An open thread on the anniversary of Thurman Munson’s death.

Image and link from It’s a Long Season.

Photo: AP

Ichiro Suzuki has been a Yankee for only nine games, but the future Hall of Famer is already approaching a franchise record. With a safety in every ballgame since joining the team, Suzuki is one series away from matching the longest hitting streak by a player beginning his pinstriped career.

Longest Hitting Streaks to Begin Yankee Career, Since 1918

Source: baseball-reference.com

OK, fine, not all hitting streaks are created equal. Even though Ichiro has matched Nick Swisher’s nine straight games, his OPS during that span has been but a fraction. Whereas Swisher pounded out 13 hits and four homers, while driving in 11 runs, by comparison, Ichiro has managed only one hit per game, including seven singles and no walks. As a result, the outfielder has posted a paltry OPS of .631, which is actually lower than his season rate of 0.641. Although hitting streaks tend to be noteworthy regardless of the underlying production, Ichiro’s string of nine straight games has disguised some of the early disappointment regarding his initial offensive contribution.

If Ichiro extends his “one-a-day” hitting streak to 10, he’ll not only inch closer to Don Slaught’s record of 12 straight games with a hit to begin a Yankee career, but also tie five others for the longest string of one-hit games in franchise history. The most recent player to accomplish the task was Steve Sax in 1990, but the most productive vitamin-style streak was turned in by Hall of Famer Joe Gordon, who made the most of his 10 hits by knocking in 11 runs to go along with an OPS of 1.075.

Longest One-A-Day Hitting Streaks in Yankees’ History, Since 1918

Source: baseball-reference.com

Should Ichiro surpass the quintet of Yankees’ one-hit masters, he can then set his sights on Ted Sizemore, who recorded exactly one safety in 16 straight games in June 1975 while playing for the St. Louis Cardinals. Over that span, the middle infielder compiled an OPS of 0.621, which although far from impressive, represented an improvement over the 0.597 rate that he posted for the entire season. As evidenced by the chart below, the list of players with the longest one-a-day hitting streaks doesn’t read like a “Who’s Who”, so, even if it means a hitless game, Ichiro might be better off not joining it.

Longest One-A-Day Hitting Streaks in MLB History, Since 1918

Source: baseball-reference.com

When the Yankees acquired Ichiro Suzuki, there was some hope that the 38-year old would be re-energized by the trade and turn back the clock for a month or two. Although history suggests that’s not likely, there’s still time for Ichiro to fulfill that expectation. However, in order to do so, he’ll need more than one hit per game. Then again, vitamins are often taken to restore youth, so maybe there’s a method to Ichiro’s one-a-day streak?

Billy Joel talks with Alec Baldwin on Here’s the Thing. Two Island guys. Cheap laffs and Baldwin is a good interviewer.

Check out this gallery of alternative book covers over at The Short List.

And while you are at it, peep the 30 coolest alternative movie posters, too.

[Picture by Emmanuel Polanco; Matt Owen]

Through August 24th, check out this show of Herb Ritts’ photographs titled “Women” at the Staley-Wise Gallery in SoHo.

“The Trailed Jug,” By William Nicholson (1917)

Check out this quick guide to ingredient substitutions over at The Kitchn.

Shock the monkey to life.

[Photo Via Laughing Squid]

Here’s a short essay by Pat Jordan on going to the movies when he was a kid:

I was 10 in 1951. Every Saturday morning, my father would give me two dollar bills so I could take two buses from Fairfield into Bridgeport, Conn., where I would go to the Globe movie theater for the kids’ matinee from noon to 5 o’clock. I had to get a bus transfer in Black Rock and wait on a street corner for the next bus, which would drop me off downtown in front of Morrow’s Nut House, “nuts from all over the world.” I then walked four blocks along Main Street, past the stores and shoppers of this big, grimy factory city, until I came to the Globe and a long line of rowdy kids my age waiting to get inside.

After I got my popcorn and Jujyfruits, I searched for a seat in that dark, crowded, noisy theater with its frayed, burgundy-velvet seats and huge, overhead chandeliers like icicles. In the ’20s and ’30s, the Globe was a bustling Vaudeville theater with leering, popeyed, baggy-pants comics and peroxide-blond ecdysiasts. After World War II, the Globe fell on hard times and was reduced to holding kiddie matinees.

I found a seat next to an old man. He was unshaved, smelly, in tattered clothes. It was not unusual to find such bums scattered throughout the theater each week, their heads nodding on their chests, snoring. It was cheaper to buy a 25-cent ticket to the kiddie matinee than it was to pay a buck for a flophouse bed. There were other strange moviegoers, too. Teenage couples high up in the balcony, kissing. And an occasional woman, like my mother, in a flowered dress with shoulder pads, staring at the screen without interest, as if preoccupied with more weighty matters.

The Score Truck showed up today, made deliveries early n often capped by a grand slam from Robinson Cano.

Yanks in a blowout, 12-3. The only blip was a rough return for Joba Chamberlin but I’m not complaining.

[Photo Credit: Mark Cappelletti]

Phil Hughes looks to stop the bleeding this afternoon. Supposed to get thunderstorms.

Derek Jeter SS
Curtis Granderson CF
Nick Swisher DH
Robinson Cano 2B
Andruw Jones RF
Russell Martin C
Casey McGehee 1B
Ichiro Suzuki LF
Jayson Nix 3B

Ichiro makes his first start in left. Never mind that shit: Here Comes Mongo and Let’s Go Yank-ees!

[Photo Via Wall Done Magazine]

Spencer Tunick’s Everyday Peoples…

[Photo Gallery via The Atlantic]

Via the most excellent site, Laughing Squid, dig this from Michael Gillette’s Bond Prints.

My new favorite thing: Calabrian Chilies in oil. Some heat but flavor like you wouldn’t believe.

Where have you been all my life?

Worth the expense. 

Love is love.

[Picture by Paul Malon via Booglarized]

“Wheat Field with a Lark,” By Vincent Van Gogh (1887)

Gore Vial:  R.I.P.

“I’m exactly as I appear,” Vidal once said of himself. “There is no warm, lovable person inside. Beneath my cold exterior, once you break the ice, you find cold water.”

Here’s an excerpt from his memoir about the Fifties.

Now this is unfair of me, because the clip is really about Mailer, but this is what I always think of when I think of Vidal:

I got one word for this game: Horseshit.

Nova was horseshit, the hitters, after the first inning when they got a couple of horseshit hits which led to what turned into some horseshit runs, were horseshit. Crowd was horseshit. Skreech and Snuffleupagus in the YES booth were horseshit. Hell, I was a steaming pile of horseshit watching at home and that’s before my cousin the Mets fan called and I was horseshit enough to complain to him.

The final was Baltimore 11, New York 5. I’d recap it for you but I’m too horseshit to do it much justice (not that it deserves any).

I’ll leave you with this from Kevin Kerrane’s wonderful Dollar Sign on the Muscle:

Any baseball talent, body, body-part, effort, action, player, team, city, or scouting assignment can be horseshit. The term covers everything but the world of words–the world of stories, explanations, and scouting reports–at which point bullshit takes over.

A real sentence spoken by a scout discussing a former colleague: “His written report was all bullshit, and that’s when I knew he was a horseshit guy.”

Bullshit can be a verb; horseshit can’t. (A sentence like “Don’t horseshit me would make no more sense to a scout than to a nonscout.) Novices sometimes elide the word into horshit, but the veterans get that first S down deep in the throat, with the tongue at the back of the palate, lots of air whistling past the lower teeth, and then they follow through for full emphasis. horsse-shit!

The word is popular throughout baseball–with players, managers, umpires, and executives.

You won’t have Chad Qualls to kick around anymore. Yanks get a back-up third baseman. Looks like Joba will be activated tonight as well.

Derek Jeter DH
Curtis Granderson CF
Robinson Cano 2B
Nick Swisher 1B
Raul Ibanez LF
Eric Chavez 3B
Ichiro Suzuki RF
Russell Martin C
Ramiro Pena SS

Never mind the slump, never mind the damn losing: Let’s Go Yank-ees!

[Photo Credit: Bravo_Zulu]

Now we’re up in the big leagues/ Getting our turn at bat.

Word to Sherm…