Yanks are in Detroit to start the week. Tonight, they’ll face the tough Alfredo Simon.
Jacoby Ellsbury CF
Brett Gardner LF
Alex Rodriguez DH
Mark Teixeira 1B
Carlos Beltran RF
Brian McCann C
Chase Headley 3B
Stephen Drew 2B
Didi Gregorius SS
Never mind .500:
Let’s Go Yank-ees!
Over at the Daily Beast, check out Philip Caputo’s excellent Esquire profile of William Styron:
A private man when compared to professional celebrities, say, Mailer, he did not wish to pursue the subject any further. Prying into a living writer’s personal life, he said, was “trivial, a degrading pastime that is best left to gossip columnists. What’s important is a writer’s work.”
And how, at sixty, did he assess his work, I asked, mentioning that writer Richard Yates had described him as “probably the finest living novelist we have.”
Styron’s self-appraisal was more modest. “I have created and, I hope, will continue to create a few people whom readers will want to read about after I’m gone,” he said. “I still feel that I have years ahead of me to be able to say more with the same talent that I have been endowed with.”
A few months after he said that, Styron very nearly lost those years, and the talent that had produced Lie Down in Darkness and Sophie’s Choice collapsed to the point that he could not read and comprehend a simple newspaper article, let alone write anything. The disease that struck him used to be called melancholia. Its current name is clinical depression—a cloak of despair that falls over a man or woman and makes every waking moment so painful that the victim loses all desire to live.
I was made aware of his breakdown last fall, when Styron called me at my home in Key West and told me he was suffering from a profound depression, which, he then thought, had been caused by tranquilizers prescribed to ease his withdrawal from alcohol. He was, he’d said, considering committing himself to a psychiatric hospital.
The news shocked me because I had formed an image of him as a contented man—contented, that is, compared to other novelists I knew, including myself. Naively, I had persuaded myself that his stable marriage, affluence, and “literary gentleman” style of life had insulated him from the grave misfortunes that seem to befall most American writers.
l heard nothing from or about him for weeks; then, in the winter, I learned from a New York magazine editor that Styron had been committed to the psychiatric ward of Yale-New Haven hospital.
There was no other word until this spring, when the same editor telephoned with what might be called the good news and the bad news. Good news first: Styron had been released. The bad news was, he’d been so ravaged by his bout with depression that he had abandoned The Way of the Warrior. Worse, the editor implied, Styron’s career might be at an end. This information was more than distressing; I refused to accept the idea that Styron’s voice could be silenced by anything short of death. I wrote him a letter, a somewhat embarrassing letter, for it was full of tough-guy, gung-ho attempts at reinspiring him, the sort of thing a corner-man might say to an exhausted fighter, but inappropriate when addressed to a sixty-year-old author recovering from a nervous breakdown. The gist of it was that writers sometimes need as much courage as warriors, courage of a different kind. If he was abandoning his book for artistic reasons; that was one thing, I said; but if he was doing so because he no longer felt up to it, he had to force himself to keep going. I then invoked the “never retreat, never surrender” spirit of the Marine Corps. It would not have surprised me if Styron had not bothered to reply to such rah-rah, but I received an encouraging answer in early April.
“Let me say again how grateful I am to you for your letter,” he wrote. “Corny as it may appear, it seems that only a Marine can be truly aware of another Marine’s suffering; you gave me a nice jolt of good cheer. Thanks from the depths. I’m pleased and proud of your friendship.”
And I was pleased that I had done some good after all. Still more pleasing was the news that he had not given up on The Way of the Warrior.
“It’s not so much abandonment,” he’d said in his letter, “as extreme alteration….I’ve completely restructured the novel.”
Over the phone, we agreed to discuss the book’s radical transformation when I visited New York later in the month.
[Photo Credit: Brigitte Lacombe]
First series win, check; first series sweep, check.
A 5-3 win yesterday afternoon in Tampa puts the Yanks at .500 as they head to Detroit for four games.
Yanks going for the sweep this afternoon in Tampa, trying to to reach .500.
Pineda’s on the mound.
Jacoby Ellsbury CF
Brett Gardner LF
Alex Rodriguez DH
Mark Teixeira 1B
Chase Headley 3B
Stephen Drew 2B
Garrett Jones RF
John Ryan Murphy C
Didi Gregorius SS
Never mind the blossoms:
Let’s Go Yank-ees!
Fresh.
A low-scoring game turning into a blow out thanks to a 7-run 7th inning, highlighted by Chris Young’s grand slam (and off a 3-2 pitch no less). Brian McCann had a big night, a good sign if there ever was one.
Masahiro Tanaka had his best start of the year and the Yanks won, 9-0.
[Photo Via: Street Art NYC]
New York in is in bloom at long last. Yesterday and today are the first ridiculously nice days of the year: warm, sunny, lots of energy, lots of color. I strolled through Central Park last night after work and saw a few ball games.
Tonight, Masahiro looks to give the Yankees their first series win of the year.
Jacoby Ellsbury CF
Brett Gardner LF
Alex Rodriguez DH
Mark Teixeira 1B
Brian McCann C
Chris Young RF
Chase Headley 3B
Stephen Drew SS
Gregorio Petit 2B
Never mind the pollen:
Let’s Go Yank-ees!
Alex Rodriguez had a good spring which seemed like a minor miracle to me. He’s 39, missed a full year, he’s had surgeries on both hips. I just didn’t think he’d be able to hack it, didn’t think he’d make the team out of spring training. But he carried good at bats into the season. Even when he wasn’t driving the ball he wasn’t chasing those tempting breaking balls out of the strike zone. Last night was his best game in a long time as he hit the ball on the nose three times for run-scoring plays.
Rodriguez hit a long home run in his first at bat, off a fastball, giving him three for the season (two of them real shots). Imagine being a has-been and hitting a ball that far? Dag.
Later, he hit another homer, this one a two-run job that tied the game. This one was more like a Mike Piazza home run, a line drive that was hit so hard it didn’t have a chance to curve foul. The pitch was a fastball, inside on the hands, but Rodriguez beat the ball to the spot. Now, I understand if he still has the power to crush a mistake but I did not anticipate him ever turning around a good fastball.
The game stayed tied until the 8th when Rodriguez came through again, this time laying off some good pitches and then smacking a line drive to center for a base hit that drove home Brett Gardner with the go-ahead (and winning) run.
The bullpen was back to its stellar self and the Yanks won, 5-4.
I got an email from a friend after the game. He said, “I don’t want to sound naive, but do really think he’d be stupid enough to take anything after last year. (I know he’d be arrogant enough, just not sure of the stupidity part).” Well, arrogance always trumps intelligence in my book, and of course it’s natural to be suspicious of Rodriguez. But that hasn’t spoiled my enjoyment and watching him locked-in has been one of the few pleasures of this young season for the Yanks. I don’t expect it’ll last. Hot streaks never do. And I seriously doubt that Rodriguez’s body will hold up. All the more reason to enjoy the moment–here and then…gone.
[Photo Credit: Kim Klement/Rueters]
Yanks are in Tampa this weekend. Adam Warren goes tonight.
Jacoby Ellsbury CF
Chase Headley 3B
Carlos Beltran RF
Mark Teixeira 1B
Brian McCann C
Alex Rodriguez DH
Stephen Drew 2B
Chris Young LF
Didi Gregorius SS
Never mind the dome:
Let’s Go Yank-ees!
[Photo Credit: Sherif Elhage via MPD]
“Part of the jam that I was in as a novelist [after his fourth novel, The Breaks], was that I kept going back to my autobiography for material. . . .Life is hard enough without it having to be perpetual material, too. I felt like a cannibal eating his own foot. Once I became a hired pen out there [in Hollywood], for the first time in my life I was forced to leave my own autobiography to research my characters’ lives, and I learned, with great gratification, that talent travels. If you have enough imagination and empathy, you can write about anybody. That was probably the only good thing, tangible good thing, that came to my writing through screenwriting; knowing that I could go anywhere and learn and bring it back home and turn it into art.”
Can you be angry at a team when you’ve got no expectations? The Yanks lost again last night. Had a 3-1 lead, and Eovaldi pitched pretty well but not long enough, and the bullpen blew it. The offense rallied but came up short.
Final Score: Orioles 7, Yanks 5.
I wish I could feel outrage, despair, something other than resignation. But there it is.
It was nice to see Alex Rodriguez’s home run. Man, that was a bomb. I don’t imagine he’ll stay healthy this year but pretty wild to watch a guy well past his prime do something like that.
My great uncle Georgie once came in the bathroom when my cousin Donny was taking a bath. George pointed at Donny and said, “You’re all wet!” He said in an accusing tone that made Donny cry. Donny was too young to realize it was meant as a joke.
What this has to do with tonight’s game I don’t know. Maybe I just like that story. Or maybe I just like this picture of Steve Martin from The Jerk.
Regardless, it’s Eovaldi, Take Deuce in Baltimore.
Jacoby Ellsbury CF
Chase Headley 3B
Carlos Beltran RF
Mark Teixeira 1B
Brian McCann C
Alex Rodriguez DH
Stephen Drew 2B
Chris Young LF
Didi Gregorius SS
Never mind the suds:
Let’s Go Yank-ees!
Ah, man, but I just couldn’t resist.
Here’s the truth of it: I spent more time watching the festive and screwy Mets-Phillies last night because the atmosphere at Citi Field was bumpin’ like it was October. I saw enough of the Yankee game to know how uninspired it was in comparison. They got close, Sabathia wasn’t awful, but it wasn’t enough as they lost, 4-3.
It’s C.C. Take Two.
Jacoby Ellsbury CF
Chase Headley 3B
Carlos Beltran RF
Mark Teixeira 1B
Brian McCann C
Garrett Jones DH
Chris Young LF
Stephen Drew 2B
Didi Gregorius SS
Never mind nuthin’:
Let’s Go Yank-ees!
[Photo Credit: McNair Evans]
Langdon Hammer, the chairman of the English Department at Yale, is the author of a new biography on the poet James Merrill. It looks like a formidable book and in the Times, Dwight Garner calls it “nearly flawless.”
I’m sure the book is an achievement and I’m not interested in minimizing that but I really like what Garner says here:
Mr. Hammer’s book is something close to brilliant, but it would have benefitted from committed liposuction. Its “Shoah”-like length will repel many casual readers, and likely even noncasual ones. While this book is not stuffed with sawdust, 800 pages is a lot of James Merrill, and its girth is admission of a certain kind of failure. Knowing what to omit is as important as knowing what to add.
Last weekend’s reprint at the Daily Beast gave true crime. Dig this fine Albert Borowitz piece on The Medea of Kew Gardens Hills:
On the morning of 14 July 1965, Eddie Crimmins received a telephone call from his estranged wife Alice, accusing him of having taken the children. When she had opened their bedroom door, which she kept locked by a hook-and-eye on the outside, she had seen that the beds had been slept in but Eddie Jr, aged five, and his four-year-old sister Alice (nicknamed Missy) were gone. The casement window was PM cranked open about 75 degrees; Alice remembered having closed it the night before because there was a hole in the screen and she wanted to keep the bugs out. The screen was later found outside, leaning against the wall beneath the window, and nearby was a “porter’s stroller”—a converted baby-carriage with a box on it.
Alice’s husband, an airplane mechanic who worked nights, protested that he knew nothing of the children’s whereabouts and, alarmed by the message, said he would come right over to see her. Alice and the children lived in a dispiriting redbrick apartment complex flatteringly named Regal Gardens, located near the campus of Queens College in the Kew Gardens Hills section of the New York City borough of Queens. Shortly after joining his wife, Eddie called the police, and the first contingent of patrolmen were on the scene in a matter of minutes. By 11 a.m. precinct cars were parked all around the grassy mall adjoining Alice’s apartment building at 150— 22 72nd Drive.
Jerry Piering, who was the first detective to arrive, quickly made the case his own. Hoping for a promotion to second grade on the Queens’ detective command, he immediately sensed that he had stepped into an important investigation. It took only one glance at Alice for him to decide that she did not look the picture of the anxious mother, this striking redhead in her twenties, with thick make-up, hip-hugging toreador slacks, flowered blouse and white high-heeled shoes. Patrolman Michael Clifford had already filled Piering in on the background—the Crimminses were separated and in the middle of a custody fight, but the role that the vanished children might have played in their skirmishing was still obscure.
The first fruits of Piering’s look around the premises confirmed the unfavorable impression Alice had made. In the garbage cans there were about a dozen empty liquor bottles that Alice later attributed to good housekeeping rather than over-indulgence, explaining that she had been cleaning the apartment in anticipation of an inspection visit from a city agency in connection with the custody suit. Still more revealing to Piering was a proverbial “little black book” that Alice had dropped outside; the men listed outnumbered women four to one.
While Piering was making his rounds, Detective George Martin found trophies of Alice’s active social life in a pastel-colored overnight bag stowed under her bed. The greetings and dinner programs that filled the bag documented her relationship with Anthony (Tony) Grace, a fifty-two-year-old highway contractor with ties to important Democratic politicians. Alice’s souvenirs showed that Tony Grace had introduced her to such party stalwarts as Mayor Robert Wagner and Senator Robert Kennedy; messages from Grace and important city officials addressed her as “Rusty.”
[Photo Credit: Tom Gallagher N.Y. Daily News]
The correct answer is D) Zero.
Oh, right, the question. Yeah, the question was: What are the chances that Stephen Drew does anything productive here?
This would be in the top of the 7th inning last night when Drew pinch-hit for Brett Gardner. I mean, when could that ever be a good thing? This was after Jacoby Ellsbury reached on an infield single to load the bases (had Chris Davis made a better play at first the inning would have been over). The Yanks were down a couple of runs and with Drew up I told The Wife there was no way Drew would do anything good. Not a chance. When the count went to 3-1 I told her he was under orders from the Universe to take a strike and try to work a walk. But what does the Universe care about me and what do I know about the Bigger Questions?
Because Drew swung at the 3-1 pitch and hit a grand slam.
That was enough to survive a shaky appearance by Dellin Betances as the Yanks won, 6-5. Andrew Miller got the last five outs.
[Photo Credit: Jill Freedman via Time]
It’s Pineda tonight as the Yanks start a thee-game series in Baltimore.
Jacoby Ellsbury CF
Brett Gardner LF
Carlos Beltran DH
Mark Teixeira 1B
Alex Rodriguez 3B
Chris Young RF
John Ryan Murphy C
Didi Gregorius SS
Gregorio Petit 2B
Never mind dem boids”
Let’s Go Yank-ees!
[Photo Credit: The Retrologist]
From Whitney Balliett’s book American Musicians: Fifty-Six Portraits in Jazz:
The Cape Cod pianist Marie Marcus came to New York from Boston to do a radio show in 1932, when she was eighteen. Her experience had been limited to Boston radio shows and to playing for a week at a Chinese restaurant called the Mahjong. “Tillie’s Kitchen, in Harlem, was a fried-chicken place,” she has said, “and Bob Howard, who sounded just like Fats Waller, was on piano. We went up there quite often, and one night Fats himself came in. I remember the whole room lighted up. He played, and then listened, and when I’d finished, he pointed to his heart, and said, ‘For a white gal, you sure got it there.’ We got to talking, and I told him that I would like to further my education in jazz, and did he know a good teacher? He looked at me and said, ‘How about me?’ I thought he was putting me on, but he wasn’t. He had a small office, with two pianos, in the Brill Building, at 1619 Broadway, and during the next year or so, when he wasn’t on the road or making records, he’d call me up and say, ‘Come on down and let’s play some paino.’ You couldn’t exactly call them lessons. We’d play duets, and then he’d play, and have me listen carefully to the things he did. He was very serious when we were working together, and I was grateful for every minute. He’d tell me, ‘When you’re playing jazz, remember the rhythm, remember the rhythm. Make the number of notes count. Tell a story, and get that feeling across to the people. Please the people by making it come from here.”
[Photo Credit: Time Life Pictures/Getty]
