just unbelievable combinations of people. Suave, inner-city African Americans, and white guys from the South. Phil Garner was the son of a minister from the South. And of course Willie Stargell. You had South Americans, Latinos. The clubhouse was a mass of ethnic energy. All kinds of music going on. At one point I thought they were going to start sacrificing chickens. And rock music. That was the “We Are Family” thing. And everything revolved around Stargell, who was the guy that held it together. And they were so excited by themselves. It was just terrific.

BB: One thing I noticed in your feature about Gibson was that his reputation had diminished when the piece was published in the early ’80s. These days Koufax and Gibson are clearly remembered as the outstanding pitchers of the 1960s, while Juan Marichal’s reputation has suffered in comparison.

Angell: Well, Marichal was the one whose reputation has faded, you’re right. And if you asked players from that era, ‘who was the best pitcher?’ they always mention Koufax, they always mention Gibson, and they all say the one everyone overlooks is Marichal, who was so tough because he had all those different pitches coming from so many different directions. He really knew how to pitch. Had a very wide range of skills.

BB: What are your impressions of the Yankees during the past 10 years?

Roger Angell: Torre’s Yankees have made me a Yankee fan again, because of him. I was not particularly a Yankee fan, because I was not a Steinbrenner fan. I was just interested in other teams. But the way the Yankees played, and the atmosphere that prevailed there, the sense of professionalism and accomplishment….the presence of people like, well particularly Paul O’Neill, and Bernie Williams and David Cone. So many people all working together, who made very little reference to themselves. There were occasional exceptions; players here and there like Wells. But it was the perfect clubhouse atmosphere and it was a new thing for New York to have a Yankee team like that. I didn’t enjoy it because it was like the old Yankees; I just liked it for itself. And they became the most interesting team in baseball, which is really amazing with the Yankees because there are so many preconceptions that are attached to the Yankees. So much of that encrusted history and lore. But these were interesting and lively teams that rejuvenated themselves. That post-season in 2001 was a great thing for everybody in a way. The play that Jeter made against the A’s, which was like the necessary last ingredient, was really something. Everybody remembers that.

BB: Does Jeter rank with the all-time Yankees yet?

Angell: I don’t need to rank anybody, let’s wait and see. There is no hurry to rank him. I don’t like to rank people unless they’ve arrived. I mean ranking Barry Bonds is extremely interesting now. But I don’t need to rank Jeter yet. Let’s see what happens. I remember when Doc Gooden had that great year (in 1985) and everybody was putting him in the Hall of Fame. And only some people said: ‘Well, it was a pretty good year, let’s see what happens.’

BB: The same can be said of Soriano now.

Angell: Yeah, he’s just arriving. It’s fun to watch people arrive. I don’t have a great interest in the Best Ever. Or the Best this, or the Best that. You can play that out in the winter, but it is overwhelming sports now. We all want to have the sense that we were there at a historic moment, or that we were watching something historic, this next home run, or base hit. It makes you think about this constantly. If you look back in baseball history, I look back at the consecutive game streak, when Lou Gehrig broke the existing record. I’ve looked back at the newspapers of the time, and it was a little thing at the bottom of a paragraph. That was all. There was not this self-consciousness about records in the old days. What you watched is what mattered.

BB: Are you a fan of baseball writing?

Angell: I’m a fan of baseball books, yeah. I think my favorite baseball book of all time is “The Glory of Their Times,” because it was thrilling to find out that some of these early players that we saw in distant, historical terms, were still around, living as old guys here in the country with perfect memories of what it had been like to play country ball. Larry Ritter went around with a tape recorder, while no one else noticed this. Suddenly there was a connection. We knew about baseball being in the past. We knew that baseball was both an old game and a young game. Which is still the case. It was an extraordinary piece of writing and reporting.

BB: Have you followed Bill James’ writing career?

Angell: Yeah, I like Bill James. I’m not a sabermetrician, but I got to know Bill James early on, and I liked him a lot. He certainly opened up an entirely different area for us to understand baseball.

BB: Did the first publication of the Baseball Encyclopedia change the way you looked at statistics?

Angell: I wrote a long piece when it came out about what a significant thing it was to have it. I was aware of certain marks before it came out–number of games played, home run records. We are reminded of it every day now. I think that I had already sensed that every player who plays is playing against every other player who has ever played. Certainly if you have the Encyclopedia there, you look back at the lifetime stats of anybody, and of World Series games, it confirmed for you in interesting and exciting detail what you had already sensed. And we all had a few records that we would carry around as our favorites. Now they are all printed out. I remember a record I picked up very early on, that almost nobody is aware of. One of my favorite stats of all time is that from August of 1931 to August of 1933, the Yankees played something like 304 games without being shut out once. An extraordinary team record; nobody has ever come close to that. Just think of that. And there were great pitchers pitching then too.

BB: What was your experience like writing “A Pitchers Story” with David Cone?

Angell: He was just great. We had no written agreement. We had sort of talked about this as a joint venture. He kept wanting me to do it, and then we had a contract. But he wasn’t involved in the contract and he could have said at any point when he started to lose, I’m sorry I can’t do this. Nine out of 10 players would have gone that way, and all he did was keep apologizing. He said: ‘I’m sorry I’m letting you down.’ I said: ‘You’re not letting me down.’ And at some point I said: ‘This is more interesting that winning.’ Which is true: Losing is much more interesting than winning. It was actually thrilling to go through with this and again, instead of looking at it from somebody who is a masterful pitcher, in control of everything, to see him hold onto some vestige of what he had been, to pull off a decent performance now and then.

BB: Was it awkward for you that he pitched so poorly?

Angell: It wasn’t awkward, it was painful. It was horrible. It was painful for everybody that knew him, including his teammates. It was tough to see an accomplished and proud and extremely successful guy like that suddenly lose his form entirely, and struggling to find it. Torre, to his credit, stayed with him, and stayed with him. It was an amazing summer all along.

BB: What was your impression of Cone’s 2001 season with the Red Sox?

Angell: He pitched well. He had a good season. He had some bad luck. He had some setbacks. The team completely fell apart. They fired the manager (Jimy Williams) mid-season. They had an inappropriate pitching coach who became the manager (Jim Kerrigan), who did not get the backing of the ownership. It was extremely ineffective, horrible. But Cone hung on and pitched well, through difficulties. He pitched a great game in Boston against Mussina, where Mussina came one out away from a perfect game. David was the losing pitcher but pitched nine innings. He had to go chew out Mussina, because he knew what a great game he pitched. Really. That was standard for David. The Sox came back down here and played at the Stadium the following week, and David made it a point of going to see Mussina, and said: “‘What you want to remember is that we both pitched in a game that we’ll never forget.’

BB: What do you make of Cone’s comeback? When we first spoke last week, Cone had just hurt his hip, pitching for the Mets.

Angell: It’s a good story. But yeah, I had a bad feeling about it last week. I could see it coming. I can’t understand why nobody said anything about it. The writers or the coaches, but I saw Cone limping around, favoring that hip for a while now. I could see this coming.

BB: You’ve shifted your rooting loyalties over the years. Which teams are you pulling for these days?

Angell: I always change my loyalties because I get interested in the team I’m writing about. If I go and spend two days watching a team, I follow that team for the rest of the year. If I become aware of the people in the lineup and talk to the players a little bit, I’m interested in that team. I’m always interested in the Mets, I’m always interested in the Red Sox, I’m always interested in the Giants, my childhood team. I’m interested in the A’s because I was always close with that team. I knew Bill Rigney very well. They were a great story in the ’70s, and later when they came back with Tony La Russa, who ran such an admirable outfit. There are a lot of teams. I’m sort of a fan of the Angels now because they played so well in the World Series last fall.

BB: You weren’t heartbroken that the Giants lost?

Angell: It almost killed me. It almost killed me. It was horrible. I mean I was there, I saw it happen with Giant fans. It was just appalling. Extremely painful. My God, they are up by five runs in the seventh inning of Game Six and lose? You don’t get over that right away.

BB: What players do you follow closely these days?

Angell: Well, there are obvious ones like Pedro, Jeter. I was a great fan of Edgardo Alfonzo. When he arrived with the Mets, he really knew how to play baseball. A few of his coaches said: This guy already knows how to play. He picked it up in South America somehow. He was a complete ballplayer from the moment he arrived. And then there are always players that I haven’t noticed before. Nowadays we are all victims of Bud Selig’s horrible new schedule, and we are sequestered from seeing teams except in local divisions. I’ve never seen nearly enough of Garret Anderson for instance, who is a wonderful player. And that happens a lot.

BB: Are you not a fan of interleague play?

Angell: Sure, I think interleague play is fine. I have to say in defense of Bud Selig–I’m not a huge Bud fan for various reasons–but a lot of what he’s done has been a success. Interleague play has been a success; the three divisions are working out OK. I don’t like the schedule. I’m dead against the new schedule. I mean the new schedule was passed because teams didn’t want to spend all that money on traveling, and the writers didn’t want to be away from home so long, so far. But if you think about it, the great thing about baseball now is that we have some extraordinary stars, some of the best players who have ever played, but they are scattered all over. And you’ve got to be alert now. I mean the Giants are going to here (at Shea) for three days in the middle of August. Three days to look at Barry Bonds: That’s terrible. Meantime, we get to see the Mets play Montreal, and the Phillies and Florida over and over and over again, which is not my idea of the best outcome for baseball.

BB: How do you like the contemporary game compared with previous generations?

Angell: I don’t think in those terms. I don’t think: This is the best time. I think that’s a way to make yourself not enjoy what’s going on. There is no doubt in my mind that we have as talented a bunch of players playing right now that the game has ever known. There is no doubt. These guys are extraordinary athletes. We have a rush of wonderful infielders, and great shortstops. Great shortstops who can hit. So why don’t we enjoy what we are seeing? I don’t have to say, this is the best time. Why make that choice? People are always ready to give up on baseball and say It wasn’t what it was. Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t, and maybe it’s about to be the best it’s ever been. It’s perfectly possible. I don’t think people have any awareness of the contributions Hispanic stars have made to the game. They are the powerful force that has made the game as good as it is right now. They are not nearly appreciated enough.

BB: Is it more difficult to talk with players now?

Angell: It’s much harder, because I’m so old. I’m 82. I approach them with my white hair. When they call you “sir,” you’re in trouble.

BB: Does the same thing go for the likes of Torre, and Zimmer?

Angell: No, the old guys know me, so I can talk to them. We go back a long ways. We look at each other and say, ‘still here?’ But a lot of my best friends in baseball are gone. Bill Rigney was my best friend in baseball, and he died a couple of years ago.

BB: Underneath his stoic calm, Torre is a tough Italian guy from Brooklyn, huh?

Angell: Torre was a catcher for most of his career. No gentle guys are catchers. Torre has got an immense sense of authority. He’s tough enough. He doesn’t go around acting tough because that’s not his nature. But the players who come to play for him come to realize that he was a hell of a player. He shared an MVP award one year, lead the league in batting. So the next year he lost 64 points off his batting title. And he always points to that. He’s also the guy who’ll tell you about the day he grounded into four double plays. He’s always putting himself down, which is a way he can help his team, because every player has horrible times, and they want to be reminded of that and not how great a player their manager was. But I go back to Bonds, who is one of the most exciting and interesting people to think about that I’ve encountered in baseball. It’s amazing to me what he’s done in the past couple of years. And all the old players that I’ve talked to about it, have said, ‘I’ve never seen a guy locked in like this’–never, ever, ever. It’s just astounding. It’s really fun to place him in the category of the best who ever played. You have to put him among the top three outfielders of all time. He now belongs there with Ruth and Mays. I had a long exchange with a writer named Charlie Einstein, who is a friend of mine, a retired writer who lives around here. He used to cover the Giants; he went out with the Giants from New York to San Francisco. He’s the biographer, and chronicler and closest friend of Willie Mays. And I wrote in my piece, I quoted a local writer out there, Ray Ratto, saying that Bonds is the best outfielder now that’s ever played. He’s number three. And he’s never going to rise above three because the other two were Mays and Ruth. Of course Bonds was pissed off. But Einstein wrote, if I can remember this correctly, this means we have a second outfield of Aaron and Williams and DiMaggio, a third-best outfield of Clemente, Cobb and Mantle. And he said: ‘Who is going to tell Stan Musial that he’s on the fourth team?’ (laughs)

THE PLUMBING OF PITCHING

When I was growing up, my uncle Fred taught me how to draw, paint and most importantly: How to look. He also taught me how to be a Yankee fan. Fred married into the family when I was about three years old, and he made a huge impression on my creative development, as well as my sporting identity. A painter who makes a living as an animator—he’s done spots for “Seasame Street” for years—Fred went to Cooper Union during the height of the Abstract Expressionist movement, in the mid to late 50s.

Fred would take me to the Metropolitan Museum of Art when I was a kid, and excitedly, expertly guide me through various galleries to specific paintings. He always had a lesson plan. The way he navigated his way around the MET made me feel like I was getting a private tour from an expert, which in fact, was exactly what I was getting. Whether we looked at Vermeers, or Carravaggios or Edward Hoppers or later on, Franz Klines or DeKoonings, Fred deconstructed paintings like he was a plumber. Straight, no chaser, no muss, no fuss, you know what I mean?

We looked at how painters work with spacial relationships, with composition, and tension, and color in their work. Essentially, Fred stripped away all subject matter, and was able to show me how painters paint, and how they made the viewers look, regardless if the picture was abstract or representational.

“Every great painter has a drawing or a painting of a sink,” he used to tell me. And he’s not far off the mark. Put your favorite artist to the test when you get a chance. A sink, after all, is not a glamourous subject, but it is a blunt, and simple one which requires basic discipline and concentration. A sink also stripes away all pretention. What is it? A lousy ol’ sink, you say. But, it’s a great subject for any artist, young or old. The beauty is in the simplicity, because it’s such a throwaway, everyday object.

I’ve carried this notion of plumbing to other areas of interest as well—writing, music, moviemaking. I love dissecting the creative process, discovering the bare bones of a craft.

Of course, baseball offers both the art of pitching and hitting for us to dig our forks into.

This past weekend, there were several articles on the nuts and bolts of pitching mechanics, preparation and philosophy. So, let’s take a break from all the other nonsense for moment and look at the plumbing of pitching…

I saw Tim Kurkjian file a report from Yankee Camp over the weekend, and he said that Jose Contreras looked impressive in his bullpen sessions for the Yankees. According to scouting reports, Contreras apparently uses his slider and his forkball/splitter early in the count to set up his fastball. Curious.

The Post filed a story on the Cuban pitcher this past weekend, detailing his training methods:

“Since I left the [Cuban national] team in Mexico [in October], I took one week of vacation. Since then I have been working out and throwing,” Contreras said at his Legends Field locker. “I have pretty much been throwing for three months. I would say that’s the reason I might look a little bit ahead of the other guys.”

Yesterday was the second bullpen session for Contreras since camp opened and it was impressive. The fastball had life and the splitter danced. And his location, usually off for pitchers at this stage, was razor sharp.

“I am ready right now to start pitching in games,” said Contreras, who signed a four-year deal worth $32 million.

“He is very businesslike, very compact and he seems very sure of himself,” Torre said of Contreras, who uses multiple arm angles ala Orlando Hernandez when releasing the ball. “There is a lot there and you get a little anxious to see him but it’s still not going to be until you see the games that we are going to take note of all the equipment he has.”

Two pieces of equipment Contreras uses aren’t conventional to most pitches. Prior to throwing in the bullpen, Contreras plays catch with a 12-ounce baseball (a regular baseball is between 5 and 51/4 ounces) and a softball.

“The [baseball] builds strength and the softball helps with the grip, especially the splitter,” said Contreras, who was 117-50 during the past seven seasons in Cuban league play.

John Harper, who is as unassuming as he is outstanding, had a terrific feature on Tom Glavine’s approach to pitching last Sunday:

Glavine’s cutter moves in harder and later on righthanders than I would have guessed. It doesn’t have the speed of Mariano Rivera’s cutter, or the violent down-and-in action of Al Leiter’s, but if it’s thrown in the right location, Glavine’s cutter has enough on it to tie up righthanded hitters.

“Yeah,” he says, “but it’s easy to throw that pitch when I don’t have to worry about making a mistake with it. It’s harder to trust it with a hitter in there. That’s what makes pitching away so much easier. If I make a mistake out there, it’s usually only a single.

“I’ve been stubborn over the years about pitching away, but even though hitters know I’m going to work them away, I find that most hitters are not going to allow themselves to hit singles to right field all day. They want to hit home runs and extra-base hits. In the back of their mind they’re always waiting for you to hang that one pitch they can smoke, and when you throw the ball down and away where you want to, you get your nice little ground ball or popup.”

Glavine then motions for me to slide out farther, so that the middle of my chest is in line with the outside corner. He tells me later he’ll ask Mike Piazza to set up the same way on either side of the plate because he uses the catcher’s body, not the glove, as his target.

“I can’t throw to the glove,” he says. “I want the catcher’s body splitting the corner. I’m looking at your chest and I want the glove right there in your chest.”

…”I don’t have a complicated game plan,” he says. “I might shake off 10 to 15 pitches a game, but everybody knows what I like to throw. Mainly I want my catchers to get out there a couple of inches off the plate so I can hit that spot and they don’t have to move the glove to catch it.”

Meanwhile, the Times had a good story on Chris Hammond, who is slated to replace Mike Stanton as the lefty set-up man in Joe Torre’s bullpen. (Evidentally, Hammond had a relationship with none other than the Great Joe D himself. On a side note, one of DiMaggio’s lawyers has just published an anti-Joe D book. Looks as if that trends here to stay.)

Hammond has a killer changeup.

Hammond has thrown the pitch since he was 10. It got him to the majors with Cincinnati in 1990, and brought him back a decade later.

“Very few pitchers really want to throw the changeup,” Hammond said. “I was talking to John Rocker a few years ago about it: `If I were you, I would sit down and that’s all I’d do in the off-season, work on my changeup.’ And he goes, `I can’t. If I’m going to get beat, I don’t want to get beat on my changeup.’ “
Hammond was incredulous at that logic. For him, the changeup is a devastating weapon, evaluated at a score of 80 – the highest possible – by the Yankee scouts.

“It has different action on it,” Newman said. “He has great arm speed and command of it. The funny term people use for it is the `Bugs Bunny change,’ because it’s like it stops in midair. It’s so good he throws it to left-handers and right-handers.”

Hammond held right-handers to a .206 average last year, and left-handers were more helpless, batting .174. He delivers his changeup awkwardly, stomping hard on the mound with his right foot and then releasing it. The harder he stomps, the more he is concentrating.

…”It looks funny,” Newman said, “but more importantly, hitters think it looks funny.”

The Yankees’ bullpen is stuffed with hard throwers – Mariano Rivera, Steve Karsay, Antonio Osuna – and Hammond gives them a different look. As it is with all newcomers, he must prove he can handle the pressure of being a Yankee. But wherever he is, Hammond said, he will always be nervous.

Joel Sherman has a piece on Andy Pettitte, who is facing a crucial season in his career, and Jonah Keri conducts an outstanding interview with Oakland A’s pitching coach, Rick Peterson, at Baseball Prospectus, that is well worth reading.

Finally, Murray Chass wrote a compelling article about the Jesse Orosco and the fountain of youth on Sunday. He also compiled a list of aging veterans who are willing to play for a fraction of what they once made, which once again suggests just how difficult it is for some players to leave the game. (Jim Caple and Aaron Gleeman give their takes on Rickey Henderson, who has not been signed by a team yet.)

Here is Dennis Eckersley, always a straight-shooter, talking to Mike Bryan in spring training 1988, from the book “Baseball Lives:”

People say baseball players should go out and have fun. No way. To me, baseball is pressure. I always feel it. This is work. The fun is afterwards, when you shake hands.

When I was a rookie I’d tear stuff up. Now I keep it in. What good is smashing a light on the way up the tunnel? But I still can’t sleep at night if I stink. I’ve always tried to change that and act like a normal guy when I got home. “Hi, honey, what’s happening?” I can’t. It’s there. It doesn’t go away. But maybe that’s why I’ve been successful in my career, because I care. I don’t have fun. I pitch scared. That’s what makes me go. Nothing wrong with being scared if you can channel it.

I issued to hide behind my cockiness. Don’t let the other team know you’re scared. I got crazy on the mound. Strike a guy out, throw my fist around—“Yeah!” Not real classy, but I was a raw kid. I didn’t care. It wasn’t fake. It was me. This wasn’t taken very kindly by a lot of people. They couldn’t wait to light me up. That’s the price you pay.

I wish I was a little happier in this game. What is so great about this shit? You get the money, and then you’re used to the money. You start making half a million a year, next thing you know you need half a million a year. And the heat is on!

Used to be neat to just be a big-league ballplayer, but that wore off. I’m still proud, but I don’t want people to bother me about it. I wish my personality with people was better. I find myself becoming short with people. Going to the store. Getting gas.

If you’re not happy with when you’re doing lousy, then not happy when you’re doing well, when the hell are you going to be happy? This game will humble you in a heartbeat. Soon as you starting getting happy Boom! For the fans—and this is just a guess—they think the money takes out the feeling. I may be wrong but I think they think, “What the hell is he worrying about? He’s still getting’ paid.” There may be a few players who don’t give 100 percent, but I always thought if you were good enough to make that kind of money, you’d have enough pride to play like that, wouldn’t you think? You don’t just turn it on-or off.

This got me thinking about the David Cone situation. While Eck is scathingly honest, in the mold of a Pat Jordan, Cone is far more measured and polished. Still, I think Eck hits on something universal when he said:

I’ve been very fortunate to pitch for fourteen years in the big leagues. That’s a long time for a pitcher. I’m afraid of life after baseball. Petrified. I’m not ashamed of saying it. I’ll be all right, but nothing will ever compare with this. I will not stay in baseball. I think about commercial real estate and money-big money!

Or maybe I’ll grow up after I get ouf of this fuckin’ game.

And that, I believe is at the heart of the matter for all American men, not just aging jocks: The fear of growing up.

Perish the thought.

Hall of Fame Watch

JOE, HO, HO

Joe Torre is on the list of 26 former ballplayers who are up for Hall of Fame consideration by the newly revamped Veterans Committee (Rob Neyer has a good article regarding the recent changes in his most recent column). In his book, “Whatever Happened to the Hall of Fame” Bill James listed Joe Torre as one of the two most qualified catchers who are not in the Hall (Ted Simmons was the other). But even if Torre is not elected by the Veterans Committee for his accomplishments as a player, there is little doubt that his success as a manager will eventually place him in Cooperstown.

The following excerpt is from Pat Jordan’s acutely observed memoir, “A False Spring”. While it doesn’t necessarily prove that Torre should be in the Hall of Fame, it does provide a revealing portrait of a young man at the start of what has turned out to be quite an impressive baseball career.

It is spring training, 1960 and Pat Jordan is struggling to make an impression as a pitcher in the Milwaukee Braves organization…

‘I was determined to impress…There was no task too menial or unpleasant (carrying the bats to and from the diamond) for which I did not volunteer. And when I suffered a minor yet painful sore arm, I told no one. I knew it wasn’t serious, was just a spring training sore arm that would heal with a few day’s rest, and so, when Billy asked for a batting practice pitcer one day, I couldn’t resist offering myself. My arm was so sore my pitches barely reached the plate. The batters, thrown off their timing by my lobs, swung so far ahead as to hit them foul or miss them entirely. They complained to my catcther, Joe Torre. He fired the ball back to me and said, “Put something on the damn ball!”

“Mind your own business,” I replied. I lobbed another pitch, and the batter swung and missed. He said something to Torre. Joe stepped in front of the plate. He held the ball up in front of his eyes and said, “If you can’t put something on this,” and then he fired it back to me, “get the hell off the mound.” He turned around and I threw the ball at the back of his head. I missed and the ball bounced off the screen. Joe flung down his glove and his mask and started toward me. We’d certainly have come to blows if [skipper] Billy Smith had not come between us. With a hand against each of our chests, he told us to cool off, forget it. I remember being suprised by the look on Billy’s face as he separated us. His eyes were wide and there was a tremor in his voice.

I was glad Billy stopped us. I had no desire to fight Joe Torre, who at 19 already had the looks and attitude of a 30-year old veteran. Joe was fat then, over 220 pounds, and his unbelievably dark skin and black brows were frightening. He looked like a fierce Bedouin tribesman whose distrust for everything could be read in the shifting whites of his eyes. Like myself, he too, was earnest that spring. Joe’s earnestness was genuine, however, not recently picked off the rack like mine. He was unwavering in his dedication to baseball. He tolerated no lapses of desire or effort from either himself or his teammates. Billy Smith called him a “hard-nosed sunuvabitch.” It was a term of endearment. Joe viewed my feeble lobs during batting practice as “unprofessional.” He was right. I should have either confessed a sore arm and not pitched, or else ignored the pain and thrown at good speed. My weak compromise hurt my teammates.

Yet this was Torre’s first spring training, too. He had acquired his professionalism from his brother Frank, then a star with Milwaukee; from his desire to prove he expected no favors from the Braves because of Frank of his own $30,000 bonus; from his Roman Catholic, Italian working-class upbringing in Brooklyn; and from his own nature. At 19 Joe was simply a mature and serious youth. He took everythying seriously—his baseball, his family, his religion, his brother’s career and even the Playboy bunny he would one day marry.

The night of our dispute in Waycross, I lay on my cot thinking that Billy Smith would admire for standing up to Joe. At that moment the scouts and managers and executives were assembling to pick tomorrow’s teams. I could almost hear Billy’s high voice as he picked me: “That’s my kinda player. Won’t take shit from no one.” But the following morning when I passed the bulletin board my name was under that of Travis Jackson, managaer of Davenport of the Class D Midwest League. Later that afternoon, I discovereed that what Billy Smith had actually said the night before was, “I won’t have no red-ass guinea on my club.” Surely he meant Torre, I thought. But his name was still under Billy’s, while mine remained under Travis’s for the rest of the spring. Why? How had Billy decided that I was the red-ass geinea?’