Up, Down, Up, and Out

By John Schulian

In my mind, it was going to be either a city column at the Evening Sun or a job at SI, and trust me, I campaigned like a mad man to get my foot in SI’s door. The magazine’s Baltimore stringer was a big-hearted, hugely energetic guy named Joe D’Adamo, who ran the backshop at the Evening Sun. Not a writer or editor, but a guy who oversaw the actual physical production of the paper. The editors at SI appreciated Joe because he was a fount of ideas, and Joe liked the way I wrote enough to talk me up to them. When Frank Deford came to town  to promote a novel he’d written, I did a visiting-author story in which I described him as looking like a waterbed salesman. I just couldn’t resist. Frank must have recognized the impulse, because he didn’t hold it against me. The next thing I knew, Joe D’Adamo was telling me that Frank had mentioned me to SI’s editors. Just the same, when Robert Creamer showed up in Baltimore to hustle his Babe Ruth book, I wrote about him, too.

Finally, in 1973, Pat Ryan, SI’s freelance editor-–soon to be known forever in my mind as the wonderful Pat Ryan-–asked me to send her a list of four story ideas. I did, and the one she liked the best was about the boxing promoter on the Block. When I sent in my first draft, Pat asked me to rewrite the ending so it involved a night at the fights. I did, and that was the last change that was made to the piece. Every word that appeared under my first byline in Sports Illustrated was mine. I was amazed, gratified, and filled with bigger dreams than ever.

Pat had a wonderful way with writers, a real gift for nurturing them. Her father, if I recall correctly, was a successful racehorse trainer, and she had started at SI as a secretary and worked her way up to writer and then editor. Nobody had strewn rose petals at her feet, and if she got the idea that you were committed to your work, she would beat the drum for you. She invited me to New York, took me to lunch, introduced me to other key editors, and treated me like I belonged even though I must have seemed like a rube. She kept giving me story assignments, too-–short items for the front of the book as well as longer stuff like the magazine’s first Moses Malone story and a piece on the amateur baseball team in Baltimore that produced Reggie Jackson and Al Kaline.

All the while I was still writing for the Evening Sun. It was a terrific place to work, as I’ve said, and the people I worked with were salt of the earth. They knew and cared about the city, and they were passionate about honest, energetic, imaginative reporting. They also knew how to put on a great ugliest tie contest. No, I never won. I was actually a pretty good dresser. I remember when I went to interview Jerry Lee Lewis, he looked me over with those spooky eyes of his and said, “I like a sharp-dressed man.” What I might have won at the paper was a bad temper award. Just about anything could set me off-–typos in a story I’d written, an inability to get a long-distance line, the list is endless, really. My standard response was to pound my desk or stand up and punch the nearest wall while yelling the obligatory “fuck!” It’s funny how in the 36 years since I left the paper, the legend of my temper has grown. One woman said I broke the window in the managing editor’s office. (Not true.) A guy said I broke a typewriter. (Also not true.) The only thing I might have broken was my hand when I punched a wall. The fact that I didn’t proves that God really does look out for drunks and fools.

By the time 1975 rolled around, I was starting to get antsy. SI didn’t have any openings for writers at my level and wasn’t expecting any. I could have lived with that if I sensed that I was about to be anointed the Jimmy Breslin of Baltimore. Instead, I was told that the managing editor had decided to kill my music column because nobody cared about rock and roll anymore. This, mind you, just as Springsteen was taking flight-–do I need to say more about the thickness of the managing editor’s skull? I was more than pissed off. I was crushed. Looking back, it was a great life lesson, because it was awfully easy to get comfortable at the Evening Sun and in Baltimore, which was just entering its resurgence. But the only way you’re going to get better is by challenging yourself, by going up against writers who are better than you are. If you do that, it’s sink or swim, and that was what I needed if I was going to make anything out of the career that consumed my life.

When I finally got my wits about me, I started plotting my great escape. I figured I could freelance for Sports Illustrated and a new magazine called New Times, which was showcasing up-and-coming writers like Bob Greene (already a star columnist at the Chicago Sun-Times), Frank Rich (in his pre-New York Times days), Paul Hendrickson (later a star in the Washington Post’s Style section), and Robert Ward (a novelist from Baltimore whom I didn’t meet until we both wound up in Hollywood). I was going to wait until my fifth anniversary at the Evening Sun-–September 1975-–and then I’d be gone. I just had to get through the next three months.

So I’m sitting at my desk one afternoon, not really giving a damn about whatever I was supposed to be working on, and my telephone rings.

“Hello?”

“Is John Schulian there?”

“You got him.”

“This is George Solomon, from the Washington Post. How’d you like to make George Allen’s life miserable?”

I’m not making this up. That’s exactly how the conversation went. Solomon was the Post’s new sports editor, and Allen was the Washington Redskins’ head coach and the Richard Nixon of the NFL. And I, as I hastened to point out, was a guy who had never written a sports story for a newspaper. I mean I’d cheated a couple of times and done features about Willie Mays in retirement and a great local playground basketball player, but I’d never written a story about a game. You know, one with a score in it.

So I said, “Are you sure you’ve got the right John Schulian?”

“I’m sure,” Solomon said.

My life had just changed.

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

Bar none, it’s my favorite promotion on the Yankee calendar. It is “Old-Timers’ Day” and it arrived early this year. For the 65th time in their history, the Yankees officially celebrated their past glory. It is somewhat hard to believe, but Joe Torre and Bernie Williams participated in their first Old-Timers Day, several years after completing iconic careers in the Bronx. Their presence alone made the day special, but I was just as interested in seeing old schoolers like Moose Skowron and Hector Lopez, characters like Oscar Gamble and Joe Pepitone, and even those Yankees who made only cameos in the Bronx, including Cecil Fielder, Lee Mazzilli, and Aaron Small.

More so than any other sport, baseball revels in its ability to celebrate its past. Some would call it nostalgia; I’m more tempted to call it history. No franchise has had more cause to recall its own accomplishments than the Yankees, given the team’s longstanding on-field success, which began with the arrival of Babe Ruth in 1921. So it’s no surprise that the Yankees became the first team to introduce the concept of an Old-Timers’ Day to its promotional calendar.

The Yankees initiated the promotion in the 1930s, though they didn’t actually refer to the event as Old-Timers’ Day. Rather, the tradition began more informally as solitary tributes to retired stars like Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig. The salute to Gehrig became the best known of the early Old-Timers affairs. On July 4, 1939, the Yankees staged “Lou Gehrig Day” at Yankee Stadium as a way of paying homage to a legendary player whose career had been cut short by the onset of ALS.

After several former and current Yankees delivered emotional speeches lauding Gehrig as both a player and teammate, the retired first baseman stepped to the microphone. In an eloquently stirring address, Gehrig referred to himself as “the luckiest man on the face of the earth,” full knowing that he had only a short time to live because of the ravages of the disease. (Gehrig would succumb to ALS only two years later, at the age of 37.) At the conclusion of his speech, the capacity crowd responded with deafening applause, signifying its appreciation for an “old-timer” who had met with the unkindest of fates.

Seven years later, the Yankees introduced their first official Old-Timers’ Day to the franchise’s promotional slate. Rather than concentrate the honors on one retired player, the event became a celebration of teamwide accomplishments that had taken place over past years. Inviting a number of the team’s former stars to the Stadium, the Yankees introduced each one over the public address system, with each player acknowledging the applause from the 70,000-plus fans in attendance.

Ever since the 1946 event, the Yankees have held Old-Timers’ Day on an annual basis, always on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon, and usually sometime from mid-July to mid-August. (Other teams followed suit in the 1960s and seventies, particularly older franchises with sufficient history to draw from. Even an expansion franchise like the Mets participated in the tradition by celebrating the New York roots of the Giants and Dodgers.) In the earlier years of the event, the Old-Timers’ Game pitted former Yankees against retired stars from the rest of baseball, with the non-Yankees wearing the opposition uniforms of their most prominent teams. In more recent times, the Yankees have invited only former Yankees to the party, largely because they have so many retired stars from which to choose, some as far back as the 1940s. The retired stars now play a kind of celebrated intra-squad game, pitting the “Bombers” against the “Pinstripes.”

Other than the game itself, the format of Old-Timers’ Day at Yankee Stadium—with an on-field announcer introducing each retired player, who then jogs (or walks) from the dugout to a spot along the foul line—has remained relatively unaltered. Yet, the voices have changed. For years, famed Yankee broadcaster Mel Allen handled the emcee duties exclusively. Standing at a podium behind home plate, Allen introduced each retired player with his stately Southern drawl. Eventually felled by declining health, Allen gave way to the less acclaimed but highly professional Frank Messer, the team’s longtime play-by-play voice who was best known for his on-air partnership with Phil Rizzuto and Bill White. In recent years, radio voice John Sterling and television play-by-play man Michael Kay have shared the announcing chores—a far cry from Allen’s dignified presence at the microphone.

Over the years, Old-Timers’ Day has occasionally managed to overshadow the events of the “real” game played later in the day by the existing version of the Yankees. This has especially been the case during the franchise’s lean years. In 1973, the Yankees staged one of their most elaborate Old-Timers events as part of a 50th anniversary celebration of Yankee Stadium. The front office invited every living member from the 1923 team, the first to play at the Stadium after the relocation from the nearby Polo Grounds. With Gehrig and Ruth long since deceased, the Yankees invited their widows to participate in the ceremony from box seats located along the first base dugout. Mrs. Claire Ruth and Mrs. Eleanor Gehrig, both outfitted in oversized Easter hats, helped bid farewell to the “old” Yankee Stadium, which was slated for massive renovation after the 1973 season. The day became even memorable because of a development in the Old-Timers’ Game that followed; the fabled Mickey Mantle, retired five years earlier, blasted a home run into the left-field stands. The Mick still had some power in his game.

One of the most indelible Old-Timers’ moments occurred only five years later. After the usual introductions of retired players, the Yankees stunningly declared that Billy Martin would return as Yankee manager. Martin had been fired only five days earlier, done in by his damning declaration that “one’s a born liar, and the other’s convicted,” a reference to the duo of Reggie Jackson and George Steinbrenner.

In spite of the omnipresent New York media, the Yankees somehow succeeded in keeping news of Martin’s return a complete secret. There were no whispers, no rumors, no hints in the local newspapers. Having managed to keep the agreement with Martin in tow throughout the morning and early afternoon, the Yankees arranged to have all of their old timers introduced as usual by Allen, clearing out a final announcement for their deposed manager. Explaining that Yankee Stadium public address announcer Bob Sheppard would now deliver a special announcement, Allen turned over the microphone to his announcing counterpart. Maintaining his dignified delivery throughout, Sheppard revealed that Martin would return to the Yankee dugout two years later, in 1980, with recently hired manager Bob Lemon moving up to the front office as general manager. As a gleeful Martin trotted onto the field at a sun-splashed Yankee Stadium, a capacity crowd greeted him with a prolonged standing ovation that was motivated as much by shock as it was by joy.

In terms of dramatic theater, it was as timely and well orchestrated as any announcement I’ve seen during my lifetime as a fan. It showcased Old-Timers’ Day at its best, combining the predictable and orderly splendor of a ceremonial day with an unexpected and newsworthy development that bordered on spontaneity.

We didn’t see that kind of news making event yesterday, but that didn’t make the day any less significant. Seeing former Yankees in uniform, sometimes for the first time in years, is something that will always prompt the goose bumps. If you like and appreciate the history of this franchise, then Old-Timers’ Day remains the one day that cannot be missed.

[Photo Credit: Ron Antoneli, N.Y. Daily News]

Bruce Markusen writes “Cooperstown Confidential” for The Hardball Times.

Mike Lupica on Mariano Rivera:

Rivera reaches into his locker now, touches the home uniform he will wear. No. 42 on its back of course. This was Jackie Robinson’s number, one that will be retired permanently when Rivera retires.

“I think about putting on my uniform today,” he says, “and don’t worry about tomorrow. I think about the new day, the new challenge.”

He smiles.

“Let’s try to do it one more time,” he says.

He’s my favorite athlete.

After the usual sentimental events of Old Timers’ Day, which featured an extended and loving tribute to Gene Monahan, there was not much to cheer about for Yankee fans in the early going of their game against the Rockies this afternoon. Juan Nicasio retired the first thirteen Yankees and the Rockies had a 3-0 lead. Robinson Cano singled to break up the perfect game with one out in the fifth and Nick Swisher followed with a two-run homer into the right field bleachers. Jorge Posada was next and he hit a high home run and the game was tied. Just like that.

Ivan Nova wasn’t great but didn’t fall apart either. Ty Wigginton wore him out, that’s for sure. His second homer put the Rockies up 4-3 in the sixth, but the Yanks answered with single runs in the sixth, seventh and eighth. Alex Rodriguez tied it with an RBI single and Eduardo Nunez put them ahead for good with an RBI base hit of his own.

Perhaps the most encouraging performance came from Boone Logan who got three outs in the seventh. David Robertson pitched a scoreless eighth and won a long battle with Troy Tulowitzki to start the eighth. Onions.

Oh, know this: Tulo made a critical error in the bottom of the seventh but also made a sensational play look easy in the eighth when he fielded a ball, moving to his right and threw Nick Swisher out easily, from deep in the hole. Man, it was impressive.

And what better way to end a long afternoon love-in than with the Great One, Mariano Rivera?

Three up, three down. Three strikeouts. It never gets old as we savor the greatness that will never be replicated.

Final Score: Yanks 6, Rockies 4.

[Photo Credit: from the most cool site, I really Like the Rain]

Old Timers’ Day should prove to be especially sentimental this year with the Godfather Joe Torre in the House. Sweet Lou Piniella and Sweet Pea Bernie Williams will also be there.

Here are some pictures I took at last year’s Class Reunion:

Hot and sunny in New York. Nostalgia followed by Yanks and Rocks.

Enjoy everyone!

C.C. was everything we expect from him today. His stuff was dynamite and he pitched eight strong, allowing just one run and a walk while he struck out nine. The Yankees pounded the Rockies, 8-3. Six players had at least two hits, including an increasingly banged-up Alex Rodriguez, who is now hitting an even .300.

Yanks look to bounce back from last night’s disappointing loss with a win.

Never mind the pessimisim, C.C. is pitching:

Let’s Go Yank-ees!

The bad A.J. Burnett showed up on Friday night–Bad A.J, Bad, Bad!–while the good Ubaldo Jimenez appeared for the Rockies–Bad A.J, Bad, Bad! The result was a 4-2 win for the Rockies. Yeah, five walks for Burnett just doesn’t cut it. About the only good thing to be said for the entire evening was that the Red Sox lost too, 3-1, in Pittsburgh. Oh, and if you are a Jason Giambi fan, and why the hell not, count me as one, you got to see the erstwhile Yankee have a good game. Giambi went 3-4 with a walk. He hit a monstrous home run into the right center field bleachers.

“I wasn’t touching the ground,” said Giambi, according to Brian Heyman. “I was excited. There’s an incredible energy playing in this stadium with the fans that they have here. It was like old times to have that opportunity to play in front of them again. I went up there, and I think he could’ve thrown the resin bag 2-and-0 and I would’ve swung at it. …

“I couldn’t have dreamed for a better game to have.”

Here’s hoping his sweet dreams lasted just one night.

[Picture by Jim McIsaac/Getty Images]

The Yanks vs. the Rockies. The Rocks? Okay…very well, then.

1. Gardner LF
2. Granderson CF
3. Teixeira 1B
4. Rodriguez 3B
5. Cano 2B
6. Swisher RF
7. Posada DH
8. Martin C
9. Nunez SS
Burnett P

We’ll be rootin’:

Let’s Go Yank-ees!

[Picture by Minh Dam]

Rest in Peace.

Over at ESPN, Andrew Marchand has a piece on Jesus Montero:

Right now, there is one thing Montero is certainly not: He is not ready to start, let alone star, in the big leagues.

“It is all in becoming a first-rate professional and he is still in the middle of that process,” said Mark Newman, the Yankees’ senior vice president of baseball operations, who heads up the team’s minor leagues.

…Monte — as everyone in Scranton calls him — is developing at beautiful, tree-lined PNC Field in front of crowds that average around 4,000 fans per game. When you walk into the stadium a sign greets you, saying the Bronx is 128 miles away. Sometimes, it seems, that is where Montero’s head is located, too.

“I just get the feeling that Monte is so blessed physically — and I hate to say it — he is almost bored here in Triple-A,” said Scranton hitting coach Butch Wynegar, a former Yankees catcher. “Maybe if he went to the big leagues tomorrow, this kid might just go off and he just might lock in.”

In the first bit here, you’ll see the old H&H Bagels in the background as Henry Winkler and Shelley Long cross 80th street and Broadway:

Morning, Sunshine:

Here’s Margaret Atwood on what she reads:

I like to read at night before bed, too, though it can give you some pretty horrific nightmares–and a stiff neck, because of the position of your head.

Really, though, I will read anything at any time. If there’s nothing else available I will read airplane shopping magazines. You find out some pretty interesting things in there, actually. You think: “Somebody invented this. They actually sat in a room and invented it. And then they went out and raised the money and they manufactured it and now it’s in the airplane shopping magazine.” Boggles the mind.

I used to read the backs of cereal boxes but I’ve kind of exhausted their possibilities. Advertisement used to provide a lot more reading material than it does now‹ads have become too pictorial. They used to have a lot more print. They used to be more narrative. Story ads were still going strong in the forties, and to a certain extent in the fifties. I think it probably started to change in the sixties. They used to have little poems. They used to have quizzes.

I’m a reading junkie, I guess. It’s the fault of my upbringing. I was brought up in the north where there weren’t any other forms of media–other than print. I certainly learned my first French off the backs of cereal boxes. This is Canada: “Eh! Les enfants! Special offer. Collect the box tops.”

I think it’s curiosity that drives me to read. I don’t think “entertainment” quite covers it. It’s not that I’m indiscriminate in my appreciation–I like to feel that I can tell an apple from a pear, and I don’t expect from the pear what I might expect from the apple. In other words, if I’m reading Conan the Conqueror I’m not demanding that it be Middlemarch. They have different things to offer. But in some cases you get led to fine experiences through very devious pathways.

“Just a Guy at Oxford” (Bill Bradley)

“The Great Wall of Boston” (The Green Monster)

“Sam, You Make the Ball too Small” (Sam McDowell)

“The King of the Jungle” (Walter O’Malley)

George Vecsey, right, with his arm around the wonderful Ray Robinson

I recently exchanged e-mails with George Vecsey, the veteran columnist for the New York Times, who started his career at Newsday under Mann.

Here’s our chat. Enjoy:

Bronx Banter: When Jack Mann took over the Newsday sports department was he influenced by any sports editors that came before him? I’m thinking of someone like Stanley Woodward.

George Vecsey: I don’t know. He came up through the news department at Newsday, had some college, was well read, surely knew about sports editors, but was so much an outsider that I doubt he would consider himself an acolyte of anybody.

BB: How would you describe to young readers what the climate of the press box was like in 1960? And how did Mann and “his Chipmunks” differ from the older writers?

GV: Well, the dichotomy was not as clear as I guess we would like to have thought. It may have been a function of age. But Isaacs and Len Shecter of the Post and Larry Merchant of the Philly Daily News were not children, and were capable of thinking for themselves, with Jack only part of it. The Chipmunks were young and energetic and brash. The split was probably on the same generational lines of the Kennedy-Nixon election – new vs. old (politics excluded). Even in 1960, some of us (me at least) were anticipating the forces of the mid-60’s in style and music and attitude. But we all were pretty traditional, except in comparison to the older writers, who were often hooked into the free drinks of the press room and the party line of the clubs they covered, or so we thought. Sounds pretty simplistic, looking back.

BB: Who else writing for the New York papers in the early 60s were like-minded? I’m thinking specifically of Shecter at the Post. Who else was part of the new breed?

GV: Len Shecter, Isaacs, Merchant, of course. And Stan Hochman A lot of the younger guys were Chipmunks just because we chattered a lot, and hung out together. Looking back, it would be hard to put one label on me, Steve, Maury Allen, Vic Ziegel, Phil Pepe, Paul Zimmerman, Joe Donnelly, Joe Gergen. We (or at least I did) admired Dick Young, who was no Chipmunk, but I knew him through my dad when I was a little kid, and Dick was very gracious to me when I came along as a young writer. I was friendly with older guys like Harold Rosenthal (more acerbic than any of us) and Barney Kremenko (a kind man, a friend), and I learned a lot from Leonard Koppett, one of the great people of the business, and I adored Jimmy Cannon. I don’t know that Bob Lipsyte considered himself a Chipmunk, but he and I hung out a lot in those days, and his excellent early work as a sports columnist (in his first tour of duty, I emphasize) re-defined the genre. So it’s hard to define Chipmunk, at this late date. Every generation has its new look. When I came back to Sports in 1980, there was Jane Gross, Allen Abel, Michael Farber, Jane Leavy, Phil Hersh, all good pals of mine. New faces.

BB: And now, the climate is different from then.

GV: The one difference between then and now was that everybody talked in the press box. Talked about the game. Argued about politics. Bickered about where we were going to dinner. Nowadays, the kids are all hunched over their machines, with headsets on, tweeting and facebooking and blogging and goodness knows what else. Nobody talks in the press box. I miss arguments. I miss human contact. I think we had more fun than the Thumb Generation. But the output in the New York Times is really good, probably better than ever, which is what matters.

(more…)

The DH has been around for almost 40 years, but baseball fans still seem to enjoy debating its merits. While some prefer the increased offense associated with the American League style, others favor the small ball strategies accentuated by the National League approach. In many ways, the give and take is baseball’s equivalent of the old “Less Filling, Taste Great” debate. What side one comes down on is merely a matter of personal preference.

Although statistics can’t answer whether having a DH is better than allowing the pitcher to hit, we can use numbers to address another popular (and related) debate: who has the advantage in interleague play?

Top-10 Pitchers in Interleague Play, Ranked by PAs

Note: Data as of June 21, 2011
Source: Baseball-reference.com

Anyone who has watched the Yankees on YES should be familiar with one side of the debate, which is frequently argued by Michael Kay. According to the broadcaster, the advantage belongs to the National League because its pitchers are more adept at handling the bat. As a result, when American League teams hit the road during interleague play, the drop off between DH and pitcher acts like a ball and chain.

Top-10 DHs in Interleague Play, Ranked by PAs

Note: Data as of June 21, 2011
Source: Baseball-reference.com

A counter to that position suggests that because National League pitchers aren’t very good at hitting anyway, the advantage they enjoy is minimal. However, when the games are played in American League ballparks, having a defined DH gives teams in the junior circuit an edge over their National League counterparts, which frequently employ a bench player in that role (even when a defensively challenged player is used as the DH, a bench player is still needed to take his place in the field).

Both sides of the debate seem to have anecdotal merit, so, what do the numbers say?

Relative Performance of DHs and Pitchers in Interleague Play

Note: Data as of June 21, 2011
Source: Baseball-reference.com

As expected, American League DHs have posted an OPS that is 0.084 points higher than their temporary NL counterparts, while NL pitchers have bested their junior circuit peers by 0.070 OPS points. At face value, the advantage seems to belong to the American League, especially because DHs bat almost twice as much as pitchers during interleague play (2.0x in the NL and 1.7x in the AL). However, because the OPS difference for pitchers is working off a lower base, the National League actually enjoys a 22% edge in that regard, compared to the American League’s 11% advantage in terms of DH production.

Because it doesn’t look as if we’ve settled the debate just yet, let’s throw in one more wrinkle: pinch hitters. Is the American League better off in an NL ballpark because it can use a quality hitter (the DH) off the bench? Or, does the National League get the edge because its reserves often get substantial playing time and have more experience serving as a pinch hitter? Once again, a case can be made for either argument.

Relative Performance of Pinch Hitters* in Interleague Play

*Based on all pinch hitters used to replace a batter hitting in the ninth slot. Pinch hitters used for pitchers batting in other slots have been omitted, and pinch hitters replacing a ninth place batter who is not the pitcher have been included.
Note: Data as of June 21, 2011
Source: Baseball-reference.com

Neither league has really had much luck with pinch hitters during interleague play. Surprisingly, even star DHs like David Ortiz (1 for 16), Frank Thomas (2 for 14), and Hideki Matsui (1 for 10) have struggled when called upon to take one at bat. At the same time, experienced NL pinch hitters like Lenny Harris (3 for 24), Mark Sweeney (1 for 24), and Matt Franco (2-15) also did poorly.  Apparently, coming off the bench isn’t such an easy task when facing the other league (having to face unfamiliar pitchers probably doesn’t help).

Aggregate Performance of DHs, PHs and Pitchers in Interleague Play

Note: Data as of June 21, 2011
Source: Baseball-reference.com

In 13,852 interleague-related plate appearances, National Leaguers have produced a line of .220/.288/.342. Meanwhile, in 14,145 such plate appearances, the American League’s output has been .218/.292/.348. Considering the voluminous sample size, the similarity in performance is astounding.

Select Statistical Totals for DHs, PHs and Pitchers in Interleague Play

Note: Data as of June 21, 2011
Source: Baseball-reference.com

Before concluding, it’s worth pointing out there are two areas in which the National League has enjoyed an advantage: sacrifice bunts and double plays (see chart above). So, with all else being equal, perhaps the senior circuit’s small ball philosophy has given it a slight relative advantage? Unfortunately for the NL, those fundamentals haven’t been enough to overcome the AL’s overall interleague superiority, which, as this analysis shows, is not derived from having an extra hitter.

Historical Interleague Record

Note: Data as of June 22, 2011
Source: MLB.com

After crunching the numbers, it’s apparent that both leagues enjoy a significant statistical advantage when playing interleague games in their home ballparks. What’s more, the respective edges seems to cancel each other out when considering all participants impacted by the different set of rules. So, as it turns out, both sides of the debate are correct. Or, maybe they’re both wrong? Here we go again.

Michael Sokolove has a measured and insightful piece in the New York Times Magazine about aging athletes. Derek Jeter is a feature player:

The careers of elite athletes, enviable as they may be, are foreshortened versions of a human lifespan. Physical decline — in specific ways that affect what they do and who they are — begins for them before it does for normal people. The athletes themselves rarely see the beginnings of this process, or if they do, either do not acknowledge it or try to fight it off like just another inside fastball. They alter their training routines. Eat more chicken and fish, less red meat. They try to get “smarter” at their sport.

A great many of us, their fans, live in our own version of denial — even in this age of super-slow-motion replay and ever more granular statistical data. We want to think our favorite players have good years left, great accomplishments ahead of them, just as we would hope the same for ourselves. The writer Susan Jacoby, who happens to be a devoted baseball fan, is the author of “Never Say Die: The Myth and Marketing of the New Old Age.” “Fans don’t like to watch aging in these relatively young guys,” she told me. “It makes us uncomfortable. We think, If it happens to them, what the hell is going to happen to us?” Jacoby, a self-described insomniac who listens to sports-talk radio in the middle of the night, said she has been appalled at the “venom” she sometimes hears directed at Jeter. “It’s like they’re saying, ‘The hero is not performing.’ Well, he’s gotten older.”

Older, for ballplayers, begins much sooner than we think. “A lot of fans, if they really studied it, would be surprised at how early players really peak, especially hitters,” Jed Hoyer said when he spoke to me by phone from San Diego, where he is general manager of the Padres. Previously he was an executive with the Red Sox, one of the more data-driven franchises in baseball. “The years of 26 to 30 are usually the prime years,” Hoyer continued, “but you’ll see plenty of guys start to trend down, even if it’s subtle, before they’re 30.”

It is almost impossible to age gracefully as an everyday player. You can transition to a role player like Jason Giambi has done in Colorado, but Jeter is in a tough spot and Sokolove is dead-on in describing Jeter’s career as “charmed.” Yet Jeter’s relative good fortune has changed over the past year. Everything about him these days is touchy:

The prospect of this article did not sit well with the Yankees, or at least elements of its hierarchy. Jason Zillo, the team’s media director, would not grant me access to the Yankees’ clubhouse before games to do interviews. I have been a baseball beat writer, have written two baseball books and have routinely been granted clubhouse credentials for a quarter-century, as just about anyone connected to a reputable publication or broadcast outlet usually is. “We’re not interested in helping you, so why should I let you in?” Zillo said, before further explaining that he views his role as a “gatekeeper” against stories the Yankees would rather not see in print.

I was surprised that he would deny access to The New York Times Magazine. But if I learned anything over the course of working on this article, it is that aging is a sensitive issue. It happens to everyone, but that doesn’t mean we’re comfortable with it. Jeter has become a lightning rod on the topic. We see him getting old, but we’re supposed to pretend he is just in a prolonged slump. “The reason the response to athletes’ getting older is so powerful is that the decline occurs in public,” Susan Jacoby told me. “We don’t see it when a man has trouble with an erection for the first time. Or a mathematics professor forgets something. It’s not Alzheimer’s, but it’s age, and it’s difficult. But it’s private.”

This is a long story but well-worth reading. Fine job by Sokolove.

[Photo Credit: David Goldman/AP]

The Reds began the second game of Wednesday’s split doubleheader with concerns about Johnny Cueto’s stiff neck, but before the first inning was over, Yankees’ starter Brian Gordon was the one suffering the effects of whiplash.

Fresh off his debut against the Texas Rangers, Gordon was hoping to write another chapter in his feel good story. However, after surrendering three home runs, there wasn’t much chance for a happy ending. In fact, the beginning was anything to write home about either.

After Chris Heisey’s lead off home run, it soon became apparent that Gordon was merely the foil in someone else’s fairytale. Heisey followed up his opening salvo with a second homer off Gordon in the fifth that extended the Reds lead to 4-1. Then, with the game no longer in doubt, the Reds’ center fielder punctuated his historic night with a third home run off Hector Noesi.

Three Homer Games Against the Yankees, Since 1919

Source: Baseball-reference.com

Although Heisey’s power surge was historic, the real star of the game was Cueto. The ace right hander was supposed to start the first game of the series, but a sore neck forced the Reds to push him back. If only they had decided to hold him out one extra day.

The only real blemish on Cueto’s record was a second inning home run by Nick Swisher that tied the score at 1-1. After the homer, Cueto set down 15 of the next 16 batters, a stretch that was interrupted by Alex Rodriguez’ seventh inning single. In that frame, the Yankees loading the bases, but Cueto turned the rally aside by retiring Ramiro Pena and Jorge Posada, who was making a bid to play hero in both games of the doubleheader.

When the Yankees failed to capitalize on their threat in the seventh, the game was basically over, but that didn’t stop the Reds from tacking on six more runs against Noesi en route to a 10-2 victory. The double-digit outburst was unique for two reasons. First, it exceeded Cincinnati’s combined run total over the previous five games. Secondly, it was only the third time all season that the Yankees lost by more than five runs. I guess they were due.

By dropping the night cap, the Yankees not only forfeited a chance to take over first place, but also failed to even their regular season record against the Reds. As a result, Cincinnati remains the one team against which the Yankees do not have at least a .500 record. Considering how infrequently the two team meet, the Yankees will likely have to wait at least another few years before getting another crack at the Reds. I wonder if the team will be able to sleep on the plane ride home?

So the Yanks went out and won with their second unit today. Freddy Garcia pitched seven innings, a couple of unearned runs scoring thanks to an error by Ramiro Pena. David Robertson chucked a scoreless eighth and threw a fastball, right down the middle, past Joey Votto to end the inning. Man, don’t try that at home, kids.

Mariano struck out two in the ninth and got the save. Brett Gardner helped turn a nifty double play and the deciding hit came from Jorge Posda, who hit a two-run home run in the sixth.

Final Score: Yanks 4, Reds 2.

Good news with Johnny Cueto on the hill for the Reds tonight.

Brett Gardner LF
Curtis Granderson CF
Mark Teixeira 1B
Alex Rodriguez 3B
Nick Swisher RF
Russell Martin C
Eduardo Nunez SS
Ramiro Pena 2B
Brian Gordon RHP

Smile, it won’t mess up your hair…and:

Let’s Go Yank-ees!

[Photo Credit:The Under Girl]

The Bombers are fielding their B squad this afternoon.

Brett Gardner LF
Curtis Granderson CF
Nick Swisher RF
Robinson Cano 2B
Jorge Posada 1B
Eduardo Nunez SS
Ramiro Pena 3B
Francisco Cervelli C
Freddy Garcia RHP

Yet we still root:

Let’s Go Yank-ees!

[Painting by Roger Patrick]

The Book of Dreams

By John Schulian

The stars were beginning to align for me even before I headed to Nashville in early 1974. The previous fall, I’d sold my first story to Sports Illustrated, and it ran a month after I scribbled my last notes at the Grand Ole Opry. The story was about a promoter in Baltimore who put on fights at Steelworkers Hall and ran a gym that was above a strip joint on the Block. I don’t think the guy could have existed anywhere else.  The smell of the sausages at Polock Johnny’s across the street drifted into the gym when the windows were open. You could feel the music downstairs coming through the floor. The promoter’s best fighter kept getting the clap from the dancers. And I thought I captured it all perfectly. A fat lot I knew.

I wasn’t given to asking other people their opinion of my work, but this time a voice in my head said I’d better stash my pride. If I screwed up the story, I might never get another shot at SI. So I took my deathless prose to an editor in the Evening Sun’s business department and asked him to read it. He wasn’t a close friend and his conversation usually had an edge to it, but I trusted him to be unsparing. And he was. When he walked up with his verdict, there was a wary little half-smile on his face. “If I was you,” he said, “I’d hit me with a sack of snot for what I’m going to say.” In short, the piece was good enough for the Evening Sun and most any other newspaper, but it wasn’t good enough for Sports Illustrated.

I spent the next couple of nights tearing it apart, reworking the structure and figuring out new transitions. I knew I had a winner as soon as I wrote my first sentence: “Baltimore is a gritty old strumpet of a city where unwritten sociological imperatives require a boxing arena to have Polish bakeries on one side, steel mills on another, and redneck bars all around.”

SI called the story “On the Block — Way of All Flesh,” and it wound up in the old “Best Sports Stories” anthology and put my name in bright lights. Tony Kornheiser told me years later that when he read the piece, he knew there was a new gun in town. He wanted to work at SI as badly as I did, and there were hundreds of other writers out there who had the same dream. SI was the holy grail.

Getting in “Best Sports Stories 1975” was the first time I felt like I’d really accomplished something professionally. I’d been fascinated with the anthology since I discovered it at Northwestern, mainly because it showcased the kind of writing I wanted to do. There were always big names like Red Smith and Jimmmy Cannon in the book, but the ones who captured my attention were writers from places other than New York who were doing great things: Myron Cope in Pittsburgh, Sandy Grady in Philadelphia, Wells Twombly in Houston and Detroit and San Francisco, even a young Philly basketball writer named Joe McGinniss, who went on to write “The Selling of the President” after he infiltrated Nixon’s 1972 campaign.

When the Evening Sun made me a one-man bureau in Harford County, I checked the public library there and found an even better collection of the “Best Sports Stories” anthologies than Northwestern’s. Every now and then, I’d slip down to the library and grab one. And I wasn’t just reading the stories. I was reading the bios of the authors who wrote them. I wanted to see where they came from and if the path I was on bore any resemblance to the one they had traveled. As soon as my story about the fight promoter ran in SI, I knew I was going to submit it to “Best Sports Stories.” I found out I’d made the book when a copy landed on the front porch of my $155-a-month furnished apartment. I was thrilled, naturally, but there was more to what I was feeling than that. I felt like I’d finally done something that would last longer than a day, something with permanence. Hell, my story was in a book.

It wasn’t that much longer before there was a year when “Best Sports Stories” didn’t come out. The editors had gotten old and one of them had died, and nobody had stepped forward to replace them. I wrote an essay for Inside Sports in which I said goodbye and, lo and behold, someone at the Sporting News read it and jumped in to bring the anthology back to life. It’s long gone now, of course, replaced by Glenn Stout’s more sophisticated and vastly superior “Best American Sports Writing” series, but I’m glad I got to do “Best Sports Stories” a good turn. I owed it.

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[Illustrations by David Noyes]