Head on over to Slugball Radio and listen to me schmooze with host Matt Hughes.\

Or just click play below:

[Photo Via: Nieman Journalism Lab]

Any win is a good win, Nu? Good ol’ Hiroki.

Picture by Bags. 

The ship be sinkin’…

Jacoby Ellsbury CF
Derek Jeter SS
Brett Gardner LF
Carlos Beltran DH
Mark Teixeira 1B
Brian McCann C
Chase Headley 3B
Stephen Drew 2B
Ichiro Suzuki RF

It’s our man Hiroki.

Never mind the bollocks:

Let’s Go Yank-ees!

Drawing by Herge.

My baby…

Painting by Aurél Bernáth.

“Kitchen Window Flowers” By Tollef Runquist (2011)

Brett Gardner batted with bases loaded and two outs in the fifth. He represented the tying run. The home plate ump rang him up on a pitch that split the border of Weehawken and Hoboken. Gardner unleashed the power of a thousand exploding suns, or at least a bunch of frustrated Yankee fans.  He got ejected and, yeah, it was worth it.

It’s hard to believe, but the Yankees actually had a legitimate shot to win this game before Gardner got tossed. They opened that inning with five straight base runners. But because Carlos Beltran could not score from second on a double over the head of Cespedes (he got a bad read, he’s old, he’s slow, the there were no outs, the ball was somewhat close to being caught, all true, but gotta score on a clear double from second base unless your hamsting rips apart) Martin Prado ran up the back of Brian McCann at second and was tagged out. They still ended up scoring two runs in the inning, but with the gift out on the bases and the bridge and tunnel whiff of Gardner, the Red Sox only needed to get one out on their own. 

That’s not to say the Yankees didn’t get walloped. They lost 9-4 as the youngsters from Boston clobbered homers off an off-model Shane Greene. I know this is heresy, but I like both Mookie Betts and Xander Bogaerts and am kind of excited to see what they become.

The loss was awful and the Yankees look less and less like a team that will play meaningful baseball in September. That’s OK. When they lost four of six in Detroit and Toronto, that was the official sign to stop thinking about October. Of course there’s no reason to write them off until they’re eliminated, but I no longer feel the need to check the standings or the scores of the more realistic contenders. If they play improbably great baseball for the rest of the month and get back into it, fabulous.

Photo by Rich Schultz/Getty Images

The Yanks host the Sox and there ain’t much at stake but the Bombers’ flickering playoff hopes.

All that and Zoilo Almonte was designated for assignment. At least Zelous is still around.

CF Jacoby Ellsbury
SS Derek Jeter
LF Brett Gardner
1B Mark Teixeira
RF Carlos Beltran
DH Brian McCann
2B Martin Prado
3B Chase Headley
C Francisco Cervelli

Never mind the call ups:

Let’s Go Yank-ees!

Picture by Bags. 

Roger Angell on DJ:

All right, I’ll settle for one more inside-out line-drive double to deep right —the Jeter Blue Plate that’s been missing of late. It still astounds me—Derek’s brilliance as a hitter has always felt fresh and surprising, for some reason—and here it comes one more time. The pitch is low and inside, and Derek, pulling back his upper body and tucking in his chin as if avoiding an arriving No. 4 train, now jerks his left elbow and shoulder sharply upward while slashing powerfully down at and through the ball, with his hands almost grazing his belt. His right knee drops and twists, and the swing, opening now, carries his body into a golf-like lift and turn that sweetly frees him while he watches the diminishing dot of the ball headed toward the right corner. What! You can’t hit like that—nobody can! Do it again, Derek.

It’s sobering to think that in just a few weeks Derek Jeter won’t be doing any of this anymore, and will be reduced to picturing himself in action, just the way the rest of us do. On the other hand, he’s never complained, and he’s been so good at baseball that he’ll probably be really good at this part of it too.

HD.

And if you haven’t seen it, check out Margaret Talbot’s 2007 New Yorker profile of David Simon.

Is there anything more precious in New York than space? Say you are standing on an avenue–Amsterdam or Columbus. A clutch of vehicles pass by and then there is nothing. You look down the avenue and there is space. For a New Yorker, this is a small luxury because the space is perishable. In another moment, the next procession of cars and trucks come along. But for a moment, the sense of space is beautiful.

Which is why Labor Day Weekend is my favorite holiday of the year in New York. You’ve got space. It is quiet. And soon, that will gone, replaced by returning vacationers, kids ready to go to school, people back to work.

Today is the most acute because now we’re down to a matter of hours before the city music begins again. But this morning, even into the late afternoon, it’s still and calm here in New York. Summer. Corn and tomatoes and long days. Drink it in. Watch some baseball. Listen to some tunes. Or just walk around, feel the space, and enjoy the silence.

Yanks are off today but there are other games on TV all afternoon.

Happy living, y’all.

[Photo Credit: Danielle Hughson]

A plump 3-0 lead, Bradon McCarthy pitching well, 2 outs in the 6th inning. Sunday looking like a good day for the Yanks. Then Melky Cabrera hits a bomb, and Jose Bautista hits a shot (he’s homered in his last five games). Edwin Encarnacion joined the party with a solo blast of his own in the 7th, and a base hit off the otherwise stellar Dellin Betances resulted into a close play at the plate and when the smoke cleared the Jays went ahead, where they’d stay to beat the Yanks, 4-3.

Yanks got the tying run on second with one out in the 9th, and then had him 90 feet away with two out for Derek Jeter. But the captain didn’t have a headline in him, just another weak, harmless line out to second.

Couple of painful losses this weekend, Juice. Brutal.

[Picture by Hugo Pratt]

…In these Yankees? Do they have a ’95 September run in them? Remember when it was Mattingly’s last month of baseball. Mebbe they’s kin do something likewise for DJ.

The most effective Mr. McCarthy’s on the mound today:

Brett Gardner CF
Derek Jeter DH
Martin Prado 2B
Mark Teixeira 1B
Carlos Beltran RF
Chase Headley 3B
Francisco Cervelli C
Stephen Drew SS
Zelous Wheeler LF

Never mind the breaks:

[Picture by Bags]

Michael Pineda made one mistake, hung one breaking ball, and Jose Bautista hit it, good for a 2-run homer. The Yankees managed one hit. That’s how it’s been and that’s how it went yesterday as the Blue Jays won, 2-0.

Onward.

[Photo Via: The Minimalisto]

It’s the big fella, Pineda. Yo, we haven’t talked about it much but the one thing that stands out to me about Pineda is his swagger. He’s got great stuff, clearly, and some attitude to back it up. Yanks haven’t had a cocky dude like him as a starter for awhile.

The boys need him to be on today. Ellsbury’s out of the line-up.

Brett Gardner CF

Derek Jeter SS

Carlos Beltran DH

Mark Teixeira 1B

Brian McCann C

Martin Prado LF

Stephen Drew 2B

Chase Headley 3B

Ichiro Suzuki RF

Never mind nuthin’: Let’s Go Yank-ees!

[Picture by Bags]

Down 1-0 after 6, man, it looked like another one of those nights. But then the Yanks scored 5 runs, added another one late on a solo home run by Jacoby Ellsbury, as they beat the Jays 6-3.

Nice job by Chris Capuano who told reporters after the game, “I couldn’t be prouder to get a win as a Yankee. It feels really good.”

It ain’t over.

[Picture by Bags]

Yanks are on the edge of something exciting or something depressing.

They’ll play three this weekend in Toronto.

Jacoby Ellsbury CF
Derek Jeter SS
Martin Prado 3B
Mark Teixeira 1B
Brian McCann C
Carlos Beltran DH
Brett Gardner LF
Ichiro Suzuki RF
Stephen Drew 2B

Never mind the bollocks:

Let’s Go Yank-ees!

[Photo Credit: Morgan Maassen via This Isn’t Happiness]

For the next week at the Film Forum, a restored print of Bertolucci’s classic. 

Fun.

[Photo Credit: YES Tours]

My glass is always half full, but I had a bad feeling heading into this game. When the news first broke that Jusin Verlander was being pushed in favor of a kid making his major league debut, the prevailing thought was that the Yankees had caught a huge break by avoiding the former Cy Young winner. My first response? “Oh, no.”

I seem to remember seeing some statistics indicating that the Yankees don’t perform as poorly as we think they do against rookies, but my memory tells a different story. Even when the Yankees were regularly running roughshod over the American League, unknown pitchers were their Kryptonite, and so it was on Thursday afternoon at Comerica Park in Detroit.

Hiroki Kuroda, as usual, was good enough to win, even though he didn’t. He pitched seven strong innings, giving up just two runs while allowing only four singles and a walk, an effort the team would clearly have signed up for on Thursday morning.

The problem, of course, is that Detroit’s Kyle Lobstein was just as good — or more accurately, just as effective. He didn’t strike out a single hitter, and Yankee batters were able to hit several balls hard, but it never amounted to anything. He lasted six innings, yielded only four hits, a walk, and two runs (one earned).

As a result, the game zipped into the late innings tied at two, with each team desperate for a win to get closer to a playoff spot, and each team squandering opportunities. Dellin Betances took over for Kuroda in the eighth and eventually found himself facing the best hitter on the planet with two outs and the potential winning run on second base. Demonstrating his growing confidence and maturity, Betances didn’t give in to the temptation to prove his strength by overpowering Miguel Cabrera with a triple-digit fastball. Instead, he froze him with two consecutive 82 MPH curveballs. Cabrera let the first go by without a swing, then waved feebly at the second to strikeout and end the inning.

In the top of the ninth, facing Grizzly Chamberlain, the Yankees mounted a two-out rally. Mark Teixeira walked, Carlos Beltrán singled him to third, and Brian McCann came to the plate needing only a single to put his team in position to win. Joba elevated his second pitch, and McCann absolutely crushed it — but it hooked to the wrong side of the foul pole, leaving the Yankees only inches from what would’ve been a three-run lead. Joba pumped two more pitches past him and the inning was over.

Betances had thrown only 13 pitches in the eighth, so I hoped he’d come back for the ninth, but instead we were treated to Shawn “Horsehead” Kelley. The trouble started immediately. Victor Martínez led off with a double deep into the right field corner, then J.D. Martínez milked a seven-pitch walk and the Tigers had runners on first and second with none out. From there he dug his hole even deeper, working himself into a 3-2 count on Nick Castellanos before recovering with a perfect pitch on the outside corner for a called strike three. Next he toyed with pinch hitter Torii Hunter, overpowering him with 95-97 MPH fastballs and teasing him with marginal sliders before finally finishing him with the heater.

There was hope. As I saw the rest of the game in my mind’s eye, I imagined Kelley overpowering Alex Avila — perhaps striking him out on three pitches — and charging off the mound and into an energized Yankee dugout. His teammates would undoubtedly parlay that momentum into a tenth-inning rally, David Robertson would come in for the save, and the Yankees would escape from Detroit that much closer to the playoffs.

In the time that it took that daydream to wind its way through the corners of my optimistic brain, Avila strolled to the plate, took a hack at Kelley’s first pitch (an inviting slider rather than a crackling fastball), and rocketed it towards the wall in right center. Ichiro raced out towards the gap, but he wasn’t able to make the play (replays showed that perhaps he should’ve made the play), and the game was over.

Kelley was beaten with his second-best pitch, and he seemed to know it. He slammed his mitt to the turf in frustration, and when asked afterwards about how he felt, his answer was direct. “About as bad as I’ve felt walking off a mound in my career. Not good.”

Is this loss worse than any of the other bad losses we’ve suffered through this season? Probably not, but it stings a bit more simply because it reminds of who this team actually is. They simply aren’t going to win six of every seven games they play, but there’s still hope. Masahiro Tanaka is pitching simulated games, Michael Piñeda continues to dominate, Shane Greene has been great, Brandon McCarthy has been much better than anyone could’ve expected, and Hiroki Kuroda has now had three solid starts in a row.

Games like this are frustrating, but it’s not the end of the world. I promise.

Afternoon Delight.

Jacoby Ellsbury CF
Derek Jeter SS
Martin Prado 2B
Mark Teixeira 1B
Carlos Beltran DH
Brian McCann C
Chase Headley 3B
Brett Gardner LF
Zelous Wheeler RF

Never mind the sunshine:

Let’s Go Yank-ees!

[Photo Credit: Chris Heads]