AJ Burnett was one of four Yankee pitchers who exceeded expectations in the first half. I covered many of his starts and found most of them to be well pitched, even though they were almost all losses. He sped out of the second half gate and straight into the gutter with Bartolo Colon and Freddy Garcia tonight prompting every Yankee fan to look up Ubaldo Jimenez’s velocity charts on Fangraphs. Even though they already scoffed at the asking price yesterday. For the record, while it would be a lot to trade Montero, Nova, Banuelos and Betances for Ubaldo, I admire the heck out the Rockies for having the restraint to not ask for Lou Gehrig’s bones in the deal.

Whether or not the Yankees pull off a trade this summer, and whether or not they get a nice surprise from one of the young arms in the minors, I think we’ve just seen the beginning of winter. If you’re a fan of A Game of Thrones, you’ll know the Stark family is fond of reminding everybody that “winter is coming.” In terms of the Yankees, I’m not at all saying their season is over or that they can’t rally past Boston for some kind of title this year, just that winter is coming as sure as the calendar says so and when it gets here, CC Sabathia is going to rule the Seven Kingdoms and beyond.

I have followed the Yankees for so long and in all that time, they’ve never had a guy as good, as healthy and as consistent as CC Sabathia. Has any Yankee had three years in a row this good since Guidry from 1977-1979? Moose had three good years to start his tenure in New York, but I don’t think his best was as good as CC’s best. In two and half years he has made himself utterly indispensable. I can’t imagine the Yankees going forward without him. Luckily, I can’t imagine the Yankees letting him go either. But with every stinker from AJ and the rest, CC’s payday grows.

Tonight AJ revealed the stink with a quickness. After being staked to an early run, he allowed the first four men to reach. It looked like he would escape with only two runs when he caught a two-out chopper behind the mound, but instead of taking a half-step to set himself for an easy toss, he hurried a “throw” past Teixeira while wheeling and whirling. A third run scored. A T-Rex could have made a better throw, and I’m talking about the fossils on Central Park West.

The score was 4-1 when the Yankees rallied off Tampa starter Alex Cobb in the fifth. Teixeira singled to cash in Gardner’s lead off walk and Robbie Cano looked dangerous representing the go-ahead run. Then the power went out at that crappy stadium and ruined the at-bat. When he finally got back in the box fifteen minutes later, the rookie regrouped from his only real jam of the night and retired Cano to end the threat.

Just at that time, Baltimore took a lead on Boston for thirty seconds, hell froze half-over and dogs and cats considered mutual respect before the natural order sped to reassert itself. Boston tied the game before Baltimore could record an out.

Burnett continued to be hot garbage into the sixth. He ended up allowing eight hits and six walks and looked every bit as bad as that line suggests. But thanks to a bail-out from Hector Noesi, the score was somehow stuck at 4-2 when he hit the shower. Shower as long as you want AJ, some odors are stubborn. (Apparently he got into it with a fan behind the dugout. I think the fan was mad that AJ didn’t invite him out to run the bases; everybody else in the stadium had had a chance.)

The Yankees brought the go-ahead run to the plate again in the seventh, but Mark Teixeira struck out looking on a close pitch. The replay showed the pitch clearly outside, but with the game on the line, if you leave it up to the umpire on a close pitch, you have to live with some bad calls.

Around this time, dogs and cats rekindled their age-old feud in earnest and the Red Sox blew the game open in Baltimore. Pedroia has raised his slugging percentage 100 points in about 15 games and somewhere along the way lapped Cano in bWAR (4.9 to 2.7).

The Yankees rallied again in the eighth, this time they meant it. Brett Gardner singled off Kyle Farnsworth to make it 4-3, but there was no chance to score Russell Martin from second. The bases were still loaded for Eduardo Nunez and he went up hacking under the pressure. It looked like a bad idea as he grounded a potential double play ball to short. But there was Brett Gardner, all over the second baseman with wonderfully tough slide to destroy the pivot. The game was tied. Derek Jeter swung at balls four and five and whiffed to end the inning, but it was sweet to get to Farnsworth for the first time this year.

While the Yankees assaulted the lead, the bullpen held the line admirably. David Robertson backed up Hector Noesi and both were excellent. Robertson especially so, as he set down the top of the Tampa order in the blink of an eye. The Rays sent out Alexander Torres to make his Major League debut. He was called up because they used nine pitchers the night before in the 16-inning loss to the Red Sox.

The rookie allowed a lead off single to Granderson, but recorded the next two outs. With Granderson on third, Joe Maddon had Torres walk Swisher. I noticed the intentional balls were fluttering to home plate – he was not comfortable. The last one bounced. David Cone and Ken Singleton were all over it as well and they wondered if the nerves might be getting to Torres. Whatever the reason, he ended up walking the next two men as well, and forced in the go-ahead run. Give credit to Jones and Martin for beautiful at-bats, but I can’t support a manager asking a guy making his Major League debut to intentionally put a base runner on in the ninth inning of a tie game. Brett Gardner did his best to draw another walk, but Torres finally found the zone and escaped the jam without further damage.

Mariano Rivera came in to face the heart of the Rays order in the ninth. And, well, you know how that story goes. It was over before I had a chance to get nervous. I was amused and offended by BJ Upton’s angry reaction to getting punched out. The pitch was placed so perfectly, broke so late and so hard, that he just should have been proud to be part of that moment. Like being photgraphed by Richard Avedon or something.

The teams combined for 16 walks and 17 hits, so it was quite a slog, and maybe it wasn’t a good game, but it was a great win for the Yanks, 5-4. And hey, if you consider the Rays’ bullpen was shot from the night before, the Yanks owe this victory to the Red Sox.

Yanks in Tampa. It was a late night for the Rays who lost 1-0 to the Sox in 16 innings. Ouch.

Derek Jeter SS
Curtis Granderson CF
Mark Teixeira 1B
Robinson Cano 2B
Nick Swisher RF
Jorge Posada DH
Russell Martin C
Brett Gardner LF
Eduardo Nunez 3B

Cliff’s got the Preview. You know how we do:

Let’s Go Yank-ees!

[Photo Credit: Mark Borthwick]

Fighting the Good Fight

By John Schulian

Chicago was a great city for anyone who worked on a newspaper. There were three dailies when I got there–the Daily News, Sun-Times and Tribune–and people read them voraciously, passionately. They were part of the fabric of life in the city. There wasn’t a great paper in the bunch, but they were still lively and full of first-rate reporting and writing. What they did not have when I hit town, however, was memorable  sportswriting. It was, if I may be blunt, painfully mediocre.

The sports-page revolution that had swept through New York, L.A., Boston, Philadelphia, and Washington hadn’t caused so much as a ripple in Chicago. Nor did the city’s newspaper executives seem to realize that all over the country, young hotshots were seizing the moment — Dave Kindred in Louisville, Joe Soucheray in Minneapolis-–and seasoned wordsmiths like Wells Twombly in San Francisco were still going strong. The Tribune had two first-rate sportswriters, Don Pierson, a wizard at covering pro football, and Bob Verdi, a droll stylist who went back and forth between baseball and hockey. Otherwise, the Trib was dreary, uninspired and burdened with lazy, burned-out columnists. The Sun-Times was trying to shake things up by bringing in consummate pros like Ron Rapoport, Randy Harvey and Thom Greer. Tom Callahan, a ballsy columnist from Cincinnati, was supposed to be part of the revolution, but he took one look at the in-house chaos and went right back where he’d come from.

Nobody was going to get rid of me that easily. I wrote an introductory column laying out my ties to Chicago -– the days I’d spent in Wrigley Field’s bleachers, the night I’d seen Bobby Hull score the 499th and 500th goals of his career -– and I followed it up with pieces on Al McGuire, a columnist’s dream, and the Bulls’ tough guy guard, Norm Van Lier. Next thing I knew, some guy was walking up to me and saying, “So how does it feel to be the best sports columnist in town?”

Jesus, the hours I put in. The deadline for the first edition at the Daily News was something like 5 in the morning, and I can’t tell you how many times I came close to missing it. (It always made me feel better when I heard that Larry Merchant did the same thing at the New York Post.) Understandably, my work habits grated on my wife when I got married. They also raised the anxiety level for the two guys who put the sports section together, the positively Zen Frank Sugano and Mike Downey, who went on to become a star columnist at the Detroit Free Press, the L.A. Times, and the Chicago Tribune. I can still quote headlines that Downey put on my columns: “She’s Dorothy, Not the Wicked Witch” for one in defense of Dorothy Hamill, and “That Mother McRae” (well, for one edition, anyway) after things between the Yankees and the Royals got chippy during the 1977 playoffs.

As soon as I proved myself, I had the clout to lobby for bringing in Phil Hersh, an old friend from Baltimore, to cover baseball. Phil was a first-rate writer, an intrepid reporter, and a fount of story ideas. While I covered Leon Spinks’ upset victory over Muhammad Ali in Las Vegas, he jumped on a plane to St. Louis and wrote a killer feature about the God-awful Pruitt-Igoe housing project where Spinks’ family lived on government-issue peanut butter in a blistering hot apartment with no way to control the heat.

Once we did a few things like that and wrote the hell out of whatever was on the agenda for the day, the bright kids on the Daily News staff caught the fever. Kevin Lamb, our Bears writer, already had it, because he’d broken in at Newsday, which had been at the heart of the revolution. All Downey needed was someone to free him from the copy desk and point him in the right direction. It was the same with Brian Hewitt, who was straight out of Stanford.

We didn’t have much space at the Daily News, but we made the most of it by out-hustling and out-writing the competition. Even when the sports department got moved downstairs to a dreary space next to the backshop, we didn’t miss a beat, just kept on kicking ass.

Seeing that happen was one of the real thrills of my first year as a columnist. I was in the middle of something that was more than just exciting, it was important. We were doing our part to keep the Daily News alive.

After I’d been in Chicago for a couple of months, I started hearing from papers that wanted to lure me away. The Tribune was the first of them. Fat chance. Then it was the San Francisco Examiner because Twombly had up and died when he was barely 40. The only call I paid attention to came from Larry Merchant. I would have sworn he didn’t know my name and here he was on the phone telling me he was in discussions to become the New York Times’ sports editor. If he took the job, he said, he wanted his first hires to be Peter Gammons and me.

Once again my head was spinning. But Merchant didn’t get the job, so I went back to busting my hump in behalf of the Daily News. I wish I could tell you every column I wrote was a work of art, but that wasn’t the case. Sometimes they were good, maybe even very good; other times I floundered and grasped for ideas and phrases that were beyond me. Still, I’ve always been grateful that I could break in as a columnist on a p.m. paper. It gave me the time I needed to master the form.  If I’d been at an a.m. paper, I’m not sure I would have survived as well as I did.

And here’s something that could only have happened at a p.m.: When I walked out of the paper to look for a cab home in the wee small hours one snowy morning, my footprints were the first on North Michigan Avenue. I had my dream job, in my favorite city in the country, and in a few hours, the people in that city–some of them anyway–were going to read what I had stayed up all night to write for them. And in that moment, I felt the romance of the newspaper business as I never had before.

It didn’t seem anywhere near as romantic late on March 3, 1978 as the Daily News staff waited for the paper’s final edition to come off the press. My face was as long as anybody’s, but I wasn’t entitled to sadness, not the way the people who had given their lives to the paper were. I was standing next to M.W. Newman, who wrote elegantly about architecture and books and local history and pretty much anything else that popped up on his radar. He’d been at the Daily News for something like 30 years. He was the one who had the right to sing the blues. I was just somebody who came along too late to help save the paper. And yet you’d be surprised how often I think of it. And how proud I am to have been there.

Click here for the full “From Ali to Xena” archives.

[Photo Credit: N.Y. Times]

Matt B hipped me to this blog post by Lawrence Block about the difficulty of adapting books for the big screen:

Once in a while, of course, someone really gets it right. Once in a while there’s a movie that takes a book, slaps it on the big screen, and works like a charm even as it reflects the writer’s vision. The most vivid recent example would be the Coens’ remake of True Grit. I’d read the Charles Portis novel first, then saw and enjoyed the Henry Hathaway film with John Wayne and Kim Darby. It wasn’t the book, but I thought it was a pretty good movie.

But the Coen brothers went back to Portis’s book, and took the revolutionary step of putting that story on the screen, using his scenes and dialogue pretty much as written. And blew the earlier picture out of the water.

Oddly, something very similar happened seventy years ago. John Huston’s The Maltese Falcon succeeded so utterly that not many of us realize it was the third adaptation of Dashiell Hammett’s novel. (The 1931 version starred Ricardo Cortez; the 1936 remake, called Satan Met a Lady, had Alison Skipworth playing the Sydney Greenstreet role.)

It’s also not widely known that Hammett deliberately wrote the book in the form of a prose screenplay, with nothing on the page that couldn’t be shown or spoken on the screen. It was his notion that movies were the future, that writers were best advised to write books that could be filmed, and that the ideal tactic would be to do the screenwriters’ work for them while writing the book. After this was conveniently overlooked by two sets of filmmakers, Huston did what should have been done in the first place, and put Hammett’s lines, essentially verbatim, in the mouths of the perfect cast. There’s a reason the film gets better every time you see it.

Amen, to that. It’s a near perfect movie.

From Kostya Kennedy:

It was 70 years ago, on a mild and misty night in Cleveland, before the largest crowd of the 1941 baseball season — 67,463 in Municipal Stadium — that Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak came to an end. The game became, in today’s parlance, an “instant classic.” It would have been destined for countless airings on many sports channels had only there been footage to air.

Instead the night of July 17, 1941 survived only in memory (and in some part myth), re-lived and re-told not just by DiMaggio himself but also by his teammates and by the opposing Indians players and by the coaches and the batboys and by the people who attended the game and by the many thousands more who were not at the game, but who would swear, year after year, that they were.

The facts are simple: DiMaggio went 0-for-3 with a fourth-inning walk. Yet each of DiMaggio’s at-bats that night was an event, the mass of fans cheering and hooting each time he strode to the plate. Many of the people felt unsure whether or not they wanted to see the Great DiMag, as he was called, succeed against their Indians. Cleveland’s ace pitcher, Bob Feller, felt that way as he watched from the Indians dugout. When I spoke to him, some nine months before his death at age 92 last December, Feller said he remembered the game clear as if the floodlights were still upon it.

Of course, a new hit streak started the next day.

Here’s a long piece on the new Muppets movie. 

Phil Hughes was not great Sunday. There were liners that found gaps, but more that found gloves. He did not dominate. But he was good. And we haven’t seen good since last October in the first round clincher versus Minnesota. So welcome back, Phil, please stick around for the rest of the season.

Brett Gardner led off the game with a hit while Derek Jeter got the day off. I think Jeter has looked fine since he came off the DL, but watching Gardner perform so well up there sure was easy on the eyes. I have friends who are offended that Jeter is still leading off. I’m not at that point, but the Yankee machine might run a little better by flipping the two. At least against righties. Gardner was on base four times and even his out was ripped to short.

Behind Gardner and his three hits, the Yankees rapped out eight more and built four rallies. Each time they rallied, they scored. Whether it was Russell Martin, Robbie Cano, Curtis Granderson or Nick Swisher, there was a key hit or sacrifice fly at the right time to keep the scoreboard flashing. They never broke the game open, but they kept pushing the lead until it was safe.

And with Phil Hughes on the mound, there was really no way to be sure exactly how big the lead needed to be. But Hughes was right and seven runs were more than enough as the Yanks won 7-2. He looked like a big leaguer again. The pitches weren’t blowing people away, but they didn’t look like they were on a tee either. And I was especially encouraged by the break on his curve ball. A baby-step, sure, but aren’t a baby’s steps the hardest to come by?

Two games ago I wrote about the gloomy dome. But when the roof is open on a sunny day after an easy Yankee win, it’s not so bad.

Now head over to the women’s World Cup final. The USA squandered several first half chances and Japan will punish them on the counter attack eventually. The US deserves a goal, and if they score first, they should win.

Phil Hughes looks to show us something this afternoon.

Derek Jeter has the day off.

Brett Gardner LF

Curtis Granderson CF

Mark Teixeira DH

Robinson Cano 2B

Nick Swisher RF

Jorge Posada 1B

Russell Martin C

Eduardo Nunez SS

Ramiro Pena 3B

Never mind the heat:

Let’s Go Yank-ees!

[Photo Credit: the most talented, Joel Zimmer]

Mornin’.

[Photo Credit: Peter Stray]

C.C., a run on three hits and eight Ks in eight innings. Mo shuts the door in the 9th. End of losing streak.

Final Score: Yanks 4, Blue Jays 1.

[Photo Credit: Abelimages/Getty Images]

Yup, it’s the Big Fella. Let’s hope the losing streak stops today.

Let’s Go Yank-ees!

One of the nicer outgrowths of Robinson Cano winning the Home Run Derby was the attention given to his designated pitcher, his own father. I suspect that a lot of non-Yankee fans did not know that Cano is a second generation major leaguer, but now they realize that his dad, Jose Cano, did have a major league career–albeit a brief one. And they should know that it was Jose who made the respectful decision to name his son after Hall of Famer and civil rights pioneer Jackie Robinson.

Jose Cano was originally signed by the Yankees in 1980, but was released that summer after making three rough appearances in the Sally League. The tall, thin right-hander then signed with the Braves–on two different occasions–only to be released each time. After signing with the Astros’ organization, he finally made it to the big leagues in 1989, nearly a full decade after beginning his pro career.

Cano did not put up good numbers with the Astros; he had a 5.09 ERA in six career appearances over one fragmented season. But here’s an oddity. In his last appearance, coming on September 30, Cano actually pitched a complete game, allowing only two runs in a 9-2 win over Scott Scudder in the Reds. Now Cano wasn‘t exactly facing the “Big Red Machine“ that day. The Reds, who were playing out the string, featured only one good hitter that day, a fellow named Paul O’Neill. The rest of the lineup showcased people like Herm Winningham, Luis Quinones, onetime Yankee Joe Oliver (who batted fifth!), Rolando Roomes, and a shortstop named Jeff Richardson.

Still, Cano pitched very well that day. How many players throw complete game efforts in their final major league appearance? Well, it turns out that Cano is the only one in history to have achieved that strange feat. Cano, who saved his best pitching for last, then left the Astros’ organization to sign a contract to play in the relative obscurity of the Taiwanese League.

Well, he’s no longer obscure. With a big assist from his son, Jose Cano is now a household name in baseball circles…

***

I’m not normally a fan of Deadspin, but Eric Nusbaum contributed an interesting article there the other day in which he rated the 100 worst players in major league history. Some of the entries were funny (Johnnie LeMaster once wore the word “BOO” on the back of his jersey) and others were downright revealing (did you know that Mark Lemongello once kidnapped his cousin, singer Peter Lemongello?).

Yet, I do have objections to the inclusions of two former Yankees on the list: Billy Martin and Curt Blefary. “Billy the Kid” and “Clank” were hardly stars, but they were useful players who could contribute to winning teams. Martin was a good defensive second baseman who could fill in at short and third. He also elevated his game enormously in the postseason; he batted .500 with two home runs in the 1953 World Series, and .333 over five World Series combined. Those are hardly the accomplishments of one of the game’s worst players.

In regards to Blefary, I’ve long been a fan of his and feel a need to defend the late journeyman. While it’s true that he was a terrible defender at several positions, he also had some power, drew a lot of walks, and gave teams flexibility with his ability to catch, play first base, or the outfield. At the very least, as a left-handed hitting backup catcher, Blefary provided value in a limited role. Once again, that hardly qualifies him as one of baseball’s worst.

The bottom line is this: there have been hundreds of players far worse than either Martin or Blefary. Those two simply don’t belong on the Deadspin list…

***

I love living in Cooperstown, in part because on any given day, just about any former major leaguer can show up. You never know whom you might meet in the Hall of Fame, or on Main Street. Already this summer, ex-big leaguers like Luis Gonzalez, Glenn Beckert, both Jose Cruz, Jr. and Jose Cruz, Sr. (who briefly played for the Yankees), and former Met Gene Walter have visited the Hall of Fame. One of the most recent to land in Cooperstown is Mike McCormick, who last week toured the museum with his daughter and her family. McCormick pitched briefly for the Yankees, making a handful of appearances in 1970 before finishing up his career the following summer with the Royals.

McCormick’s prime seasons came with San Francisco in the sixties. It’s easy to forget that McCormick once won the Cy Young Award. In 1967, he moved up from being the Giants’ No. 3 starter behind Juan Marichal and Gaylord Perry to being the staff ace. Pitching 262 innings, McCormick led the league with 22 wins, pitched 14 complete games, and posted a 2.85 ERA. He was clearly the best pitcher in the league–and fully deserving of the honor of the Cy Young. Still, he is one of the least known winners of the award, a relative no-name compared to the likes of Seaver, Guidry, Gooden, Maddux, Clemens, and Johnson. McCormick lacked the staying power of other Cy Young winners, largely because of injuries.

Still, McCormick won 134 games during a highly respectable career. He has been retired since 1971, but had never visited Cooperstown until now. “It’s the first time that I’ve been to the Baseball Hall of Fame, and shame on me,” McCormick told Hall of Fame researcher Bill Francis. “It’s an incredible place. I would tell everybody that has an opportunity that this is the place to come.”

Amen, brother. I’m surprised that even more retired players don’t come to Cooperstown. After all, they receive free admission to the Museum, along with a behind-the-scenes tour of the Hall of Fame, if they want it. For the 72-year-old McCormick, it was an experience that was almost as thrilling as winning that Cy Young.

Bruce Markusen’s The Team That Changed Baseball was recently quoted in Sports Illustrated.

The best argument for me against an unbalanced schedule is 19 games versus the Blue Jays. I find the dome gloomy and ugly. The team bores the heck out of me, and they beat the Yankees too often for my tastes. At least they have Jose Bautista and his improbable career arc is fun to watch and to try to make sense of. Except he’s injured. So when the Yanks lost to the Jays tonight 7-1, there were no redeeming features whatsoever.

The really bad news is that to start the second half, the Blue Jays have roughed up two of the bright spots of the first half. And since we have had our doubts about both of those guys, let’s hope this isn’t the beginning of a turbulent course correction.

Freddy Garcia appeared to have good stuff. The fork ball was tumbling out of his hand and his off-speed stuff looked to have good downward action. Lots of swings and misses. Watching the Jays break the tie in the fourth on two beautiful doubles by Snider and Encarnacion, it would be hard to pin the runs on the pitcher. He made his pitch, got the location, speed and break he wanted, but both hitters managed to sweep the barrels of the bats down and out of the zone and right into the pitches’ paths.

Crack, crack. That was all the Jays needed, though Garcia surrendered four more runs. The Jays plated three in the fifth on one hit as Garcia backed up a lead-off double with three walks. If the Yankees had not emptied the bullpen in the previous game, would Girardi have made a move there? I think he would have. The Yankees weren’t hitting thanks to a good outing from flame thrower Brandon Morrow, but at 3-1 or 4-1, they had the puncher’s chance. Whatever – the punch never came.

Thursday’s loss wasn’t hard to take because those freakish early runs were so strange. It was clearly an “inning from Hell” and the bats showed up and scored seven runs, and even made it interesting for half an inning. Tonight was just a drubbing in every aspect. The Blue Jays were chewing sweeter gum and sucking on saltier sunflower seeds. Their water was wetter.

In the bottom of the seventh Russell Martin took a foul ball off the face mask really hard. Yankee fans tuning in for these last two games thought, “Right there with you Russell.”

CC Sabathia and Phil Hughes for a series spilt? Stranger things have happened, but I won’t be able to visualize Hughes having a good game until he has one.

Photo by John Frisch

Derek Jeter SS
Curtis Granderson CF
Mark Teixeira 1B
Robinson Cano 2B
Nick Swisher RF
Jorge Posada DH
Russell Martin C
Brett Gardner LF
Eduardo Nunez 3B

Never mind the hangover:

Let’s Go Yank-ees!

Allen Barra on James Rodney Richard:

You’ve heard stories about how great J.R. Richard was at his best, and they are all true. What the stories don’t tell you is how thrilling it was to watch him on the mound on a good day. He was the scariest pitcher I’ve ever seen. He was 6’-8 ½”, and his three-quarters side arm fastball sometimes made it to 100 mph. Imagine a right-handed Randy Johnson with 30 more pounds of muscle, and you’ll get some idea of how terrifying he was.

I don’t think he was a great pitcher—great in the sense of being the best in the league for a couple of seasons—and it’s true that he had an advantage when pitching in the Astrodome, the best hitter’s park in the game back then. But midway through the 1980 season, Sports Illustrated’s William Nack called him “the best right-hander in baseball,” and that was probably true.

By 1980, at the age of 30, he was certainly on the verge of greatness. From 1976-1979 he won 74 games, completing 62 of them and averaging 260 strikeouts per season. He had over 300 strikeouts in both 1978 and 1979. As he got older, he seemed to be getting better and smarter, with a change that startled some hitters. (Of course, when you consistently throw everything, including your slider, in the high 90s, a changeup is going to be even more devastating.)

Over at Egotripland, Prince Paul offers his 10 favorite sample flips.

Listen n loin.

The Yankees had won their first game coming out of the All-Star break nine years in a row, but that major-league-record streak came to an end in a stunningly bad loss to the Toronto Blue Jays on Thursday night. Both manager and players looked more rusted than rested after the three-day hiatus as Joe Girardi seemed to be employing his bullpen as if he were pulling names out of Billy Martin’s hat, and his players were equally guilty as they committed three errors and a balk, all of which led to a total of SEVEN unearned runs. How did I hate this game? Let me count the ways.

1. The game was essentially over after the first inning, but that inning could have been dramatically different. With one out, Eric Thames hit a diving line drive to left field. Brett Gardner took a run at it, but clearly couldn’t decide whether to go for the catch or back off and play it for a single. His hesitation cost him dearly, as the ball skipped past him and Thames ended up on second base with a double. (Quick aside: isn’t it time for Gardner to get a Gold Glove? I’m just sayin’.) Bartolo Colón was on the mound, and he struggled. He walked José Bautista, but then followed that up with an Adam Lind groundout, and two were out with two on. Aaron Hill then rapped a solid single to center and it was 2-0 Jays, and Travis Snider followed with a ground ball single two batters later for a 3-0 lead, but those were really the only runs that should’ve scored in the inning. (Again, if Gardner had played Thames’s drive correctly, the game would’ve been scoreless.) But the inning continued. J.P. Arencibia hit pounded a grounder to Eduardo Núñez at third, but Núñez let it bounce off his thigh for an error, and the bases were loaded. Next Rajai Davis dribbled a meek little ground ball just to the left of the mound, but Colón had no play and a run scored. In case you missed that, Yunel Escobar came up next and dribbled a meek little ground ball just to the left of the  mound, but Colón had no play and another run scored. That Escobar ball was so eerily similar to the Davis ball that both Colón and Girardi were caught with wry smiles of disbelief. There were no smiles, however, after Thames came up with his second double of the inning, a ringing ground-rule version hit directly over Curtis Granderson’s head in center field. It was 7-0. The game certainly appeared over, and Colón’s night was definitely over.
2. But why did Girardi pull Colón? The only hope for the Yankees was that a long-man might come in and hold the Jays down for the rest of the game so that the Score Truck could chip away at the lead over the next eight innings. That long-man would be Hector Noesi, but since he certainly wasn’t ready yet, Girardi chose Luís Ayala, even though Ayala has typically been used in higher leverage situations much later in the game. (Ayala, of course, added to the mockery of the opening inning by allowing the eighth run to score on a balk.) Unless there were injury concerns (Colón had had to race to first for a putout in addition to fielding those two dribblers), Colón should’ve finished the inning, and Noesi should’ve started the second.
3. It really bothers me when the Yankees tease me into thinking that they’re going to make a comeback. This one started with an Andruw Jones solo home run in the third. 9-1. A few batters later Curtis Granderson rifled a backhand to the baseline that had so much top spin that it actually bounded over the head of Thames in right field for a triple that scored two. 9-3. Granderson would score almost immediately on a routine ground out from Mark Teixeira. 9-4.
4. Meanwhile, young Noesi was cruising along, keeping the Jays complacent. In the top of the sixth, things got interesting. With two runners on, Jones launched his second home run of the game, and suddenly it was 9-7. Now, of course, two things became clear. One, if the first inning hadn’t been so atrocious, the Yankees would have been in the lead; and two, if Girardi hadn’t burned up Ayala, he could have come in for the sixth, Boone Logan the seventh, All-Star David Robertson the eighth, and Mariano Rivera in the ninth. The Yankees would score a few runs, and we’d all have been happy.
5. But none of that happened. Girardi brought Logan in with one out and two on in the sixth. Logan would get one out, but then he’d yield a single which scored two, taking all the wind out of the sails. 11-7.
6. This is when I lifted my flat screen above my head and fired it through the sliding glass door, so I’m not entirely sure that all this actually happened. Remember when Darko Milicic was known as the Human Victory Cigar? Well, Girardi has found his Human White Flag, and his name is Sergio Mitre. HWF would allow two runs in the seventh (one charged to Logan) and then cough up three more in the eighth (one courtesy of a Jeter error partially caused by Girardi’s shrewd decision to pull the infield in down by seven runs because an eight run deficit in the ninth would’ve seemed insurmountable.) Final score: Blue Jays 16, Yankees 7.

Yanks in Toronto for a long weekend.  Cliff has the preview.

The Bombers have reportedly signed J.C. Romero to a minor league deal. Greg Golson was called up from Triple A.

Derek Jeter SS
Curtis Granderson CF
Mark Teixeira 1B
Robinson Cano 2B
Nick Swisher RF
Russell Martin C
Andruw Jones DH
Eduardo Nunez 3B
Brett Gardner LF

Never mind the spiel:

Let’s Go Yank-ees.

[Picture by Bags]

Here’s a fun vintage movie poster site.

Mistrial in the Clemens case.