NLCS Game Twoski.

The ALDS continues…

[Photo Credit: Eric Gay/AP Photo]

Hugo Pratt.

From Eater, here’s a brief Q&A with Eric Ripert on the Art of Fine Dining and Not Being a Jerk:

ER: I used to be a very authoritative chef — a young, borderline violent dictator. Very intolerant, insulting my cooks, screaming in the kitchen, breaking china. But I wasn’t happy and my team wasn’t happy. In 2000, I started to contemplate what had gone on in my career. I was losing a lot of employees and was confused. So I decided to change the way we manage people. I realized that you couldn’t be happy if you had anger. It’s a very simple thought. But it helped me decide to not be abusive any longer. We decided to change.

But how did you manage to transmit that to your staff?

ER: It took me a long time to pass that to my cooks — there was a lot of resilience. I couldn’t yell at someone for yelling, so I had to be very patient and explain that yelling is not good. First of all, you’re not happy. Second, the cook you just yelled at is scared. Third, the team isn’t happy. And it creates an ambiance in the kitchen which is not productive. I want a peaceful environment. It took us a while, but today we have arrived at a certain level of management where the team is happy to be together and work together, and it stays that way even at our busiest times. The chefs don’t yell and scream, and there is no drama.

Sometimes we have lapses. It’s not like every day is joyful. But when we have a bad day, we recognize it and try to compensate for the mistake and move on. Sometimes a guy will flip.

Do you ever flip?

ER: The other day I said something mean to a sous chef. I didn’t really scream, but I knew I got him. I regretted it, apologized, and that was that.

But I notice the success in the turnover. People will stay, even line cooks, for three years. They feel that they are part of the experiment, and they realize that you can do good food, under pressure, without being an asshole.

Go figure that.

So one of our own, Brian, is a barber. He recently moved to New York from the west coast and is setting up shop at a place called FSC Barber (there are two locations downtown, he’s at 5 Horatio Street in the west village). He’s there, Monday through Wednesday (11-8) for the next two weeks, in audition-mode. As a result, he’s giving haircuts and shaves for free. Go in and ask for Brian. Tell him the Banter sent you.

And that’s word to your barber.

Happy Birthday.

If the Phone Doesn’t Ring

By John Schulian

It took me a year to realize my career was in free fall, but it wasn’t because I was extraordinarily dim or yet another example of the writer being the last to know. Even with the taint of my lost season at “Reasonable Doubts” fresh upon me, I got enviable gigs. The first, an assignment to write an HBO movie about Mike Tyson, actually had me thinking it might be a springboard to bigger things than episodic TV. At the very least, I expected to learn something from the producer I was working for, a walking piece of history named Edgar Scherick. He was a screamer, old Edgar was, but when a man can say he produced movies like “Take the Money and Run” and “The Taking of Pelham One Two Three” and put “The Fugitive” and “Wide World of Sports” on TV, allowances are made.

I have this memory of him nervously chewing hard candy as we worked on the Tyson story in fits and starts. He’d stop in the middle of sentences to take a call, or yell at his assistant to call someone for him, or order one of the bright lads in his employ to fetch this, that or the other thing. And then he’d pick up our conversation exactly where he had left it. He was smart in a Hollywood way, and in a read-the-classics way, too. And if I thought he was nuts, well, sometimes it couldn’t be helped. Maybe you’ve heard how Scott Rudin, a Scherick protégé who became a hugely successful producer, forced one of the over-educated serfs in his employ to get out of their car while they were on the freeway. I’ve heard it said that Rudin learned that trick from the master.

No sooner had Edgar and I begun collaborating than two friends, Ken Solarz and Jacob Epstein, offered me a job as a consulting producer on an attempt to resurrect “The Untouchables” as a syndicated series. They hired David Israel, too, but more important, they caved in to my most hubristic act in Hollywood. I said I only wanted to come into the office on Mondays because that was the day my cleaning lady was at the house–and they let me get away with it. It was the act of a prize horse’s ass and I soon paid for it.

First, HBO put a new executive in charge of the Tyson movie. His predecessor was Eva Marie Saint’s daughter, who couldn’t get past the idea that Tyson was an icky rapist. There was no denying it, of course, but he was also a kid who was formed by the hellhole in which he had grown up, and that was something Edgar and I very much wanted to address. And then there were the deaths of Cus D’Amato and Jimmy Jacobs, who were Tyson’s guiding lights. Don King compounded the odds against Tyson when he filled the void by warping the kid’s perspective and relieving him of vast portions of his fortune. Which was all fine and dandy, but HBO’s new executive still wanted to bring in his own writer. He didn’t bother to meet me or even pick up the phone. I was gone, and I hadn’t written so much as FADE IN.

HBO ended up paying me every cent I would have received if I’d gone the distance with the script. But money was beside the point. I’d missed a chance to take a step toward writing movies.

I gave myself 15 minutes to feel bad. Then I had to get back to work on a script for “The Untouchables.” As fate would have it, it was about a boxer. The show’s executive producer said he loved it–and then he said he wanted me to change it entirely by ripping off “Detective Story,” a hit Broadway play that had become a Kirk Douglas movie in the 1950s. The friends who had hired Israel and me were long gone, leaving us in the clutches of this emaciated, overmedicated madman who, according to rumors, had made so much money that he once bought an airplane he never learned how to fly. He just wanted to say he had one. Whatever, I told him I wasn’t ripping off anything. He responded exactly as I expected him to. He fired me.

My phone didn’t ring for the next year.

While show business rolled on without me, I lived through the death of my mother and an earthquake that did major damage to my home. I wrote for Sports Illustrated, GQ, Philadelphia magazine, and the L.A. Times Book Review. I even ran into an executive I knew from Stephen Cannell’s company who said, “I was just telling someone today that we need a great writer like John Schulian.” I wasn’t cheeky enough to tell him the genuine article was his for the asking.

The agents who had been telling me what a big deal I was–young men on the make, every one of them–acted as though I no longer existed. The only agents who looked after me were female, and you can make of that what you will. Nancy Jones, Sue Naegle, and Jill Holwager took turns calling every week or two to pump up my spirits by saying they were looking for work for me. It was a kindness I’m not sure I thanked them for–until now.

The lack of a TV job, with its long hours and attendant pressures, may have been a blessing because my life was in tumult. There would be no more Sunday afternoon visits on the phone with my mother, and there wasn’t a wall in my house the quake hadn’t cracked. For the second time in my adult life, I needed to get my feet under me. The difference this time was that I had every confidence I would. I began my resurrection by adapting a short story for a hard-boiled anthology series that A&E never put on the air. Then I wrote an episode of “Lonesome Dove” for an old friend from “Midnight Caller” who was trying to turn it into a syndicated series. The “Lonesome Dove” project turned out to be a fiasco, but at least I had some money coming in and my name was back in circulation.

And then along came “Hercules.”

It was hardly the kind of show I’d dreamed of doing, but as Steven Bochco had told me, you go where the work is. Sam Raimi and Rob Tapert, two friends from Detroit who had scored big with horror movies, were making “Hercules” their first venture into TV. Or rather Tapert was doing it while Raimi tried to get his directing career back on the tracks. “Evil Dead” and “Army of Darkness” had made him a cult hero, but his latest effort, a Sharon Stone western called “The Quick and the Dead,” had stalled at the box office, and he was a million miles creatively from rebounding with “A Simple Plan,” a wonderful, un-Raimi-like movie, and “Spiderman.” The times I saw him, and they weren’t many, he was wandering around the Raimi-Tapert offices on the Universal lot, looking like he’d taken one too many punches. Tapert, on the other hand, was wired. He saw TV as a chance to prove that he brought as much to the party in his way as his illustrious partner did in his.

I was the guy Tapert hired to lead him and Sam into the world of episodic TV. They had already done five “Hercules” movies for TV, and they had fought every step of the way with the series’ creator, Christian Williams, who was coincidentally a former Washington Post reporter. It was hard to tell who hated whom more, but suffice it to say Chris was long gone by the time I walked through the door.

However much blood had been spilled behind the scenes, I still liked what I saw when I watched the “Hercules” movies–the big action sequences, the special effects, the stunning locations in New Zealand, and especially the star. Tapert and Raimi, to their everlasting credit, had passed on that cyborg Dolph Lundren and chosen a clean-cut unknown from Minnesota named Kevin Sorbo. Kevin was strapping without being muscle bound, and he possessed an amiable, self-deprecating screen presence, a nice way with humor, and the ability to tap into his emotions on those rare occasions when a scene called for it.

One more thing I liked about the show: it was, at its roots, a western. Hercules wanders the countryside, finds people who need his help, comes through for them in a big way, and moves on. Hell, I’d been working on plots like that since I was a kid drawing movies on strips of paper. So I went in thinking I would have fun doing “Hercules” even though it was a decided step down in class from what I’d worked on before. I’d just brainwash myself so I could pretend it was the 1950s and I was heading to Universal every day to write sword-and-sandal movies or Audie Murphy westerns. And it worked–but only for a little while.

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

Alex Rodriguez has been getting killed by the press since the Yanks were bounced last week, but that’s nothing new. He’s getting killed by fans–at least the ones I’ve talked to–and that, too, is nothing new. The one Yankee player who has benefitted most from this is Mark Teixeira. Over at SI.com, Tom Verducci weighs in:

Teixeira, who came to the Yankees as a .290 career hitter, followed that .256 season with another decline, to .248. Put him in a postseason environment, with better pitching and home runs tougher come to come by, and Teixeira’s rally-killing style is going to be more pronounced. He has hit .167 over his last 108 postseason at-bats.

His troubles are particularly acute from the left side. Teixeira batted .224 from the left side this year while getting only four hits all year to the opposite field.

His batting average on balls in play has dropped every year with the Yankees: .302, .268, .239. That’s not unlucky. It’s symptomatic of his hitting style. His fly ball rate has increased every year as a Yankee (37 in 2008, followed by 44, 46, 47). His infield pop-ups, which are no different than strikeouts, and were as low as 14 in 2008, have grown to 21, 30 and 27 as a Yankee.

Teixeira’s swing simply is not built to make him a consistent clutch hitter. After coming to the Yankees with a .308 average with runners in scoring position in 2008, he hasn’t come close to that kind of reliability with New York (.264, .273, .268) — especially in the postseason environment.

Teixeira turns 32 years old next season. The Yankees already have age-related issues with Alex Rodriguez and Derek Jeter. You can put Teixeira in that category, not because of health, but because his pull-happy, fly ball swing is the kind that doesn’t age well, sort of like those of J.D. Drew and Adam Dunn.

I wonder how long before Teixeira starts to feel the heat?

More playoff baseball.

Have at it:

Happy October.

[Photo Credit: It’s a Long Season]

Al Davis died yesterday.

He was 82 and he was as big a legend as the NFL has ever seen.

Is there a better baseball writer in the country than Tyler Kepner? And I’m not just talking about newspapers. If so, please let me know because I’m missing something special. Kepner covered the Mets beat and then the Yankees beat for the New York Times before becoming the paper’s general baseball writer/columnist. His work features measured, even-handed analysis, good reporting, and, oh yeah, the guy can actually write. He’s just getting better and better. I got to thinking about him when I opened the sports section of the Times this morning. There are few sports writers than have all of Kepner’s skills these days and I, for one, am grateful to have him on the scene.

Also in the Times today is a long feature by Ken Belson on Hideki Irabu.

Rangers vs. Tigers Game Thread.

Verlander  to bring the heat.

Let’s Go Base-ball.

[Photo Credit: Bitchassbidness]

In the end it wasn’t the pitching that did in the Yankees, it was the hitting. The Yankees could not even score three runs in the most important game of the season. They managed only two runs–on a total of ten hits. It wasn’t for a lack of effort, but there wasn’t a clutch hit to be found the entire night, with the exception of Jorge Posada’s fourth inning single that loaded the bases before Russell Martin and Brett “The Jet” Gardner ended the inning with back-to-back pop ups. By my count, the Yankees missed at least seven or eight down-the-middle fastballs, pitches that were hittable, but ended up as nothing more than foul balls or called strikes.

In the three losses the Yankees sustained, they scored three runs, four runs, and two runs. When the games were close, the Yankees could not score enough. They won the blowouts, but they could not win the one and two-run games that are so prevalent throughout the season, or in this case, a short playoff series.

In a way, I’m not surprised. I’ve heard out-of-town broadcasters refer to the Yankees’ offense as a “powerhouse” or as a “juggernaut” or as “relentless.” My reaction to that is this: these guys didn’t watch the Yankees play much this season. The Yankees’ offense was hardly relentless. They didn’t even finish first in the league in runs scored; they finished second to the Red Sox, whose season went up in flames largely because their pitching staff exploded. The Yankees ran hot and cold offensively, they were very good at times, and they hit a lot of home runs, but they were sporadic with runners in scoring position. They were not a powerhouse. This was not the “Big Red Machine” or “Murderers’ Row.” Not even close.

So what do the Yankees need to do elevate the offense, particularly in the postseason? It would be helpful to break up the futile threesome of Alex Rodriguez, Mark Teixeira, and Nick Swisher, who once again failed to come up big in the playoffs. All of the blame tends to get put on A-Rod, but Tex has been as much of a black hole with his exaggerated uppercut and pull swing. (He needs to do some serious work with Kevin Long in the spring and get back to being the all-fields hitter he was in Texas and Anaheim.) A-Rod and Teixeira are not tradeable because of their long contracts, so it might be time to trade Swisher and make room for some new blood in right field. I like Swisher, and I love his enthusiasm, but his inability to hit in the postseason has become a problem.

It would also help the Yankees if they make Jesus Montero a featured part of their offense. There is no way that Jorge Posada will be coming back; even though he was one of the few hitters who showed up against the Tigers, he was unproductive for most of the summer and was inadequate as a DH. It’s time to get younger. Montero, who should have received more at-bats as a pinch-hitter against the Tigers, can move into the DH role and bat sixth or seventh from day one. He is the real deal offensively, a player who will hit for average and power, and it is time to stop sending him back to Scranton/Wilkes Barre. It is also time to stop shopping him for pitching. The Yankees need a better and younger offense, just like they need better pitching. They need to keep Montero.

This is not to say that the Yankees should make pitching a secondary priority. Regardless of whether CC Sabathia opts out of his contract, they need to think about free agents like C.J. Wilson and Edwin Jackson. They need to think about trading Swisher for a capable No. 4 starter and/or some left-handed help in the bullpen. And, to borrow a phrase from Bill Parcells, they need to take the Huggies off of Phil Hughes and let him pitch every fifth day and let him strengthen his arm by pitching more–not less. If the Yankees do these things, along with bringing Sabathia back, their starting pitching should be stronger in 2012.

In the meantime, we are left with a disappointing finish to a season. Unlike some, I don’t consider the season a total failure without a World Series championship. I can take some solace in Derek Jeter reaching 3,000, Mariano Rivera becoming the all-time saves leader, and the Yankees winning a division title in a year in which the Red Sox were supposed to be the team to beat.

So there is some consolation in that. I just hope that Brian Cashman and the Yankees don’t find too much consolation, because there is work that needs to be done to help the Yankees take three more steps in 2012.

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

Yeah, it’s a bummer how the Yankees’ season ended but can anyone remember a two-week stretch this late in the baseball season that’s been this good? Here’s hoping the Championship Series and Whirled Serious measure up.

[Photo Credit: Phelim Hoey]

Brewers vs. Diamondbacks followed by Phils and Cards. Game Five.

Chat here.

[Featured image by: food addict]

The latest chatter with the one and only Ted Berg.

In which SNY hits the bleep button.

Another Yankee season is over. This was the ninth season that we’ve covered here at Bronx Banter and once again, it’s been too much fun, hanging with you, growing and living life with you. And we ain’t going anywhere. This is a 365-day-a-year jernt.

Keep coming back. We’ll keep diggin’ up the good stuff fuh ya.

Checking out Rothko at the MET.

[Photo Credit: The Painter’s Keys]

Carrying a Kindle on the subway is not big deal. Nobody wants to steal a Kindle. They want iPads and iPhones. But while I was away, my wife started up with the Kindle and I’ve got to switch to other reading. I wouldn’t mind carrying a book or a magazine or something, but I’m halfway through the fifth book of the Song of Ice and Fire series and I’m not stopping there. It would be like pausing to set up camp on the final quarter of the descent from Everest.

But that leaves the tablet or the phone as my reading choices. The phone is too small for me. But damn, I did not feel comfortable at all whipping that other thing out. It’s a little too heavy for super-easy handling and it’s incredibly conspicuous. It’s designed to catch your eye after all. One of the stops on my route is notorious for ripping off iPads, and I looked down to see that I’m clutching the corners with white fingertips.

I’ve got to get that Kindle back, Daenerys Targaryen is counting on me.

Nicole Franzen visits the greenmarket.