Blog Archives

Why the Twins Will Beat the Yankees…

My college roommate hailed from Edina, Minnesota. Eric was a catcher with an arm-shaped cannon (he’s unavailable to suit up for the Yankees Wednesday night) and remains a die-hard Twins fan. When we played stickball in the park in the sweltering June heat, he wore a turtleneck. When he went out to retrieve the Washington Post from a snow pile in February, he wore shorts and sandals. These Minnesotans are built differently than us New Yorkers. We save our shorts for the summer and bundle up in righteous indignation when it snows.

When the Yankees fell into their September funk, I began envisioning a brief, chilly, miserable series in Minnesota, with their ecstatic fans stomping their flip-flops and Robinson Cano inappropriately smirking from within the latest Gore-Tex innovation in hood-masks as he went oh-fer eight. Weather reports from Minnesota predict sun and warmth, so the Yankees will luck out in the first two games of the ALDS weather-wise. Hopefully it’s the first of many breaks that will go their way, because if they don’t catch some futher good fortune, this is the year the Twins get over the hump and beat the Yankees in the ALDS.

Minnesota set the tone for their 2010 season on March 21st. That’s the day they signed their franchise-player and reigning American League MVP to an eight-year, $184 million contract. The contract was almost Yankee-like in terms of length and amount. It was a commitment to the player, sure, but it was also a commitment to the team and the fan base. In concert with opening a new stadium, the organization was assuring any doubters that the Twins intended to compete with the big spenders.

It was only a few years ago that the Twins desperately peddled Johan Santana to the Yankees and Red Sox. After realizing they were being used as the target in an organizational pissing contest, they turned, dazed and confused, and accepted whatever crappy deal was still left on the table from the Mets. Santana has been good for the Mets, but the Twins are probably thrilled that they’re not the ones paying him right now, with or without shoulder surgery. But I can’t believe that either the fans, players or the management was happy about being the shuttlecock in a game of badminton between Brian Cashman and Theo Epstein.

Now the Twins have a new outlook, beginning with their new ballpark and continuing with a payroll that added 50% from 2009. The payroll still doesn’t come within half of the Yankees’, but for the players and fans in Minnesota, it must feel liberating. It must feel like they have finally joined the big time. And I think this optimism and confidence will fuel the upcoming ALDS. It’s their house; it’s their time. (more…)

The Yankees have had a bad stretch recently, yet after a rain out and learning of Tampa’s loss to Kansas City Friday night, they controlled their own destiny headed into Saturday’s double-header at Fenway. If the Yankees were to win their remaining three games, they would win the East and secure home-field advantage for the American League Playoffs. Though the Red Sox officially became the Dead Sox when CC Sabathia and David Price won on Wednesday night, sweeping them at Fenway Park will be a very difficult challenge and excellent preparation for the games that await.

In addition to a victory, the Yankees wanted to see Andy Pettitte assume the consistent quality of his pre-injury form. He got rapped for nine hits in four innings, but was deceptive enough to strike out eight. I’ll have to give some of the credit for those whiffs to the late afternoon shadows that turned Tim Wakefield’s knuckle ball to wadded up toilet paper for a few innings before the Yankees figured it out.

Andy has been knocked around twice in a row by these Red Sox, so that’s another reason to be happy their season ends after Sunday. On a confidence scale of AJ to CC, I’m somewhere around 2009 Andy rather then pre-injury Andy, but I am going to expect good things from him in the ALDS until he shows me otherwise.

The Yankees blew a 5-3 lead thanks to walks and wild pitches from Boone Logan, Joba Chamberlain and Kerry Wood. From there, the game hinged on two aggressive base-running plays. When Wood skipped his wild pitch past Posada, he charged to cover the plate. There may have been a play on the runner at third, but Posada could not manipulate his old bones into proper position to throw the ball when the play demanded. He double-pumped and was still unable to free his throwing arm, but he stubbornly flipped it towards…I don’t know. Maybe he consulted a compass and threw it at the N. It wasn’t toward home plate however. Luckily, Wood stayed at the plate as Ramiro Pena ranged into foul territory and cut off the second runner at home with a well-executed long-hop. Sometimes you see a third baseman fire one off the carpet in a dome this way, but I’ve rarely seen it done so well by an infielder throwing home.

With the score tied at five, Brett Gardner worked Jonathan Papelbon for a walk to lead off the tenth. This was Gardner at his best. He spoiled good pitches, took close ones and earned first base. I entered the season with the mission to give Gardner the benefit of the doubt, but not expecting anything. I’m ending the season hoping that there is a starting spot reserved for him for next year. After a sac bunt, Derek Jeter dribbled one to second so weakly (check-swing) that he was staring at an infield hit. Bill Hall muffed a bare-hand stab and as soon as the ball got behind him, I knew Gardner would be burning down the third base line with the go-ahead run. Joe Buck seemed surprised.

Mariano Rivera had a no-nonsense ninth inning for the 6-5 victory punctuated with a final strike to poor Eric Patterson so perfectly etched on the outside corner that he was forced to apologize to him after the game. Why bring a bazooka to a knife fight? Because they’re the Red Sox. Because they’re going to make this weekend living hell. If the Yankees want to win these next two games, they’re going to have to go full tilt. Because no matter who the Red Sox put in these uniforms tonight and tomorrow, they’ll happily use their season’s last breath to hock a loogie in the Yankee stew.

The Rays are up on Kansas City, so the Yankees must win tonight to stay in the driver’s seat for the AL East and home-field advantage. I know Burnett has used up all the credit he had with just about any Yankee fan and no matter what happens tonight, he’ll be unwelcome on the hill be it October or April. But with a non-sucktastic performance tonight, he can at least feel like he’s part of the team again and helping them towards an important goal. And maybe that could be step one (of one hundred) on the road to acceptance.

Find two movie titles that share a common word – preferably the first word of one title and the last word of the other. Then create a new plot that combines both movies. Like: “Members of the Rebel Alliance escape an ice-covered planet in a time-traveling Delorian.” Have your friends guess the mashed up title.

Since you are beginners, that was an easy one (“Empire Strikes Back to Future,” with “Back” being the shared word). How about: Two hopeless alcoholics visit their boss for a four-day bender with his corpse? Or: A cocky, unhappy weatherman is forced to participate in the same NASCAR race day after day? Or: A secretary poses as a Wall Street executive and winds up being unfairly placed in an insane asylum? Or: Pouting teenage vampires take a road trip and get in touch with their feminine sides?

It’s a horrible, horrible game that I can’t stop playing. I hope it infects your mind in a similar fashion – I don’t want to be the only one. And I hope it distracts you from the way the Yankees are playing right now. They have lost 12 of 18 games and their grip on the best record in baseball and the home field advantage in any round of the postseason. They are hot, stale garbage. Since this game was such a mess, I want to take a quick peek back at what got them to this point.

The first cries that the Yankees stopped trying came too early for me. During that string of close losses at Texas and Tampa, I thought the bullpen was legitimately spent. Few of Girardi’s moves worked out in those games, but I thought he was taking a lot of heat for a dearth of sac flies and hits with runners in scoring position. But then came the “rain delay.”

On Wednesday, with a chance to take the most recent Tampa series, lock in at least a 2.5 game lead, and bring a four-game sweep into the equation, a wicked rain halted play with the Yankees trailing by a measly run after three innings. But the wind blew so hard that night that all of Girardi’s Major League pitchers were swept away. When the rain cleared, he gave Royce Ring his season debut, for some reason. He backed him up with Dustin Moseley, or as he’s known in my apartment, Bantha fodder. Moseley let up a run for Ring, and then one of his own. But the Yankees scored two themselves and were still squarely in the game.

Given the gift of a close contest after using the roster dregs, Girardi still refused to engage the game. Because the nasty weather cancelled Kyle Farnsworth’s flight to LaGuardia, Girardi had to turn to Chad Gaudin to put the game away. For Tampa. He let up two homers, but Girardi was scared to death it might get closer, so he left him in to let up another run. When Albaladejo let up the seventh run, Girardi finally breathed easily – there was no chance of extra innings. There was no chance someone might slip on the wet grass and get hurt. And there was no reason to use a good relief pitcher. He succeeded in putting all the eggs in CC’s basket. Then CC ate the friggin’ eggs.

(more…)

The top two teams in baseball faced off in the opener of the heaviest series of the year. The Yankees own the slimmest margin conceivable in the standings, but Rays fans would probably argue that their head-to-head record and tougher schedule thus far makes them more deserving of the title “the best team in baseball.” If one of these teams can win this four game series, that might settle the regular season argument right there. To recap this game, Alex chose me, because he either really wants to play the Twins or nobody else was available.

And if the drama surrounding the game wasn’t enough for you, the Yankees unveiled George’s monument tonight. Some might object to the fact that it’s roughly the size of Texas. Others might not, because, hey, it could have been the size of Alaska.

Through five innings, the Yankees cruised along like a team possessing focus and purpose – a first place team with every intention of staying there. After jumping out to a four-run lead Curtis-y of a two-run bomb and an old fashioned rally with hits, walks and a sac fly, the Yankees seemed poised to blow it open. In the bottom of the fifth, with two outs, bases loaded and Matt Garza’s pupils dilated, Lance Berkman waited in the batter’s box for the 3-1 meat ball that might put the game out of reach.

Hitting with a 3-1 count is a hitter’s dream. The hitter imagines both the type and location of the pitch and if he gets what he’s looking for, takes an aggressive cut looking to do serious damage. And if he doesn’t get what he’s looking for, he spits on it. Lance, pressing to get an important hit for the Yankees after his catastrophic gag job on Sunday in the eleventh versus Baltimore, couldn’t execute this simple strategy. Garza unleashed ball four up and in on Berkman’s hands.

With two strikes, it was a tremendous pitch. A ball, but maybe it was too close to take. And it was in a location that is only hittable by the fastest hands. But there weren’t two strikes, and thus Berkman should have doused it in saliva and trotted down to first base, extending the inning for Gardner and the Yankee lead to 5-0. Instead, Lance swung blindly, and the ball dug into the handle of his bat like an earwig. The bat exploded while the ball floated harmlessly to Ben Zobrist at second. Circle that pitch, I thought. These days, the path to defeat, no matter how obscure, could start anywhere.

(more…)

A super-heroic game from Arod inspired both Alex and me to choose images of Superman after last night’s performance. Thanks to Rodriguez the Yankees won 4-3 and gained a game on both the Rays and Sox, moving back into the penthouse of the AL East. The one I chose is a picture by George Perez from the Avengers-JLA crossover a few years ago. This drawing is from the climactic battle. The Vision has just been killed, and Thor is under a pile of bad guys. With his last act, the Vision drains his power jewel into Superman, essentially supercharging their strongest gun. Thor whips him his hammer, Captain America flings him his shield, and Superman puts everything into one swing with the mighty Mjolnir which saves the day.

Yeah, last night was kind of like that.

I’m not picky when it comes to wins. AJ Burnett going seven innings and allowing three runs, even if it was tough to watch at times, is cause for optimism. The offense was brutal, no getting around it, and they’ll have to be better if they want to win the series with Tampa next week. But they have two more games in Baltimore to put on their hitting shoes and I think they will.

I did not think the pitch Alex took for ball two in the ninth was a strike. It required a little restraint from the home plate umpire, but to me it was not overly close and would have been a harsh way to end the game. Though I guess from Balitmore’s perspective, having Arod plaster one into the night is pretty harsh too.

Alex said that Arod expressed his inner-Reggie last night. Coming up big at the biggest times is how heroes are made, and we sure needed hero during this recent stretch. I hope Arod is ready to assume that role for the duration.

When Alex smushes one like that, I imagine the ball flattening upon impact and then snapping back to form as it hurtles into space. It’s a testament to the good folks at Rawlings that the ball did not explode. Next time, he should try the hammer.

I don’t always hate umpire schtick. The emphatic punch-out is part of the style, intensity and enthusiasm of Major League Baseball and these guys are integral to the game’s personality. I also don’t expect them to get every call correct. If they’re hustling, in the right position, and trying to be consistent I don’t get worked up about it. But when a home plate umpire spends an entire game preening and posing, but can’t be bothered to pay attention to the strike zone, it ruffles the feathers. And in rare cases, when umpire buffoonery repeatedly alters the scoreboard, I’m steamed.

Tonight, in the second inning, home-plate-umpire Dale Scott took a run away from the Yanks and second-base ump Alfonso Marquez added one to the Rangers side of the ledger. With bases loaded, Brett Gardner took what should have been ball four to drive in the first run. The pitch was not close, being low and outside (looking at Gameday, and then watching the pitch again on TV reminds me to take Gameday’s location with a grain of salt) and Gardner was noticeably peeved. He swung through strike three to end the threat.

In the bottom of the inning, Kinsler reached on a check swing dribbler in front of Cano. He attempted to steal second later in the at-bat, but Cervelli got a great pitch to throw on and drilled a dart to Derek (his best throw in recent memory) for the easy out. Or so thought everyone other than Marquez. Kinsler pulled back his lead hand and lurched into second base as Jeter swiped the tag across his fingers, chest and face. After watching it several times in replay, there was no angle which definitively showed a tag or a non-tag, but I firmly believe that some part of Jeter’s glove touched some part of Kinsler. Marquez definitely did not have a good idea either way, but decided that even though the throw beat Kinsler by five feet, he would call him safe. The Rangers bunted Kinsler to third and scored him on a ground out.

Jeter was shocked. Cervelli was confused. Vazquez, I’m sure was frustrated. Girardi was pissed. After railing against Marquez he turned to Scott to argue the strike zone. That’s reason for ejection, but Scott gave him a long leash and Girardi decided not to push it any further. The bad umpiring changed a 1-0 lead into a 0-1 hole, but the Yankees got fired up for a few innings after that and ran CJ Wilson out of the game early. Arod hit a big two-run double and Thames and Cervelli followed with two-out run-scoring singles. At 4-1 the Yankees had a nice lead but it would have been much more comfortable at 5-0. Especially with Javy Vazquez on the mound.

Actually, Vazquez was fine. Not good exactly, but adequate. He had bad luck with defense, bloopers, and the bad call. He impressed most when in the most trouble. With bases loaded in the fourth, a jam of his own making, he induced a grounder down the first base line that I’m sure most of us thought was easy pudding for Teixeira. I don’t know if he got a bad first step or missed the ball off the bat or if it just skidded through faster than it appeared off the bat, but Teix was nowhere near it. Vazquez got mad.

(more…)

As Brett Cecil mastered the Yankees for the fourth time this year, the Yankee game lacked any drama after Phil Hughes served up a two-run gopher ball (already his second of the day) in the third inning. As the Bombers failed to mount a serious challenge in a 7-3 loss, Yankee fans watching the scoreboard were treated to a roller-coaster ride as Tampa and Boston played hot potato with the leads in their games with Baltimore and Chicago.

As the Yankees went quietly, Tampa was putting up a four spot on the Orioles in the sixth to overcome a three-run deficit. Luckily, the recently defiant Orioles answered back with four of their own in the bottom of the same inning. After Tampa scratched another two runs in the seventh, the Orioles held on tightly to the slim remaining margin. They sealed the win in impressive style as newly minted closer Koji Uehara made short work of the top of the Rays order, whiffing MVP candidate Evan Longoria to end it.

And that was nothing compared to what was going on in Boston. The Red Sox led 2-1 until Daniel Bard’s throwing error in the seventh gave Chicago a 3-2 lead. Boston struck back immediately to reclaim a 4-3 lead courtesy of a Victor Martinez two-run blast. After an insurance run in the eighth, Papelbon needed three outs to make up a game on both the Yanks and Rays. He only could get two. Eight white socks crossed the plate and Chicago ended up with a sweet comeback victory.

These happily wild endgames turned the Yankee loss into a minor annoyance, or possibly to the truly enlightened, a mere afterthought. Hughes was bad. Though he only allowed seven hits in six innings, the hits were all loud (six for extra bases) and the Jays hurt him with every kind of pitch. Hill doubled on a terrible curve and homered on a flubbed cutter. Wells homered on misplaced fastball. Buck touched up another bad cutter and Snider doubled on an ineffective change (pitch identification courtesy of mlb.com’s Gameday). When he needed an out, he didn’t know where to turn, and he mostly came up small.

The velocity charts on Fan Graphs don’t show a lot of deterioration on Phil’s offerings over the course of the year, but pitches that blew past bats in April and May are finding wood as the summer drags out. He is less precise with his location, less effective overall.

But the Jays are a clubbing squad. He avoided the walks, got five K’s and mixed in the change up a little bit more. And he lasted six innings. I don’t think Hughes has many big performances left in him this year, but I’m not going to forget the great start to the year either. Hope he contributes what he can down the stretch, and comes back stronger next year.

(more…)

Nine huge hits from the three big guns in the middle of the Yankee offense blew the doors off Trevor Cahill and the A’s. Left spinning in the dust on the back of the mound was the license plate and the once-sterling (still fantastic) ERA of a fringe Cy Young candidate. Yankees 11, A’s 5.

Mark Teixeira, after missing almost two full games with a bruised thumb, Robinson Cano and Nick Swisher combined for four doubles, two home runs, and seven RBI. And since a proper one has four chambers, Marcus Thames with six homers in his last five starts, ably fills out the current heart of the order.

(About a month ago, having given up hope of rebounds from Jeter and Arod, I asked Alex if Cano and Teixeira could carry the Yanks to the division title. He said big Teix would come through and it looks like Cano and Swisher will be in the trenches with him. Thames has been amazing, but I’m not counting on it to continue, though for no other reason than he’s never been this good for this long before.)

Dustin Moseley was the beneficiary of the outpouring, not because he picked up the win (that honor went to Javy Vazquez for his four-plus innings of very effective relief) but because it spared him the loss of what probably should be his last meaningful start of the 2010 season.

Vazquez deployed a slow, loopy curve ball which sat in the high sixties. He has been throwing his curve ball both more often and harder this year than in his incredible 2009 campaign. Whether or not that factors into his poor results thus far, there’s no denying that the A’s were flummoxed by the new curve. Let’s see how it looks against the hard homerin’ Blue Jays before we get too excited.

I won’t mind if I never have to watch another Daric Barton at-bat. At least when he’s facing the Yankee pitching staff.

(more…)

Ivan Nova came out for his first Major League start spitting fire. With adrenaline flowing to his lanky right arm, and his spirits lifted by a fantastic Gardner-to-Cervelli double play, he blazed fastballs of 97 and 98 miles per hour to get himself out of trouble in the first inning. And Yankee fans rushed to mlb.com to check the pitchFX to validate the startling reading on the YES gun. They were not disappointed by those results, but they were disappointed that the Jays won the battle of the bullpens, 3-2.

Coming into the 2010 season, River Ave Blues filed this report on the young hurler. After being unprotected in the rule 5 draft, claimed and quickly returned, Nova put a few nice starts together in Trenton in 2009, earned a promotion to Scranton. With most of the Yankee pitching talent in the low minors to start 2010, Nova was an easy choice to add to the 40 man roster this offseason as there was a good chance he could provide depth for the Major League staff if injuries or Javy Vazquez came to pass. And here we are.

Nova comes in with a reputation as a bit of a worm-killer. He’s a tall-drink-of water, and his motion and action on the fastball (after he calmed down and found his 94 mph groove) and lack of a quality second pitch, reminded me of Chien Min Wang. I really liked Wang, even when he was forced to carry the load as the Yankees de facto ace. A healthy Wang is an ideal back-of-the-rotation innings eater. Solid, if unspectacular. I doubt that Nova could be as good as Wang, but, for now, I’d like to see more of him and less of some other guys.

Aside from a good fastball, however, Nova did not show much else. Filed under “not much else” should be that lame curve that Jose Bautista hit into the stands to pad his league leading total. The game was tied in the sixth when Nova sent a high fastball Bautista’s way (did he expect another non-breaking curve?). Notice I didn’t say high and inside. It might have been a little off the plate, but it never had a chance to hit the guy. It was exactly like that time Manny Ramirez lost his junk and caused all that commotion when Clemens threw a high, but not-that-inside, fastball back in the 2003 ALCS.

Anyway, Bautista decided to take serious offense and was looking to hit one a thousand feet his next time up in the eighth. He came  up a couple hundred feet short, but still deposited the game winning homer after turning on an inside heater by David Robertson. He styled to the extreme and relished his curtain call. Oh, how I wanted that to come back to bite his ass, but, alas. Earlier in the game, Flash mentioned Bautista has 38 home runs, and zero to the opposite field. He couldn’t imagine that the Yankees would pitch him inside in this series. He ended up hitting 2 inside pitches (mistakes, no doubt) over the left field wall for all of Toronto’s runs.

Bautista now has six home runs and twelve RBI versus the Yankees in 2010. And the Jays have taken six out of ten from the Yanks. The Red Sox already won, so all that’s left to do tonight is to root for the Angels (and clean the living room, do the dishes, take out the garbage, put the laundry away, check work emails). Go, uh, let’s see, Scott Kazmir. Hmm. That’s probably not going to work.

On another note, does anybody watch the Little League World Series? I tune in on occasion, but almost always turn it off quickly because the umpiring is so atrocious. The pitcher can get a strike any time he hits the catcher’s glove, no matter how far into the opposite batter’s box the catcher sets up. Jose Molina employs the same strategy. It never seemed to work for the Yankees, but it sure worked for the Blue Jays tonight. The one to Granderson in the ninth was closer to the on-deck circle than to home plate.

From his first pitch, which nailed Brett Gardner on the right leg and prompted some pointing (and possibly a warning, more on that later) from the home plate umpire Eric Cooper, Jeremy Bonderman exhibited the disposition of a dull teenager enduring the facts-of-life lecture from prattling parents. His annoyed expression and frequent shoulder shrugging suggested he wanted to anywhere else but on the hill at Yankee Stadium. Despite his best efforts to the contrary, he managed to stick around for five innings, seven runs and three homers. In fact, after he drilled Brett the Jet and let up back-to-back jacks (courtesy Teixeira and Cano) in the first, it crossed my mind that Bonderman just might rear back and fire one at Swisher’s melon to earn the automatic heave-ho and the warmth of an early shower. With times being tough all over, I guess the probable suspension was too much of a financial risk, and luckily for the Yanks, he stayed in the game.

As soundly as the Yankee hitters pounded Bonderman’s weak offerings, Dustin Moseley prevented the game from becoming a laugher. For awhile, he was holding the non-Cabrera portion of the lineup at bay, surrendering “only” two solo homers to Miggy through the first four innings. But when Don Kelly brought his .279 career slugging percentage to the plate in the fifth and deposited a hanging breaking ball a few feet over Austin Kearn’s outstretched glove for a two-run home run, the game took on an ominous, too-close-for-comfort feeling that persisted (for me anyway) until it was over.

The battle of the bullpens got interesting in the seventh when Boone Logan and Kerry Wood loaded the bases on three singles. With one out, Wood dug deep and produced big-time strikeouts of Santiago and Raburn. (Other than a few too many walks, Wood has had a really fine first nine innings for the Yankees) Then the Tigers tried to walk the same tight rope, but Austin Kearns played the bully and sent them spilling to the earth with a booming ground rule double to plate two runs and increase the Yankee lead to five.

(more…)

Open skies! Pour forth your cleansing draught. Purify this field, this team, this season. Wash away age and rust. Leave gleaming life where spread decay and rot. And quietly, gently carry away the dead in your bubbling floodwaters. Give us the promise of a new day, with blazing sun, clean slate and the hope of…

What’s that? It stopped raining? Oh crap, they kept playing.

Javy Vazquez discharged pus for 105 pitches through four innings and made Sergio Mitre’s appearance a welcome sight. Until the ninth, the Yanks best offense was either a dropped pop-up or Francisco Cervelli’s feeble attempt to drive in the tying runs in the seventh (Granderson did have three hits, but batting in front Cervelli nullifies anything but a home run)

Just as Cervelli was failing in the seventh, Tampa was mounting a gutsy, late-inning comeback against Cliff Lee, the blazing sun, to settle the Rays into a first place tie in the AL East. They needn’t feel claustrophobic sharing the penthouse, the Yanks won’t be staying there long playing like this.

The ninth inning deserves its own paragraph. After Miguel Cabrera padded the lead to a really daunting 3-0, Valverde completely lost the strike zone and walked Cano, Cervelli and Gardner (none of them even took the bat off their shoulders) around one of Granderson’s singles. Derek Jeter’s season-long battle with his strike-zone judgment and weak ground balls reared its ugly head at the worst possible time. Instead of simply not swinging, he flailed at a 2-1 pitch out of the zone that would have made the count 3-1, and then tapped weakly into a game ending double play (amazing turn by Carlos Guillen) after the count ran full. By simply not swinging, I bet he would have walked and given the Yanks a real shot an undeserved victory.

Alex Rodriguez and Nick Swisher left the game with injuries. It seems the Yankees are really going to attempt to win the World Series with only a couple of guys having decent seasons. Color me skeptical. In losing to the reeling Tigers 3-1, they looked like a tired, broken-down mess.

After a herky-jerky motion Max Scherzer issues sick stuff from odd angles, so given the current state of the Yankee offense, he presented an insurmountable challenge. So much so that I was happy to see Curtis Granderson get a hit early, dispelling the very real chance of being no-hit. They looked slightly more comfortable against the bullpen, though they couldn’t break through until Valverde walked the park. As it was, that’s back-to-back games with eight total hits and one run. I ask that I be relieved of recapping duties until the Yankees produce a double-digit victory.

(more…)

Burnett was hardly burnt; he was very crisp. But the Yanks offense was left bruised and bloody as hell by this guy:

I replayed the game quickly after a long day in the city dodging raindrops and the early Kansas City run didn’t register as important on my radar screen. In fact, with Arod smacking what looked like his fourth straight homer to start the second, and a couple of other squared up outs from Swisher (in the first) and Berkman to end the second, I thought the game would play out much like the night before, with the Yanks piling up the homers in an easy victory.

They didn’t hit another ball really hard the entire game – maybe Swisher’s fly out in the fourth qualifies as hard-hit, but even still. A few grounders shot through the infield courtesy of Cano and Gardner, but that was it. And the first inning run stood up stiff, like a stubborn cowlick. Royals 1, Yanks 0.

Bullington had a passable fastball operating in the low 90s with just enough run on it to miss the sweet spot of the bat. He mixed in a low 80s breaking ball that was tough on lefties when ahead in the count. He saved his best fastball to strike out Arod in the eight, when Arod had a couple of good hacks to try to tie the game. It was an incredibly effective performance and a hard-earned first career victory for the former number one draft pick.

But when a guy gets brilliant results with less than impressive stuff, how much credit does he deserve? I thought the Yankees did a so-so job of getting into hitter’s counts and took some aggressive swings at hittable pitches, but always for naught. The guy just got it done. I wouldn’t bet on him getting by with the same stuff next time out, but what do I know?

(more…)

I knew sooner or later I would have to write about a Mariano loss. When Mariano comes into a game, I turn on the recorder, I turn off the TV and I wait 30 minutes. Then, I check the score, and if he has blown it, I lose it. I don’t lose it out loud anymore, and I don’t act out. But my hands are shaking with anger as I pound the remote control buttons to delete the recording and stew around for hours because I’m too upset to sleep. The days following are tough, and I’d rather do anything than talk about and read about baseball, but you know you can’t avoid it in this day and age. There’s an angry buzz on the subway the next day. Plus the barely contained glee from the Yankee haters. A Mo loss is like a straightjacket for me. The only thing that brings me back is reminding myself (over and over) that he’s already moved past it in time for the next game.

Before Mariano got involved, the Yanks could not get their feet straight tonight and it cost them another very winnable game. Four times awkward footwork turned plays against them and it’s possible all four plays had an impact on runs crossing the plate. Bad AJ showed up briefly to groove four or five fastballs in the sixth and the Rangers bullpen wriggled out of some jams that the Yanks bullpen couldn’t and lost a really tough game 4-3 in ten innings.

The first foot fault, and probably least hurtful, happened when Josh Hamilton skied to center for the first out of the bottom of the fourth. Michael Young liked his chances to take second on Gardner, but I thought Gardner had it lined up perfectly to prevent the extra base. Either he didn’t know Young was tagging or he doesn’t have a lot of confidence in his arm, because he took a loping crow hop before firing the ball in. Young was safe easily. I thought an aggressive throw would have either kept Young at first or nailed him at second. He may have scored anyway on the two out double that followed, but at least the Yanks would have had a slim chance to hold him or make a play at the plate if he was starting from first.

(more…)

Hard-hit baseballs swarmed Yankee Stadium tonight like those godawful midges in Cleveland. So many interesting plays developed within the barrage of base hits and the mad dashing of base runners. If you had the ear of a young, eager baseball fan during tonight’s contest, you could really fill it up with all that transpired. An inside-the-park home run. A potential run disallowed by a prior base out. Another runner cut down at home plate by a phantom tag. A vintage Posada brain fart so perplexing and inexplicable that it stubbornly defies analysis. The 599th home run of an epic career. A successfully executed running-swinging bunt. Nooks and crannies for baseball fans of all kinds. Except those that like to, you know, see a pitcher get somebody out.

When is five runs in six innings a disappointment? When the pitcher is Bruce Chen or Aaron Sele. This game had to be a laugher. I thought for a second, maybe I’m jinxing it by acknowledging how ridiculously lopsided this match-up is. But if CC Sabathia isn’t a sure thing against Bruce Chen and the Royals, then just go ahead and throw everything out the window.

Of course, CC was far from a sure thing. He was batting practice. I’ve seen CC get roughed up before, but not like this. Not against such awful hitters. And not so consistently. He was bad in the first, second, fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh. To his credit, he dug down and kept battling. And in an eventful game of Yankee gift swap, where each team was eager to forfeit runs and re-gift them later in the game, the Yanks found the laugher I hoped was in there all along and won 10-4.

(more…)

After visiting with Danny Rose, Woody Allen’s most optimistic creation, perhaps it’s best to begin our exploration of The Purple Rose of Cairo with Woody’s take on the film, from Conversations with Woody Allen by Eric Lax:

When I first got the idea, it was just a character comes down from the screen, there are some high jinks, but then I thought, where would it go? Then it hit me: the actor playing the character comes to town. After that it opened up like a great flower. Cecilia had to decide, and chose the real person, which was a step up for her. Unfortunately, we must choose reality, but in the end it crushes us and disappoints. My view of reality is that it is a pretty grim place to be, (pause) but it’s the only place you can get Chinese food.

This should prepare you for the sadness that accompanies a viewing of this film and the sorry state of the lead character, Mia Farrow’s Cecilia.

Set in New Jersey of the 1930s Cecilia is buried beneath a country-wide Depression that has claimed the humanity of her husband Monk, a dastradly Danny Aiello, and, with the help of Allen’s longtime collaborator Gordon Willis, drained the color from the world around her. Woody recollects:

I deliberately wanted her to come out [of the theater] to a very unpleasant situation for her. Gordon was able to do that. I described to him coming out of the movie theater and it suddenly being the real world in all its ugliness.

Cecilia waits tables and trods beaten paths to broken door frames amid drab New Jersey browns. She finds solace at the local movie theater, where, in a neat reversal of the color-coding of The Wizard of Oz, the black-and-white of the fantasy world on screen is a veritable wonderland of richness and possibility and the colors of reality are stifling.

Woody Allen doesn’t appear in this film, and if you squint really hard, I guess you can see some of him in Cecilia. But I think that “looking for Woody” in the films in which he does not appear is sometimes a mistake. And it does a disservice to Mia Farrow’s performance. Woody Allen does not hold a patent on neurotic behavior – I found Mia’s Cecilia to be an original. Her beaming recollections of the previous night’s cinema smoothly countering her fumbling dishes at the diner.

But you can’t break dishes during a Depression. Her job lost and her two-timing abusive husband a constant oppression, she returns again and again to the cinema to lose herself in the latest bit of romantic escapism on display: The Purple Rose of Cairo, featuring an explorer named Tom Baxter, of the Chicago Baxters, whose import to the film is of some contention. Regardless, Cecilia fixates on him to the point that he notices. Upon her fifth viewing, Tom decides to approach her – by walking out of the screen and into the theater.

(more…)

At 10:00 PM, it is now almost three hours after my children typically fall asleep. As I tiptoed out of their room for the sixth time tonight a few minutes ago, having been slyly manipulated by the two-year-old and head-butted and throttled into submission by the one-year-old, I found my skull pounding all over except for this void in the front-center of my brain, from whence everything important I once knew was surely flooding into the abyss.

These kids have worn me down to nothing but a steaming pile of nerves. If the Yankees were slogging their way through nine innings of not-hitting Ryan Rowland-Smith right now, I would probably be standing in a pile of broken electronic equipment. But they already did that today, and thanks to CC, Mo, and Arod, they won, 4-2, so they are the least of my troubles.

For seven innings, the game sped along without much offense to gum up the works. The Yankees threatened a big first inning when Jeter sharply singled off Hyphen’s foot and Swisher whacked one in the left center gap. I actually thought a blowout was in the offing. But weak results from Teixiera and Rodriguez and a nifty over-the-shoulder catch from Josh Wilson at SS robbing Robbie of a ribbie limited the Yanks to one measly run.

From there, nothing much happened except an un-rob-able bomb from Cano in the fourth. Even though the Mariners have a weak offense, their recent binge on Yankee pitching coupled with a slumping Yankee lineup placed a lot of weight on CC’s big shoulders. He responded marvelously. He allowed two corking rips to Milton Bradley, but avoided any trouble apart from one tough spot in the second. With Bradley on third and one out, CC really bore down to keep Josh Wilson from tying the game. After seven pitches, including a great change-up which Wilson spoiled with an emergency hack, CC got the harmless pop out and preserved the lead.

It stood 2-0 in the eighth when CC walked the leadoff man on four pitches. Not a good sign, but I also didn’t want to see Joba Chamberlain in that spot, so really not much to do but watch and wait. CC couldn’t get a glove on Ichiro’s grounder through the box, but he still had a good shot to get out of it as he faced Branyan with runners on first and second and two outs. Then Posada gagged a ball to the backstop which turned Branyan’s subsequent single into a game-tying basehit.

Strangely, I felt supremely confident in the heart of the Yankees order headed to the bottom of the eighth. Perhaps it is because I own Aardsma in fantasy baseball and know how much he blows. When Arod muscled a short homer over the right field wall, I realized I never really even had time to get mad at the guys for coughing up the lead. And then when Mariano was shaking hands after his 13-pitch ninth inning cakewalk, it was a good day. The video of the last strikeout of Josh Wilson should be put in a time capsule – the cutter moving off the outside edge toward infinity; Wilson’s bat pointlessly waving in the other direction.

Sabathia was the stopper they needed him to be, and Arod came up big on demand as well. Good day at the ball park. Bad night for bed time (and recaps).

“The site is supposed to be located on an ancient Indian Burial Ground…”

 Is The Shining a scary film? I don’t know. It certainly sticks with you and comes back to you, not always at the best of times. I think it’s because Stanley Kubrick has seared a few incredibly disturbing images onto our collective consciousness – an accomplishment that stands up just as well as if he had made a great film. Or maybe that’s the same thing.

The movie was not well received in 1980. But it would have taken a visionary critic to have foreseen the lasting impact of this film, and there is a lot to criticize even if someone had been such a visionary. Roger Ebert gave it a “Thumbs Down” initially, and then in 2006, he reconsidered and included it in his reviews of Great Movies.

To get the plot out of the way, because that is the least important thing about The Shining, Jack Torrance (a revved up Jack Nicholson) agrees to become caretaker of a haunted hotel and almost instantly loses his marbles and tries to kill his wife (Shelley Duvall) and son (Danny Lloyd). Though he is pretty much off-the-deep-end after the first snowstorm, his madness is fairly directionless until a couple of experienced ghosts counsel him on the finer points of axe-wielding and wife-hacking. The breakneck speed of Jack’s descent and the ultimately useless side story of the telepathic son and chef (Scatman Crothers) are poorly draped around some of the spookiest and most indelible images from the entirety of horror-film history:

The winding mountain road.

Danny’s ever present Big Wheelish Trike.

The blood in the elevator.

The twins.

Jack’s demonic facial contortions.

(more…)

If it pleases you, discuss the World Cup matches here. And keep us blisslessly ignorant desk jockeys informed of what’s going on. It will be a wild morning with probabilties of advancement swinging drastically with each goal scored in either game.

The Desert Foxes of Algeria still have a slim hope to advance. The, whatever the US is called, have a somewhat better chance, but nothing is for certain.

Scenarios for Group C are as follows:

USA Advances With: 1) A win. 2) A draw and an England loss. 3) A draw and an English draw while maintaining a total goals advatage over England. (currently US is up 3 goals to 1)

ALGERIA Advances With: 1) A win and an England tie. 2) A win and an England win and Algeria makes up goal deficit to Slovenia.

England Advances With: 1) A win. 2) A draw and a US loss. 3) A draw and a US draw,but England ends up with more total goals than the US.

Slovenia Advances With: 1) A win. 2) A draw. 3) A loss and a US draw.

Solely  in terms of US advancement, we are rooting for low scoring draw (0-0 or 1-1)  between England and Slovenia. Under that scenario, the US wins the group with a victory over Algeria and advances in second position with any kind of draw. If England wins their match, America has to win to get in.

Chat about today’s World Cup match here, if you please.

The Yankees just lost 7-1 to a recently reeling Phillies team. The same team Boston pummeled into submission a few days ago. Thanks to Tim Hudson, New York will retain their share of first place, but after beating Roy Halladay on Tuesday, this series result needs to be scraped off the bottom of our shoes.

The Yankees did not hit. They did not field. Andy Pettitte pitched admirably, but admirably was nowhere near good enough. He needed a shutout to win tonight, and his two-out two-run goofball to Shane Victorino was enough to beat the hapless, batless Yanks. The fact that Joba Chamberlain came in and ruined any chance at a pie party was just more shit to scrape. (I had written the first paragraph in the top on the ninth, and when I saw Joba’s mug on the computer, I guessed 6-1. Almost.)

(more…)