Spent last week in New Mexico.

Albuquerque.

Man..it sure was nice.

My wife adores baseball mascots. I think she’d rather meet the Phillie Phanatic than any player–oh, how she wants a kiss from that furry green beast. She complains that the Yankees don’t have a mascot. “What a bunch of tight asses,” she says. This helps explain why she is attracted to Francisco Cervelli, the closest thing the team has to a fuzzy cheerleader. She’s liked Cervelli ever since he joined the team a few years ago–though she did not like when he crossed home plate in a hot dog fashion up in Boston last season.

Ever since I’ve braced her for the possibility that he’s a short-timer in pinstripes. He’s spirited, throws the ball to third after a strike out with flair. The pitchers seem to like throwing to him though he doesn’t have a great arm and despite a few Luis Sojo-like streaks of clutch hitting, he’s not much with the stick either. And yet he’s still around and will go into spring training as the favorite to be the Yankees’ back-up catcher.

Over at Lo-Hud, Chad Jennings looks at organizational depth at catcher. There’s also a news-and-notes post featuring word on Phil Hughes and a rumor about Godzilla Matsui. As always, the Lo Hud remains an essential stop for the well-informed Yankee fan.

[Photo Credit: Barton Silverman/The New York Times]

It was warm on Saturday afternoon. Here’s the wife as the 1 train rolls into the station. Yup, she’s a good one.

My wife is sweet and polite, she is proper and feminine.

She is also a good shot.

Last week in Vermont, I shot a handgun for the first time in my life. Guns scare me but my father-in-law is an expert teacher, calm, cautious, and encouraging.

I kept thinking of Lorraine Bracco in “Good Fellas” when she said, “I gotta admit the truth. It turned me on.”

The wife shops inside, the husband waits patiently outside. The marriage works.

Ham and cheese, made to order for the wife. That’s three slices of black forest ham and six slices of jarlsberg cheese, red leaf lettuce (dressed with olive oil, champagne vinegar and maldon salt), dijon mustard and thinly-sliced cornichons on rye. That’s how she likes it, that’s how she gets it.

Hey…it’s good to be the queen.

It’s easy for me to fall into that line of thinking so I remind myself every day to be present, in the now, not yesterday and not tomorrow. After all, it takes a lot of energy to be pissed off. And it would be shame for me to act like a spoiled brat at my age, especially considering all the good things I’ve got going on, especially this peach of a woman I call my wife.

Damn, I’m one lucky sonofabitch.

Here’s the Mrs. taking pictures for her Christmas collection.

“Hopefully, we’ll be watching another victory parade,” I said.

“But then it’s over and what are we going to do? Maybe I should start watching football.”

Football? She hates football. What is she turning into?

Emily still likes to bust my chops when I become shrill and unreasonable, announcing the season is over after a first inning at bat. But on Sunday night, the pressure finally got to her. She retired into the bedroom by the seventh inning and listened to the game on the radio. I stayed out in the living room and watched it on TV. By the 9th inning, I came in and she said, “I think I’m going to vomit.”

An inning later, after the Yankees had won, I came in again, and she said, “I’m never going to watch or listen to another baseball game again. I can’t take it. I’m sick to my stomach.” I had to stop myself from smiling. This after the Yankees had won, mind you. “Welcome to my world,” I said.

Last night, with a chance to clinch a playoff birth, A.J. Burnett gave up seven runs in just over two innings, and I opted for the wife’s world of Dancing with the Stars. Figured I owed her one. The Bombers rallied but fell short, 7-5. The Red Sox also won, but the Rays and Twins both lost.

We’ll do it again tonight.

My wife Emily and I have seen most of our friends become parents over the past six or seven years. It’s been painful at times as we don’t have children of our own. But as our friends’ children grow up, any discomfort we’ve experienced has eased.

As childless parents, our cats have become our kids. It might sound corny to some, but for animal lovers it won’t. We adopted our oldest cat, Tashi, a few months before my old man died. I never knew I could love an animal as much as I love her. At night, she’ll crawl up on our bed and sit between our pillows. I press my ear to her belly and listen to her purr. Sometimes, in the middle of the night, I wake up overcome with emotion because I know that one day she’ll die and life will continue without her. It almost makes me sick and I imagine that’s a small variation of the kind of anxiety parents must feel all the time about their kids.

I don’t miss having children now. I enjoy the ones I know. And I cherish every day with my wife and our two cats. I force myself to stop and appreciate the moment–like I do every time Mariano Rivera pitches–because it’s just a moment, and no matter how tightly I hold on to it, time slips through your fingers and nothing lasts forever.

In the spirit of spring and Mother’s Day–which is just around the corner–the wife is having a sale (15% off ) on her photography note cards now through 5/9/10.

She’s added a number of new sets including orchids and cherry blossoms.

Ah, spring loveliness. Dig it.

Last night my wife and I sat on the couch, facing each other and she told me about her day. We didn’t turn on the TV all night, a rarity. At one point, she showed me the cartoons from last weekend’s Week in Review section. I told her how those were the only cartoons we ever saw in my house growing up. She said they always got the Sunday Funnies and I told her the Times never had comics. I said maybe her parents got one of the tabloids.

“Can you see my parents reading a tabloid?”

“I’ll bet your mother grew up reading the Post.”

“What!?”

“Sure, it was a liberal paper back then. I’m sure they got the Post along with the Times. Maybe the Herald Trib too. Or the Journal-Amer–”

She burst out laughing.

“The Herald Trib?”

Laughing at me. In my face.

“Well, that’s what they called it,” I said, raising my voice in mock fury.

“Yeah, right. You are such a dork!”

“That’s what they called it!”

She curled into a ball as if to protect herself from attack and I picked up the phone and called her mother.

Her mom answered and Em and I took turns talking to her, laughing. She called it the Herald Tribune. But they read the Post in their house.

“See, I told you,” I said.

Emily spoke to her mom and her voice dropped, “Oh-no.”

Emily’s folks had to put down their dog in the morning, a fourteen-year old Dalmation. We stopped giggling and Emily’s voice became soothing and concerned. As childless parents, our two cats are like our kids. The thought of life without them is dreadful. I often day-dream about what will happen when Emily’s parents die, how I’ll feel when my mother dies. In two days it will be the third anniversary of my father’s death. And I think about when our cats will die until I force myself to think about something else.

This morning, I sent Emily’s parents an e-mail, letting them know that I was thinking about them. Em’s mom sat on a rug in the Vet’s office a few hours later and held her dog as it was put to sleep. 

Em and I talked about that tonight. The pain of losing loved ones. We talked about the shrine we’d make for our cats when they go. She was back on the couch. A re-run of The Office played in the background. I got up to get some some cereal. I found an unopened box and brought it into the living room and handed it to her.

“Why can’t you open it?” she said.

“Because…things…happen.”

“Oh, I don’t think opening it is the problem. I think it’s when you leave it on the counter all night, wide open so that you make sure that it gets completely stale. That’s the problem.”

She laughed at me again.

“Hey, listen,” I said, “I’m trying to be pro-active here, and what’s with the editorializing?”

“I figured it might work well in the Herald Trib.”

A pause. She scrunched into a fetal position and then filled the room with laughter.

The wife and I were on our way home Saturday night, riding the IRT back uptown to the Bronx. Two young, heavy-set women sat across from us with a stroller in front of them. One of the women drank a can of orange soda and played with her infant son; the boy gripped her fat fingers and laughed. The other woman tapped her cell phone and complained about how long it was going to take for them to get ready–showered and dressed–to go out.

“It’s nine o’clock, you gunna take forever to get your ass in gear. I don’t even know what I’m going to wear.”

The women chattered along–giggling and talking loudly like teenagers–and the child became restless.

“What are you bothering me for?” the mother said to him. “Why do you keep saying, ‘Papi’? Your father isn’t here.  Papi, Papi, Papi. I’m here. He’s not here. You want me to call him so you can talk to him? I brought you into this world, why you need to always bother me? I’m the boss. You do as I say.”

The Mrs and I were tucked into the two seats at the end of the car. We were distracted by the mother, our conversation halted. Finally, Emily turned to me and said, “Can we move?” I had been thinking about changing our seats for several stops. At 168th street, we moved to the next car.

It’s not about being judgemental it’s about comfort. If you can do something about it, why expose yourself to something that makes you uncomfortable, anxious or upset? Yeah, when I’m aware of it–and both Emily and I are exceedingly sensitive to this kind of thing–I don’t think, I just move.

Watch the closing doors.

Sitting close to the action on Saturday night at Citifield (“I’m Still Calling it Shea,” read a t-shit), Emily and I were surrounded by Mets fans. We didn’t wear any colors. “We’re undercover,” my wife said to me. And so we were. I kept score (a scorecard costs five bucks; they go for twice as much in the Bronx) but had a mitt on my left hand in case a screaming line drive came our way. No such luck.

The Yanks held a 1-0 lead into the sixth. The wife excused herself and went to the ladies’ room. (She was in the bathroom when Aaron Boone hit that dinger in ’03 and ever since I send her in when absolutely necessary.) Mark Teixeira doubled on Tim Redding’s 99th pitch of the night, and his next three pitches were hit as well: single (Alex Rodriguez), double (Robinson Cano), and home run (Jorge Posada).

AJ Burnett, meanwhile, allowed just one hit and three walks while striking out ten in seven innings of work. He mowed ‘em down, as you’d expected against the Mets’ depleted line-up.

There was no blood orange sky but it was cool, pleasant night. Most of the Mets fans in our section had cleared out by the eighth inning. Em and I could have danced all night as the song goes. So we soaked it all in and went home heppy kets.

Final Score: Yanks 5, Mets 0.

So Em and I got hitched yesterday and it all went swimmingly. We are staying at a resort by the water and were all set-up to have our ceremony, just the two of us, on a pier over-looking the ocean. 1:30 p.m. was our launch time. Em went off to get her hair and make-up done just after 11:00 while I stayed in our room and finished ironing my shirt and getting myself prepped. And yo, wouldn’t you know it, but by 11:30 the skies opened-up and it started to rain like mad. And it didn’t stop.

I turned on the Weather Channel, and kept going out onto our terrace to look at the sky. Gray and raining, the palm trees rustling in the wind. Man, I was bugging thinking about Emily bugging (and she, in turn, was bugging about me bugging about her bugging). We came all the way down here to Paradise and it’s freakin’ raining, you’ve got to be kidding me. But then I thought of my cousin Eric who would have embraced the rain, the sense that Mother Nature was doing her thing, and it was all good, and that calmed me some. Then I thought, “Hey, I’m totally happy, I look great, and I’m marrying the love of my life, screw the weather.”

The rain tapered off some by a quarter to one when Em called. She sounded calm. I asked if we were going to change the location to inside and she said “No, not yet.” I went off to meet the minister, A. Dewitt Hutcherson, a tall-strapping man who looked vaguely like Michael Irvin. We were going to be the 9,796th wedding he’d performed in his career.

The rain had stopped and the humidity hit with the quickness. As we walked to the pier, believe it or not, the sun came out. Ten minutes later, my bride joined us, and it was completely sunny. The ceremony was short and sweet and lovely. We took pictures for a long while against the brilliant blue-green backdrop of the ocean and we were very happy.

Then, after eating the cake and drinking some champagne, we finally got back to our room. Em went to the bathroom to fix herself up and I quickly checked the ESPN ticker for the score of the game (incorrigible, I know, but come on, I had to distract myself for a minute). Yanks were down 6-2. Oh, well, I thought. No big deal.

We then consumated our love for each other while the Bombers roared back in the ninth. When we checked the scores later and saw that the Yanks had won, we couldn’t believe what we were seeing. They didn’t have any details, but when caught the highlights on Sportscenter, and…holy my god! Talk about Kismet. That was the icing on the gravy to what was already an amazing day. All those two-out, bottom of the ninth hits? Man, I was nervous just watching the clips. And our boy Alex Rodriguez hitting another huge home run? Dag, man, what a wonderful thing.

I realize that the Boston series is a thing onto itself (hopefully, the Yanks can take one out of three), but no matter what transpires this weekend, Em and I will always have the memory of A Rod coming through on the most meaningful day of our lives. It’s a small thing, but a beautiful thing.

Hope everyone is doing well. I’ll get atcha when I return next week.

Loss has been foremost on my mind recently. My dad had a heart attack one month ago and he died the following day. I miss him dearly.

I’ve been thinking about ol’ Bernie Williams this weekend, about how much I’m going to miss him–that is to say, if he’s really gone. It’s not so much his production, or lack thereof, that I’ll miss, but him. Of course, I don’t know him personally, but I’ve watched the majority of his big league games and have grown accustomed to his face, his swing, his mannerisms, his gestures. It isn’t the big things but the nuances, the details.

I love the continuity baseball offers. Each year, guys get too old and retire, while new guys come up and offer us something new to admire. If you’ve been a fan for a long time–as most of us have been–you see the professional life and death of many players. Sometimes, it is soothing to see a familiar face just because they are familiar, and nothing else. I thought of this last week when I read that Steve Trachsel was signed by the Orioles. I find his games almost intolerable to watch, he pitches so damn slowly. Otherwise I have no particular feelings about him. But I am used to him. Knowing that there is a chance that, months from now, in the middle of summer, he’ll be involved in one of those agonizing Yankee-Oriole, four-hour-plus slugfests, is strangely comforting.

I sure have plenty to appreciate, that’s for sure. On Saturday, Emily and I took a ride up to Westchester to spend the afternoon with my mom and my step-father. While Em and Tom busied themselves with a project in the back yard, mom and I made a batch of madeleines, the shell-shaped cookies made famous by Proust in “Remberance of Things Past.” They are wonderful tea-time cookies, and must be eaten almost immediately. Even an hour or two after they’ve come out of the oven, they begin to change in nature, going from a light, sponge cake to a heavier, greasier cookie. It’s not even that they are my favorites, I just like the idea of them–the immediacy of it all. And you just can’t have them without a strong cup of tea for dunking.

Here they are fresh out of the oven. That’s my ma, adding some confectionate sugar, the final touch (dig, her beloved Tintin swatch).

And here is the final product, along with a simple plum tart and a strong cup of Earl Grey tea.

A small, good thing, if there ever was one.

A heppy ket.

Yesterday, was cooler and even more lovely than Saturday. Em and I generally spend Sundays doing the chores, shopping for food and chillin’ around the cribsite. One of our favorite activities finds me in the kitchen cooking for the week with Emily sitting close by. We chat and listen to Fats Waller records and just cool out.

We the shopping done early yesterday and after I placed a few phone calls for interviews I need to conduct for an article I’m writing, I got down to cooking. Em took her seat and I took the opportunity to tell her how much I love our Sundays together. Then I said, “You know, when I first met you the overwhelming impression I came away with is never to judge a book by its cover. You were so well-put together, your hair was slicked-back into a pony tail and you were wearing that chic black leather jacket. You were smoking hot and I pegged-you for a material girl all the way. Then after we hung out that day, I was like, ‘Wow, she’s not like that at all.’ In fact, you were one of the most unpretentious, down-to-earth women I had ever met.”

I went on to tell her how much of an inspiration she’s been for me over the past four-and-a-half years, and I wasn’t joking. Em has Crohn’s and has had more than her fare share grief because of it, but, though she gets laid low every once in a while, whe is as determined and resilient as anyone I’ve ever known. You just can’t keep her down, bro.

Then I got down on one knee and took out the ring.

She didn’t know it was coming. I mean, she knew I was going to pop the question sooner rather than later, but it wasn’t until I was down on my knee that she realized that this was the moment. “Angela’s Theme,” by Bob James (better known as the theme song from the old TV show, “Taxi”) was playing softly on the stereo when I asked Emily if she’d marry me. At this point, my heart was racing, as she began to tear-up.

She said, “I’d marry you any day of the week.”

Ten minutes later, I had her on the five yard line in the bedroom when the phone rang. “Let it ring,” I said as she came in the room with the portable phone. Then thinking that it might be a return call from one of the potential interviews I was going to do I looked at the caller ID. My eyes–according to Emily–almost popped out of my head. “It’s Reggie,” I said.

And sure enough, it was none other than Mr. October. I picked up the phone and quickly made arrangements for an interview later this week. We weren’t on the phone longer than two minutes.

“You’re having some kind of fifteen minutes,” my fiance says to me.

Man, you ain’t kidding. We spent the rest of the day in a joyful haze and later we dropped-in on our good friends down in Inwood. Needless to say, we experienced the range of emotions…

From Joy…

To Silliness…

To Terror (and Silliness)…

To Vitamins L-O-V-and E

Hey, it’s a beautiful thing.

I’ll keep pitching ‘em:

And she’ll keep hitting ‘em:

Oh, and speaking of which, Sal and his pals crushed the O’s, 9-4 yesterday. The Yanks’ magic number is down to 11 and the win gave them the best record in the AL.

Most of us encounter these kinds of situations all the time. Two days ago at the ball game, I found myself unable to “pass.” I was watching the Yankee game with my cousin and two guys I played high school ball with–one of whom is a good friend. The two jocks started talking about women and baseball and the gist of the discussion was, “Let’s make fun of women because they don’t have a clue when it comes to sports.” I just knew where the conversation was going and it instantly made me uncomfortable, not only because my girlfriend is a devoted fan but because sitting in front of us was a woman who is more knowledgable about the game than most men could ever hope to be.

I caught myself and thought, “Aha, so this is a ‘passing’ sitation.” At first I didn’t know how I was going to respond. One instinct was to join them. I had an ideal story. Earlier in the day, my cousin Eric and I were playing stickball on 5th street between first and second avenues. We were pressed for time and only had about ten minutes left to play when a sexy young thing walked towards us. She had been watching us play for a few minutes when she approached me and said, “Can I play?” She was friendly and exceedingly cute. How do you say “no” to that? If I were single, I’d have turned into Charlie Lau and not only let her play with us but I’d teach her how to hit, anything, in the process. But not only am I not single, I don’t have wandering eyes like that and am not that tempted to flirt with hot young East Village women. So I told her that it was nice of her to ask but that we only had a few more minutes left and we wanted to finish our game. “But if you ever see us playing down here again, feel free to stop by and you can join us then.” I was as friendly as possible and it felt good not to compromise the moment Eric and I were sharing. She looked surprised–not quite comprehending how we could turn such an offer down–and quietly walked away.

Anyhow, I was pleased with how I handled the situation–tactfully but with conviction. Now, I could use this story as a way to join the “He Man Woman Hater’s Club” brewing behind me. Screw women, this is our sport, kind of a thing. I turned around to the guys and instead of directly confronting their chauvanism, or joining it, I started talking to them about Emily and how much of a baseball fan she’s become. I told them that sometimes Em will ask me what I think is a ridiculously stupid question but other times she’ll come up with something simple and logical that I just can’t answer. For instance, say the Yankees are at home and have a runner on first. If the opposing pitcher throws over to first more than once the crowd–any home crowd–will start to boo. One day Emily asked, “Why are they booing?” I stuttered and finally had to look at her and tell her I hadn’t the foggiest idea why. “Because…that’s just the way it is,” was the best I could come up with.

My friend Adam was amused by the story and told me I was so right. The conversation shifted and that was that. But it got me thinking about the different, often refreshing sensibilities women bring to a male-dominated world like baseball. Nancy Smith, the woman sitting in front of us, had an opportunity to meet several of the Yankees last summer and she told me that she had a pleasant ten minute conversation with Mariano Rivera. “He’s a very nice man,” she reported. What did they talk about? Where he lives when he’s up here, how much his kids love the winter and the snow. You know, regular stuff. Things that most guys would never think of talking about if they were to ever to meet a baseball player.

I’d be asking him all sorts of questions about baseball, about pitching. I’d never think to talk to him about such mundane things as the weather. The irony is Nancy probably put Rivera more at ease, and had a more intimate, natural conversation with him than I would have in the same situation. She might enjoy being around him as much as any male fan, but even if she was geeked about it, there was probably nothing urgent beneath the surface, no agenda. She didn’t “want” a piece of him, she just wanted to chat.

Nancy’s story reminded me of something Jane Gross, a former sports writer, once told Roger Angell (from the story “Sharing the Beat,” which can be found in Angell’s “Late Innings” collection):

“I think women reports have a lot of advantages [over male reporters], starting with the advantage of the players’ natural chivalry. We women are interested in different things from the men writers, so we ask different questions. When Bob McAdoo gets traded from the Knicks, my first thought is, How is his wife, Brenda, going to finish law school this year? And that may be what’s most on his mind.

Not better, not worse, just different. Sure, there are times when Emily asks a question that has my snotty-ass rolling my eyes. Other times, she’ll just floor me with her insights–whether simple or profound. I deliberately use my love of baseball as a way to relate to other men. But some of the greatest fans I know are women. And that’s a beautiful thing, bro.

Mr. Wizard didn’t have an answer. So I asked around some, and still don’t have a definitive answer. Bill James suggested that they were possibly invented as a response to Pete Reiser, the Brooklyn Dodger outfielder who was famous for running into outfield fences and getting knocked out. Late ’50s, early ’60s was his guess. Steve Treder thinks it could have been a bit earlier but agrees that it was probably designed at the same time other player-safety innovations were created–batting helmets and padded walls. (By the way, I just learned in David Maraniss’ forthcoming book on Roberto Clemente that none other than Branch Rickey came up with the plastic/fiber-glass batting helmet–was there anything that Rickey wasn’t invovled in?) Here is Rich Lederer’s take:

Warning tracks, as we now know them, were fairly standard by the 1950s. I’m not aware of any ballpark without a warning track by the 1960s. Are you?

The first warning track dates back much earlier though. Yankee Stadium had what was known as a running track dating back to the 1920s. It was used as just that: a running track (used for foot races) but it served a dual purpose as a warning track for baseball games, too. I just don’t know if it was a coincidence or not. That said, I have black and white photos in baseball books that backs up this claim.

So, anyone else have any ideas? Paging Mr. Markusen. Hey, my girl’s just got to know.