Twenty-five years ago today…

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.

Man, is this ever good.

Things fall apart. It looked there for the taking. Alfonso Soriano hit a two-run home run in the first, the Yanks built up a 4-0 lead and it didn’t matter that they left a ton of men on base (and in scoring position, no less) because C.C. Sabathia was dealing. Until the 7th, that is, when the first two men reached and then Paul Konerko hit a double to score a run. But C.C. got out of the inning, thanks in part to an alert play by Robinson Cano, with the lead. And that lead held until two outs in the 9th. Mariano retired the first two batters then gave up a double and with two strikes to Adam Dunn, a single to left field which scored the tying run.

Blown save. Oy. Mo did pitch a scoreless 10th inning, though. And Robinson Cano looked to bail him out when he hit a solo home run in the top of the 12th but Adam Warren botched the save in the bottom of the inning–couple of base hits and a game-winning triple did him, and the Yankees, in.

Final Score: White Sox 6, Yankees 5.

A tough loss on a rough trip. That’s 1-5 against the sad-ass Padres and White Sox. Which makes the Yankees, what? Sad asses. Plenty of bruised feelings to go around.

[Photo Credit: David Banks/USA Today]

It’s C.C.

Brett Gardner CF
Alfonso Soriano LF
Alex Rodriguez 3B
Robinson Cano 2B
Vernon Wells DH
Curtis Granderson RF
Eduardo Nunez SS
Lyle Overbay 1B
Austin Romine C

Never mind the speeches:

Let’s Go Big Fella!

[Image Via: Belles d’amour]

Howard Bryant on the changing nature of the MLBPA:

After the release of the Mitchell Report in December 2007, players were still resistant to the reality that they themselves were the biggest victims of their members’ transgressions. But now, the steroid discussion no longer seems to be a philosophical conversation but a personal one. Players now consider PEDs a violation of their personal baseball code, no different from standing in the batter’s box too long after a home run or repeating what was said in the clubhouse. In the past, they had framed the drug conversation as an imposition of public relations pressure placed by grandstanding outsiders — the public, the media, the front office or Congress.

Now, players are demanding an accountability from one another that didn’t exist in previous years. For the first time, players no longer view steroids as a victimless crime. Users aren’t cheating the public as much as they are other players.

“So, let me get this straight,” an American League player said. “Guy uses steroids. He then puts up better numbers than I do. He goes to free agency and gets the years and the money, takes a job I don’t get and now I have to scramble during the winter to find another slot. Then, he gets busted for steroids and we use my union dues for his lawyers, his defense and his appeal? And that makes sense to you? That bulls— is fair?”

[Photo Credit: AP]

“The Ruins of Detroit” by Yves Marchand & Romain Meffre (via Air and Angels)

Yeah, Hard Luck Hiroki didn’t pitch poorly. It was that damn 3rd run he gave up before getting the final out in the 7th. Otherwise, man, he pitched another competent game. But the Yankees had Chris Sale on their hands, a formidable, hard-throwing lefty. They scored a run and would have had another if the home plate umpire didn’t blow a call at the plate. When your team doesn’t score those moments are critical because the Yanks scored another run in the 9th but Alfonso Soriano whiffed with the tying run on base and that was that: another loss. And the downward spiral continues.

Final Score: White Sox 3, Yanks 2.

[Photo Credit: David Banks/AP]

It’s Hiroki–Our Guy!

Brett Gardner CF
Alfonso Soriano LF
Alex Rodriguez DH
Robinson Cano 2B
Vernon Wells RF
Jayson Nix 3B
Eduardo Nunez SS
David Adams 1B
Austin Romine C

Never mind the boo boids:

Let’s Go Yank-ees!

[Photo via This Isn’t Happiness]

John Henry buys the Boston Globe and the Graham’s sell the Washington Post.

Here’s David Remnick:

After talking with the board of directors, Donald Graham quietly began looking for a potential buyer around Christmas of 2012. “We were in our seventh consecutive year of declining revenues, and there was the question of, What could we do?” Graham told me. The company had bought Slate and Foreign Policy (and is holding on to them) and sold Newsweek (which changed hands again this weekend). “Our strategy had been to innovate like hell in digital and other businesses and offset the declines in print revenues. But Katharine said the declines were going to go on, for the eighth and ninth straight years. And so …”

The trends were violent and undeniable. Graham and Weymouth saw circulation drop from 832,332 average subscribers, in 1993, to 474,767. The newsroom staff was once more than a thousand; it is now around six hundred and forty. The paper is still capable of extraordinary journalism—in June, it broke the Edward Snowden-National Security Agency surveillance story, along with the Guardian, and, only last Sunday, scored the first interview with the leader of the Egyptian military coup, Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, in which the general said, nervily, “you have turned your back on the Egyptians and they won’t forget it.” But the Post is clearly a diminished version of its old self. It is still serious and grounded, but not quite essential in the way its rival, the Times, remains.

And our pal Peter Richmond.

[Photo Credit: Lisa Provence]

Alex Rodriguez wasn’t half-bad at the plate last night. He had a bloop single in his first at bat, drove a high fastball to deep center the next time up (hit it pretty well but it was just high enough for him not to center it), was late on an inside fastball in his third at bat and flied out to deep left, and then struck out looking to end his night. Unfortunately, Andy Pettitte wasn’t half-good. The White Sox scored 3 runs in the first inning and while nobody hit the ball hard and luck was on the home team’s side, things got worse after that and Pettitte was gone before the end of the 3rd inning.

Rough night for the Bombers. Final score: White Sox 8, Yankees 1. 

Derek Jeter goes back on the DL, David Adams called up, Brent Lillibridge cut, Andy Pettitte faces—ah, screw it: Alex Rodriguez is in the lineup tonight.

Brent Gardner CF
Alfonso Soriano DH
Robinson Cano 2B
Alex Rodriguez 3B
Vernon Wells 1B
Curtis Granderson LF
Ichiro Suzuki RF
Eduardo Nunez SS
Chris Stewart C

Never mind the boo birds:

Let’s Go Yank-ees!

The suspensions. 

And here is more on Alex.

[Image by Zac Freeman]

I visited my mom recently and she showed me photographs from her trip to Africa in 1966. It was on this trip that she met my dad. She didn’t only have pictures, she still had the sunglasses she rocked that summer. They were in a plastic case stored in a box along with letters and photos.

Pretty cool, right?

Man, this is beautiful–George Saunders’ commencement speech at Syracuse University (click here for the video):

So: What do I regret? Being poor from time to time? Not really. Working terrible jobs, like “knuckle-puller in a slaughterhouse?” (And don’t even ASK what that entails.) No. I don’t regret that. Skinny-dipping in a river in Sumatra, a little buzzed, and looking up and seeing like 300 monkeys sitting on a pipeline, pooping down into the river, the river in which I was swimming, with my mouth open, naked? And getting deathly ill afterwards, and staying sick for the next seven months? Not so much. Do I regret the occasional humiliation? Like once, playing hockey in front of a big crowd, including this girl I really liked, I somehow managed, while falling and emitting this weird whooping noise, to score on my own goalie, while also sending my stick flying into the crowd, nearly hitting that girl? No. I don’t even regret that.

But here’s something I do regret:

In seventh grade, this new kid joined our class. In the interest of confidentiality, her Convocation Speech name will be “ELLEN.” ELLEN was small, shy. She wore these blue cat’s-eye glasses that, at the time, only old ladies wore. When nervous, which was pretty much always, she had a habit of taking a strand of hair into her mouth and chewing on it.

So she came to our school and our neighborhood, and was mostly ignored, occasionally teased (“Your hair taste good?” – that sort of thing). I could see this hurt her. I still remember the way she’d look after such an insult: eyes cast down, a little gut-kicked, as if, having just been reminded of her place in things, she was trying, as much as possible, to disappear. After awhile she’d drift away, hair-strand still in her mouth. At home, I imagined, after school, her mother would say, you know: “How was your day, sweetie?” and she’d say, “Oh, fine.” And her mother would say, “Making any friends?” and she’d go, “Sure, lots.”

Sometimes I’d see her hanging around alone in her front yard, as if afraid to leave it.

And then – they moved. That was it. No tragedy, no big final hazing.

One day she was there, next day she wasn’t.

End of story.

Now, why do I regret that? Why, forty-two years later, am I still thinking about it? Relative to most of the other kids, I was actually pretty nice to her. I never said an unkind word to her. In fact, I sometimes even (mildly) defended her.

But still. It bothers me.

So here’s something I know to be true, although it’s a little corny, and I don’t quite know what to do with it:

What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness.

Those moments when another human being was there, in front of me, suffering, and I responded…sensibly. Reservedly. Mildly.

Or, to look at it from the other end of the telescope: Who, in your life, do you remember most fondly, with the most undeniable feelings of warmth?

Those who were kindest to you, I bet.

It’s a little facile, maybe, and certainly hard to implement, but I’d say, as a goal in life, you could do worse than: Try to be kinder.

And more:

When young, we’re anxious – understandably – to find out if we’ve got what it takes. Can we succeed? Can we build a viable life for ourselves? But you – in particular you, of this generation – may have noticed a certain cyclical quality to ambition. You do well in high-school, in hopes of getting into a good college, so you can do well in the good college, in the hopes of getting a good job, so you can do well in the good job so you can….

And this is actually O.K. If we’re going to become kinder, that process has to include taking ourselves seriously – as doers, as accomplishers, as dreamers. We have to do that, to be our best selves.

Still, accomplishment is unreliable. “Succeeding,” whatever that might mean to you, is hard, and the need to do so constantly renews itself (success is like a mountain that keeps growing ahead of you as you hike it), and there’s the very real danger that “succeeding” will take up your whole life, while the big questions go untended.

So, quick, end-of-speech advice: Since, according to me, your life is going to be a gradual process of becoming kinder and more loving: Hurry up. Speed it along. Start right now. There’s a confusion in each of us, a sickness, really: selfishness. But there’s also a cure. So be a good and proactive and even somewhat desperate patient on your own behalf – seek out the most efficacious anti-selfishness medicines, energetically, for the rest of your life.

Do all the other things, the ambitious things – travel, get rich, get famous, innovate, lead, fall in love, make and lose fortunes, swim naked in wild jungle rivers (after first having it tested for monkey poop) – but as you do, to the extent that you can, err in the direction of kindness. Do those things that incline you toward the big questions, and avoid the things that would reduce you and make you trivial. That luminous part of you that exists beyond personality – your soul, if you will – is as bright and shining as any that has ever been. Bright as Shakespeare’s, bright as Gandhi’s, bright as Mother Theresa’s. Clear away everything that keeps you separate from this secret luminous place. Believe it exists, come to know it better, nurture it, share its fruits tirelessly.

[Photograph Credit: Ivan Sigal]

Is Bud writes Glenn Stout:

Measured only by the dollar, Selig’s tenure has been a success. However, by almost any other method, it has been a failure, for during his tenure whatever special place baseball still held in American society and culture has irreparably eroded. More than that however, baseball used to matter. Now, despite its financial health, the game is in many ways like an invalid living on an old fortune, wealthy but sequestered, important only to those who still need to keep the old boy alive to live off the crumbs that drop from his lap.

…At the same time, under Selig, the credibility of the game has been shredded. Under his limited sense of leadership, the game chose not just to ignore PEDs, but to revel in their impact, to juice the game artificially after a period of labor strife. Did they plan this? No. Did they see it happen and get all goose-bumpy, and start drooling at the financial rewards? Absolutely. As long as the checks cleared it mattered not that a host of records essentially became meaningless, that history was devalued, or that fully two decades of seasonal results are suspect (including Boston’s long awaited world championships in 2004 and 2007). All in the name of short-term gain, baseball under Selig chose to insult the intelligence of several generations of fans in favor of those who came to the game, not as fans, but as corporate guests.

Baseball has always been a business, but for years its success depended, at least in part, on the ease with which it was easy to forget that. All pretense of that is gone now. Baseball is only business, and business is the only measure that matters. Witness the changes to the All-Star game, the playoffs, the escalating cost of watching the game, in person, on TV, or the Internet. If there is a National Pastime anymore, it is the ATM.

And let’s not forget drug testing.

ss

No, we aren’t talking about Alex Rodriguez. His nightmare is recurring and not likely to go away anytime soon. Tomorrow will bring official word that he’s being suspended and the coming days and weeks will give us more than we can stomach.

Today’s nightmare isn’t even Phil Hughes, who didn’t make it out of the 3rd inning today pitching in front of family and friends in San Diego. No, it’s Derek Jeter who has a Grade 1 calf strain:

“It’s been terrible,” Jeter said. “It’s been like a nightmare. The whole season has been a nightmare. I really don’t know what to tell you. I wish that wasn’t the case and we were sitting here talking about something besides another injury. We’ll see what happens. I have no idea.”

The game, a bummer (Padres 6, Yanks 3) but the news is more dispiriting than that.

..with more mishegoss on deck. Buckle up.

[Photo Credit: Matt Slocum/AP]

It’s Phil Hughes vs. former Yankee, and new Padre, Ian Kennedy. This is the first time Kennedy has ever pitched against the Yanks.

Ichiro Suzuki RF
Robinson Cano 2B
Alfonso Soriano LF
Curtis Granderson CF
Lyle Overbay 1B
Eduardo Nunez SS
Jayson Nix 3B
Austin Romine C
Phil Hughes RHP

Never mind tomorrow’s hoopla:

Let’s Go Yank-ees!

“Hold My Hand (Take 1)”–Fats Waller

[Photo Credit: Paul D’Amato]

There is a sentiment within and around the Yankees that if they are to make the playoffs, they need CC Sabathia to pitch like CC Sabathia. This is a rather short-sighted point of view. The Yankees have five starting pitchers, and like most staffs, those pitchers can be easily ranked from one through five; the names shouldn’t matter. Contending teams need an ace, a pitcher they can count on to win big games down the stretch, and the Yankees happen to have two of them — Hiroki Kuroda and Ivan Nova. Their third and fourth starters are Andy Pettitte and Phil Hughes, which, in the event that the Yankees make the playoffs, would leave Sabathia as a left-handed specialist out of the bullpen.

So instead of worrying about Sabathia, we should instead be thankful for Nova. He was on the mound for the Yankees on Saturday night, and he did what aces do: he shut down the opposition to give his team a much-needed victory.

With bad news bookending the game (the Yankees pulled Derek Jeter from the lineup to rest his ailing leg and announced that he’d likely miss a game or two, and ESPN reported after the game that Alex Rodríguez will be suspended on Monday through the end of 2014), the nine innings in between were a welcome respite.

Nova took a few innings to find his groove, but he was able to work out of minor trouble early on. He gave up consecutive singles with one out in the first inning, then yielded a lead-off double in the second, but in each case he emerged unscathed. After that second-inning double off the bat of Alexi Amarista, Nova retired fifteen consecutive Padres and never really broke a sweat. Only one of those fifteen batters was even able to work a three-ball count; that was Chase Headley in the sixth, who then struck out on the next pitch.

The problem for the Yankees, though, was that San Diego starting pitcher Tyson Ross was just as good. Ross set down the first thirteen hitters he faced, and did so in fairly dominant fashion, striking out seven of them with a strong fastball, a quality changeup, and a devastating slider. Lyle Overbay broke the spell with a clean single in the fifth, but it wasn’t until the seventh inning that the Yankees were able to make any headway against Ross.

Alfonso Soriano lifted a fly ball that floated just over the infield and landed just in front of center fielder Amarista for a single. Soriano had given up on the play immediately and jogged to first, costing himself a double, but Curtis Granderson erased that minor mistake two pitches later when he launched a home run to right field to give the Yankees a 2-0 lead. Consecutive walks to Overbay and Eduardo Núñez pushed Ross from the game, but the Yanks weren’t able to do any more damage that inning.

Will Venable doubled to lead off the Padres’ seventh, but once again Nova simply bowed his neck against the yoke. He struck out Jedd Gyorko on three pitches, got Amarista to ground out, then followed his first walk of the game with his eighth strike out to end the threat. He had only thrown 85 pitches on the night, but he was done. His final line was impressive (7 IP, 4 H, 0 R, 1 BB, 8 K), but it was really just more of what we’ve come to expect from him. Over his last five starts — a significant sample size — Nova’s numbers look like this: 38 IP, 25 H, 7 R, 10 BB, 37 K, 1.66 ERA, 0.92 WHIP. If it looks like an ace, and walks like an ace, it must be an ace. He’s 3-2 over those five games, but only because the Yankees managed just a total of five hits in his two losses.

David Robertson pitched an efficient eighth inning, the Yankees scored another run in the ninth with a Granderson single, stolen base, and an RBI single from Jayson Nix, and then it was time for Mariano Rivera.

Each of Rivera’s appearances now are bitter sweet. It’s as if you’re eating the most delicious piece of chocolate cake that you’ve ever had. Even as you’re delighting in each heavenly bite, you can’t help but feel a bit of sadness as you watch the piece on your plate growing smaller and smaller. And so it is with Rivera. How many more times will we get to see him take the mound? Fifteen? Twenty? Each one now is precious.

As chants of “Mar-ee-ah-no!” were filtering down from the San Diego crowd, the Great One produced another masterpiece. Venable and Gyorko were retired on fly balls that wouldn’t have scared anyone in a slow-pitch softball game, and Amarista struck out swinging on three pitches. All three men will tell their grandchildren about those at bats.

Yankees 3, Padres 0.

[Photo Credit: Denis Poroy/Getty Images]