I was on the Sports Casters podcast last night–“Baseball Bonus Show #1”–talking “Lebowski” and Ken Burns, Todd Drew and the new baseball season. It was a great time, dig it if you have many minutes.

Eh, I just had “Shattered” on the brain.

Albert Brooks is now on Twitter and the world is a funnier place:

Rough night. took ambien. woke at 3A.M. had a turkey sandwich. this morning daughters parrot’s missing. I’m shitting feathers. coincidence?

6 hours ago Favorite Retweet Reply

AlbertBrooks Albert Brooks

Just finished Mein Kampf. Had no idea it was the same guy.

Thank you, Mr. Brooks.

Food and art collide at this sensational blog: scanwiches.com.

I question the wisdom of having Opening Day on a Thursday at 1 pm, when most people can’t watch it. But, since I’ll be working from home tomorrow, I don’t question it too hard – the sooner the better. The Knicks suck, I don’t have a horse in the NCAA tournament, football is all horrifying brain injuries and labor disputes. GET HERE ALREADY, BASEBALL.

I went on record yesterday as predicting the Yanks to finish a respectable 3rd in the AL East, though I’m not as pessimistic as that may sound; I expect them to be a good, competitive team, just maybe not quite good and competitive enough. On the plus side, I also have C.C. Sabathia and Robinson Cano in the top three for Cy Young and MVP, respectively. I think it’ll be an entertaining season, which is what I mostly care about,

Things I’m most looking forward to:

• Mariano Rivera. The one Yankee who is never overhyped, just that damn good.
• Curtis Granderson. Maybe I shouldn’t have bought into all the fuss about his improved swing at the end of last season (small sample size and all), but I did, and I’m looking for a big season from him this year. Even if that doesn’t happen, the guy is extremely likable, so he should be fun to root for.
• Robbie Cano. I don’t know if he’ll keep getting better – and that would be a lot to ask for since he’s already plenty good enough – but this is the first year, I think, that going in I’ve considered Cano to be a real first-tier star and not just a talented and promising youngster. A good second baseman who’s also a legit middle-of-the-lineup masher is a precious thing.
• A healthy A-Rod in, possibly, one of the last years he’s young enough to make that contract seem like a good one. I don’t think he’ll be bad or anything, going forward – just a bit diminished with age (and aren’t we all?). I know better than to read anything into spring training numbers, but let’s just say it looks like Rodriguez is feeling pretty good right now. And that makes me rub my hands together like an old movie villain.
• Brett Gardner. I keep waiting for him to crash back to earth… but maybe he won’t? Is he actually this good? How much more does he need to show before I start believing it?

There are also, of course, a few things I have a bad feeling about:

• Ivan Nova. See, I’m not including Freddy Garcia/Bartolo Colon here, because everyone expects a fifth starter to be lousy. But Nova is in a position where, if he can’t give the team at least a solidly mediocre start, those losses are going to hurt. I think Nova could be solid in a relief role but that six good innings from him on a regular basis is too much to ask for; but the thing that gives me hope here is that he’s only 24 and threw well at AAA last year. Still, I miss Pettitte already.
• Catcher/Backup catcher. Gustavo Molina is such an incredibly awful hitter that we will all rejoice when Francisco Cervelli turns up again, hopefully in a month or so. But then we will remember that – much as I like the guy’s effort and energy and persona – he can’t hit either, except as compared to Molina. That’s fine and dandy for a BUC, but meanwhile, Russell Martin is no Jorge Posada – not with the bat and, so far in his career at least, not with the work ethic. We’ve all been spoiled by watching a borderline Hall of Famer catch the last decade-plus, and I think we’re about to realize just how much.
• Joba. For of all sad words of tongue or pen, The saddest are these: “It might have been!”

This was a long damn winter. Good, bad, whatever, bring on the baseball. And if, like me, Little Orphan Annie isn’t really your style, try this:

Via the Gothamist, check out this footage…I was 15 that summer (thanks to Bronx Rob, now Brooklyn Rob, for passing this along).

Roger Ebert on Elizabeth Taylor:

Most of us choose our favorite movie stars before we turn 18. They take possession of our imaginations while we’re still trying on role models. By the time we’re out of high school, we’re essentially who we’ll be for the rest of our lives, and although new movie stars are created every year, they will never have the same resonance of someone we fixed on earlier.

For many people under the age of 50, Elizabeth Taylor was something of a punch line, known more for her multiple marriages, her perfume line and her friendship with Michael Jackson. But for me and others of my generation, the death of Ms. Taylor took away one of the last movie stars who really affected us in our youth. I have no doubt that Meryl Streep is a better actress, but Ms. Streep is younger, and I’ve met her, and besides, she’s just another human being, you know? She can take consolation in the fact that millions of younger moviegoers grew up on her movies, and for them she will forever be a goddess.

Movies enter our minds more directly when we’re young. They’re realistic in a different way. There’s a difference between empathizing with a character and identifying with a star. When we start going to the movies, stars are leading surrogate lives for us. At the risk of tasking you with my infantile fantasies, I was, for a period of hours, John Wayne or Robert Mitchum or James Stewart. I believed Doris Day was just about the nicest and sunniest person on earth. I was not only in lust with Elizabeth Taylor, Jane Russell and Marilyn Monroe, but in some way I absorbed their appeal and shared with them the knowledge that they were desired. They let me imagine how it felt to be longed for, and that was a knowledge sadly lacking in my real life.

Terrific piece. They don’t make stars like Taylor anymore.

If you dig boxing and boxing writing you must head on down to the Barnes and Noble in Tribeca tonight at 7. Banter favorite George Kimball, co-editor of “At the Fights: American Writers on Boxing,” will be joined by Pete Hamill, Mike Lupica and Robert Lipsyte.

Be there or be square.

Our pals over at Pitchers and Poets take a look at some of the worst caps in MLB history.

Here’s Chad Jennings with all the latest Yankee news. Oh, and Mike Mussina will throw out the first pitch on opening day.

Yo, fellow nerdlicks, dig this: 20 essential blogs for the NYC bookworm.

Here’s Kostya Kennedy talking Joe D:

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As promised, we’re now polling the Banter masses regarding various Yankee-centric items for 2011:

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Jimmy Breslin’s new book on Branch Rickey was reviewed in the Times a few days ago.

Meanwhile, our boy William asks: Was Rickey the father of sabermetrics?

Last week, the gifted Jeff MacGregor, who has unfortunately been buried somewhere in the ESPN wilderness, offered up this gem about the cage down on West 4th:

There is no inside game at all, except on the putback. Nobody drives, nobody works down low or inside. Sometimes the airball falls straight from the sky, is caught, is lifted back or is lofted downrange. But it is a shooter’s game without shooters.

This is strange, because the game at West 4th is historically tough, all elbows and grunt and hard feelings. The miniature court rewards ruthlessness and body mass, not speed. Games here in August, played by older, angrier men, unfold like long-form fistfights in the heat. Not today.

The Cage is filled instead with city peacocks. Black and white and brown. Dazzling and radiant and useless.

Perfect.

[Photo Credit: NYC Gov Parks]

My first few apartments in New York were near the 6 Train. Using the 6 Train as your primary train is like eating from a salad bar and filling your bowl with only croutons. It may work for you, but only if you have specific, limited requirements and a tiny imagination.

It was several years before I felt comfortable with the rest of the system. If I was on the West Side and I needed to get to Yankee Stadium, I had to actually consult the map and think twice.

Now I live Uptown, work in Midtown, and have a wide variety of routes at my disposal. The labyrinth went from over-my-head to back-of-my-hand, though I can’t pinpoint the moment when the information fully settled. But it’s there now and it feels good to master something that seemed so complex at first.

As long as we’re not talking about Brooklyn and Queens. That’s just a mess.

Well, the Yankees pretty much have their team together now — yesterday they crossed most of their t’s and dotted the bulk of their i’s.

Eric Chavez? In.

Edward Nunez? More reluctantly in.

Austin Romine and The Jesus? Minors, AA and AAA respectively.

Gustavo Molina? In, and may god have mercy on your soul.

Mark Prior? To A-ball, for the weather.

Romulo Sanchez? Sold to a Japanese team.

Ronnie Belliard? Fed to the sarlacc.

Things will change, of course, especially this year. I don’t know which of Freddy Garcia, Bartolo Colon and Ivan Nova will spend all season with the Yankees, but I very much doubt it will be all three. And this Molina situation (that’s what I insist on calling it – “this Molina situation” or “this Molina issue”) is very much temporary. I really like the Eric Chavez signing, and I like that Edward Nunez will not, barring disaster, see much playing time. The core of the Yankees is another story althogher  – we’ll get a lot of C.C. Sabathia and Robbie Cano and so forth, with just a soupçon of Colon. If you will.

Still: the Yankees’ fringes are quite fringe-y this year, aren’t they? I suppose not much more than usual – but having the two rotation spots to plug up somehow rather than the standard one does give the roster a bit of a different feel.

I’m guessing this won’t be a popular choice in these here parts, but in my preseason picks for Baseball Prospectus and The Daily, I had the Red Sox winning the division and the Rays getting the Wild Card, with the Yankees coming in a respectable third. I could easily be wrong, of course – I very often am  – and I certainly wouldn’t be shocked if the Yanks finished better than that. I don’t think they’ll be a bad team, by any stretch – it’s just that the AL East is so tough, and looking at the Yanks’ pitching, I don’t see it being enough.

I’m sure looking forward to finding out, though.

Over at River Ave Blues, Mike Axisa gathers all the necessary information on how the Yankees’ bench is shaping up.