Mike Flanagan, a former pitcher for the Baltimore Orioles–and a damned good one–is dead.
Mike Flanagan, left, with his manager, Earl Weaver
He was tough on the Yanks. I remember watching him pitch when I was a kid. Sad news, indeed.
[Photo Credit: Yahoo!]
‘Tis the season.
At the famrer’s market this morning.
Tip your hat to Coco Crisp. He beat CC Sabathia, David Robertson and Rafael Soriano on the same night. His first inning homer off CC started the scoring. His fister to center off Robertson in the eighth gave the A’s a short-lived 3-2 lead, and his three-run bomb to right in the tenth off a nothing-slider from Soriano won the game 6-4. A night after the Yankees failed to fully bake a comeback, the A’s showed them how to make it crispy.
Batting second, Crisp went 4-4 and the A’s were fortunate to have ninth hitter Scott Sizemore also go 4-4. That was eight of the eleven hits the A’s would get, but stacked the way they were in the order, they were timed just right to account for six runs. The Yanks spread their 11 hits around and only came up with four.
The Yankees broke a 1-1 tie in the sixth when Nick Swisher jacked a solo homer. Swish’s last four balls in play: homer, fly out to the top of the wall, homer, homer. He’s seeing beach balls right now. They had the chance to pad the lead in the seventh, but stranded Nuñez on third with no one out. For Girardi’s love of the bunt, he’s not one to squeeze. I’d support a squeeze with Gardner to push the lead to 3-1 with CC, Robertson and Mo available to get six outs.
Turns out the A’s didn’t need six outs to ruin the evening. Just one. A single, a sac and a double knotted the score and sent CC to the showers. David Robertson’s hammer failed to find the nails. He walked Jemile Weeks in front Crisp’s run-scoring single. He’s been so good that he can’t be faulted for this stumble. He escaped further damage with a fortunate double play as Derek Jeter sprawled to cover Hideki Matsui’s snaking liner.
With all that Robertson has done for the Yankees lately, 11 straight scoreless appearances, it was the least the offense could do to return the favor and pick-up him up off the mat. Maybe Mark Teixeira agreed as he wasted no time in tying the game with his 35th homer to start the eighth. The Yanks continued to apply pressure as Eric Chavez lashed toward left with two on and two out, but the ball made a bee-line for third baseman Scott Sizemore’s glove.
Mariano Rivera came in the face the heart of the order in the ninth and helped to make rookie Brandon Allen’s second visit to Yankee Stadium less pleasurable than his first. He was perfect for the fourth consecutive time since his rough week. Seven strikeouts in just four innings. I think those homers made him mad. Not mad enough to pitch two innings though, I guess. The Yanks sent Soriano out in the tenth after only 12 pitches from Mariano.
This is the first series the Yanks have dropped in the second half apart from the Red Sox series. The Red Sox crushed the Rangers again, so that puts the Yanks in second place. Every time the two teams pull even, the Red Sox reassert their claim on the division lead. The AL East will still probably be decided in the remaining games between the two leaders, but it would be nice to be the one on top when those games happen.
Last night was about as satisfying as a loss can get. Tonight was… not.
***
Three starts ago CC Sabathia was a front runner for the Cy Young Award. After getting bombed by Boston and losing to Tampa, he’s completely out of the race. Prior to August, CC let up six homers all season. This month alone he’s allowed eight long balls. Of course, Justin Verlander is just a s responsible as CC for the fall, dude’s been lights out. But shoot, that happened fast. The good news is that even during this funky month, CC has struck out 35 in 36.1 innings, and walked only three. The 11+ K/BB ratio means good things are just around the corner in September.
Speaking of August, Derek Jeter is about to log his second consecutive month with a slugging percentage over .400. This is notable because after April 2010, he slugged .338 for the next eight months. In not one of those months did he slug higher than .379, falling to the unthinkable nadir of .272 in April 2011. His ISO was .078. But over the course of his last 188 PAs, he’s slugged .470 and his ISO is closer to his career average: .119 vs .136. I have no idea if skipping the All Star Game helped him achieve this turn-around, but I won’t make a stink if he chooses not to go next time.
Derek Jeter singled in his first two at bats tonight. It brought his season average to .299. We all know that batting average does nothing more than measure the ratio of hits to official at bats, and OBP, wRC+ and wOBA (among many other stats) are far superior when measuring a player’s quality. But I’d be lying if I said I’m not pulling for Jeter to see the sunny side of .300. He ended up 2 for 5 and stands at .297.
Alex Rodriguez is still out, but C.C. is on the hill.
While we wait for the game to start, check out this interview with Marc Carig over at The Yankee Analysts. Nice job by Carig and Moshe Mandel.
Brett Gardner LF
Derek Jeter SS
Curtis Granderson CF
Mark Teixiera 1B
Robinson Cano 2B
Nick Swisher RF
Jorge Posada DH
Eduardo Nunez 3B
Francisco Cervelli C
Never mind the preamble: Let’s Go Yank-ees!
[Drawing by Larry Roibal]
“Standing Nude” by Richard Diebenkorn (1966)
Man, he had chops. I just love seeing all the work he did on this picture. I could look at this all day.
Yeah, I know it’s the off-season, but still, great is great:
Dig this: 10 commonly misused words. Helpful. I often confuse “bemused” with “nonplussed” and am never exactly sure when to use either, though I think they are great words. “Disinterested” is a precise and wonderful word too.
[Photo Credit: Abelardo Morrell]
Devils on Horseback at The Spotted Pig. That’s a prune wrapped in bacon. May sound off-putting but believe me, it’s delicious.
The Breaking Point
By John Schulian
As much as I detested how Murdoch had cheapened the Sun-Times, I kept pushing myself to write the best column I could. For a while, I might even have succeeded. But things were too different and too weird for someone as irascible as I am to keep his mouth shut for long. The paper’s new editor wanted to cut a wide swath in Chicago society, and his wife was just as pathetic and desperate for the spotlight as he was. The new sports editor was a young dolt who seemed to spend most of his time sniffing around a pretty copy clerk. I’d worked for a string of first-rate sports editors before he showed up, guys who wouldn’t have hired him to fetch coffee, and here he was acting like he knew something.
One day he made the mistake of asking what I thought of the changes Murdoch’s infidels had made to the paper. When I told him, he looked like I’d hit him between the eyes with a sack of wet brownies. I’m sure he scampered off to let his bosses know that I hadn’t drunk the Kool-Aid. That’s the way they operated. I’m surprised we weren’t required to take a loyalty oath.
It’s safe to say I wasn’t the only one at the Sun-Times who loathed Murdoch and his henchmen. But people needed a paycheck. They had families, mortgages, bills. They needed the work. And if the people they worked for were a bunch of bums, so be it. They would soldier on and hope for a better tomorrow.
I was one of them until I came home from covering the 1984 U.S. Olympic trials in Los Angeles. I’d been fighting a virus for weeks and I felt like dog meat. But I’d never called in sick in Chicago and I wasn’t about to start now. It was a Friday and I went to Wrigley Field and interviewed Ryne Sandberg, who was having his breakout season with the Cubs. Then I came back to the office to turn the interview into my Sunday column. It was noisy in sports, so I took refuge in the features department, which was empty except for two deskmen laying out the Sunday sports section. All was right with the world until this guy I’d never seen before walked up and started insulting me, saying my column wasn’t any good and I was overpaid. It turned out that he was a features editor who’d been imported from Murdoch’s paper in San Antonio. Maybe the editors there could get away with acting like drill instructors and prison guards, but this was a first for me.
I should have just hauled off and hit the son of a bitch. But I’d been ambushed. I was stunned. On top of that, I was so weary and sick that I just wanted to go home and crawl into bed. It was all I could do to call him a weasel and a motherfucker and invite him to go to the editor who had decided to pay me all that money and get me fired.
The deskmen, both gentle souls, were gob-smacked, which, in retrospect, was the only amusing thing about this episode. I don’t think they realized their jaws were on their chests until Murdoch’s provocateur left and I finished my column and drove home to Evanston, about a half hour from the office. The longer I drove, however, the angrier I got. This was before cell phones so I had to wait until I walked I the door to call the office and ask if that mouthy prick was still around. He was. “Don’t let him go anywhere,” I said.
There are people who will tell you I went back to the office that night and punched him out. I didn’t. I realize this will come as a disappointment to both those who regard me as some kind of a hero and some kind of a lunatic, but it’s true. I’ve often wished that I had beaten the son of a bitch so badly that his unborn children felt it, but I’m not nearly that tough. Almost everything I’ve punched in my life has been inanimate. I do, however, have a temper, and I refuse to be bullied, and that’s why I returned with malice aforethought. But when I saw the guy for the second time, a voice in my head started saying, “You don’t want to go to jail, you don’t want to get sued.” Hardly the thoughts you associate with someone on the verge of violence, but there you have them.
I settled for calling the guy every kind of a gutless motherfucker I could think of, hoping he’d throw the first punch. But his mouth had written a check his ass couldn’t cash. He kept backing up, and just as he was about to turn and run, I grabbed him – one hand on his collar, one on his belt — and threw him over the nearest desk. He bounced once, as I recall. Then I walked around the desk, picked up him, and threw him back where I had found him. The only real satisfaction I got was the expression on his face. He looked like the noose had just been put around his neck and I was the hangman.
The next day, the sports editor called to say I’d been suspended me without pay. In doing so, the paper violated its contract with the Newspaper Guild, which said I was entitled to a hearing before any action could be taken. The Sun-Times responded by firing me. But the Guild fought the good fight in arbitration and I won a healthy settlement. It came on top of a different kind of reward from the people in the features department who had been bullied by the son of a bitch I bounced around. He had been making their lives a misery from the day he showed up. To them, I’d struck a blow for justice.
My wife was less convinced of my virtues. I didn’t blame her. I still don’t. I wasn’t easy to live with in those days. I was either on the road for work or at home raging about a computer that had crashed or a column I’d written poorly or a typo the copy desk hadn’t caught or . . . Jesus, I was a runaway train. The blow-up at the Sun-Times only added to my anger and my wife’s confusion and frustration. The strange thing was, we never argued. Maybe we should have. But my being fired was where our paths diverged for keeps. We divorced quietly, amicably, painfully.
For the rest of the summer, I rode my bike up and down the North Shore, from Evanston to Highland Park and back, always by myself. I had a million thoughts running through my head and no concrete plans. About the only person I saw on a regular basis was a big-hearted used-book dealer named Roger Carlson. He had a little shop in an alley in Evanston. It didn’t have any windows, so Roger had one painted next to his front door. The window looked in on a bookstore, and there on the shelves, alongside Shakespeare and Dickens and Hemingway and Fitzgerald, was a book with a name on it that really didn’t belong there or, for the moment at least, anywhere else. My name.
Over at Pinstriped Bible, Steve Goldman asks: Why did Joe Girardi play for one run in a two-run game?
In the bottom of the ninth inning of Tuesday night’s game against the A’s at Yankee Stadium, the Yankees trailed 6-3 entering the frame. Jorge Posada led off with a solo home run off of A’s closer Andrew Bailey, closing the deficit to 6-4. Russell Martin followed with a double, and Brett Gardner reached on third baseman Scott Sizemore’s error, putting runners on first and second with no outs and bringing Derek Jeter to the plate.
Jeter is tremendously hot right now. He came into the game hitting .339 since returning from the disabled list and he went 3-for-3 with a walk prior to the ninth-inning plate appearance. Again, the Yankees needed not one run, but two. In baseball this year, teams that have put runners on first and second with no outs have scored an average of 1.4 runs, which is to say the Yankees stood a very good chance of scoring one run there and a solid chance at scoring another. Teams that have runners on second and third with one out see their expected runs go down to 1.3, a fractionally smaller number, but it’s still less of a chance to score. I leave it to you whether eliminating the double play was worth trading that fraction of a run as well as the possibility of having three chances to score those two runs instead of two. Again, we’re talking about old school Derek Jeter here, not April-June Jeter. The formerly ground-ball obsessed GDP expert has hit into just three twin killings in 40 games, the last one coming about two weeks ago. What do you do?
Girardi chose to take the bat out of Jeter’s hands.
I saw the King this morning. He was slinking after a squirrel. Then he saw me, came over, meowed, and let me pet him. Then he walked off and took a bath.
It’s good to be the King.
I thought it was gone. I already knew they had lost the game, but when I watched the ninth inning on replay I still thought Nick Swisher’s deep drive to center was gone off the bat. But his bid for a second homer in the final two innings settled into Coco Crisp’s glove at the centerfield wall for the final out of the game.
The way the Yankees are playing right now, ignore the fall and enjoy the bounce. The A’s dragged the Yanks around the field for seven and a half innings last night like a corpse. Trailing 6-0 with two-out in the eighth, the Yankees pounded out five runs and came a few feet shy of four more. It was a loss in the end, 6-5, and with the Red Sox winning big in Texas, that matters. But as losses go, give me one that falls just short of an amazing victory.
If you care about justice, it was a fair result that Swisher’s blast ended up an out instead of a game-winning grand slam. The batter before Swisher was Robinson Cano, and with a full count, the umpire gave him first base on what was clearly strike three. But even if the call was bad, the pie would have still tasted as, er, mediciney.
The 2009 Yankees have really spoiled us. This year’s team probably has a few sweet comebacks but I barely remember them. Down 4-1 at Toronto in the eighth? One time they were trailing Baltimore by four runs early? This game would have blown those out of the water. But as it stands, there’s a lot of extra pie to go around this year as the Yankees win early and big, and lose close. Luckily, they do the former way more than the latter.
So your scorching hot shortstop has three hits on the night and represents the winning run at the plate with nobody out in the bottom of the ninth. Do you like that sac bunt there? You want to avoid the double play and Jeter is ground ball machine. But he has only nine GIDP this year, fewest of any of the regulars apart from Gardner, who has five. Before Jeter’s injury, the bunt is a no-brainer. But right now, I’d like to see him hit away. If you must put on a play, how about a hit and run? Even if Jeter grounds into a double play, Granderson still gets a chance to tie it with one swing.
Bartolo Colon did not spot the A’s all six by himself, though he was charged with five runs. He was not good against a terrible offense and Boone Logan couldn’t strand two of his runners in the seventh. Hector Noesi also got nicked for an insurance run which ended up being the difference, though at the time it just made the score 6-0.
Brandon Allen enjoyed his first trip to New York, hitting two home runs. If you’re reading this in the morning, heads up and cover your coffee mug as the one he hit in the second inning should be landing somewhere around breakfast tomorrow.
We celebrate comebacks because they remind us not to give up. Not be pessimists. Not be fatalists. This was a comeback that didn’t result in victory, but it should teach us those lessons just the same. Hopefully there a few more chances to wear pie this season.
Bartolo “Diego Rivera’ Colon is on the mound tonight as the Yanks start a three-game series against the A’s at the Stadium.
Alex Rodriguez was a late scratch with a sore thumb. All the same, our purpose remains:
Let’s Go Yank-ees!
[Note: “The Watermelons” (1957) was Rivera’s final painting]
Joe Posnanski on the AL MVP race:
Right now, I firmly believe the best player in the American League is Jose Bautista. And, right now, he’s my MVP. There are plenty of good candidates who can catch him — and most of them are on teams in contention. The Red Sox have Dustin Pedroia and Jacoby Ellsbury, both are having great years. One of my favorite players in the game, Curtis Granderson, is having a marvelous season for the Yankees. Ben Zobrist, one more time, is having the best year nobody’s noticing. Miguel Cabrera continues to slug. It’s difficult to compare pitchers and hitters, but Justin Verlander has been almost unhittable — at time actually unhittable — and others like C.C. Sabathia and the Angels pair of Dan Haren and Jered Weaver are pitching extremely well.
But, for me, it’s Bautista by two or three lengths heading into the home stretch. Somebody has to catch him. And, no offense to the quality of leadership or hustle or RBIs or wins or any other sort of unnoticed value, but they’re going to have to catch him with production I can see.
Agreed. Be interesting if Verlander makes a push, though.
And over at Grantland, here’s Jonah Keri on Montero vs. Posada:
The Montero Legend took a huge leap forward Monday night. Playing the remainder of a suspended game plus a full game in what amounted to a virtual doubleheader, the 21-year-old slugger exploded, going 5-for-8, blasting two homers, and knocking in seven runs. After a slow start, Montero’s up to .290/.349/.456 for the year. Although skeptics wonder whether he can handle the defensive rigors of catching in the big leagues, most believe he’ll be a great hitter.
… Posada has actually put together a half-decent season as a platoon guy (.249/.354/.453), after a disastrous start to the year. Despite Montero’s recent surge, Posada’s line against righties compares favorably with the kid’s overall numbers. The old man may not be quite dead yet.
So what to do? Montero’s tantalizing talent still has Yankees fans drooling to get a look at him — a chance they might get in September. If Montero succeeds, Posada might get left off the postseason roster, his days as a Yankee over for good. Whatever decision gets made, Yankees fans should hope it’s based on performance, not politics. You can get away with a sub-optimal roster when the Baltimore Orioles, Kansas City Royals and Seattle Mariners are on the schedule. But in the postseason, you’d better bring your best 25 with you. Or else.
[Montero picture via Bronx Baseball Daily]
Just felt a minor tremor here in midtown. Everyone on the floor is buzzing about it.
[Photo Credit: Set Babies on Fire]
If you’ve never read “The Things They Carried,” by Tim O’Brien, I suggest picking up a copy. Here is the title essay:
First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross carried letters from a girl named Martha, a junior at Mount Sebastian College in New Jersey. They were not love letters, but Lieutenant Cross was hoping, so he kept them folded in plastic at the bottom of his rucksack. In the late afternoon, after a day’s march, he would dig his foxhole, wash his hands under a canteen, unwrap the letters, hold them with the tips of his fingers, and spend the last hour of fight pretending. He would imagine romantic camping trips into the White Mountains in New Hampshire. He would sometimes taste the envelope flaps, knowing her tongue had been there. More than anything, he wanted Martha to love him as he loved her, but the letters were mostly chatty, elusive on the matter of love. She was a virgin, he was almost sure. She was an English major at Mount Sebastian, and she wrote beautifully about her professors and roommates and midterm exams, about her respect for Chaucer and her great affection for Virginia Woolf. She often quoted lines .of poetry; she never mentioned the war, except to say, Jimmy, take care of yourself. The letters weighed ten ounces. They were signed “Love, Martha,” but Lieutenant Cross understood that Love was only a way of signing and did not mean what he sometimes pretended it meant. At dusk, he would carefully return the letters to his rucksack. Slowly, a bit distracted, he would get up and move among his men, checking the perimeter, then at full dark he would return to his hole and watch the night and wonder if Martha was a virgin.
The things they carried were largely determined by necessity. Among the necessities or near-necessities were P-38 can openers, pocket knives, heat tabs, wrist watches, dog tags, mosquito repellent, chewing gum, candy, cigarettes, salt tablets, packets of Kool-Aid, lighters, matches, sewing kits, Military payment Certificates, C rations, and two or three canteens of water. Together, these items weighed between fifteen and twenty pounds, depending upon a man’s habits or rate of metabolism. Henry Dobbins, who was a big man, carried extra rations; he was especially fond of canned peaches in heavy syrup over pound cake. Dave Jensen, who practiced field hygiene, carried a toothbrush, dental floss, and several hotel-size bars of soap he’d stolen on R&R in Sydney, Australia. Ted Lavender, who was scared, carried tranquilizers until he was shot in the head outside the village of Than Khe in mid-April. By necessity, and because it was SOP, they all carried steel helmets that weighed five pounds including the liner aid camouflage cover. They carried the standard fatigue jackets and trousers. Very few carried underwear. On their feet they carried jungle boots-2.1 pounds – and Dave Jensen carried three pairs of socks and a can of Dr. Scholl’s foot powder as a precaution against trench foot. Until he was shot, Ted Lavender carried six or seven ounces of premium dope, which for him was 2 necessity. Mitchell Sanders, the RT0, carried condoms. Norman Bowker carried a diary. Rat Kiley carried comic books. Kiowa, a devout Baptist, Carried an illustrated New Testament that had been presented to him by his father, who taught Sunday school in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. As a hedge against bad times, however, Kiowa also carried his grandmother’s distrust of the white man, his grandfather’s old hunting hatchet. Necessity dictated. Because the land was mined and booby-trapped, it was SOP for each man to carry a steel-centered, nylon-covered flak jacket, which weighed 6.7 pounds, but which on hot days seemed much heavier. Because you could die so quickly, each man carried at least one large compress bandage, usually in the helmet band for easy access. Because the nights were cold, and because the monsoons were wet, each carried a green plastic poncho that could be used as a raincoat or groundsheet or makeshift tent. With its quilted liner, the poncho weighed almost two pounds, but it was worth every ounce. In April, for instance, when Ted Lavender was shot, they used his poncho to wrap him up, then to carry him across the paddy, then to lift him into the chopper that took him away.
[Photo Credit: Addiction Inbox]
Salsa Verde with Avocado from the outstanding food blog, The Year in Food.
