Yanks look to break even in Detroit this afternoon. Our man Hiroki is on the hill–and boy do the Yanks need a strong performance from a starting pitcher.
Derek Jeter SS
Nick Swisher DH
Robinson Cano 2B
Mark Teixeira 1B
Eric Chavez 3B
Curtis Granderson CF
Raul Ibanez LF
Ichiro Suzuki RF
Chris Stewart C
Never mind the getaway jet:
Let’s Go Yank-ees!
[Photo Credit: C.F.B.; Mortality]
From High to Low…
Over at the New York Review of Books, here’s Joyce Carol Oates on the mystery of Charles Dickens:
Biography is a literary craft that, in the hands of gifted practitioners, rises to the level of art. Yet even its most exemplary practitioners are frequently left behind, like hunters on the trail of elusive prey, in the tracking of genius. Claire Tomalin’s biography is likely to be one of the definitive Dickens biographies in its seamless application of “the life” to “the art”—and what a perilous balancing act it is, in which, just barely, Dickens’s art isn’t lost amid a smothering welter of facts. “This may be more detail than one normally wants about anyone’s life,” Tomalin acknowledges. And indeed there is an inordinate amount of detail in this biography, particularly in regard to Dickens’s frantically busy social life, his scattered interests, and his grinding public career. (How many reading tours Dickens embarked upon before, finally, his “last farewell to the London reading public” in 1870! The reader begins to be as fatigued as Dickens.)
The problem with such assiduously recorded lives of great artists is that one is drawn to an interest in the artist’s life because of his or her accomplishments, primarily; the “life” in itself is of interest as it illuminates the work, but if the often banal details of the life detract from the work, the worth to the biography is questionable. Even an ordinary life, cataloged in every detail, will bloat to Brobdingnagian girth, distorting the human countenance. Only a very few encyclopedic biographers—Richard Ellman most illustriously, in his long yet never dull biographies of James Joyce and Oscar Wilde in particular—transcend the weight of their material, and make of it an intellectual entertainment commensurate with its subject.
[Photo Credit: Cecilia Majzoub via Film is God]
Unpretty.
From In The Loop:
Simon: It’ll be easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy.
Toby: No, it won’t. It’ll be difficult-difficult-lemon-difficult. That is what it will be.
Nothing’s coming easy to the Yankees just now, even when they score 12 runs. So this wasn’t one of your cleaner games, and it didn’t restore massive amounts of confidence — but the bottom line is, they didn’t blow a 7-0 lead. They came as close as you possibly can without actually doing so, but the Tigers never did quite catch up, and New York won 12-8. Of course, just because it could have been much worse, doesn’t mean it couldn’t have been better.
CC Sabathia didn’t have the stuff he had Friday night, when I was at the Stadium and watched him pitch a strong, controlled complete game against the Mariners. The Tigers are also not the Mariners, though. That’s a serious lineup that can do a lot of damage if given half a chance, and they got plenty of chances in this one. On top of Detroit’s bloops, dings, and other weird sound effects, the Yankees threw in some errors (Robinson Cano, Casey McGehee) and sloppy play for good measure.
Sabathia made it into the seventh before things started to seriously unravel. He had given up three runs going into the inning, and when he was pulled his line was 6.2 IP, eight hits, five runs — though even here he maintained a sterling ratio of one walk to seven strikeouts. When he left, things became even less raveled under unlucky reliever David Robertson.
But Rafael Soriano continues to be way more reliable than I would have dreamed back when Rivera went down, and the lineup never rested on its laurels. Every Yankee batter had at least one hit; Curtis Granderson knocked in four runs, and Mark Teixeira and Eric Chavez (again!) claimed two each. Anibal Sanchez was cooked after three innings, and the Detroit pen lost the war of attrition.
The Yankees are 64-46, so there’s no need to panic, and never was. They do need to sharpen their game back up, though, or that record — like Tony Janiro post-Jake LaMotta— won’t be pretty no more.
Yanks look to snap out of their funk beginning tonight with C.C.
Derek Jeter SS
Nick Swisher RF
Robinson Cano 2B
Mark Teixeira 1B
Eric Chavez DH
Curtis Granderson CF
Russell Martin C
Ichiro Suzuki LF
Casey McGehee 3B
Winning Ways–Start Here:
Never mind the summertime blues: Let’s Go Yank-ees!
[Photo Credit: Taylor Hain via Film is God]
You talk about penance and you send this through the door.
Let’s flip the cliche around. When a team is successful we say “they just find a way to win.” And when they are slumping, I suppose, they find a way to lose, right?
Okay, so Miguel Cabrera hit a home run and a two-run double off of Phil Hughes, that’s to be expected. The Tigers led 4-2. But the fifth and sixth runs, both driven in by Andy Driks (two-out triple against Cody Eppley in the sixth, and then a two out single against Joba Chamberlain in the eighth), were fatal. Because the Yanks rallied against Jose The Long Goodbye Valverde, good enough to close the Tigers lead to one. Russell Martin’s double in the top of the ninth with runners on the corners made it 6-5 but the ball was hit so hard that Ichiro, running from first base, didn’t have a chance to score.
Curtis Granderson, hitless in the first two games of this series, popped up a high fastball for the final out.
“Oh, that’s so painful,” my wife said. “I feel so bad for Curtis.”
“Fuck Curtis,” I said. Meaning, who cares about the player? Don’t be mad or sad for them, be mad for us. The fans who suffer most.
The Orioles won again, this time in 14 innings and now trail by four-and-a-half games (The O’s have won 12 straight extra inning games).
“There should be a high level of concern,” Eric Chavez said according to Chad Jennings. “Anybody who says that there isn’t is lying. You’ve just got to win ballgames, and we’re not finding a way to do that, and it should be a concern. It’s that time of the year when, yeah, it’s a concern. We need to start playing good and winning games.”
You wonder what will snap the Yanks out of this funk. Something surely will. Let’s just hope it happens soon…
And don’t call me Shirley.
[Photo Credit: Dana Oliver]
Yanks look to not suck tonight with Phil Hughes on the mound.
Curtis Granderson CF
Derek Jeter SS
Robinson Cano 2B
Mark Teixeira 1B
Eric Chavez 3B
Nick Swisher RF
Raul Ibanez DH
Ichiro Suzuki LF
Russell Martin C
Never mind the bollocks: Let’s Go Yank-ees!
[Photo Via: Mortality]
My pal the Ill Chemist has a dope 15-minute jam up on Mixcloud. It’s called Too Much Information Vol I and it features, among others, Lord Buckley, The Who, Yma Sumac, Sly and the Family Stone, Mr. Magoo, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Biz Markie, Duke Ellington, the Beastie Boys and Buddy Hackett.
Listen, laugh and shake…your…rump-ah!
From our pal Diane Firstman:
Leave it to Dave Tompkins to give us something surprising…
…like this Grantland piece on Nat Moore, NFL wide receiver and Miami Bass pioneer:
Nat Moore would be best remembered for his heliocentricity rather than for receiving the NFL’s first Man of the Year Award for providing “outstanding service” to a North Miami community decimated by riots, racism, and a highway. Kids who wanted to torch the seat of justice could enroll in one of the Dolphin youth football programs — or they could just skate backward to “Ring My Bell” at one of Nat Moore’s teen clubs.
What the NFL failed to recognize were Moore’s outstanding contributions to the birth of Miami bass, a rap extremity that enhanced player quality of life: spandex, jock jams, the strip club, the Luke party, the maximization of trunk space.1 This was the first hip-hop genre that appeared to be solely dedicated to fusing a subwoofer waveform with the human rear end, as if trying to develop a new biotechnology called Bottom, making these exaggerations of low end indistinguishable from each other.
[Photo Credit: How to Wreck a Nice Beach; Lovely Derriere]
My profile of the late George Kimball appeared on Deadspin last December. I worked long and hard on that piece and was proud of the effort. And now some nice personal news I’d like to share with you…
It’s been selected to The Best American Sports Writing 2012 (Edited by Mike Wilbon).
Derek Jeter fist pump.
And this:
[Photo Credit: Fiftyfootshadows]
Rest in Peace, Robert Hughes, a wonderful critic and author.
The Daily Beast has a nice collection of Hughes’ best quotes. Here’s an interview he once did with R. Crumb.
Go to You Tube and look up The Shock of the New or American Visions. You’ll be entertained and will learn a ton.
I met him once, briefly, in the New York Public Library. Mark Lamster introduced us. This morning, Mark posted a funny bit on his Facebook page:
My most memorable conversation with Robert Hughes, in the NYPL Allen room:
Me: “What are you working on now?”
Him, with gruff humor: “Another goddamn book.”
[Photo Credit: News Image Limited Library; featured painting by Richard Diebenkorn]
No shame in getting smoked by Justin Verlander, now is there?
Nova had nothing. Yanks lose, 7-2.
[Photo Credit: Opcion]
Yanks in the Motor City for four games against the Tigers.
Tonight gives Verlander.
Curtis Granderson CF
Derek Jeter SS
Robinson Cano 2B
Mark Teixeira 1B
Raul Ibanez LF
Nick Swisher RF
Eric Chavez 3B
Ichiro Suzuki DH
Russell Martin C
Time for Nova to shine.
Never mind the gun smoke: Let’s Go Yank-ees!
[Robert Motherwell via Just Another Masterpiece]
The Killer B’s, they ain’t doin’ nuthin’. Andrew Marchand has the story.
Here’s a good piece by our ol’ chum Pete Abe about why firing Bobby V won’t fix the Red Sox.
[Pictures Via: Boston SportsU18; Boston Public Library]
If you’ve got an I Pad or any other kind of nifty tablet, his looks more than worth your six bucks: Henry Chalfant’s Big Subway Archive.
Ichiro was hit just above the right knee yesterday with a pitch. Before the ball reached him he yelled out. It was funny especially if you’ve ever been hit by a pitch. I remember getting plunked once in a high school game. The home plate ump warned both teams before the game not to curse but when the ball hit me in the leg I said, “Fuck.” I looked back at the ump and apologized. He told me to go to first.
Here’s a piece by Tim Kurkjian over at ESPN on what it feels like to get hit by a pitch:
“There are two types of thoughts when the ball leaves the pitcher’s hand,” Indians outfielder Shelley Duncan said. “The first one, you see the ball, and about halfway to the plate, you have that ‘Oh s—‘ moment. If you don’t get ready for it, that’s when you get hurt. The other one is the pitch that you know right away, you are going to wear it. You can turn your body, you get ready to get hit, but it all happens so fast. You have to make the adjustment because one second you are calm, then a split second later, your heart is racing.”
Catchers have been known to yell, “Watch out!” when a pitch is headed for a hitter; the Yankees’ Russell Martin has done that more than a few times. Braves outfielder Matt Diaz said, “I’ve yelled, ‘Oh!’ when the pitch was headed at me because I was sure it was going to hit me, then it didn’t. I turned to the catcher, and he was laughing his a– off. The umpire was chuckling. I said, ‘I thought it was going to hit me.’ They said, ‘We did, too.'”
[Photo Credit: The Washington Post]
Via Kottke here is Sight and Sound’s list of the Top 50 Greatest Films of All Time.
You may start arguing…now.
