The Chicago White Sox snapped New York’s winning streak at eight with an 8-7 victory, but the two other Yankee streaks continued. Charlie Keller crushed an upper-deck shot in the eighth inning, temporarily tying the score and making it thirteen straight games with Yankee homeruns, but the Sox won it in the ninth. DiMaggio set the all-time Yankee hitting streak record at thirty games, but he needed some luck. He came to the plate in the seventh inning, still without a hit, and smashed a hard ground ball directly to Chicago shortstop Luke Appling. But just before Appling could gather in the grounder and put an end to the streak, the ball took a horrible bad hop, bounding up and hitting Appling in the shoulder. He had no play, and DiMaggio kept streaking. Sometimes it’s better to be lucky than good. Much more on this tomorrow…

What’s the worst that could happen if I let it be?

I didn’t even bring my phone with me to the store. Yet when I got home our boys held a 5-3 lead going into the bottom of the 14th. Mark Teixeira got the big hit, a two-run double against Brad Lidge. Jayson Nix hit an infield single to deep short to start the frame and then Derek Jeter failed to lay down a bunt on the first two pitches he saw. But he fouled pitches off and took some more; soon the count was full then Jeter hit a ground ball single himself. It was a stubborn, resilient at bat, and Jeter’s first hit in seven trips to the plate.

Lidge recovered to strike out Curtis Granderson and he got ahead of Teixeira but then hung one and the Yankee first baseman lined a ball to the right field corner.

Rafael Soriano wasn’t smooth and two men were on base when he got Bryce Harper to ground out to end the game. I thought Harper, 0-6 with five strikeouts at that point, would fulfill an ESPN highlight clip that I had running in my mind, but he did not. After the game, Washington’s manager Davey Johnson said that for the first time this year, Harper chased pitches out of the strike zone, anxious to make something happen.

By the time the game was over and Freddy Garcia, sixth of seven Yankee pitchers, was the improbable winner, the startrtd, Jordan Zimmerman and Andy Pettitte were a vague memory. Both pitched well. Zimmerman reminds me of Matt Cain. He’s got great stuff but the Yankees made him work and he was out of the game after six innings.

One thing about Zimmerman, he made two excellent plays in the field. The first, after catching a line drive, had him making a pinpoint throw to the shortstop as they tried to double Eric Chavez off second. The next play was another throw, this one home, that nailed Nick Swisher (Swisher’s leg collided with the catcher’s knee and the cheerful outfielder’s day was done).

Pettitte was outstanding, again, and held a 3-2 lead after seven. He’d thrown 95 pitches but with three right handed hitters coming up in the eighth inning was pulled in favor of Corey Wade who retired the first two batters on two pitches. He got ahead of Ian Desmond 0-2 and then threw a bad pitch, a meatball that missed its target by plenty. Desmond smacked a 400 foot home run and the game was tied. After a walk to Tyler Moore, Boone Logan relieved Wade. Dwayne Wise, who’d replaced Raul Ibanez in left to start the inning, shifted to right and Nix went to left. Adam LaRoche was the pinch hitter and he singled to right. Wise fielded the ball and made a strong throw home. Russell Martin tagged Moore for the third out.

It was a stirring play for the Yankees as well as a lucky one as the replays showed that Moore was safe. But this is how it goes when you are on a wining streak–luck is on your side. Right now, the Yanks have more than a little bit of luck. Everything is going their way. We’ll take it.

Oh, yeah, this was their first win all season without hitting a home run. Tomorrow they go for their ninth straight.

Unt we am Heppy Kets.

Final Score: Yanks 5, Nats 3.

[Photo Credit: Patrick McDermott/Getty Images]

It’s Andy today against another impressive young pitcher. I’m out of the house early so I don’t have the line-up here. Head on over to Chad Jennings for the latest.

Meanwhile, never mind getting complacent: Let’s Go Yank-ees!

[Photo Via Municipal Archives of NYC]

UPDATE: Rodriguez has the day off.

Derek Jeter SS
Curtis Granderson CF
Mark Teixeira 1B
Robinson Cano 2B
Nick Swisher RF
Raul Ibanez LF
Russell Martin C
Eric Chavez 3B

In the final game of their showdown at the Stadium with the Cleveland Indians, the Yankees grabbed a 6-4 victory and moved to within a game of first place. DiMaggio hit a double to left in the fifth inning, setting a Yankee record by hitting in his twenty-ninth straight game. Second baseman Joe Gordon had homered earlier in the fourth inning, meaning the Yanks had gone deep in twelve straight. The Yankees had now won eight games in a row, and seemed to have finally gotten their season headed in the right direction. It’s interesting that the current Yankees seem to have found their way as well.

[Painting by Phillip Barlow]

Gio Gonzalez is no joke. Throws a fastball in the mid-90s and has a vicious curve ball. He’s walked too many batters when he’s faced the Yanks in the past but he only walked a pair tonight while striking out eight. The Bombers pushed across two runs against him in the third inning–soft ground ball to right by Alex Rodriguez and a single to left by Nick Swisher–but Gonzalez got tougher as the game went along. His pitch count was up over 100 after six and he didn’t come back for the seventh, despite how well he was pitching.

Phil Hughes, on the other hand, might not have the same kind of dynamic stuff but he continued his recent surge going six, walked two, and struck out nine. He’s challenging hitters these days, changing eye levels with the fastball–hung a couple of curve balls, including one that drove in the Nationals’ first run–but he was impressive. And for the first time this season, he didn’t give up a home run.

Andruw Jones reached base with a seeing-eye-single to start the seventh, ending Gonzalez’s night, and then Dwayne Wise replaced Jones and took off on the first pitch reliever Brad Lidge threw to Russell Martin. He made it without a throw. Lidge hung a slider to Martin on the 1-1 pitch and then Martin fouled off several good pitches before he drew a walk. Jason Nix sacrificed the runners over–Ryan Zimmerman threw him out a first, and he fielded and threw the ball with such quickness and fluidity that made me think what a pleasure it’d be to watch him play defense on a regular basis–and Robinson Cano came to the plate as a pinch hitter.

Cano was intentionally walked and then Derek Jeter fell behind Lidge, missing a couple of good pitches. With the count full, Jeter hit a soft ground ball to short, good enough to score a run. The throw to first hit the dirt and skipped past Adam LaRoche. Another run came home and it would be more than enough for the Yanks who added a couple more on an opposite field double by Curtis Granderson. In the ninth, Grandy hit a solo home run, his 20th of the year.

Cody Eppley pitched a perfect seventh, Clay Rapada a clean eighth and our old pal David Robertson pitched the ninth. He gave up a couple of hits and a run but it was good to see him again. Even better to see the Yanks win another game. They’ve won 17 of their last 21.

Indeed.

Final Score: Yanks 7, Nats 2.

[Photo Credit: Joel Zimmer; Greg Flume/Getty Images]

The once lowly Washington Nats ain’t chumps no more. They’s in first place, don’t cha know.

Yanks get their first look at Byrce Haper this weekend. Should be fun.

Derek Jeter SS
Curtis Granderson CF
Mark Teixeira 1B
Alex Rodriguez 3B
Nick Swisher RF
Andruw Jones LF
Russell Martin C
Jayson Nix 2B

No Robbie. Don’t know why just yet.

Never mind the Go Go: Let’s Go Yankees!

[Photo Via ViewFinder]

As the Yankees played on consecutive days for the first time in a week, DiMaggio had only one hit against the Cleveland Indians on this afternoon in the Bronx, but it was enough to continue two streaks. DiMaggio hit his thirteenth homerun of the year, an upper deck blast which extended his personal hitting streak to twenty-eight and the Yankees team homerun streak to eleven. The Yankees beat the first place Indians, 3-2, for their seventh win in a row; they were now only two games out of the top spot in the league.

At twenty-eight games, DiMaggio was now only one game behind the Yankee record, held jointly by Earl Coombs (1931) and current Cleveland manager Roger Peckinpaugh (1919). Reporters were starting to wonder if DiMaggio might challenge the all-time record, then believed to be George Sisler’s forty-one game streak from 1922. (It would be a few weeks before someone turned up the actual record.) Contacted by the New York Daily News, Sisler said, “You can’t imagine the strain. The newspapers keep mentioning the streak. Your teammates continually bring it up. You try to forget, but it can’t be done. It’s in your head every time you step to the plate.” And he didn’t have to deal with live cut-ins from ESPN, plus he probably smoked cigarettes with tons of nicotine.

Fresh direct from Fortune magazine archives, check out this 1946 article about the Yankees:

In more ways than one, Larry MacPhail is like no other figure in baseball’s ruling class–the “magnates.” Because he is publicity minded and operates on terms of rowdy good-fellowship with the press, to whom he addresses a few thousand wellchosen words almost every day of his life, he is constantly in the news, and not always in a complimentary light. Where Ruppert was always “the Colonel” (an honorary title conferred on him at age twenty-two), MacPhail, who won his rank in service, is more likely to turn up even in the staid New York Times as “Loquacious Larry” or the “Rambunctious Redhead.” Once, in a fit of passion, he threw a middle-aged punch at the capable and well-liked Arthur Patterson, then covering the Dodgers for the Herald Tribune. Patterson, whose hair is just as red as MacPhail’s, countered in kind. MacPhail was so pleased about the affair that he later appointed Patterson traveling secretary and publicity director of the Yankees. The MacPhailian legend, indeed, stops precariously short of clownishness. Irrevocably, he is what the boys call “a character.” It is a curious, possibly a useful, mask for one of the abler businessmen in the U.S. and, with the possible exception of scholarly Branch Rickey, the soundest operator in baseball. (Rickey is a great all-around baseball man, but is now undergoing, in Brooklyn, his first real test as the president of a major-league club.)

The idea of MacPhail as a brooding Byronic figure would give most of his acquaintances a laugh, but even so it may be that he is entertaining a mildly psychotic war in his bosom. As a red-haired, freckle-faced kid in Ludington, Michigan, at the turn of the century, Larry liked to play nine o’ cat until dusk, but he practiced his piano lessons, too, and at fourteen was good enough to play the organ in the Episcopal Church. At sixteen he qualified for Annapolis but went to Beloit instead, where he was a star in his three favorite sports–baseball, football, and debating. During vacations he played pro ball under an assumed name. “In the Southern Michigan Association one season,” he can be induced to recall, “I hit .282. Fred (Bonehead) Merkle was in the league that year and was sold to the Giants for $750. He hit .274.”

Over at the Boston Globe, Dan Shaughnessy has a long interview with Theo Epstein:

Epstein: I think taking a step back, if you take a look at what our baseball group was best at, we were best at drafting and developing young talent and finding some undervalued players. I think we were the best drafting team of the decade and all that. That’s a very patient, organic approach. Pure . . .

“We joked about it all the time in the front office. We’d say, ‘Wouldn’t it be great if we could just say, screw free agency altogether. We’re going with a purely home-grown lineup. We’re going with old-school, Branch Rickey-style, pre-free agency, pre-draft whatever?’

“Middlebrooks at third, Lowrie or Iglesias at short, Pedroia at second, Rizzo at first, Lavarnway catching, Ellsbury in center, Reddick in right, Kalish in left. Wouldn’t that have been fun?

“We kind of clung to that in the back of our minds, knowing it was impossible, recognizing that there was an inherent tension between that approach and bigger business. I kind of kick myself for letting my guard down and giving into it, because that might be a better team in some ways and resonate more with the fans than what we ended up with.

“When you make a mistake in the draft, you just keep drafting. You keep finding another player to develop. When you make a mistake in free agency, you’re stuck with it for the duration of the deal and it can be a real impediment.

[Photo Credit: Neil Leifer]

Permanently. 

Chad Jennings reports that Brett Gardner will not need surgery but the Yanks don’t expect him back for about another month.

It’s been a lost first half for Gardner though the Yanks will be fortunate if he returns and is healthy come mid-July. In the meantime, do you suppose they’ll make do with what they’ve got or make a move to get more talent in left field? My hunch is that they are going to wait it out with what they’ve got.

[Photo Credit: Graycard via It’s a Long Season]

Miami looks to even the NBA Finals tonight in Oklahoma City. I think they’ll do it though I’m pulling for the Thunder.

The Yankees returned home to face future Hall of Famer Bob Feller and the first place Indians at the Stadium. Feller was working on a streak of his own; since a loss on May 9th, he had won eight straight decisions, bring his season’s record to an impressive 13-3. When DiMaggio came to bat in the third inning, he watched three straight balls before Feller finally had to come into the zone. Hitting away, DiMaggio slashed a drive into the right-center field gap for a double. Also of note, Tommy Henrich homered for the Yanks in the first inning, extending another string. The Yankees had hit homeruns in ten games in a row, a streak that some local papers were beginning to follow.

Over at the Atlantic’s In Focus, Alan Taylor raids the New York City Municipal Archives and delivers a beautiful photo gallery:

I have tried to read Richard Ford’s “The Sportswriter” on a few occasions and have not be able to get into it. His short stories have been recommended to me, and after reading Andre Dubus III’s glowing review of Ford’s new book, I may have to give him another shot:

Willa Cather once wrote that “a creative writer can do his best only with what lies within the range and character of his deepest sympathies.” By that measure, and any other, Richard Ford is doing his very best in his extraordinary new novel, “Canada,” his first book since “The Lay of the Land” six years ago. Here, Ford is clearly writing within the range and character of his deepest sympathies — in this case, from the point of view of an abandoned 15-year-old boy — and he’s doing it with a level of linguistic mastery that is rivaled by few, if any, in American letters today.

…On a purely plot-hungry basis, turning the page seems the only thing to do, but — as is so often the case with the fiction of Richard Ford — what actually happens in the story feels secondary, or at best equal, to the language itself. In the hands of a lesser writer, this can create problems: the prose begins to feel self-indulgent, written not to illuminate any truths but to please the writer, and in the process, story itself is lost and the reader is left behind. But “Canada” is blessed with two essential strengths in equal measure — a mesmerizing story driven by authentic and fully realized characters, and a prose style so accomplished it is tempting to read each sentence two or three times before being pulled to the next.

Here’s the Paris Review interview with Ford. Dig in.

The Manhattan Project by Cameron Michael.

The Manhattan Project HD1080P from Cameron Michael on Vimeo.

This is great.

Photo: Getty Images

It’s hard to be better than perfect, but last night, Matt Cain was just that. Not only did the Giants’ right hander throw the 22nd perfect game in baseball history (and first in franchise history), but he also tied Sandy Koufax for the most strikeouts while doing so. What’s more, Cain’s game score of 101 matched Koufax and Nolan Ryan for the best mark ever posted in a no-hitter of any kind.

Most Strikeouts in a No-Hitter or Perfect Game

*Denotes perfect game.
Source: Baseball-reference.com

By joining Koufax and Ryan with a game score of 101, Cain’s masterpiece takes a back seat to only Kerry Wood’s remarkable rating of 105. Then 20-years old, the Cubs’ phenom accomplished the feat on May 6, 1998, when he struck out 20 Houston Astros, the same franchise Cain dominated to make history last night. Although Cain’s perfection fell shy of Wood’s record, his performance was still only the 10th game score of 100 or greater in nine innings since 1918, making that accomplishment even rarer than the perfect game itself (the highest game score ever recorded is 153, by Joe Oeschger in an epic 26-inning affair).

100-Plus Game Score Club, Since 1918

*Denotes perfect game.
Source: Baseball-reference.com

No one should be surprised by Cain’s brilliant outing. After all, the right hander has now authored two of the top game scores this season. For those less inclined to trust esoteric statistics, Cain had previously thrown three complete game one-hitters, so maybe a no-hitter was just a matter of time?

Matt Cain’s Top-10 Game Scores

Source: Baseball-reference.com

Now that he has thrown one of the best nine inning games in baseball history, what will Matt Cain do for an encore? History hasn’t been very kind to perfect game pitchers in their next start, but after last night’s performance, for Cain, the exceptional might be the new rule.  Maybe he’ll join Johnny Vander Meer as the only pitcher to throw consecutive no-hitters? Or, perhaps, he’ll break Mark Buehrle’s record of 45 consecutive batters retired (dating back to his previous start, Cain has retired 32 batters in a row)? The Angels are next up on the schedule, so they should consider themselves forewarned.

With the Yankees clinging to a one-run lead, two out in the ninth inning of tonight’s game against the Atlanta Braves, Chipper Jones stepped against the Yankee closer. The Yankee closer pitched him tough, but the future HOFer won the battle by serving a slider on the outside corner for a deep line drive into left field for a base hit. Chipper’s nicepieceofhitting brought Jason Heyward to the plate representing the winning run. He got his hacks, on the second strike especially. He looked like he was trying to hit two game winning dingers in one swing, but the 93 MPH heat danced over the barrel. The next pitch busted his bat and the ball popped harmlessly to Robinson Cano at second base.

The Yankees won 3-2 and gained another game on Tampa, who were Dickeyed to death by the Mets. They completed their second straight sweep and have now won six games in a row and 16 out of 20. I should be feeling great about their recent success and their perch at the top of the American League, but all I was thinking about in the ninth was that the Yankee closer from the first paragraph wasn’t Mariano Rivera. That match-up with Chipper would have been a special one and I couldn’t help but feel a pang of sadness that it couldn’t happen.

And, though Soriano pitched a fine inning and I think he’s done a nice job, the difference between a backdoor slider and a backdoor cutter was never more apparent. Soriano set him up beautifully, but Chipper could wait back on the slider defensively and slash it to the opposite field. The cutter would have sped right past him. Hence Mariano’s proclivity for the backwards Ks to the lefties.

The game started brightly for the Yankees. Just a few days ago I said it would be nice to see Jeter get a double this week, since he had only two extra base hits in his last 32 games. I think the key for the baseball gods was the reasonable nature of my request: Jeter doubled off Tim Hudson to lead off the game. I will be more thoughtful the next time I make a wish. Curtis Granderson didn’t do much with a favorable count, but his grounder advanced Jeter to third. The Braves pulled the infield in on Alex Rodriguez. A few years ago, a third base man would have called time and double-checked his last will and testament if asked to plant his feet on the infield grass with Arod up there.

Alex looked lost on a couple of sliders, but Hudson eventually found the middle of the plate and Alex sent it right back up the box with a sharp knock and the Yankees led 1-0. Somehow, Hiroki Kuroda kept it right there for half the game. The Braves threatened just about every inning, but with Hudson coming up to the plate just about every time the Yanks needed a big out, Kuroda escaped damage. If the Yankees are afflicted with RISPitis, at least there’s a chance it might be contagious. The Braves were 2 for 13 with no RBI with runners in scoring position.

In the fifth, Brian McCann hit a long two-run homer to give the Braves the lead. In soccer, it would have been a “deserved lead” because the Braves seemed in control of the game at that point. Two batters into the sixth, the Yankees had it back – so much for “deserve”. Jeter singled and Granderson kept his hands and weight back behind a floaty cutter and skied it into the right field stands. It had a pop-up’s trajectory, but a homer’s distance, so we’ll take it. That skinny dude has a heckuva power stroke.

The Yankees again hunkered down behind a flimsy one run lead. Kuroda gave way after six and the Russian nesting doll of a bullpen the Yanks are running out there these days went to work. Logan walked two but squeaked through by retiring Heyward and Hinske with runners on base. Rapada was in an even worse spot, runners at the corners with only one out and .320 hitting Martin Prado at the plate. Rapada’s sidewinding sinking action induced the double play grounder that saved the game.

That brings us to Soriano in the ninth, a win, a sweep and a nice little challenge series with the first place Washington Nationals coming up. No Strasburg though.

When the Yankees were in fourth place, playing losing/boring (however you want to describe it is fine with me) baseball, every night seemed the same. The starting pitching wobbled early and the Yankees would be down two or four before even getting loose. And when they did get into the game, there would be some insurance runs for the bad guys or RISP fail for the Yanks that would seal the loss. Tonight was just the opposite. The Yanks scored first. The Yanks reclaimed the lead as quickly as possible after relinquishing it, and the Yanks induced the soul-crushing double play in the late innings. I don’t know if that’s good baseball, exciting baseball or just the swing of the pendulum, but I sure do prefer the wins.

Photo by Scott Cunningham / Getty Images

Curious to see how Hiroki Kuroda pitches tonight. He left his last start early after being hit in the foot by a batted ball.

Good news:  David Robertson is back (and will be activated for Friday night’s game).

Derek Jeter SS
Curtis Granderson CF
Alex Rodriguez 3B
Robinson Cano 2B
Mark Teixeira 1B
Raul Ibanez LF
Nick Swisher RF
Russell Martin C
Hiroki Kuroda RHP

Never mind the moronic Atlanta chant: Let’s Go Yank-ees!

[Photo Credit: Associated Press]