Tough night for Austin Romine who took a foul ball off the noggin late in the game. And we’re hoping Ivan Nova and Alex Rodriguez aren’t badly hurt too. Meanwhile, the Yanks acquired the gifted fielder Brendan Ryan yesterday. Over at Sports on Earth Jack Moore thinks it’s the best available solution.
Are the Yankees moving down your radio dial? Neil Best has the story for Newsday.
[Photo Credit: adrien toubiana via Je Suis Perdu]
Over at River Ave Blues, Mike Axisa offers three options of what to do with Phil Hughes and David Huff.
Do we really need another article about Derek Jeter’s fielding? Even though he’s only played a handful of games this season, even though the topic has been beaten to death? Apparently so, and this one by Ben Lindbergh comes recommended from our pal Hank Waddles. Check it out over at Grantland.
[Photo Via: N.Y. Daily News]
The fifth home game at Yankee Stadium after 9.11 was Cal Ripken Day. Here’s my scorecard. The game ended in a 1-1 tie, called due to rain. It was a cold, miserable day. I remember seeing cops on the roof of the Stadium behind the lights. They looked like prison guards.
Ripken gave a short speech before the game, saluted all the famous Yankees, including Jeffrey Maier which prompted boos and laughs. During the National Anthem, the crowd joined in, slowly at first, low but firm. “Oh, say does that…” It gave me the chills. The city was still under the perishable spell of togetherness that existed in the days and weeks after the attacks. During the 7th inning stretch, the field was cleared of everyone but the umps when Eddie Layton played “God Bless America” on the organ. There was more solemn singing from the crowd.
It was a memorable day. Cal whiffed 4 times. And nobody won.
Here’s Bryant Gumbel’s editorial from the latest episode of HBO’s Real Sports:
“Finally tonight, what are we supposed to do with Alex Rodriguez? Embrace him? Pity him? Scorn him? I can easily understand any or all of those reactions because I think he’s a liar and a fraud. But what I don’t understand are the expressions of shock and outrage over his alleged drug use because, frankly, this country’s crazy about drugs. In case of addiction one can go to drug rehab at Muse to get help.
Modern Americans reach for a drug for any and everything – for problems real and imagined. It’s why we consume more pills than any nation on earth and why TV ads are relentlessly selling us Xarelto, Abilify, Stelara, Prodaxa, and dozens of other drugs we never ever guessed we supposedly needed. Many of them who are addicted to these drugs, are often recommend to visit Orlando rehab center for early treatment.
Americans are only about five percent of the world’s population yet we take 80% of the world’s painkillers and a whopping 99% of the world’s Vicodin. We have four million kids on Ritalin, 22-million women on antidepressants, over 30-million adults on sleeping pills, 32 million on Statins, 45 million on another drug I can’t even begin to pronounce. The list goes on and on. There is drug and alcohol treatment in Miami that can help the ones that are addicted to drugs and unwanted medication they use as a temporary escape. The professionals at alcohol detox austin can help victims overcome addiction issues.
So think what you will of Alex Rodriguez but when so many moms and dads are active parts of a national drug epidemic, let’s stop crying that a ballplayer’s the one setting a bad example for kids. And let’s skip the expressions of outrage and shock because however you may choose to view A-Rod’s alleged drugs use, there’s no denying the ugly reality that that’s become the American way.”
Here’s a cool old relic from the last great era of Yankees dysfunction. It’s a clip of Goose Gossage losing his shit in front of the New York media in 1982–the beginning of a miserable, drawn-out decade for the organization, when all that ’70s glory turned to pinstriped shit.
This year has nothing on the Bronx Zoo hangover years.
From Volume 1 of Celebrities at Their Worst.
Last week Derek Jeter was on the Jimmy Fallon Show. The Roots and Fallon tried out some new theme music for Jeter’s at bats.
Here’s the winner:
[Photo Credit: N.Y. Daily News]
The Wife’s favorite comment this season is, “Who?!?!” Cause she can’t keep track of all these dudes. Over at SI.com, Joe Lemire on trading places nature of the 2013 Yankees:
Every so often, Yankees traveling secretary Ben Tuliebitz will pick up the P.R. department’s game notes, scan the list of all the players who have participated for the club this season and stumble across a name he hadn’t considered for a while. Cody Eppley? Ben Francisco? It’s easy to forget those players were 2013 Yankees, but both were on the Opening Day roster, an ancient document of little present-day use.
“This has been the craziest year for me,” said Tuliebitz, who is in his seventh season as traveling secretary. “I have a checklist of all the things I need to do, and it seems like every time I start crossing something off my list, I have to add something because we’re going to call this guy up and send this guy down.”
…It’s Cashman’s job to choose the players and Tuliebitz’s job to get them there, no matter the logistics. Veteran first baseman Travis Ishikawa, for instance, was home with his family in the Bay Area when the Yankees plucked him off the waiver wire, so Tuliebitz said he arranged for Ishikawa, the player’s wife and their two young children to fly cross-country. Ishikawa arrived a day earlier than his family in order to play on July 8. His family made the game, but they weren’t around much longer — Ishikawa played just the one game before being designated for assignment on July 11.
Adams arrived at the ballpark at first pitch on Monday night after his flight landed two hours before the 7:10 p.m. CDT start and rush hour traffic impeded his progress from there. That’s still better than his return to Triple A two weeks ago. The team was playing in Louisville, but all New York-area flights there were canceled because of storms, so Adams instead was booked on a flight to Cincinnati. The bad weather delayed that flight five hours, so he was bunkered down in Newark airport until 1 a.m., landing in Cincinnati at 3 and then taking a car service the last hour and a half to Louisville.
Today is the 34th anniversary of Thurman Munson’s death. Dip over to The Stacks and read Michael Paterniti’s memorable 1999 Esquire appreciation of the Yankee captain:
I give you Thurman Munson in the eighth inning of a meaningless baseball game, in a half-empty stadium in a bad Yankee year during a fourteen-season Yankee drought, and Thurman Munson is running, arms pumping, busting his way from second to third like he’s taking Omaha Beach, sliding down in a cloud of luminous, Saharan dust, then up on two feet, clapping his hands, turtling his head once around, spitting diamonds of saliva: Safe.
I give you Thurman Munson getting beaned in the head by a Nolan Ryan fastball and then beaned in the head by a Dick Drago fastball—and then spiked for good measure at home plate by a 250-pound colossus named George Scott, as he’s been spiked before, blood spurting everywhere, and the mustachioed catcher they call Squatty Body/Jelly Belly/Bulldog/Pigpen refusing to leave the game, hunching in the runway to the dugout at Yankee Stadium in full battle gear, being stitched up and then hauling himself back on the field again.
I give you Thurman Munson in the hostile cities of America—in Detroit and Oakland, Chicago and Kansas City, Boston and Baltimore—on the radio, on television, in the newspapers, in person, his body scarred and pale, bones broken and healed, arms and legs flickering with bruises that come and go like purple lights under his skin, a man crouched behind home plate or swinging on-deck, jabbering incessantly, playing a game.
With suspensions rumored to come down today, William Rhoden writes that Bud Selig’s bullying almost makes Alex Rodriuez a sympathetic figure:
According to people briefed on the negotiations between Rodriguez and Major League Baseball, Selig has discussed several options, ranging from a lifetime ban to a suspension that would begin this season and end after next season. Rodriguez has never been known as a player who cares about anyone besides himself. But if there were ever a time for A-Rod — and the once-powerful players association — to step up and fight the impending suspension, that time is now. Rodriguez should challenge the credibility of the evidence. If Major League Baseball has compelling evidence, force the league to show it.
There are no vials of evidence. There are no eyewitnesses to Rodriguez’s alleged performance-enhancing drug use. Investigators have the word of two questionable characters connected to Biogenesis, one of whom, the former owner, Anthony Bosch, once impersonated a doctor. Investigators may indeed have compelling evidence — phone records, shipping receipts, e-mails. If they do, A-Rod and the players association should force those investigators to reveal what they have gathered.
This exhaustive investigation is less about A-Rod and performance-enhancing drugs than about power and control. Major League Baseball is attempting to impose its will on high-profile players by possibly circumventing due process to make an example of them.
[Photo Credit: STEVE NESIUS/STEVEN J. NESIUS PHOTOGRAPHY]
Today’s Alex Rodriguez mishegoss is brought to you by Jonathan Mahler, Buck Showalter, and what the hell, Jeff Pearlman.
Alex Rodriguez is the subject of Scott Price’s SI cover story this week:
Rodriguez, once seen as baseabll’s great clean hope, is now viewed as hopelessly dirty.
Others have come back from such stigma: Mark McGwire is the hitting coach for the Dodgers; Jason Giambi and Andy Pettitte, old teammates and admitted users of PEDS, are treated these days as elder statesmen. Rodriguez figures to be different–and knows it–but last week maintained the front of a blissed-out Candide. He insissted that he doesn’t wonder, Why me?
“I never say that,” Rodriguez said. “But maybe there are a couple of chapters where I can become that person again. I’m not giving up. I have tremendous faith, and hopefully there’s a couple more chapters to this book. And hopefully there’s a happy ending somewhere. I have faith.
And:
Asked, last week, if he understood Cashman’s famously profane rip, Rodriguez shot back, “Do you understand it?”
Yes. Because Cashman knows; Rodriguez’s gift, his unprecedented completeness, was never really his; it’s called a gift for reason. Sports is a collective of time as well as talent. Six generations of baseball players and fans, billions of dollars worth of stadia and TV time, an infinity of minor and major leageurs working for untold lifetimes–all of it combined to create the game, the numbers, the interest and the hothouse environment in which Alex Rodriguez was going to be the best.
People care so much about sports greatness because, deep down, they know that it’s a reflection; something there belongs to them. We gave Rodriguez his chance. We urged him not to waste it. Cashman knows, better than anyone: We hate when we make so big a mistake.
Here’s more from Price at SI.com.
More Mo–this one from Ben Bolch in the L.A. Times:
Dodgers outfielder Carl Crawford uses just any old bat when he faces Mariano Rivera. The more rickety and age-worn, the better.
He knows there’s a good chance his bat — and his at-bat — will be doomed by what many consider the most devastating pitch in baseball.
Rivera’s cut fastball, or cutter, is often the only pitch hitters see when facing the New York Yankees closer. It’s a pitch that he throws almost exclusively, its late movement as it approaches the plate shattering bats and hitters’ hearts alike.
Why waste good wood on that?
“I don’t use the same bat that I’ve been playing good with because chances are real high” it’s going to get broken, Crawford said with a chuckle. “So I just take an old, cheap bat that I don’t really care about and try to stay as short as possible” with the swing.
The clock is ticking on Alex Rodriguez and his showdown vs Major League Baseball. Here’s the latest from the Daily News, the Associated Press and ESPN.
Sometimes being from the Old School doesn’t work. Rough day for the former Yank, Tino Martinez.
Reports have our old chum Alfonso Soriano traded to the Yankees. He has $24.5 million left of his contract through the end of next year; the Cubs will pick up $17 million.
I always liked watching him hit in a cartoonish way–skinny guy, heavy bat, slugg0, lots of strikeouts–oh, that slider low and away. Remember when he was in New York and people talked about his strong wrists and how he was like Hank Aaron? Well, he never developed past his bad habits and has been more like a svelte Dave Kingman but he should be an improvement over Vernon Wells. Sori could be vexing to watch but he was easy to like.
At the same time, I wish the Yanks would just become sellers and stop picking up veteran scraps, for what? To make a playoff run this year?
As some around here have said all season: Sell, Sell, Sell!
