Yanks play the Blue Jays for the first time this year. They’ll play two games up in Toronto.

Meanwhile, Marc Carig writes that the Yanks have enough pieces in the bullpen to get to Soriano in the 9th.

Curtis Granderson CF
Nick Swisher RF
Robinson Cano 2B
Alex Rodriguez 3B
Mark Teixeira 1B
Raul Ibanez LF
Eric Chavez DH
Russell Martin C
Jayson Nix SS

Jetes the the night off.

Never mind the tantrums: Let’s Go Yank-ees!

[Featured Image via Personal Message; photograph by Bags]

There were fewer than 1,500 fans in the Stadium as the Yankees snapped their five-game losing streak, beating the White Sox, 6-5. Those who were there saw DiMaggio hit a momentous homerun in the third inning, a colossal blast which cleared the bullpen in leftfield before landing far up into the bleachers. It was said at the time that the only other right hander to hit a ball that far in Yankee Stadium was Detroit’s Hank Greenberg. The Yankees came to bat in the bottom of the ninth down by a run when DiMaggio smashed a triple to dead center, keying a two-run rally that would earn his team a much-needed win. Two down, fifty-four to go.

Dock Ellis is back in amination.

Seventy-one years ago Tuesday, Joe DiMaggio began his historic fifty-six game hitting streak, a feat which likely will never be matched. To commemorate this achievement, we’ve decided to track Joe D day-by-day and game-by-game over the next two months, which promises to be fun. Here’s the first installment…

As the Yankees arrived in the middle of May, both the team and its twenty-six year old center fielder were in the midst of terrible slumps. DiMaggio came into the afternoon’s game against the White Sox hitting a respectable .306, but he had seen his average drop more than 200 points in the previous three weeks following a torrid start to the season. The Yankees started the day 5 1/2 games behind the first place Cleveland Indians, and they lost that day to Chicago, 13-1. DiMaggio’s 1 for 4 effort at the plate actually lowered his batting average to .304, and so it appeared that both slumps were continuing. While it’s likely that few would’ve expected the team’s struggles to continue, it’s certain that no one had any idea where DiMaggio’s first inning single would eventually lead.

The Yankees lost to the Orioles 5-2 tonight in a game so dull and unremarkable that I’m worried I might lapse and accidentally recap the drama at Manchester City on Sunday instead. The Yankees had a chance to sweep a two-game set with the division leading Orioles and with CC Sabathia on the hill and in form of late, what could go wrong?

Wei-Yin Chen. I don’t know if he’s really any good, but he’s pitching pretty well and the Orioles have now won six of his seven starts. CC wasn’t good on a night when he had to be. Adam Jones really smacked one out of the park in the second, and CC let up three doubles, but he could have survived if not for all those other base runners. Seven Orioles reached on via walk, hit by pitch, or infield single and CC was toast after six.

Chen kept the Yanks off the board for those same six innings. Curtis Granderson got him, the other way no less, in the seventh for the only two runs the Yanks would score and the game never seemed like it would bend towards the Yankees.

Maybe with a little bit tighter defense and a few decent calls from the umps at key moments and if we could swap those three rally-killing double plays for hits… oh hell, forget it. We’d have to start over and play this one again to find a way to make a Yankee victory plausible. They were the second best team at the park and that’s because the rain scared away that Little League team that was planning to attend.

Moving over to basketball and soccer, let’s just say that if your Mother’s Day celebration did not include the Manchester City game versus Queens Park Rangers, you missed out on the best sporting event of the year. No doubt, lock up the prize, no one is topping that. It was the 2004 Red Sox, but if all that craziness of the Games 4 and 5 of the ALCS happened in Game 7 of the World Series instead.

In the NBA Playoffs, I’m rooting for Lebron I guess, though I’ll be plenty psyched if Roy Hibbert and the Pacers keep winning. I just want Lebron to win one and then to see what happens after that. Will he break through and become something different and better than he is right now? Will he slide back after grabbing the ring? I also would like him not be the terrible choke artist that many paint him to be.

Then I look at the play-by-play data from tonight and I see he disappeared at the end of the game only to pop up and miss the two biggest free throws of the night, ones that would have turned a one-point deficit into a one-point lead with 54 seconds to play. He didn’t get a shot off for the final three and half minutes, clearly deferring to Wade, who managed to pump off five and was fouled shooting a sixth in the same time span.

I wish I watched that game instead of the Yankees because I’d love to know what the hell was going on there. I don’t think we’re asking Lebron to win or lose by himself. We’re just asking him to play the final minutes the same way he plays the rest of the game. Did anybody watch?

The title of this post was inspired by Eduardo Nunez, who can play any position on the field, not that you’d want him to. It also applies to CC Sabathia, who, I learned from YES, had locked up with the resident lefty Hulk over in Tampa, David Price, five times previously and not yet delivered a win for the Yanks. Despite E-Nunez gifting two runs to the Rays by botching two routine plays in the first two innings, the Yankees were all over David Price from the word “go” and CC Sabathia clamped down like a too-tight Ace bandage over eight excellent innings for a 5-3 win and a series victory.

What does Eduardo Nunez do well? He’s 24 years old. He can steal a base. He can stand anywhere on the diamond you ask him to and, if the ball is hit in his general vicinity, he might block it with some part of his body and throw it somewhere within the stadium in which he is playing. For some reason, this skill set is the lynchpin of Joe Girardi’s roster management strategy.

Most of the outfield is hurt? Don’t call up a Minor Leaguer, Nunez can stand out there. We have an old and injury prone left side of the infield? Start Nunez as often as possible. The legendary closer broke his knee? Is Nunez already in the game? Damn. Call up a reserve outfielder, I guess. Is this really what the Yankees have become? A team so shitty that Eduardo Nunez and his null set is vital? I don’t believe it.

But I digress. I considered writing about Mariano Rivera again tonight. About how his sudden absence has changed my outlook on the Yanks. Less childish. Less emotional. Less passionate. Then Eduardo Nunez booted an easy inning-ending grounder in the first and I shouted at the TV, “Get him off the field, he’s terrible!”

“What does “terrible” mean?”

Oh, shit, the kids are still up and they heard that. Backtrack and apologize or give them the hard truth that Eduardo Nunez sucks at baseball, relatively speaking? Backtrack. I have to get these kids through Little League, after all.

Anyway, somehow bedtime got extended until the Yanks tied it up at 2-2, so they went to sleep with fresh memories of Curtis Granderson homers. Better than sugar plums if you ask me.

Price sure looked like he had all his stuff, but the Yanks weren’t fooled very often. Granderson homered and blasted another to the warning track. Alex had great swings and two hits. Cano saw him better than anyone, with three hits and the telling blow, a two-run jack. Last night, the Yankees scored one run off of Jeff Neimann and were lucky to get it. Tonight they scored five off David Price and seemed a good bounce away from getting ten. Go figure.

In the six innings without a Nunez error, Sabathia permitted four base runners and held the Rays scoreless. His final line was eight innings, two unearned runs, seven hits, one walk, and ten strikeouts. I think he was better than that line indicates, if that’s possible. CC Sabathia is quite possibly the one thing the Yanks got right this winter. And it’s a big one. Next time we’re bitching about Pineda, Montero and Ibanez, let’s be sure to throw CC on the scales.

Let’s also give Joe Girardi some credit for a smart move tonight. He took Nunez out for a defensive replacement. In the sixth inning.

Photo by Mike Stobe/AP

If the only baseball you’ve watched over the past fifteen years has involved the Yankees, it’s possible you’ve come to believe what some will tell you — the closer is the most overrated position in baseball. Those last three outs are really no different than the first three outs. Far too much glory and farther too much money are heaped upon those few soles lucky enough to have been weeded out of the starting pitching pool and thrust into the last spot in the bullpen. Any pitcher, after all, could get those last three outs. If the only baseball you’ve watched over the past fifteen years has involved the Yankees and Mariano Rivera, it’s possible you think those last three outs are easy.

They aren’t. At least not always.

On Wednesday night the Yankees scored a run in the top of the first inning when Derek Jeter notched his 50th hit of the season and scored all the way from first a few minutes later on Robinson Canó’s double to left field. That 1-0 lead stuck for a long time, thanks mainly to an impressive start by Yankee rookie David Phelps.

Phelps got off to a rough start, giving up a leadoff double to Ben Zobrist and backing that up with a walk to Carlos Peña. He’d eventually issue another walk to Luke Scott to load the bases with two outs. He recovered to get Will Rhymes to ground out to second to end the inning, and then settled into a groove, setting down nine of the next ten batters to cruise into the fifth.

Baseball is a funny thing. If everything we read back in 2007 had come true, Joba Chamberlain and Phil Hughes, the one-time jewels of the Yankee farm system, would have about 150 wins between the two of them by now. Sure, Phelps was the team’s Minor League Pitcher of the Year in 2010, but he hasn’t generated nearly the hype of countless other Yankee prospects. Still, it looks like he might stick around, even if his spot in the rotation is given to Andy Pettitte. His control is good, and his money pitch — a Maddux-like fastball that starts at a left-hander’s hip before darting back over the inside corner — seems perfectly designed to neutralize the scariest hitters he’ll face in Yankee Stadium.

With two outs in the fifth and still clinging to that 1-0 lead, Phelps looked to be in position to grab his first major league win. But with his pitch count climbing into the eighties, a walk to Peña, another to B.J. Upton, and Joe Girardi’s itchy trigger finger all conspired against him, and Phelps found himself walking off the mound an out too early.

Boone Logan quelled the rally by striking out Matt Joyce, then set down two more in the sixth before passing the baton to Cory Wade, who saw the game through the seventh. Things got a bit interesting in the eighth, thanks to a leadoff walk issued by Rafael Soriano and a throwing error by Canó, by Soriano wriggled free and passed the game to David Robertson in the ninth inning.

Robertson’s statistics coming into the inning were obscene. He hadn’t allowed a run since the end of last August, and he had struck out 23 hitters in just 13 innings in 2012. Sure, he had struggled a bit the night before, but this was the Hammer of Thor. Now that he had worked his way through his jitters, he’d surely get back to doing what the Hammer does — pounding the strike zone and blowing away any and all overmatched hitters who dared oppose him. These last three outs, after all, are no different than the three in the eighth.

All of this zipped through my head as Robertson came to a set and readied for his first pitch to Sean Rodríguez. Fifty-five seconds later the Rays had runners on second and third with no one out. Rodríguez singled to left on the first pitch of the inning, and Brandon Allen echoed that with a single of his own to right on Robertson’s second pitch. (Nick Swisher’s ill-advised attempt to nail Rodríguez at third was nowhere near the cutoff man, and Allen was able to take second.) Robertson was probably as stunned as anyone else, and he promptly walked Zobrist on four straight pitches to load the bases and bring the dangerous Carlos Peña to the plate.

Robertson’s teammates call him Houdini for his uncanny ability to squirm free of jams like this one; in his career fifty batters have faced him with the bases loaded and twenty-five of them have struck out. Peña became the twenty-sixth of fifty-one, and suddenly it seemed possible. On a 1-1 count to Upton, Robertson dropped a pitch that may or may not have (but probably didn’t) dance across the outside corner. It was the type of pitch that many umpires would honor, but Jim Reynolds had been squeezing pitchers on both sides all night, and he saw this as a ball. If Robertson had gotten that pitch, you can bet he would have pumped a 1-2 fastball up in Upton’s eyes, and you can bet that Upton would’ve swung right through it for strike three. But at 2-1, justifiably fearful of extending to 3-1 with the bases loaded, Robertson was forced deeper into the meat of the strike zone with his fourth pitch. Upton didn’t get all of it, but he got enough to float a fly ball to medium right. Swisher made one of the best throws I’ve ever seen him make, but Rodríguez slid in just ahead of Russell Martin’s tag. The game was tied, and the save was blown.

A few minutes later Matt Joyce hit a three-run home run to right (spraining his ankle on the swing and falling down at home plate), and the game was over. Rays 4, Yankees 1.

Should we worry about Mr. Robertson? Hardly.

[Photo Credit: Kathy Willens/AP Photo]

Steve Kerr advocates raising the NBA’s age limit over at Grantland. His argument is that the NBA is better served financially by having players in college longer. And in the end, Steve, isn’t what’s in the best financial interests of  the NBA really what’s best for America?

The dreckiest sentence in this mountain of dreck is this one: “Why should NBA franchises assume the responsibility and financial burden of player development when, once upon a time, colleges happily assumed that role for them?”

Let’s rewrite that question for Steve, but add one single ounce of humanity and perspective: “Why should anyone other than the NBA assume the responsibility and financial burden of player development?” Steve thinks the NBA is entitled to reap the corrupted benefits of the professional basketball player factory that is the NCAA.

And thank goodness for the NCAA. Assuming responsibilty over here and financial burden over there, all out of the goodness of their collective heart. The NCAA and NBA have concocted a virtually risk-free scam in which the NCAA develops talent at no cost, funnels that talent into a monopoly.  The only potential risk is a player getting hurt before he gets pushed through the funnel. That’s a minimal risk because the flow of talent is endless.

Well, minimal risk for the NBA and NCAA anyway. But screw the kid. That’s Kerr’s point and at least he had the guts to state it bluntly – albeit after he piled on about 2000 words of tone-deaf platitudes and other compost:

The arguments against raising the age requirement hinge on civil liberties, points like, “Who are we to deny a 19-year-old kid a chance to make a living when he can vote, drive, and fight in a war?” If this were about legality or fairness, you might have a case. But it’s really about business. The National Basketball Association is a multi-billion-dollar industry that depends on ticket sales, sponsorships, corporate dollars, and media contracts to operate successfully. If the league believes one rule tweak — whatever it is — would improve its product and make it more efficient, then it should be allowed to make that business decision.

With that guiding principle Steve, what other “rule tweaks” might serve the greater good of the NBA, and by definition, America? An endless and frightening list of things comes to mind. No business should be allowed to violate fundamental freedoms of our society to improve their bottom line. That type of thinking is vile.

And why is Grantland publishing this badifesto? I’m not asking an entire collection of writers to speak with one voice, but dropping in a non-writer with partisan ties to an issue to editoriolize is in poor taste. Especially when his case is so glaringly weak and offered without counterpoint.

I also don’t think rich, old, White men should be allowed to arbitrarly decide when impoverished, young, Black adults should be allowed to earn a living in their chosen profession, but Steve Kerr deftly dealt with that issue by not mentioning it.

With a 4-2 lead after seven innings, the Yankees showed off their new “Plan A” bullpen tonight. Rafael Soriano took over eighth-inning responsibilities as David Robertson packed his hammer for the ninth. It was the first close game since Mariano got hurt and I felt another wave of shock and depression as Mariano’s theoretical absence hardened into an actual game situation. It’s not that I’ve never seen the Yankees win a close one without Mariano, it’s just that those games were obviously temporary. A fleeting glimpse at an alternate universe, its otherness reaffirming our reality where Mariano was firmly and safely entrenched. This, as we all know too well, was different.

Ben Zobrist rocketed a triple to left-center gap to greet Soriano. He bounced back to strikeout Carlos Pena and B.J. Upton and was one strike away from stranding Zobrist when he threw a 55-foot slider that glanced off Russell Martin’s chest protector and bounced far enough away for Zobrist to score. Soriano then walked Matt Joyce on a close pitch, another slider, and went 3-0 on Luke Scott. Scott was ripping dead-red on the  3-0 pitch and Martin and Soriano wisely stayed with the slider. Soriano worked the count full and punched Scott out on a nasty, diving slider – the one he meant to throw Joyce.

The lead down to one, the Yankees rallied to give David Roberston a little slack. Alex Rodriguez hit a screaming bastard of a line drive that nearly impaled B.J. Upton in center. They gave Upton an error for letting Alex get to second, but better an error than a hole in the chest. Teixeira finally out-hit the shift and snuggled a double into the right field corner, scoring Alex.

David Robertson faced the bottom of the order in the ninth and did not burst into flames when he took the mound. It took a couple of batters. He got the first out but walked Rhymes. He let up a single to Sean Rodriguez and Tampa sent up Brandon Allen to homer or whiff. He whiffed. The real problem was that the Rays had turned the lineup over and their most dangerous hitter, Ben Zobrist, came to bat as the go-ahead run. Robertson worked him carefully but could not get the umpire to give him even an inch on the outside corner. He walked him on five pitches to load the bases.

Holy shit. Couldn’t we get a nice easy save our first time out there without Mo? It has to come down to the one player on the Rays who can hit it 500 feet at any time? Carlos Pena had had a rough night with three strikeouts coming into the at bat, but I’d like to meet the Yankee fan that was glad to se him up there. Robertson started Pena with two perfect pitches – a curve and a fastball both on the outside corner – for two called strikes. Robertson tried to get Pena to chase a low curve and a high heater, but the count ran even at 2-2. Don’t let it get to 3-2, I thought, with all those runners in motion, any hit might lose the game. Robertson took aim at the outside corner one last time and drilled it with his best fastball of the night. Pena never took his big bat off his big shoulder and the Yanks won 5-3.

Phew. That only counts as one win? Are we sure?

The Yankees scored their first four runs on homers – two by Raul Ibanez, who is a more animated corpse than I thought he would be, and one by Curtis Granderson. Good thing the Yanks hit the ball over the fence, because they can’t buy a hit between the lines. The Rays are employing the shift with such audacity, I think it’s as much gamesmanship as it actual defensive strategy. It’s starting to remind me of how the 1986 Mets were completely spooked by Mike Scott’s scuffed balls. If they’re not careful, they’re going to end up mindfucked against their most dangerous division rival.

For the second game in a row, Joe Girardi pushed Ivan Nova through a trouble spot in the seventh inning. Last week, Nova kept the Yankees close for six innings but it wasn’t close after he pitched the seventh. The rest of the thirteen man staff watched the game get out of hand. This time, through an annoyingly consistent rainfall, the Yankees gave Nova a three-run bulge to work with. He was strong through five, but allowed solo shots in the six and the seventh. Perhaps rattled by the homers, he gave up his only two walks of the night immediately following the dongs. And he looked vulnerable for the first time all night in the seventh.

In the sixth, Mark Teixeira and Derek Jeter turned a nifty 3-6-3 double play to erase the walk and end the inning. In the seventh, it didn’t look like Nova would be so lucky. After the walk to Jeff Keppinger, Will Rhymes doubled down the first base line. It rattled around the corner, but Keppinger held at third. Sean Rodriguez flew out to shallow right. Swisher caught the ball with his body moving towards home plate and uncorked a very good throw just to the first-base side of home plate. Russell Martin received the ball and spun to place the tag in front of the plate. Keppinger stayed at third. Martin stood in front of the plate with the ball like a kid on a doorstep with flowers in his hand waiting for his date to come down the stairs.

Keppinger would have no trouble winning a Republican primary with such unimpeachable conservative principles.

Mad props to Ivan Nova, who struck out eight Rays with his excellent mix of pitches. I thought the change-up, slipping down, just out of the zone, was particularly promising tonight. He looked so good through most of his outing, it’s hard to reconcile the homers. He let Jose Molina take him deep, which, on a better team might be a punishable offense in Kangaroo court. Nova was up 0-2 in the count and threw a pitch like he was down 2-0. Watching Molina jiggle around the bases I wondered if this game is really as hard as we make it out to be sometimes.

Despite the Molina incident and coming damn close to blowing the lead in the seventh, Nova held on and rewarded his manager’s faith in him. But even though Nova and Ibanez were the stars of the game, the story was new look bullpen. And in life after Mo, we’re going to have to settle for success, even if it’s not quite as beautiful.

The Yankees lost to the Royals in Kansas City on Thursday night, falling 4-3 to a team that hadn’t previously won a single game at home. Young lefty Danny Duffy was in control for much of the night, dominating most Yankee hitters with his 98 MPH fastball and an assortment of curves, sliders, and changeups. (It should be noted, however, that Derek Jeter picked up four more hits, raising his average to .404 overall and a ridiculous .576 against lefties.)

Jeter’s fourth hit was a single to lead off the ninth inning, and when Curtis Granderson followed with a walk to put runners at first and second with no one out and the 3-4-5 hitters due, Kansas City’s one-run lead seemed about to melt. But Mark Teixeira promptly grounded into a 4-6-3 double play, leaving the game to Alex Rodríguez. A-Rod swung through Jonathan Broxton’s first pitch for strike one, then took a pitch that was low and inside and should’ve evened the count at 1-1. Home plate umpire Vic Carapazza saw it as a strike, and suddenly A-Rod was in an oh-two hole. He reacted about as strongly as you’ll ever see a batter react after strike two, taking a step or two towards the umpire with both arms outstretched wide in disbelief. A player of lesser stature would surely have been tossed, but to Carapazza’s credit, he let Alex have his say, perhaps because he knew he had missed the call.

Rodríguez stepped back in the box and dug deep, fouling off three straight pitches before taking three balls to work the count full. He took a mighty swing at the ninth pitch of the at bat, but only managed to dribble it weakly down the third base line. Third baseman Mike Moustakas rushed in, plucked the ball from the grass with his bare hand, and fired to first to get A-Rod by half a step and end the game.

By now, though, you know that none of that matters. While shagging fly balls in the outfield during batting practice before the game, Mariano Rivera twisted his knee and fell to the ground in obvious pain. Waiting his turn in the cage almost four hundred feet away, A-Rod spoke for Yankee fans everywhere when he said, “Oh, my god! Oh, my god! He’s hurt!” Manager Joe Girardi raced to where Mariano lay on the warning track, and moments later he and bullpen coach Mike Harkey were hoisting the greatest closer of all time — and by at least one measure, the greatest pitcher of all time — onto a cart that would drive him off into the sunset, perhaps forever.

The true extent of Rivera’s injury wouldn’t be revealed until after the game, but the specter of disaster loomed over the entire evening. At one point Ken Singleton reported that it was simply a twisted knee and said something about how Girardi would have to do without him for a few days. Anyone who had seen the play (you can watch it here) knew it was much worse.

Within minutes after the final out, Rivera himself confirmed the worst. He had torn his ACL and his meniscus. The exact course of action won’t be known until Rivera flies back to New York and meets with team doctors, but one thing is for sure: he won’t pitch again in 2012, and since this season had long been rumored to be his last, there’s no guarantee that he’ll want to return for 2013, nor is it clear that he’ll even be able to pitch next year. When asked if he thought he would pitch again, an emotional Rivera gave a sobering answer: “At this point, I don’t know. At this point, I don’t know. We have to face this first.”

And now I have to face it. Throughout the game as we were all wondering what the news would be, I didn’t once consider how Rivera’s loss might affect the team. I didn’t wonder who the new closer would be, and I didn’t worry about the team’s playoff chances. All I could think about was whether or not I would ever see Rivera pitch again.

What I’m about to say wouldn’t make sense to people who aren’t sports fans, but I’m guessing that anyone who reads this will understand. Mariano Rivera, Derek Jeter, Andy Pettitte, and Jorge Posada have been fixtures in my life for so long that they’ve transcended sport and become more than just baseball players. They have been the Mt. Rushmore of these Yankees, the faces of the franchise.

With Rivera specifically, it won’t just be during the final three outs of the ninth inning that I’ll miss him. I’ll miss those moments when the camera catches him tutoring a young reliever and modeling the grip of his cutter, a magician opening his bag of tricks. I’ll miss the naps he’d sometimes take in the middle innings. I’ll miss his measured reactions to wins, his stoic confidence in defeat. Without question, I’ll miss the man more than the player.

Sometimes, it’s not about baseball.

[Photo Credit: AP Photo/YES Network]

After skipping the latest Phlobafest last night, I was determined to catch most of Ivan Nova’s performance tonight. He’s the flip side of the aching disappointment attached to Phloba – surprising success. Sadly, Nova’s not that great either.

He’s good when he keeps the ball in the park and works his magic escaping jams of his own creation. The ball left the park tonight, and as his pitch count ran north of 100, all those men on base began to score. The Yankee offense did next to nothing against Jake Arrieta and lost the rubber game of the series 5-0 to the Orioles.

Jake Arrieta deserves the game ball for this one. He threw hard fastballs on the corners and mixed in breaking balls when needed. But the well-placed fastball was enough. The Yankees hit few balls hard and never threatened. Arrieta went eight strong innings, a career high.

Nova kept the Yanks in the game for six innings, but he was always in trouble. As he lost control of the game in the seventh inning, the thin ice of the Yankee bullpen finally fell through. With injuries to two starting outfielders, the Yankees decided to go with a short bullpen this week and it cost them a chance to steal the victory tonight. Who can fault Girardi with leaving Nova out there to put the game out of reach when he was carrying only 13 pitchers? Hopefully everyone will be healthy by the weekend so he can restock his arms.

The good news is that when Eric Chavez had an unexpected head injury in the middle of the game, there was another player waiting there on the bench that could fill in for him. That’s the kind of circumstance a professional manager must be prepared for and fans like us would overlook. The thirteen man staff might have forced Girardi to stretch Nova, but he would have looked even sillier if he had to forfeit the game when one of his starters got hurt.

I think the Yankees will win their fair share of games this season, and probably contend for the postseason. But with this starting pitching it’s hard to imagine what a winning streak might look like. Phil Hughes throwing a gem? Arod carrying the team over a three-game set? Those things seem impossible these days. Even worse, Cano and Teixeira are making Alex look dangerous. The pitching is so weak after Sabathia and somehow, in the absence of Gardner and Swisher, the lineup scored three runs in an entire series against the Orioles. When the Yankees are rolling they find three-run homers in seat cushions.

The Yankees are currently built like a .500 team: a fantastic bullpen, a creaky, streaky lineup and a rotation so top-heavy, if it was a human pyramid, the bottom layer would be crushed to death. The lineup should improve with health and a little patience. The rotation, though, I don’t see it. Andy Pettitte has done a lot of wonderful things for the Yankees, but would turning this starting staff into a postseason threat be his most impressive?

Photos by Kathy Willens  & Jim McIsaac/ AP

I received an email last week from a former teammate I hadn’t heard from in years. He was letting the old team know that our high school was celebrating the twentieth anniversary of our first Bergen County championship before the varsity game on Saturday. I looked at the word “twentieth” and for a moment wondered what team he could be talking about. I thought our 1992 team was the first to win Counties, but surely that wasn’t…shit, that was twenty years ago.

We showed up at the field on Saturday and most of the guys look like they could put on a uniform and get through seven innings without a nurse. The two decades took a toll in other ways though. There was less hair on display than a shoddy Brazilian bikini wax. It was the first time I’d seen my teammates since they became husbands and dads and it was a trip to see the changes in one fell swoop.

We’ve transitioned from teenagers to middle-agers along different paths but wherever and whenever it happened, our collective youth had vanished. Maybe some people held on longer than others, but after twenty years, nobody was spared. And that brings us to Phil Hughes who, it occurs to me now, has used up all his youth.

That’s the depressing part of Phloba’s (I am fusing Phil and Joba into the most disappointing word I can fashion, I might have broken that out last year, I don’t remember) breakdown. It would be fun to root for a Cy Young candidate or an All-Star (wait he was an All-Star?) but what we’re really lamenting injury after injury and sputtering pitch after pitch is the creeping shadow of time claiming Phloba’s youth. Whatever Phloba becomes now, it becomes as a man (as men?) with the burden of failure and the destruction of promise.

I knew I had to recap this game tonight, but I had a tough flight from Chicago backed up by dragging my ass around a basketball court and now a precarious time in which I try to make sure the coach seat and the boxing out don’t conspire to throw my back out when I sleep. When I saw Hughes was pitching, I didn’t even bother to record the game. I figured he’d be at best mediocre while giving up dongs left and right. If he was brilliant, I could suck it up and catch the replay.

No sucking it up was required.

My flight was delayed because of weather and I really hoped the game would be cancelled. I remember that’s how I used to feel when I young. I was so nervous for the games, I always hoped for rain. This time it was for strategic purposes – I didn’t want Phil Hughes to have to throw a pitch.

No such luck. The Yankees lost to the Orioles 7-1 in a game I’m glad to say that I missed entirely. I didn’t want to see Hughes let up homers. I didn’t want to see Eduardo Nunez massacre another position on the diamond. I didn’t want to see an offensive highlight package in which Arod’s bunt single, which led to no runs, featured prominently.

Hughes was better than last time, maybe the best he’s been all season, but it was nothing worth celebrating. And now he’s just another day older.

Photos by Al Bello / AP

Grand Central Station by Bags.

When I was a boy obsessing over all things baseball back in the 1970s and 80s, the Baltimore Orioles were universally viewed as the game’s model franchise. A part of this perception was a residual of their three straight American League pennants from 1969 to 1971 (and World Series win in 1970), but there was more than that. The O’s returned to the Fall Classic in 1979 and 1983 (winning it that year), and along the way they seemed to do it the right way.

In many ways, they were the polar opposites of the Yankees, who insisted on buying free agents and dealing away their prospects. The Orioles built slowly and steadily, hanging onto their farm products long enough to watch them develop into outstanding players like Hall of Famers Eddie Murray and Cal Ripken, Jr. Everyone loved the Orioles.

Then came Camden Yards, the first of the new wave of retro parks, in 1992, and Baltimore seemed poised to return to prominence and continue its three decade run of success. After winning the division championship in 1997, however, the Orioles quickly dissolved into mediocrity and irrelevance.

Somehow these Orioles have surprised everyone and climbed into first place in the American League East, and they carried that banner with them as they arrived in New York on Monday night.

Waiting for them on the mound for the Yankees was Hiroki Kuroda. With the New York starting rotation in an absolute shambles, Kuroda chose the perfect time to come up with the best outing of his Yankee career. He pitched seven strong innings, striking out four and allowing only a single run on a Chris Davis sacrifice fly in the second inning.

Aside from that blemish, Kuroda was in control the entire night. Things got a bit interesting, however, in the seventh. Nursing the 2-1 lead provided by Eric Chávez’s second-inning two-run home run, Kuroda ran into a bit of trouble when Nick Markakis opened the frame with a single, advanced to second on a long sacrifice fly by Adam Jones, and was joined on the bases when Matt Wieters was hit by a pitch. To make matters worse, Kuroda uncorked a wild pitch to allow the runners to move to second and third.

When the Yankees and Orioles matched up in Camden Yards two weeks ago, it was clear that Russell Martin felt the Baltimore players were stealing his signs, and on Monday night it was clear he hadn’t forgotten. Apparently leery of Wieters — a catcher himself — perched at second with a perfect view of their signs, Martin and Kuroda seemed to ditch their signals entirely. Instead of flashing digits from behind the plate, Martin marched out to the mound every few pitches and the pair seemed to be calling two or three pitches at a time during each conversation.

There was a ring of paranoia to the whole thing, but it worked. Kuroda struck out Davis to get the critical second out, then faced our old friend Wilson Betemit. On the second pitch of the at bat Kuroda unleashed a breaking ball that skipped off of Martin’s glove and bounded away towards the Baltimore dugout for an apparent wild pitch. Markakis immediately sprinted in from third in an attempt to tie the game, but the ball didn’t bounce quite as far away as he might have expected. Martin pounced on the ball like a cat and flipped it back to Kuroda. Picture the mirror image of Jeter’s flip from eleven years ago; the result was the same. Kuroda neatly applied the tag, and the inning was over.

From there the bullpen took over. David Robertson worked the eighth inning, and as Michael Kay and Kenny Singleton related a story in which John Smoltz suggested that Robertson might chase down Orel Hershiser’s consecutive scoreless inning record, the Alabama Hammer did what he does, hammering down three nails in the Baltimore coffin on three straight strikeouts of Betemit, Mark Reynolds, and Robert Andino. As is usually the case with Robertson, it wasn’t just that he had struck out the side, it was the thoroughly dominant manner in which he did it. His fastball never pushed north of 93 MPH, but all three hitters were completely overmatched. Robertson ended April with eleven innings pitched, seven hits, three walks, and eighteen strikeouts. It seems blasphemous to make the comparison, but there’s only one reliever I’ve ever seen who is so fluid in his delivery and so powerful in his command of the strike zone.

That man took the mound in the ninth and left three outs later. Yankees 2, Orioles 1.

[Photo Credit: Valentinovamp; Kathy Kmonicek/AP Photo]

Moose Skowron looked like a character out of “Moon Mullins.” Or in a more contemporary sense, he had the appearance of a secondary character in “The Simpsons.” With his lantern jaw, thick jowls, and military crew cut, he possessed the look of a man who could put his fist through your chest and pull your heart out.

Appearances are often deceiving, and they were exactly that with Skowron, who died at 81 on Friday after a battle with lung cancer. Oh, he could be gruff and curt on the outside, but once you opened a conversation with him, you discovered a down-to-earth guy who enjoyed telling stories from his days with the Yankees. And when you’ve played with characters like Mickey Mantle, Hank Bauer, Yogi Berra, and Whitey Ford, or managed for one-of-a-kind legends like Casey Stengel, you’ve got good material to work with.

There were other deceptions with Skowron. Like many fans, I always assumed that Skowron’s nickname came from his size, his power, and his brute physical strength. He was six feet, two inches, 200 pounds, with much of frame wrapped in muscle. Well, the true origins of his nickname had nothing to do with his physical dimensions. When Skowron was a boy, his grandfather gave him an impromptu haircut, which made the youngster look like the Italian dictator, Benito Mussolini. Skowron’s friends called him “Mussolini,” and the family adapted by changing the nickname to “Moose.” By the time he was playing major league ball, everyone was calling him Moose. One of the few exceptions was the Topps Card Company, which always listed him as “Bill Skowron” on his cards.

After signing with the Yankees in 1950, the organization tried him as an outfielder and third baseman, before realizing he lacked the athletic agility needed of those positions. He moved to first base, where he was blocked by players like Johnny Mize and Joe Collins. He finally landed in the Bronx in 1954, when he platooned with Collins, before becoming an everyday player by the late 1950s.

How good was Skowron in his prime? Well, he was very good. From 1957 to 1961, he averaged 20 home runs a season while qualifying for five consecutive American League All-Star teams. During that stretch, he twice slugged better than .500; he also received some support for American League MVP on two occasions.

As a right-handed power hitter, the old Yankee Stadium was hardly made to order for Skowron. But he adapted, developing a power stroke that targeted right-center and right fields, where the dimensions were far more favorable for hitting the long ball. Skowron’s right-handed hitting presence was importance, given that most of their power hitters hit from the left side (including Roger Maris, Berra and the switch-hitting Mantle.) If opposing teams loaded up on left-handed pitching, Skowron could make them pay.

Skowron really had only two flaws in his game. A classic free swinger and bad ball hitter, Skowron could sometimes hit pitches up his eyes, but he could also flail away at other pitches outside of the strike zone. Since he didn’t walk much, his on-base percentage suffered. Skowron’s other weakness involved his health; he simply could not avoid injuries. One time, he hurt his back while lifting an air conditioner. On another occasion, he tore a muscle in his thigh. There were broken bones, too, including a fractured arm that resulted from an on-field collision. With such injuries forcing him to miss chunks of games at a time, he often played 120 to 130 games a season, instead of the 150 to 160 that he would have preferred.

The 1961 season provided contrasts and quandaries for Skowron. On the down side, his slugging percentage and his on-base percentage fell. More favorably, he hit a personal-best 28 home runs while playing in a career-high 150 games. Batting out of the sixth and seventh hole, Skowron provided protection for the middle-of-the-order thumpers, a group that included Maris, Mantle, and Berra.

As he often did, Skowron elevated his play in the World Series. In the 1961 Classic against the Reds, Yet, it was in the 1961 World Series. In five games against the upstart Reds, Skowron slugged .529 with one home run and five RBIs, reached base 45 per cent of the time, and hit a robust .353. Then again, Moose was almost always good in the Series. In 133 at-bats stretched over eight World Series appearances, Skowron hit eight home runs and slugged .519. In Game Seven situations alone, the Moose hit three home runs. If you believe in the existence of clutch, and I do, then Skowron belongs near the top of that list.

Skowron put up another good season in 1962, but his age and the presence of a young player in the system changed his status within the organization. Believing that Joe Pepitone was headed toward superstardom, the Yankees decided to trade Skowron that winter. They sent him to the Dodgers in exchange for Stan Williams, an intimidating veteran reliever who liked to throw pitches up and in as part of his quest for strikeouts.

In some ways, Skowron could not have been traded to a less ideal situation. Newly built Dodger Stadium, which had replaced the Los Angeles Coliseum as the Dodgers’ home, had a ridiculously high mound and outfield measurements that did not favor sluggers like Skowron. He also had to face a new set of pitchers in the National League; outside of World Series competition, Moose had little familiarity with senior circuit pitching. To make matters worse, Skowron did not play first base every day, instead platooning with Ron Fairly. Moose hit a miserable .203 and ripped only three home runs in well under 300 plate appearances.

To the surprise of many, Skowron still had something left for the World Series. Playing against his former Yankee mates, he swatted a home run and batted .385 to help the Dodgers to a four-game Series sweep.

World Series heroics aside, the Dodgers questioned whether Skowron had much left. So they sold him to the Washington Senators. He hit well during a half-season in the Capital City, but when the team fell out of contention, he was sent packing to the White Sox in a mid-season trade. Skowron hit well over the next season and a half, but slumped badly in 1966 before closing out his career in ’67.

Yet, there was much more to Skowron than on-the-field highlights and accomplishments. He made news off the field, sometimes in frivolous ways and sometimes through embarrassing situations. Let’s consider a couple of episodes from the 1960s:

*During the 1963 season, Skowron and several other Dodgers made a guest appearance on the TV show, “Mr. Ed.” Skowron, catcher John Roseboro, center fielder Willie Davis, and Hall of Fame left-hander Sandy Koufax played themselves. In the main plotline of “Leo Durocher meets Mr. Ed,” the talking horse gives batting tips to Durocher, who was billed as the Dodgers’ manager even though he was actually a coach under Walter Alston. Durocher is supposed to relay the tips to a slumping Skowron. Moose and the other Dodgers then watch in amazement as Mr. Ed completes an inside-the-park home run against Koufax. (In a complete aside, Durocher also appeared on an episode of “The Munsters,” and was once again mentioned as the Dodgers’ skipper. Either Alston wanted nothing to do with Hollywood, or someone was trying to send him the message that Durocher was the real Dodgers manager.)

*While training with the Dodgers in Vero Beach, Florida, he decided to make a surprise trip to see his wife at their home in Hilldale, New Jersey. When he arrived at the house, Skowron found his wife in bed with another man. Infuriated by the surprise discovery, Skowron proceeded to pummel his unwanted guest. Shortly thereafter, Skowron was charged with assault, though many were sympathetic to his situation.

Skowron had better long-term success with other relationships, particularly his fellow Yankees. Beloved in the Yankee clubhouse, Moose became especially close friends with Hank Bauer, a rough-and tumble character in his own right. They often made public appearances together, including numerous visits to Cooperstown for Hall of Fame Weekend signings. I remember meeting Skowron and Bauer back in the late 1980s, while I was still working in sports talk radio. They were signing at a table outside one of the many card shops on Main Street. I wanted to interview the two of them, but I was intimidated by Bauer’s raspy voice and Skowron’s rugged appearance. Feeling like a rookie cub reporter, I settled for making a few innocuous remarks to the two ex-Bombers.

It remains one of my regrets. I never did have another chance to interview either Skowron or Bauer. That was a real mistake on my part, losing out on the opportunity to have a real chat with Skowron, one of the game’s great storytellers.

If there is any consolation, some of Skowron’s stories can be found on You Tube, and in the many books that serve as oral histories of the Yankee franchise. This was a guy who was good friends with Mantle and Berra, a guy who knew Whitey Ford, a man who played with Maris, a guy who dealt with the idiosyncrasies of Casey Stengel. Skowron was a man worth listening to, a link to an era that was long ago, but an era that we always want to re-visit.

Moose was a man that we’ll miss.

Bruce Markusen is co-author of the newly revised edition of the book, Yankee World Series memories.

(Photo Credit: Washington Post; Alex Belth.)

[Editor’s Note: Bruce will be on leave for the foreseeable future while he works on a book. We’ll miss his weekly posts and he will drop in occasionally with a Card Corner piece. Meanwhile, we wish him good luck with his project and thank him for being the man.]

In last year’s ALDS the Yankees touched up Justin Verlander but lost the game anyway when CC Sabathia blew the lead and Rafael Soriano gave up the winning homer. Tonight’s game spun out in unpleasantly familiar fashion as the Yankees got to Verlander for five extra-base hits and five runs in six innings but Ivan Nova couldn’t make it stand up. Nova was the one starting pitcher that had not submitted a stinker yet this season, but that’s history now.

After five pedestrian innings, Russell Martin presented Nova a surprise lead with a two-run homer off Verlander headed into the sixth. Nova proceeded to back up pedestrian with pus. The Tigers teed off on everything he threw, and the lead was gone in three batters – the big blow a booming double by Austin Jackson. Boone Logan came in and lost a battle to Prince Fielder and the inning ended with Detroit up two, 6-4.

The Yankees bounced back, scratching a run in the seventh and clawing another in the eighth. In between, Joe Girardi got run out of the game for arguing balls and strikes. The umpiring was another unpleasant reminder of the 2011 ALDS.

The stellar Yankee bullpen stepped up to hold the line, the highlight being Mariano’s vintage ninth inning. He broke three bats and struck out a guy looking while touching 93 mph on multiple pitches. In his first few outings, Mariano’s cutter wasn’t moving that much. Now it’s biting like a January wind.

In the ninth inning, the Tigers sent out a flame thrower named Brayan Villareal. He threw the ball so hard and with so much movement that one suspected he’d have trouble throwing three strikes before he threw four balls. He ran the count full to Russell Martin but coaxed a grounder to second. Derek Jeter worked a walk (and ended his fifteen game hitting streak in the process) and when ball four to Curtis Granderson skipped off Mike Avila’s shin guard, he was in motion and made it all the way to third. That brought up Alex Rodriguez, who locked in today with three hits, one of them a homer off Verlander, and his only out three feet short of the center-field wall.

Alex looked very dangerous up there and I was sure he was going to drive in the winning run as he tracked Villareal’s offerings into Avila’s glove. After two balls, Villareal’s third pitch sailed away from Avila. The catcher desperately stabbed his glove at the pitch but he couldn’t snag it. The ball rolled away towards the Yankee dugout. I started celebrating, but when the camera cut to Jeter straining down the line, he was not nearly as close to home plate as he should have been. It looked like he was running in mud and Jeter slid just as the ball arrived. Villareal dropped the ball, but Jeter was safe anyway. The Yankees made a winner of Mariano, 7-6.

Turns out Jeter got a poor read on the passed ball and if it wasn’t for Alex Rodriguez urging him to run, he wouldn’t have made it. Great game for Alex all the way around. And a great win for the Yankees after a few days full of bad news. This is exactly the kind of game the Yanks did not win in last year’s ALDS. Hopefully they’ll have one or two in the bag next time they get there.

I’ve been stewing about Pineda’s injury and Montero’s absence since I heard the news yesterday. Since the trade can’t be undone, it’s wasted energy on my part to continue to be upset about this. But before I let go completely, I want to write now what I was unable to articulate when the trade was made.

It was a dumb trade because the Yankees gave up cost controlled talent with ‘x’ risk attached to acquire cost controlled with ‘y’ risk attached, where ‘y’ was clearly greater than ‘x.’ This is an equation that a desperate team might follow, but not a perennial contender with deep pockets. The Yankees were better served keeping their own cost controlled offensive talent and using their financial might to acquire pitching, which is inherently more risky.

The Yankees chose to ignore all of CJ Wilson, Yu Darvish and Edwin Jackson when they were available. Those guys would have all been risky and expensive acquisitions but if they sucked or got injured, ala Igawa or Pavano, they could go get somebody else. They can spend money over and over again. They can only trade Jesus Montero once. I know that Pineda was more attractive than the expensive free agents because of his age and restricted salary, but that’s not a concern the Yankees should have had at the forefront of their decision making. They walked a tightrope when they could have paid to pave a road.

Let’s not forget the Yankees have to buy offense in the very near future. All the savings they were going to get from Pineda’s presence in the rotation were going to be spent filling second base, two outfield spots, catcher, and third base / DH. Why not just keep Montero and save that money? Why is money saved in the rotation any better than money saved in the lineup? Now of course, there will be no savings from Pineda as the Yankees will have to buy pitching to replace him as well.

It’s a classic case of being too cute for no reason. Even if you liked Pineda better than Montero, surely you liked Darvish and Montero better than Pineda and Ibanez. This is a roster equivalent of Girardi’s first inning intentional walk. If everything worked out, he looks like a smart guy. But he brought catastrophic outcomes into play that did not exist before the walk. By trading away the less risky Montero and acquiring the inherently risky Pineda, the Yankees brought into play a scenario where they get neither Pineda nor Montero and have to pay a shit load of money to replace them both.

I feel bad for the dude. Hope he rehabs and pitches well for the Yankees some day. And I’ll just leave it at that.

Photos by Mila Zinkova and AP/Bill Kostroun

Jack Curry is known to Yankee fans as one of the faces of the YES Network’s Yankees reporting team, but he wasn’t always a “TV guy.” Prior to joining YES in 2010, Jack enjoyed a decorated career as a sportswriter, most notably at the New York Times. He forged his path without having to go to smaller markets and work his way back east, a rarity for those who work in media, particularly in New York. His full bio can be found here. You can follow him on Twitter @JackCurryYES.

Jack was a staple on the Yankees beat when I covered the Yankees from 2002 through 2006 for yesnetwork.com. At that point of his career, he was one of the Times’s National Baseball Reporters and I was a punk trying to figure out how to become a better reporter and writer, assignment editor, and do all of it without getting in anyone’s way. I recall that Jack was a pillar of professionalism; someone not only I, but also every other writer respected and liked. He’s the same person on camera as he is off camera.

Over a series of conversations and e-mails, Jack and I discussed a number of topics, ranging from what inspired his career choice to the move from print to TV and Internet, and more.

Bronx Banter: At what point did you “know” that you wanted to become a sportswriter? Was there a “eureka” moment while you were at Fordham?

Jack Curry: When I was in the seventh grade, I started a newspaper at my elementary school. It was only two or four pages. But I remember the jolt I felt when everyone at the school was commenting on my articles. It was the first time I had a byline and I loved how that felt. Writers like to know what people think of their writing so I grew to love the idea of being a sportswriter. I hung on to the dream of being a major league player through high school, but that faded. I played high school baseball, but I was a much better writer. I went to one baseball practice at Fordham under coach Paul Blair. It lasted four and a half hours and I missed dinner that night. Even if I had made the team, I would’ve been a backup. So that one practice told me it was time to stop playing baseball and start covering baseball (and other sports). I funneled all of my energy into journalism and broadcasting after that.

BB: Who were the writers that you admired growing up, and how did they influence your reporting / storytelling style?

JC: I grew up in Jersey City, NJ, and the Jersey Journal was the first newspaper I remember reading. They syndicated Jim Murray’s column so it always had a prominent spot in the sports section. But, since I didn’t know anything about syndication as a kid, I just thought Jim Murray was some guy from Jersey City who had the greatest job in the world. He covered all of the biggest sporting events and, man, he could write. I wanted that job. When I finally realize who Jim Murray really was, it didn’t change my thoughts. I still wanted that job. I got the chance to meet Jim Murray at a college football game, which was an absolute thrill. My regret is I didn’t tell him my “connection” to him. I’m guessing he would’ve thought it was pretty cool.

BB: How did you get from the Jersey Journal to the New York Times?

JC: I worked for the Jersey Journal for three summers while I was in college. I’m going to bet that I covered more Little League baseball in those summers than anyone in the state of New Jersey. But I loved it. I loved going to the games and watching which kids cared and which kids were coached well and which kids were so much better or, unfortunately, so much worse than the other players on the field. Trying to get decent quotes out of 11- and 12-year-olds can be more challenging than trying to get decent quotes out of some major leaguers.

After I graduated from Fordham, I worked at the Star Ledger of Newark for about a year. I covered high school sports there, but I wanted to do more than that. I applied for a position in the New York Times’s Writing Program. Basically, the Times hired you to be a clerk for 35 hours a week and then you could use your days off or your hours off to pitch story ideas and to volunteer to cover events, etc. When I was hired as a “writing clerk,” I wrote a lot of stories that appeared without bylines. The Times had some arcane rules about not giving the clerks a byline, which I always thought was nonsensical. When you were hired as a writing clerk, you were told that there was no guarantee you’d ever be a reporter at the Times.

Anyway, once I got my foot in the door, I was on a mission to do anything and everything to stay there. I wanted to do enough so that they had to keep me. I needed to prove to them that I could be a sports reporter there. It took about three years, but I was finally hired as a reporter.

BB: So many sportswriters jump from sport to sport now. I can think of a number of current beat writers from several of the area papers who have shuttled back and forth. What drew you specifically to covering baseball and keeping yourself on that beat?

JC: I covered college basketball and football and the New Jersey Nets at the Times before I started covering baseball in 1990. I wanted to cover baseball. To me, there was no other sport to cover. I was fortunate that the Times recognized that and trusted me with covering a baseball beat. I took over the Yankees beat at the All-Star break of 1991 and have essentially only covered baseball since then. I like basketball and I’ll watch some football, but I would have never been as happy covering those sports as I was in covering baseball.

BB: When I started at YES and began setting the editorial direction of the website, we were trying to do something completely different in our coverage of the Yankees. Our goal wasn’t to compete with the papers, but to be considered legitimate. How did you view YESNetwork.com’s presence on-site in those first few years?

JC: In the early years, I viewed YESNetwork.com’s presence as another entity that was immersed in covering the Yankees. When I first started as a beat writer, you were concerned about the other beat writers and what they were doing. But, with each year, more and more outlets began to cover the team and you had to pay attention to them, too, and see what they were producing.

BB: What struck you about the way YESNetwork.com covered the team, and the games? How, if at all, has that changed since you became a YES Network employee and contributor to the dot.com?

I think YESNetwork.com has tried to be different than the traditional newspaper sports website, as it should be. The Yankees are the brand and there’s obviously an attempt provide as much Yankee content as possible. I think there’s more interaction with the fans, which is another positive. What I’ve tried to do is use the 20-plus years of experience that I have covering this team to offer analysis on players and trends, develop feature stories and, obviously, push to break news.

BB: Describe the events that led YES to call you and offer you the YES job, and what drew you to make the jump to TV on a full-time basis.

JC: After 22 years at the Times, I decided to take the buyout and pursue other opportunities. The timing was good for me. I felt confident about making a career switch in my 40s. I’m not sure if a person can do that in his 50s. I had always had a good relationship with John Filippelli of YES because I had been a guest on “Yankees Hot Stove” since 2005.

Before I even took the buyout, YES was the place where I hoped I would land. Shortly after my departure from the Times became official, I heard from YES. There was mutual interest and I was excited about the chance to transition from print to broadcast. My colleagues at YES, people like Flip, Michael Kay, Bob Lorenz, Ken Singleton, Jared Boshnack, Bill Boland, Mike Cooney, John Flaherty and so many others, all welcomed me and helped make that transition a smooth one for me. I work with a lot of very cool and very talented people.

It’s rewarding to work for and with people you admire and respect and people that you consider your friends.

BB: Peter Gammons and Jayson Stark were among the first two prominent baseball writers who became “multimedia” guys. Later, your former colleague Buster Olney, Ken Rosenthal and Tom Verducci followed. Did it just make sense for you to do the same?

JC: You forgot to mention Michael Kay. Michael had worked for the Post and the News and did clubhouse reporting for MSG. Obviously, he also was a radio announcer before moving to YES. He was the one person who implored me to give TV a try. I will admit that I was resistant. I liked being a baseball writer. There were times where I thought I would end my career as a newspaperman. But I’m very happy to have made the switch. I love what I’m doing at YES. They have given me terrific opportunities in the studio with Bob Lorenz, who is as selfless as any co-worker I’ve ever had. Flip has also trusted me with chances to do work in the booth during games, which have been great experiences.

BB: In the last 10 years — heck, the last five even — so much has changed in how sports are covered on a daily basis. Responsibilities include blogging and tweeting, in some cases web-exclusive video reporting. The beat writer/columnist’s audience is broader than ever. Has that caused you to change your journalistic approach?

JC: My journalistic approach hasn’t changed. I’m trying to find insightful and interesting stories and tell them as adeptly as I can. I’m trying to dig up timely and pertinent information and deliver it as quickly and as accurately as I can. That’s the way I did the job at the Times. That’s the way I do the job at YES. But I am moving faster in telling those stories and chasing that information. Because of Twitter and blogging, we’re all doing that. When I was a beat writer in the early 1990’s, my world revolved around deadlines: 7 PM, 11 PM, 1 AM, etc. I’m on TV now, but, when I write for the website or I tweet, it’s usually about getting it done as quickly as I can, not about getting it done by 7 PM.

BB: Speaking of journalism, you broke the story of Andy Pettitte returning to the Yankees. What was the internal reaction to your scoop?

JC: My bosses at YES were elated that we broke the Pettitte story. I first tweeted about it and wrote a news story that was up on our website five minutes later. About 25 minutes after that, we led our spring training broadcast with the news about Pettitte’s return. Since that story came out of left field, they were thrilled that we led the way.

BB: What was the reaction to the Twitter war that ensued due to ESPN claiming credit for the story?

JC: It doesn’t behoove me to revisit what happened on Twitter after the Pettitte story broke. From a journalistic perspective, that was a very good day for YES. That’s what’s most important.

BB: Is the rapport with former players you used to cover, like Paul O’Neill, John Flaherty, David Cone, and Al Leiter, any different now that you’re on TV, considered an “analyst” like them?

JC: What’s interesting about all of those guys is that I had a great relationship with all of them when they were players, so those relationships have simply carried over. I liked talking baseball with all of those guys when I was a writer. I like talking baseball with all of them now that we’re colleagues.

BB: Which part of your career was, or has been, the most challenging?

JC: The most challenging part of my career were the earliest days at the Times, but, to be honest, those were also some of the most enjoyable days. Like I said, when I first started there, I wasn’t guaranteed anything other than a future of answering phones. I had to show a lot of different editors that I could write and report.

At first, I was going to answer this by saying the most challenging time was being a new beat writer on the Yankees. But, by that point in my career, at least I had become a reporter at the Times. I knew I had made the staff. In the early days, I didn’t know if that would ever happen. I’m glad it did.

[Photo Credits: YESNetwork.com, New York Times, Twitter]

Hiroki Kuroda and Yu Darvish came to the Major Leagues from Osaka by different routes. Darvish has talent and ambition that the Nippon League could not contain. It cost the Rangers over one hundred million dollars to bring him to Texas. Over his long career, Kuroda quietly moved from one challenge to the next, only considering the Major Leagues, and eventually Yankees, when his previous teams didn’t want to pay him anymore.

Their journeys to America, however different the paths, share a common starting point. In 1934, Eiji Sawamura left his high school team and renounced his amatuer status for a chance to prove himself against the best players in the world. He joined the newly formed All Nippon club to face Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig and the other American All-Stars during the Bambino’s famous tour of Japan and to become a member of Japan’s first professional baseball league, which would start play in 1936.

The Big Leaguers put on a hitting show all over Japan. They won all the games and hit bushels of homers to the delight of many Japanese fans. Every contest was lopsided save one, pitched by seventeen-year-old Eiji Sawamura. The game is recounted in detail in Robert K. Fitts’s new book, Banzai Babe Ruth. Almost equaling the famouns feat of Carl Hubbell in the 1934 All Star Game, Sawamura struck out Charlie Gehringer, Ruth, Gehrig, and Jimmie Foxx in succession while pitching nine brilliant innings.

The Japanese hitters would not score against the Americans, a theme that repeated itself throughout the tour, so Sawamura would have to be equally stingy. Sawamura took the mound with a bright, mid-day sun beind him and the American hitters had trouble distinguishing his adequate fastball from his hellacious curve. After several innings of futility, Babe Ruth advised his lineup to forget the fastball and sit on the curve.

In the  seventh inning Lou Gehrig did just that. The game was played in Shizuoka Kusanagi stadium, which is very small, even by Japanese standards. Gehrig picked out a curveball and his blast found the cozy right field stands. It was the only run of the game.

Connie Mack was the elder statesman on the trip, but did not attend the game. After Ruth recounted the young pitcher’s exploits, Mack rushed to meet Sawamura that evening. He asked Sawamura to return to America and become a Major Leaguer – sixty years before Hideo Nomo and Hideki Irabu, Sawamura had a chance to become the first Japanese import. Fitts has Sawamura’s answer:

Despite his competitive spirit and drive to beat the Major Leaguers, Sawamura would remain in Japan and honor his decision to play in the new league. “I’m interested, but also afraid to go” was the young pitcher’s official response. Mack smiled and did not press for a more definitive answer.

Japan celebrated Sawamura’s performance without regard for the final score. A Japanese pitcher proved his skill and heart against the best in the world. It not only made Sawamura a national hero, but laid an important brick in the foundation of Japanese professional baseball. Sawamura went on to have an excellent career, but it was cut short by World War II. He enlisted in the Imperial Army in 1943 and was killed when his ship was torpedoed near the end of the war. The Japanese created the Sawamura Award to recognize excellence in pitching, much like the American Cy Young Award.

Yu Darvish won the Sawamura Award in 2007 and was in the running each of the last four years. He showed why in eight and a third innings tonight. In only the seventh matchup of Japanese starting pitchers in the Majors, Darvish beat the Yankees and Hiroki Kuroda 2-0. Darvish struck out ten and got another twelve outs on the ground. He put on a show with a variety of effective pitches, most impressive to me was the difference between his mid-nineties four seamer and his low-nineties running fastball.

Hiroki Kuroda wasn’t quite up to that standard, but held a hard-hitting lineup in check into the seventh. He allowed a homer to Ian Kinsler in the first and made the mistake of walking Elvis Andrus in front of the hottest hitter in the American League. After a steal, Josh Hamilton drove in Andrus with a single. Other than that Kuroda kept the Rangers off balance with his off speed stuff. There are a lot of ways to get Major League hitters out and between these two creative pitchers, we saw most of them tonight.

The Yankees did have a chance to get to Darvish in the third. Granderson batted with the with bases loaded and nobody out. Darvish mixed sliders and fastballs and Curtis ran the count to 2-2 by fouling off the nastier ones. On the seventh pitch, he dropped a slow, wrinkly curve low and away and got a very generous call to get the strikeout. Alex Rodriguez could not get around on a 94 mph heater in on his hands and tapped into a double play to end the threat.

Of course Yu Darvish looks like a great investment tonight. He was excellent. I don’t doubt there will be bumps on the road, but he seems well equipped with strong command and deployment of an electric arsenal. Watching both pitchers tonight, I was happy to have Hiroki Kuroda on the squad, he’s a capable guy. But Darvish was good enough to make me wonder why the Yankees weren’t interested in him at all. It’s only one game though and if the Yankees see them again, I hope they remember revenge is Darvish best served cold.

(OK, that’s not a good pun, but neither are any of the other ones I’ve been hearing. Let’s at least try to push the envelope here.)

Photos via fromdeeprightfield.com and ESPN.com

You’ll have to excuse me if I don’t believe in the Texas Rangers. I know they’re good, and not just because they represented the American League in the World Series in each of the past two seasons. So far this year they’ve been the clear class of the league, winning thirteen of their first sixteen games, and they’ve been led by several players off to phenomenal starts. Ian Kinsler was leading the league in runs scored, Michael Young was hitting .403, Mike Napoli had an OPS of 1.041, and then there was Josh Hamilton. The Hammer finished his first sixteen games with league-bests in each of these categories: seven home runs, .776 slugging percentage, and an otherworldly OPS of 1.214.

So yes, the Rangers are good, but there’s still a huge part of my consciousness that refuses to believe it, that only remembers them as the appetizers that were served up year after year as the Yankees were winning championships in the late 90s. And as if to solidify that image in my mind, the Rangers trotted out the retiring Iván Rodríguez to throw out the first pitch (and the first throw down to second base). It seemed like 1998 all over again.

That theme continued as soon as the game got underway and Derek Jeter singled on an infield grounder that Kinsler couldn’t quite corral. After Robinson Canó singled and Alex Rodríguez walked to load the bases, Curtis Granderson blooped a single into short center field to score two runs and give the Yankees and C.C. Sabathia a 2-0 lead.

In the home half of the inning, though, the Rangers looked poised to do more than just answer back. Kinsler opened with a single, then Elvis Andrus pushed him around to third with a single of his own, bringing Hamilton to bat with no one out. So far this year Sabathia hasn’t been as dominant as we’ve gotten used to seeing him, and one of his biggest problems has been an inability to make the pitch in a game’s crucial moment. Even though he held a two-run lead and his teammates had twenty-four more outs to score him some more runs, this felt like a moment.

Sabathia looped a lazy slider (or was it a curve?) clocking at just 78 MPH towards Hamilton, up above the belt but in enough that Hamilton couldn’t get any good wood on the pitch. He rolled the ball out to Canó at second who started an unorthodox 4-3-6 double play. Kinsler scored from third, but it was a win for Sabathia. He had made his pitch.

Building on that momentum, Sabathia cruised the next four innings, yielding just two hits while striking out seven, including all three hitters in the fifth.

Meanwhile, the Yankee hitters were padding their lead. Back-up catcher Chris Stewart started the fifth inning with a walk, moved to second on an error, to third on Jeter’s third hit of the game, and finally home on a Nick Swisher sacrifice fly. Two batters later with two men on, Rodríguez picked an opportune time to notch his first hit off a left-hander all season long as he launched a bomb over the fence in straight away center field for a three-run homer and a 6-1 Yankee lead. (Interestingly enough, it also more than doubled the previous RBI output for Yankee cleanup hitters.)

In the top of the sixth Mr. Jeter struck again, this time with a rocketed double off the wall in right center field to score Stewart with the team’s seventh run. A quick word about Jeter. The man who was essentially left for dead last June is currently leading all of baseball with 30 hits and slashing .411/.436/.644. Suddenly the talk is less about retirement and more about Pete Rose. While it still might be a stretch to imagine Jeter playing shortstop for the seven years it would take for him to get to forty-two-fifty-six, it’s clear he’s got a lot of hits left in him. He currently sits eighteenth all-time with 3,118 hits, but by the end of next season he will probably have edged past Carl Yastrzemski and vaulted all the way into sixth place.

Sabathia ran into a bit of trouble as the game progressed, yielding a majestic solo home run to Hamilton in the sixth and then a two-run double to Craig Gentry in the seventh, but he recovered to work a five-pitch eighth inning before handing the ball over to the Great One for the ninth. Just like that, the game was over.

Yankees 7, Rangers 4.

[Photo Credit: LM Otero/AP Photo]

It’s tempting to say that Phil Rizzuto, Bill White and Frank Messer were the only broadcasters for the Yankees during the 1970s. It seemed that way, if only because those three men were fixtures on television and radio. But there were a few others who announced for the team that decade, including Fran Healy,  a good guy who made the immediate transition from backup catcher to broadcaster, and Bob Gamere, who is now in a federal prison for possessing and transporting child pornography.

There was also a guy named Dom Valentino.

Valentino died last week at the age of 83. If you don’t remember him as a Yankee broadcaster, you’re easily forgiven. I have only vague recollections of Valentino, and I was a diehard Yankee fan for most of that decade. Valentino announced Yankee games for just one season, in 1975, which turned out to be an also-ran campaign for the Yankees, just one year before their celebrated return to the World Series.

But I do remember Valentino, at least a little bit. Further research reveals that he was all of five feet and four inches, but had a large, booming voice that belied his stature. A colorful personality who wore shirts with wide collars that could have fit aircraft carriers, Valentino had an excitability on the air that made him distinctive. He sometimes embellished details on the field, trying to make circumstances more dramatic than they were, but hey, baseball is entertainment and not precision brain surgery.

The 1975 season was hardly a hallmark campaign for the Yankees, but it was noteworthy for the debuts of both Jim “Catfish” Hunter and Bobby Bonds in Yankee pinstripes. And it was absolutely tumultuous for Valentino, perhaps the most dramatic year in his life. Not only did Valentino do Yankee radio broadcasts that summer, but he also performed play-by-play for the New York Nets, who still had Julius Erving and were still in the ABA, and the NHL’s New York Islanders. It was a hectic time for Valentino, especially in the spring, when the Yankees, Nets and Islanders were all playing simultaneously. Given such a breakneck schedule, it became understandable why Valentino endured a heart attack in July. Then, during his time in the hospital, Valentino suffered a second heart attack. Two heart attacks meant an end to his one season of broadcasting in the Bronx.

Valentino’s life had almost ended a month earlier, and through circumstances under which he had no control. After a Yankee home game on June 13–Friday the 13^th as a matter of fact–Valentino was driving home when he was hit head-on by a drunk driver. The collision thrust Valentino partly through his windshield. Miraculously, he survived the terrifying accident, only to endure the two heart attacks later in the summer. No one should have to go through that kind of a year.

After a 15-month layoff, Valentino returned to broadcasting, but not at the major league level. Determined to announce games once again, He took a job announcing New Orleans Pelicans minor league games. By 1980, he was back in the big leagues, doing play-by-play for the Oakland A’s. Valentino’s friendship with Billy Martin, who was guiding the “Billy Ball” A’s at the time, helped him land the job. Finally, a good break had come Valentino’s way, after all those near tragedies of 1975.

That Valentino somehow made it through 1975, and then fought his way back to a major league broadcast booth, is remarkable. He managed to live until his early eighties, when a pair of strokes and prostrate cancer finally took his life. That’s fighting. And that’s surviving. Dom Valentino, God bless you…

***

Saturday afternoon’s miraculous comeback from a 9-0 deficit will likely become a Yankee classic, and for good reason (it happened against their hated rivals and occurred on national TV), but it’s not the first time that the Bombers have come back from such a margin against the Beantowners. On June 26, 1987, the Yankees played the Red Sox in a Friday night game at the Stadium. They fell behind the defending American League champions, 9-0, after the first two innings.

In the bottom of the third, the Yankees then went to work against a young Roger Clemens By the end of the inning, the Yankees had knocked “The Rocket” from the game, banged out nine hits against a trio of Red Sox pitchers, taken advantage of an error and a passed ball, and scored a bushel of 11 runs. The big blows came from Dave Winfield (a three-run homer), Gary Ward (a bases-loaded single), and of all people, Wayne Tolleson (another bases-loaded single).

But the Yankees could not maintain their sudden prosperity. Rich Bordi, called on to pitch long relief after a failed start by Tommy John, immediately gave up two runs in the top of the fourth, as the Sox tied the game. The two teams would not score again until the bottom of the 10^th, when Mike Pagliarulo drew a leadoff walk against Calvin Schiraldi, moved to second on Rick Cerone’s sacrifice bunt, and came home with the game-winning run on Tolleson’s RBI single.

Not surprisingly, Don Mattingly put himself right in the middle of the offensive heroics. He went 4-for-6, scored two runs, and drove in another. Willie Randolph added three hits and a walk, while Winfield chipped in with his three-run shot, the Yankees’ only home run of the night.

The offensive outburst overshadowed the good work of the Yankee bullpen. After Bordi coughed up the lead, Cecilio Guante gave Lou Piniella three and a third innings of scoreless relief, lefty Pat Clements pitched shutout ball for two and two-thirds, and Tim “Big Foot” Stoddard picked up the win by notching the final out in the top of the 10^th. For those three pitchers, the game might have represented the highlight of their brief Yankee careers.

And just to give you a little flavor of the era, some of the other Yankees who played that day included a veteran Claudell Washington, platoon specialist Mike Easler, and the good-hit, no-field catcher, Mark Salas.

Yes, that was 25 years ago. A different time and an era. But the same result–an incredible come-from-behind win against the Sox.

Bruce Markusen writes “Cooperstown Confidential” for The Hardball Times.