Now dig this:

Duane Keiser’s Peel.

Bronx Banter Book Excerpt

Memory Lane: A Truly Blown Save

By Charley Rosen

Here’s the testimony of a onetime Yankee starting pitcher who wishes to remain anonymous:

“I’d pitched on Friday night and I’d partied with all my heart after my complete-game win. I was still hungover and feeling pretty blotto by the time I reported to the Stadium for Saturday’s afternoon game. So I hid from the skipper in the trainer’s room as long as I could, gulping down as many cups of black coffee as my already queasy stomach could take. Still, my eyes were bloodshot, my skin had a yellowish tinge, I felt like someone had driven a spike into my forehead, and it seemed that I was perpetually in danger of tossing my cookies. If the skipper saw me in this condition, his hard stare would be enough for me to vomit on his shoes. So, after cringing in the trainer’s room for about five innings, and squatting on the porcelain throne for two more, I decided to hide out in the bullpen.

“Now one of the team’s veteran relievers had a hard-on for the skipper, but only because he thought the skipper had a hard-on for him. It seems that the pitcher, let’s call him Joe, had one or two top-notch years coming out of the Yankees bullpen and racking up a modest but impressive amount of saves. But as Joe’s slider began to lose its bite, he was only being used in mop-up situations.

“Joe would sit in the bullpen and bitch about how he was being denied the chance to make the money he deserved. ‘Wins and saves,’ he’d say. ‘That’s what pays the big bucks. And here I am wasting the best years of my career only working in blowouts.’

“Anyway, on this particular afternoon, our best reliever had a sore arm, and two other guys had pitched long innings on Thursday night. The only other available relievers were Joe and some raw rookie who couldn’t be trusted to wipe his ass after he took a crap. Meanwhile, our starter was in trouble every inning. Walking guys, hitting two or three, giving up line-drive hits, but barely managing to survive because the other guys made some stupid baserunning mistakes. Plus he was the beneficiary of two outstanding fielding plays that resulted in bang-bang double plays. And our lineup was smashing the shit out of the ball, so we were up by a score of ten to five. It should also be noted that if a reliever pitched three innings to close out a winning game, he’d get a save no matter what the final score was.

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If you are not checking Craig Robinson’s Flip Flop Flyin’ on the reg…

…well, this is a reminder: peep, dont’ sleep.

Last night I was walking to the subway in midtown when I saw a woman wearing a Curtis Granderson jersey. Don’t see many of those, I thought as I approached her. I must say hello. She had her back to me and was standing on the corner. Next to her, another woman was looking at a subway map.

“You guys need help getting to Yankee Stadium?” I asked when I reached them.

The woman in the Granderson jersey raised her eyebrow and looked me suspiciouisly. The kind of “What-Do-You-Want-From-Me?” look that you only see from out-of-towners.

I told her I was a Yankee fan, not to worry, then helped them out. We talked about the team for a minute. She told me that she was Curtis Granderson’s sister. I told her how well-liked he was by Yankee fans and now the suspicion was gone and she smiled, big and beautiful. And then she and her friend went to the game.

Philip Humber mastered the Yankees tonight for seven superb innings and the White Sox won a brisk game 2-0. Humber huddled a no-hitter into the seventh before Alex Rodriguez bounced one through the box. AJ Burnett was almost as good, but on a night when each base was precious, the Yankees coughed up two bases too many and the White Sox turned those gifts into their margin of victory.

In the top of the fourth, when the game still shone with the promise of youth, Carlos Quentin led off with a hit. Curtis Granderson got a bad jump on the ball and misplayed a single into a double. Two groundouts plated the run, but the Yankees figured they had made the smart trade. In the top of the ninth, Alexei Ramirez led off by grazing a pop fly behind the mound. Rafael Soriano, in relief of the brilliant Burnett, assumed it had loft enough to reach the infielders and gave up on the play. Jeter was the closest to no-man’s land when the ball thudded to the grass, but the only play on the ball was Soriano’s. The White Sox pinch ran, stole second and got the timely hit to pad the lead. But on this night, that insurance run was surplus to requirements.

In the middle of the game, I got the eerie feeling that I had seen this before. As Philip Humber, making his sixth career start, put the Yanks down with ease, and AJ Burnett put in a strong yet futile effort in response, this game last year versus the Royals’ Bryan Bullington crept into focus. And lo, it came to pass. In the tough loss, AJ Burnett was really a pleasure to watch. The strikeouts were not there, but his control was excellent and his April has been a good one.

Humber spotted his fastball and then used his off-speed stuff generously, keeping the Yankees off balance and on the front-foot all night. The guy had a great game, but I think he’ll get clobbered the next time around, just like Bullington did. I put this mostly on New York’s offense not making the necessary adjustments to the slow-stuff. He did sneak a high fastball past Cano in a crucial at bat in the seventh to derail the Yankees best scoring chance, so give him credit for that.

At this point in the year, I can still feel OK about a game like this given how well AJ Burnett pitched. But with the Red Sox and Rays charging, games like this will probably be tougher to stomach in the very near future.

Here kitty, kitty…

What does catwoman have to do with the slumping Chicago White Sox? You got me. I just wanted an excuse to post this picture.

Over at PB, Cliff has the series preview. Lo-Hud has the latest not-so-good news on Phil Hughes.

Here at the Banter, we root, root, root for the home team.

Never mind the Meow Mix, forget the rain: Let’s Go Yank-ees!

[Photo Credit: Christina Ricci by Gas Station]

Great Comic Book Covers Week…

…lifted from the most excellent, 1979 Semi-Finalist.

Here’s a piece on Ian O’Connor’s new book on Derek Jeter. The book, due out next month, is sure to ruffle some feathers.

[Picture by Edi Weitz]

Tonight on American Experience a documentary about the Stonewall uprising.

Watch the full episode. See more American Experience.

This looks terrific.

“Licensed to Ill” is 25 years old. Over at New York Magazine check out this oral history of the Beastie Boys’ first album:

Adam Horovitz: That year was basically Mike’s house during the day, writing lyrics, going to the club, going to the studio, going back to the club. We would write and write and write, then read the lyrics out loud to see who liked what. And that’s kind of how we’ve always done it since then. Rick had a drum machine, and I used to go to his dorm room and make beats. I made the beat for LL Cool J’s first single, “I Need a Beat.” I bought an 808 at Rogue Music [the Roland TR-808 was one of the first programmable drum machines] with some of the settlement money.

Mike Diamond: We would start with the music, and then Rick would clean it all up. Rick had the ability to make things sound legitimate and bigger, to make it sound like a record.

Rick Rubin: Each one had a strong personality. When we came up with rhymes, we tried to cast them for the right character and the right voice.

Horovitz: It just sort of happened. It wasn’t like, “Okay I’m going to be like Melle Mel, you’re Kool Moe Dee.”

Diamond: We never broke it down like, “Okay, I’m the baritone.”

Chuck Eddy, music writer (who did a notorious Beasties piece in 1987 for Creem): They were smart, arty Jewish kids from New York, and they created these white-trash burnout characters with the help of Rubin. And they pulled it off. ­

Over at Buzzfeed, check out 40 sad portraits of closed record stores.

Well this is just silly fun.

Monday bounce babe.

Dig this cool ass photo gallery of old New York over at Neat Stuff.

In the New Yorker, here’s David Remnick on a new Malcolm X biography:

For nearly twenty years, Manning Marable, a historian at Columbia, labored on what he hoped would be a definitive scholarly work on Malcolm X. During this period, Marable struggled with sarcoidosis, a pulmonary disease, and even underwent a double lung transplant. Recently, he completed his rigorous and evenhanded biography, “Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention” (Viking; $30), but, in an echo of his subject’s fate, he died on the eve of publication. One of his goals was to grapple with Malcolm’s autobiography, and although he finds much to admire about Malcolm, he makes it clear that the book’s drama sometimes comes at the expense of fact. Haley wanted to write a “potboiler that would sell,” Marable observes, and Malcolm was accustomed to exaggerating his exploits—“the number of his burglaries, the amount of marijuana he sold to musicians, and the like.” Malcolm, like St. Augustine, embellished his sins in order to heighten the drama of his reform.

The literary urge outran the knowable facts even in the most crucial episode in Malcolm’s childhood. One evening, in 1931, in Lansing, Michigan, when Malcolm was six, his father, Earl Little, a part-time Garveyite teacher, went to collect “chicken money” from families who bought poultry from him. That night, he was found bleeding to death on the streetcar tracks. The authorities ruled his death an accident, but Malcolm’s mother, Louise, was sure he had been beaten by the Black Legion and laid on the tracks to be run over and killed. Perhaps he had been, but, as Marable notes, nobody knew for sure. The autobiography (and Lee’s film) presents the ostensible murder as established fact, and yet Malcolm himself, in a 1963 speech at Michigan State University, referred to the death as accidental.

[Photograph by Ricard Avedon]

I went to Citifield yesterday. Dig these two on line at Shake Shack…

I was there with my two cousins and the wife. We had a great time (Shake Shack, Mets Win, Shake Shack)…

That’s us singing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame.”

The Yankees and Orioles offered up an interesting game to fill an Easter afternoon on Sunday, but things got really interesting in the bottom of the ninth. Joba Chamberlain had stumbled a bit in the seventh, giving up a two-run home run to Mark Reynolds to narrow the Yankee lead to 3-2, but that one-run lead certainly seemed sufficient after Mariano Rivera came on with two outs in the eighth and (with help from a sparkling grab by Brett Gardner in left) doused a fire started by David Robertson.

Once Rivera got to the bottom of the ninth with that 3-2 lead, the outcome seemed certain. Even after Adam Jones worked a lead-off walk, any feelings of doubt were quickly assuaged as first Reynolds and then Matt Weiters were set down on strikes.

But then things got a bit slippery when Jake Fox singled to right, pushing the tying run into scoring position and bringing up Brian Roberts, who rocketed Mariano’s 33rd pitch of the afternoon into the right field corner, easily scoring Jones and giving pinch runner Robert Andino a better than average shot at plating the winning run. But Nick Swisher did a good job of digging the ball out and hitting the cutoff man, and Robinson Canó was able to nail Andino at home, preserving the tie and sending the game into extra innings.

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Yanks look to get greedy today against the O’s.

Hope the egg hunt treated you well.

Let’s Go Yank-ees!

[Photo Credit: Printresting via This Isn’t Happiness]

Happy Easter, Peoples.

[Photograph: Bogdan Cristel/Reuters]

The Yanks scored three runs in the first inning and Russell Martin added a three-run homer a little while later as C.C. Sabathia cruised through the Orioles hitters. The big lefty was in fine form, throwing hard, until the seventh when he gave up a three-run homer of his own. Just as I started to grumble about the possibility of Soriano and Rivera being needed, however, the Yanks got those runs back in the eighth when Jorge “Dinger or Bust” Posada went deep and Russell Martin hit his second home run.

On Martin: A good friend of mine who roots for the Dodgers tells me that Martin’s good run won’t last. If he’s correct I suspect that Martin will spontaneously combust like a Spinal Tap drummer come August 1st. In the meantime, it’s been a pleasure to watch the dude hit and field.

Oh, before the inning was over, Alex Rodriguez hit a grand slam, putting him one behind the Iron Horse for the most all-time. Yeah, and with six RBI tonight, he’s now 12th on the all-time RBI list.

In the 9th, Josh Rupe hit Martin in the upper back with a pitch. Dirty pool. Fortunately, Martin did not lose his cool though his teammates were riled plenty. And then sweet karma, Brett Gardner, the very definition of a banjo-hitter these days, cranked a two-run homer. It was retribution enough as the Yanks didn’t throw at Orioles in the bottom of the inning.

Love and happiness for the Yanks and their fans…

Final Score: Yanks 15, Orioles 3.

[Picture by Susumu Fujimoto]