I’d be shocked if Lee signs with the Yanks at this pernt–and I’m with Bruce Markusen in thinking they should just take their offer off the table–but if he goes back to the Phillies after all of this, well, that’d be pretty clever.
Know one dude who’d be happy:
[Photo Credit: the Morning Jog]
Earlier today, on Twitter, I offered Cliff Lee all the money I have on me ($7.65) if he would hurry up and decide something already, so that I could write about him today. I have not yet heard back from his agent, however, so I went ahead and bought lunch and the offer is no longer on the table.
In the absence of any baseball news more significant than Brian Bruney signing with the White Sox, and some media-on-media violence from the usually mild-mannered Buster Olney and Joe Posnanski, I am thus forced to turn my attention to basketball. Which, in recent years in New York City, has been almost unspeakably bleak. But after years of excruciating play, and then years of being unable to bring myself to care how excruciating their play was, I am casting a hopeful but wary eye on the Knicks.
Going by his own statement, Isiah Thomas, who has by now made it clear that he is clinically delusional, targeted Lebron James for the 2010 season from the very first unfortunate moment that he was hired to run the Knicks. (He even tries to make that his explanation for the Eddy Curry deal, but like all other explanations for the Eddy Curry deal, it makes no sense whatsoever). As you may have noticed, however, Lebron did not come to New York City this season, and I’m just as glad, because people hate New York sports teams enough as it is, and because the whole “Decision” thing was so insufferable. But I did not think, at first, that Amar’e Stoudemire would be any kind of suitable consolation prize.
Stoudemire is no LeBron, but he’s also a lot better than I gave him credit for prior to this season, and he’s a fairly interesting, likeable guy to boot. This is the first year since the millenium, more or less, that the Knicks have been any fun to watch, and that’s not all Stoudemire, but he’s played a big role. I did not expect that I would gain much pleasure from watching point guard Raymond Felton, either, but I was wrong – and really after the agony of the Stephon Marbury years, it’s just lovely to have a PG who isn’t noticeably mentally unstable, miserable, and constantly jeered by his hometown crowd. Wilson Chandler, Landry Fields: I expected nothing and, for once, the Knicks have overdelivered… so far. They do not seem to hate each other, their fans, or their coach… yet.
The season is still young and, when it comes to the Knicks (or any team owned by James Dolan), I will not count my dysfunctional chickens. No imaginable severity of collapse could surprise me any more. But the Knickerbockers are working on their best record since the Clinton years, and finally, best of all, the Garden is no longer hostile and angry and hurt. I don’t need the Knicks to be great right now, I just need them to be better. Mediocrity is a soothing relief.
Needless to say, it’s been many many years since that was true of the Yankees. Which is why they are willing to go a walloping seven years on a 32-year-old pitcher, and why that pitcher can take his sweet Arkansas time in making up his mind. Hurry up, Lee, or I’m going to have to write about the god damn Jets, and nobody wants that.
Leave to Marty to elevate things to another level:
It’s obvious, I know, but fitting…
Let’s hope today is the day for this putz, Lee. Go to Texas and leave us to get on with it.
In the meantime, bop your head to this:
The Cliff Lee Drama promises to unfold shortly–tomorrow they say–and I for one am fed-up with all this waiting. I hope he signs with Texas, stay the bad guy (and I think he’s lock to go back). Look, if he comes to the Yanks, I’ll bellyache about the contract, because it’s insane, but I’ll be pleased that he improves the team in the short term. If he passes, I’ll be relieved and eager to see what the Yanks do next.
That said, this waiting game isn’t endearing Lee to anyone. Not that he does–or should–care.
It’s raining in New York this morning. The Jets play the Dolphins in the late afternoon game out in Jersey. I wonder if football players wake up bummed when they hear raindrops or if it just doesn’t matter at all to them as they gnaw on a slab of raw meat.
In the meantime, check out this loving appreciation of Vic Ziegel and Maury Allen by Harvey Ararton in today’s New York Times.
Araton gets props over here.
In the meantime, the Knicks are on early this afternoon. Yes, the Knicks. Amare has been so much better than I ever expected. What a nice surprise. It’s been awhile…
UPDATE: The first half of the Knicks-Nuggest game today at the Garden is enough to turn fair-weather Knicks fans like me back on. 66-65 Knicks at the half, a shoot-out. Lots of fun. Nene vs. Amare has been spirited, Amare came close to getting his second tech and tossed in the second quarter. Refs gave the Knicks a hometown call. Nene’s thrown down three dunks, the last one, emphatically! over Amare.
Can’t remember the last time I was actually excited about watching the second half of a Knicks game…
UPDATE: Knicks win a good one…that’s their 8th win in a row, something they haven’t done in 16 years.
Celts and then the Heat come to the Garden this week. Nice.
[Photo Credit: N.Y. Daily News and Nathaniel S. Butler/NBAE via Getty Images]
Some You Tube fun on a cold winter night:
My favorite Scorsese flix (his ma makes the sauce):
Love this movie:
Bouton as Terry Lennox…
Mr. Barbar.
When I was in high school, Mike Nichols directed a celebrated version of Samuel Beckett’s play, “Waiting for Godot.” It featured Steve Martin, Robin Williams, F. Murray Abraham and Bill Irwin. It ran for a short time at the Mitzi Newhouse Theater and tickets were not sold to the public. A lottery was held for Lincoln Center subscribers and my former French teacher scored a pair. I applied the full-court press and she took me on the condition that read the original version of the play (Beckett was Irish but wrote Godot in French first).
I didn’t read it, and it wasn’t until a few years later, when I took a class on Beckett at Hunter college, that the play’s meaning made sense to me. Literally translated from French, the title is “While Waiting for Godot,” and to me that is what the play is all about–what we do while we wait.
This week, we haven’t talked much about food, movies, music or life in the city. We’ll be back at it come Monday. In the meantime, while we wait on Clifton Lee, here are a few links for your face:
Marky Mark’s new boxing movie could be worth the price of admission.
This Led Zep book sounds like fun, too.
Peep Savuer’s banquet of cook books.
Dig this blog about George Steinbrenner as a young man.
And how about this dude who just sold his first book, a baseball novel, for $650,000? Man, I’m sure looking forward to reading it.
(Yeah, and that’s Elia Kazan in Odet’s original version of “Waiting for Lefty” in the photograph above.)
I turned 40 years old today. It was a very casual birthday party, with just my wife and sons, and only 150 of our most intimate household staff. We were going to attend Game 4 of the MEGA-SERIES at Yankee Stadium tonight, but honestly, after winning the first three games against the Mexico City Mets by a combined score of 48-3, we thought we’d enjoy the clincher from our cozy little mansion on Central Park West (as you know I bought the Museum of Natural History from the city during the bankruptcy saga of 2012).
As I reflect on the last five years, it’s hard to imagine things working out any better – and I can trace it all back to when the Yankees passed on Cliff Lee in the winter of 2010. Man, I was such a naïve moron in those days, 35 years dumb, wanting Cliff Lee to pitch for the Yankees at just about any cost. I thought it would be great.
Thankfully, the Yankees did not sign Lee, and instead decided to give the 150 million dollars earmarked for his salary back to Yankee fans in proportion to the amount of tickets purchased in 2010. I got a nice check for $351.26. I took that money, and, well, you know the rest. I now own most of New York City.
The Yankees struggled to compete in 2011. The Boston Red Sox had assembled a better team by spending freely and won the World Series. Little did they know, that would be the last title Boston would ever win. Because of the crippling costs of paying Carl Crawford, the Red Sox cut corners on maintenance of Fenway Park and it sank into the ground during the victory parade.
Having no readily available baseball facility, the Red Sox have been playing in Portland, Maine ever since. Now that Major League Baseball has adopted the relegation system, the “Snow Sox” have been toiling in the Minor Leagues since 2013. If only they had not signed such irresponsible deals in 2010! They would still be kings of New England, head of a nation. Now the players themselves have to clear the field of snow before games. Dustin Pedroia likes it though. He gets to drive the plow.
The other thing that happened in 2011 is that Bud Selig, in his final act before being eaten by jackals, pushed through some big changes to the structure of the baseball Postseason. Certain future World Series championships would be worth way more present ones. If you won the 2011 World Series, you only got one trophy and only were allowed one parade. If you won the 2015 World Series, now the MEGA-SERIES, it was worth five trophies and five parades. And if you won the 2050 World Series, the GOLDEN-SERIES, it was worth 100 trophies and parades and earned you bragging rights for the entire century.
Had the Yankees been saddled with Cliff Lee’s ridiculous contract they would have had no shot at the MEGA-SERIES. They also would not have been able invest on player development with such gusto. In 2011, Yankee scientists discovered the “baseball-gene” by studying the recently acquired tissues of the Alou, Boone and Brett families – another use of the so-called “Lee Moolah.” Thus the Yankees were the only team to develop baseball-primed embryos before President Palin banned science after her inauguration in January of 2013.
The Yankees transferred the embryos to their “incubation center” on the moon. These fertilized eggs will evolve into baseball gods in 2050, just in time for the GOLDEN-SERIES. I will be 75 in 2050 and I think I’ve set it up perfectly for Yankee fans – did I forget to mention I also own the team? Winning that 2050 GOLDEN-SERIES will make the intervening decades of mediocrity so worth it. I can’t wait to attend those 100 parades. You know, if I’m not dead.
When I heard that Ron Santo had passed away, I was immediately saddened by the loss of a beloved baseball icon who would not live to see his eventual induction into the Hall of Fame. Santo was the kind of hard-nosed all-round player that I wish had played for the Yankees in the late 1960s and early 1970s. He might have made those seasons of mediocrity a bit more tolerable.
Little did I know that the Yankees nearly acquired Santo after the 1971 season. That nugget of information comes courtesy of Bronx Banter posting favorite “Williamnyy23” (whose real name still escapes me). During the 1971 season, Santo and Cubs manager Leo Durocher endured a major falling out. With tensions between the two men raging, the Cubs decided to entertain trade offers after the season. The Yankees, who desperately needed a new third baseman to take over for the overmatched Jerry Kenney (no home runs in 395 plate appearances), came knocking. They offered their two top starting pitchers, Mel Stottlemyre and Fritz Peterson, but rather remarkably, they were turned down by the Cubs. The Yankees apparently thought so highly of Santo that they were willing to surrender 40 per cent of their rotation–the top 40 per cent, no less.
Both Stottlemyre and Peterson were 29 at the time, both in the prime of their careers. Stottlemyre had gone 16-12 with a 2.87 ERA and Peterson had won 15 games with a 3.05 ERA. The pair had combined to give the Yankees over 500 innings in 1971. Their departures would have left the Yankees with three younger starters in their mid-twenties–Stan Bahnsen, Steve Kline and Mike Kekich–followed by two gaping holes in the rotation. But that’s how much the Yankees valued the 31-year-old Santo, even coming off a down season in which his home run total had dropped to 21 and his slugging percentage had fallen to .423, his lowest mark in three years.
As it turns out, none of the principals in the proposed trade had much staying power. Santo put up two more decent seasons before being traded to the White Sox, where he closed out his career rather ungracefully in 1974. Peterson had only more good season in New York before becoming embroiled in the infamous wife swap of 1973 and being traded to the Indians in the Chris Chambliss deal. Stottlemyre pitched well for two seasons before tearing his rotator cuff, an injury that basically ended his career in the spring of 1975.
In retrospect, it’s probably a good thing that the Yankees did not make the Santo trade. With Santo in the fold in 1972 and ‘73, the Yankees never would have made the fruitful trade that brought them Graig Nettles during the winter of ‘72. They would have been stuck with an over-the-hill Santo by 1974, putting them in the position of having to trade for another third baseman. Who knows if Nettles would have still been available? Who would have been a reasonable trade option? Buddy Bell, Darrell Evans, and Bill Madlock were all traded during the 1970s, so it’s possible that the Yankees might have made a deal for one of them. All three were fine players, but none would have performed any better than Nettles did for the Yankees from 1973 to 1983.
Still, it’s interesting to think of what might have been. Ron Santo as a Yankee? The Yankees wanted it to happen, but the Cubs had other thoughts. And the rest is history.
Cliff Lee has at least one seven-year deal on the table from the Yanks. Actually, he’s got a variety of proposed deals from both the Yankees and the Rangers. And he’s still thinking. To me, this means that he’s going to sign with the Rangers. Maybe later today, or over the weekend. The New York papers will be chock full of panic but our man Steven Goldman says not to worry:
Lee might help in the short term, but if the price is too high, they have other choices. Six months from now, Manny Banuelos could be ready to take his stuff up to the Bronx—again, just because the Yankees handled Hughes and Chamberlain like they’d never had a young pitcher before (in fairness, in many ways they hadn’t), not everyone has to advance by baby steps. There is a school of thought that says that once a pitcher reaches a certain level of proficiency in the minors, all a team achieves by keeping him down there is not greater learning, but a greater risk or arm injury as they roll pitches off his odometer.
…I don’t really want to hear about Lee anymore, because I don’t view Lee as the Ultimate Nullifier, the Encyclopedic Panacea. There are other things that need to happen as well, but we don’t hear about them, because all the eggs seem to be in this one left-handed basket. It may also be that because of these numbers—31, 37, 35, 30, 30, 39, 39, 34, and 41—I can’t get too excited by the addition of a 32, no matter how good. The only way the Yankees are going to continue to win consistently is with the addition of a 22, and a 23, and even the odd 27 if need be. Maybe Lee is the next Warren Spahn and he will pitch well into his 40s. I have no way of knowing if that is the case. What I do know is that there was only one Warren Spahn, and you could wait on the corner for a long time before you see another.
The Yanks and Sox compete all season long on the field. Come winter, it’s the GMs and the agents and the owners on center stage. The Yanks got Teixeira, the Sox were patient and countered with Gonzalez. Sox get Carl Crawford, Yanks all in for Cliff Lee. Sox want Russell Martin, Yanks want Russell Martin.
Boys, boys. Man, the Yanks-Sox the biggest circle jerk in baseball or what? Do these guys ever sleep?
Because, as Brian Cashman told reporters at the Winter Meetings yesterday, “this is what he always does,” I’ve half-assumed that Andy Pettitte would come back for another year. And if I had to put money down, I’d still guess that he will… but I also sort of conveniently forgot that he was now 38 years old and coming off a groin injury. Anyway, that Cashman line prompted my to look up the excellent Sports Illustrated lunch conversation between Tom Verducci and Musketeers Pettitte, Jeter, Posada and Rivera from just before spring training last season:
SI: How about when the season ends? You talk? Text?
Pettitte: We text.
Posada: We stay in touch. We try to get Andy to come back. ‘Andy, please come back. Please come back.’
SI: You guys took a picture together after the last game at Yankee Stadium in 2008. Do you guys do that every year?
Posada: Yeah, it’s Andy’s idea.
Rivera: Yeah, and it’s great because you don’t know how long we’re going to be together.
Jeter: We’ve done it other years because we did it when Bernie [Williams…] was there, too, right?
Posada: We’ve done it since ’03 because Andy’s been retiring since ’03.
Yesterday Andy Pettitte made a very Andy Pettitte-like call to Brian Cashman, and Chad Jennings at LoHud has the rather heartwarming details:
Andy Pettitte called Brian Cashman today. The message was vague and uncertain, but the purpose was direct and to the point. Pettitte still hasn’t decided whether he’s going to retire, but he had to make sure his indecision wasn’t negatively affecting the Yankees offseason.
“If I had to bet at some point, I think he’ll play,” Cashman said. “But he’s telling me right now he’s leaning the other way. He just doesn’t want to hold us up.”
Cashman said there was nothing Pettitte said that gave him reason for optimism, he simply believes — because “this is what he always does” — that Pettitte will eventually have a change of heart and decide to pitch one more year. For now, though, it’s completely up in the air.
This is a little gesture, but it’s one that a lot of players wouldn’t bother to make, and it’s things like this that give Pettitte his aw-shucks good guy reputation. When he finally does retire he will be hugely missed, and as always I just hope it isn’t this year. Aside from the fact that, especially in light of recent Red Sox developments, the Yanks could really, REALLY use a solid lefty this season, I want Pettitte to come back so that the fans can get a chance to say a proper goodbye. I remember someone pointing out, in Pettitte’s final 2010 playoff appearance, that it could be his last time in a Yankee uniform, but he hadn’t said anything yet, and the moment went almost entirely unacknowledged.
I have never really cried over baseball, but the closest I came was probably the 2001 World Series – those miraculous comebacks and, especially, the crowd chanting Paul O’Neill’s name. Of course the fall of 2001 was highly emotional for other, much more significant reasons, but that moment really got to me — and to O’Neill, who got awkward and embarrassed and teared up himself. It was Yankee fans at their best (the Bombers were losing at the time, after all), and the old Stadium at its most alive. That particular moment won’t ever be recreated, but Andy Pettitte deserves his own sendoff. He started, and won, the very first game I ever attended at Yankee Stadium – in 1995; I was 13 – and I would very much like to be there for his last. When all’s said and done I suppose you have to evaluate Andy Pettitte as a very good pitcher rather than, on the whole, a truly great one, but he had so many great and big and gutty games over the course of his career, and no player features in more of my Yankee memories.
Cliff Lee is the object of the Yankees’ desire and Brian Cashman has not minced words in swooning over the star pitcher. Now that the Red Sox have signed Carl Crawford to a crazy deal the pressure is on for the Yanks to keep pace. I’ve gotten used to Lee as a nemesis and wonder if he’ll end up back with the Rangers or even the Angels though I certainly wouldn’t be surprised if he comes to the Bronx either.
The Yanks sound desperate to get him. The latest has them going to seven years. Is that knuts, a wild pitch, or just the price of doing business?
Speaking of wild pitch, dig this great marathon MC Serch and OC freestyle from the old Stretch Armstrong Show:
And if that’s not your speed, how about this:
Or, for those of you who speak Spanish:
Update: Chad Jennings with some Rule 5 fun.
Update: Over at Newsday, Ken Dawidoff breaks down Derek Jeter’s new contract.
Update: Joel Sherman has the details on several contract offers the Yanks have made to Cliff Lee.
Mere hours after signing Jeff Francoeur, the Kansas City Royals are apparently “nearing an agreement” with Melky Cabrera.
Now: as I wrote here less than a month ago, I like Melky, and I wish him a long and happy life and a prosperous career. That said, until I see him in a Royals uniform, I’m going to assume this is just an all-too-believable joke that got out of hand.
Do the Red Sox have a deal done with Carl Crawford? That’s what PeteAbe is Tweeting:
Adrian Gonzalez and Carl Crawford? That’s quite the lineup upgrade for the Sox. I’ve written before (as have many others) that seven years seems ill-advised to me for a player like Crawford who relies so much on his speed, but that’s not to say he won’t kick ass and take names for a while yet. I hope that wherever he is, Jesus Montero is working on his snap throws to second.
Keep in mind that this isn’t confirmed yet. Still, Abraham wouldn’t have run with it if he wasn’t confident in his source.
UPDATE: Okay, now it’s confirmed: the deal is all but done, pending a physical and a few contract details. Who’s happier right now, Crawford, Sox fans, or Cliff Lee’s agent?
Well, I keep trying to write a Cliff Lee post and the latest news keeps changing. Yesterday the reported rumor, which remains unconfirmed, was that two “mystery teams,” not the Yankees or Rangers, were willing to offer a seven year contract. This seems hard to swallow, however, since at that point the Yankees hadn’t even been given the chance to make an official offer. Today, we heard that New York may be plotting a six-year, $140-150 million offer, which sounds to me much more probable, but also like the outer edge of reasonableness. By now they may well have made it. And in his Winter Meetings press conference today, Joe Girardi called Lee “everything you want” and described him as “important” to the Yankees’ plans.
I wouldn’t be too upset if the Yanks miss out on Lee – as Cliff Corcoran and others have pointed out this offseason, there’s very good reason to be wary of signing a pitcher like Lee to a big, long term contract. It would help the Yankees next year but likely trip them up by 2015, if not sooner. And while I would love to watch Cliff Lee pitch every five days, because the man is an artist, I just don’t know that it will justify the long-term price.
Anyway, the absolute latest news is that Lee’s agent is leaving the winter meetings (with the cryptic words “We’re going somewhere.” Right. I hope he meant “we’re getting somewhere,” but that’s only slightly more illuminating). So nobody knows anything yet.
Wait — scratch that: bowing to their destiny, the Royals have signed Jeff Francoeur, just as you knew they would. Bring on the equally inevitable epic Posnanski post!
UPDATE: The Yankees did indeed make an offer today, widely reported as six years and in the neighborhood of $140 million. I’ll be curious to see if there really was any “mystery team” out there willing to go seven years.
Let’s take a quick break from Waiting for Godot with some good old meat and potatoes rock n roll:
Some fans love to play armchair manager or, especially these days, armchair GM. I like to play armchair shrink, not because I have any training as a social worker or as a doctor but because in an era where athletes are over-exposed and yet distant and sheltered, I find it amusing. It floats my boat, being a yenta. And when you get right down to it, so much of sports coverage these days is about being a yenta. The truth of it is we don’t know anything about these guys. Derek Jeter, Jim Thome, name a “good guy.” I have no idea what they are really like and I don’t know that I’d trust any writer–especially a writer–who claimed to know otherwise.
Some of my baseball pals don’t want to know anything about the players. Just keep it to the playing field. The more they know, the harder it would be to root. But it has always been complicated to separate the artist from his or her work. What do you think of when you watch Charlie Chaplin? Or Woody Allen? Can you watch a Roman Polanski movie and not think about the man behind the camera? What about Elia Kazan? My wife won’t watch any movie with Mel Gibson anymore. Can you watch Alex Rodriguez and still enjoy him? Can you enjoy sports and art without being a moralist? I can, but sometimes it is easier than others.
So I enjoyed the show of emotion from Derek Jeter yesterday and had fun reading into it. Helps keep me warm as the weather gets colder.
Today is the third day of the winter meetings. Still nothing doing on Cliff Lee though the tweets and posts keep a coming.
We’ll keep ya posted…
Update: Yanks getting ready to show Cliff Lee their money-maker?
