Joe Pos on The Great Mariano:

There’s nothing left really to say about his greatness. We all know the story. He throws that cutter precisely where he wants, it turns left just as it gets to the plate, and there has never been anyone quite like him.

Still, watching him break four bats on Wednesday night — I’m pretty sure he broke Denard Span’s bat when getting the last out of the eighth, then broke Orlando Hudson’s bat, Joe Mauer’s bat and Jim Thome’s bat in the ninth — was another awe-inspiring reminder. He clearly does not throw as hard as he once did. Teams have broken him down on video for more than a decade. We all KNOW exactly what he’s going to do. And still, major league hitters come up, they swing at his cutter, the ball breaks in two inches more than they expected, they break their bat. In Las Vegas, I’ve seen David Copperfield make a car appear out of thin air, and I’ve seen Lance Burton duel someone in a costume who turns out to be Lance Burton. I’m sure I could watch those tricks 50 times and never figure out how they are done. I’m sure I could watch those tricks 100 times and never figure out how they’re done.

But Mariano Rivera has pitched 1,150 innings in the big leagues. He has pitched another 135 or so postseason innings. He has faced almost 900 different big league hitters. And this same trick, precisely this same trick, works almost every time. The Twins may or may not be good enough to come back in this series. They will obviously need to beat up on the Yankees’ second-string starting pitchers, and try to hold their own against this relentless Yankees offense. What they do know is this: They ain’t going to win it in the ninth inning. Mariano Rivera turns 41 next month. He is aging just like the rest of us. But for one more year, it sure looks like nobody is going to beat the Yankees in the ninth inning.

C.C. Sabathia pitched pretty well, but pretty well wasn’t going to get it done against Francisco Liriano tonight. No, scratch that. Liriano was magnificent, but in the sixth inning his slider turned back into a pumpkin and the Yankees – no, never mind, in the sixth inning Sabathia lost it and the Twins finally – nope. It was Curtis Granderson – no, it was Mark Teixeira who – it was Mariano – the blown call in the ninth could’ve… screw it, the Yankees won, 6-4.

I went through quite a few different ledes tonight.

Initially, it looked like Francisco Liriano was going to out-ace C.C. Sabathia. The Hefty Lefty wasn’t bad, but his mistakes were taken full advantage off: a two-run Michael Cuddyer home run in the second inning, and a failure to cover first base quickly enough one inning later — combined with heads-up Orlando Hudson base running and a Posada passed ball — led to a 3-0 hole for the Yankees. At the time, that seemed like a lot of runs.

Meanwhile, for the first five innings, Liriano alternated between merely pitching well and making the Yankees look ridiculous. During his streak of 10 New York batters retired in a row, hitters like Gardner and Granderson and Alex Rodriguez were cutting loose with swings that came nowhere near the ball in either time or space.

But then all of a sudden Liriano turned mortal – or perhaps, to be less dramatic about it, in their third time through the order the Yanks just got a better feel for him. Mark Texeira got things started with a double, and Alex Rodriguez, who had struck out flailing on three pitches in his previous at-bat, worked a walk. Robinson Cano singled, and after a rather hapless-looking Marcus Thames struck out, Jorge Posada had a fantastic at-bat and pushed a single into right. Curtis Granderson’s triple finished the Yanks’ scoring in that inning, and also finished Francico Liriano’s night.

The bottom of that inning wasn’t any kinder to Sabathia, who had a very un-C.C. meltdown (“you’re being very un-Dude, Dude”). A walk, a double, and another walk loaded the bases, at which point Sabathia walked in the Twins’ tying run in the person of Danny Valencia (who has been a pleasant surprise for the Twins this season and is about to become an unpleasant surprise for a lot of Yankee fans). Yoicks. He recovered to strike out J.J. Hardy and end the inning, but the lead was already gone and everyone headed into the seventh inning all tied up at 4.

It was Texeira who led the second Yankee comeback, too, following a Nick Swisher single with a high, slow two-run home run just fair to right field. (I don’t know if it was an actual phenomenon or just a product of weird camera work, but the fly balls hit tonight seemed to have an unusually long hang time; I could’ve recited “Jabberwocky” in its entirety while waiting for that ball to come down on one side of the foul pole. Joe Girardi was shown yelling “Stay fair! Stay fair!” and his leadership skills with inanimate objects must be impressive, because it worked). So now the Yankees had a 6-4 lead, but with as many reversals as this game had, nobody was relaxing.

The Yankee pen kept things right there, although not without a few terrifying moments. It took the combined efforts of Boone Logan, David Robertson, and Kerry Wood to get the ball to Mariano Rivera, with two outs in the eighth and runners on second and third. And Rivera — who one of these days will start showing some cracks in his 40-year-old facade, but not today — got Denard (“No Relation Unless He Has Some Short Uncoordinated Jewish Relatives We Don’t Know About”) Span to do what hitters traditionally do against Mariano Rivera, and ground out.

The ninth inning would’ve been another by-the-numbers Rivera classic except that the third out, a shoestring catch by defensive replacement Greg Golson, was incorrectly ruled a trap by the umpires. As if we needed yet another argument for instant replay in the postseason, and if the Yankees had gone on to lose I would’ve suggested a Tweet-up at MLB Headquarters with pitchforks and torches. Instead, Jim Thome popped up the first pitch he saw, and the 6-4 lead held up.

For all the tsuris over how hard the Yankees should play for the Division as opposed to the Wild Card, the Twins lost their home field advantage along with this game. Andy Pettitte starts Game 2 tomorrow for roughly the 300th time in his career, and with the Yanks up 1-0 in the Series, I look forward to actually being able to breath during that one.

How do you follow-up a no-hitter?

The Yanks and Twins begin their series in the shadow of Roy Halladay’s great feat. So be it.

We’ll be rooting! (Enjoy the comments section and be mindful of our house rules–feel free to curse, just don’t curse at each other.)

This is what we’ve been waiting for. Never mind the fancy introductions…

Let’s Go Yan-Kees!

[Picture by Bags]

Roy Halladay has thrown a no-hitter in Game 1 of the NLDS against the Reds. The bum walked a batter in fifth inning.

Oh, Doctor!

[Picture by Bags]

As another postseason begins, today’s events serve as a reminder that it’s time for our annual public safety announcement:

BEWARE OF MOLINAS.

Molinas are extremely common this time of year. Always keep in mind that, even if they do not appear to be a threat, Molinas are very dangerous and can strike without warning. Almost every fall they claim at least one victim, tragedies that could likely have been avoided by taking a bit more care.

So, please, remember to remain on your guard when in the presence of Molinas throughout October and early November. If you come across one, do not attack or threaten it, do not approach its young, and do not hang any curveballs. Back slowly away and overpower it with your fastball. If all else fails, Molinas can generally be outrun.

Observing these simple safety tips will help ensure that you have a happy, healthy, and pleasant fall season.

-Your Friends at Bronx Banter

–

Photo of Molinas in their natural habitat by Iscan via Flickr

I’m going to enjoy watching the Rays and Rangers series. Consider this a game thread.

Speaking of Texas, here’s a long piece on Nolan Ryan and the Rangers by Jonathan Mahler for the New York Times Magazine:

In our conversations, Ryan lamented the fate of the modern pitcher, who has had to contend not only with performance-enhanced hitters but with certain changes to the rules of the game. During his playing days, Ryan relied heavily on intimidation; he is particularly annoyed by the empowering of umpires to eject pitchers from games for throwing at batters. “You take an aggressiveness out of the pitchers and put it into the hitters,” he told me in his office, where a pair of large oil paintings of cowboys on the Texas frontier hang above his desk.

Initially drafted in 1965 by the Mets, Ryan won his only World Series ring with New York but still couldn’t wait to leave. After a stint with the Angels, he became a free agent in 1979 and promptly returned home to Texas, pitching nine years in Houston before finishing out his career with the Rangers.

Ryan retired as one of the greatest pitchers ever, but the subsequent ascendance of statistical analysis in baseball has not been especially kind to his legend: the growing appreciation for walks as an offensive weapon has knocked him down more than a few pegs in the pitching pantheon. What remains remarkable about Ryan, though, is not simply his longevity — even in his 40s, his fastball approached 100 miles an hour — but his durability. At age 42, he once threw 166 pitches in a single game.

Ryan was never known as a student of the art of pitching. He was a power pitcher, blessed with an absurdly strong, seemingly indestructible arm. But he now has firmly held convictions about how to handle pitchers, and they stand in direct opposition to baseball’s prevailing orthodoxy — what he calls “the babying” of modern-day pitchers. “Pitch counts drive me nuts,” Ryan said. “You gonna put Steve Carlton or Tom Seaver or Bob Gibson on a pitch limit?”

Let’s do this…

In crafting this week’s edition of “Card Corner,” I wanted to come up with a player common to the two franchises facing each other in this week’s Division Series. I thought about picking Chuck Knoblauch, but his career-altering battles with the yips and his recent marital and legal problems have left a bad taste on the tongue. I thought about Luis Tiant and Jim Kaat, but their Yankee careers were simply too short. Ultimately, the choice of Graig Nettles feels like the right one. A supreme defender and infield acrobat, a clutch power hitter, and a wit of champion proportions, Nettles remains one of my favorite old Yankees and a clear-cut link to the two earliest world championship teams of the Steinbrenner regime.

It’s easy to forget that Nettles began his career with the Twins, and not the Yankees or the Indians, the team that handed him off to New York during the winter of 1972. The Twins originally drafted Nettles during the summer of 1965, the first year of Major League Baseball’s amateur draft, but he did not make his professional debut until the following season. Playing as a third baseman for Single-A Wisconsin Rapids, Nettles showed a powerful touch from the start, hitting 28 home runs. That performance earned him a promotion to Double-A in 1967, where he struggled against more advanced pitching and saw his slugging percentage fall under .400. Yet, the Twins saw enough to give him a late-season audition in Minnesota before bumping him to Triple-A Denver in 1968. Starring for the minor league Bears, Nettles slugged .534, batted a career-high .297, and showed himself ready for another mid-season call up.

The Twins liked Nettles’ left-handed bat, but they had enough questions about his glove work to move him to the outfield during his lone season in Denver. So when Nettles arrived at the Twins’ spring training site in 1969, he was listed as an “outfielder/infielder.” Yes, one of the finest fielding third basemen in the game’s history was originally billed as some kind of utility player. (Note that Nettles 1969 Topps rookie card lists him strictly as an outfielder.) It was reminiscent of the career of Brooks Robinson, who had started his professional career as a second baseman before the Orioles made the sage decision to slide him to the hot corner.

(more…)

In my head the baseball season is divided into three distinct parts.  The first, of course, begins on Opening Day, a red-letter day on my calendar.  (Incidentally, I can’t be bothered with spring training.  I know that sounds like blasphemy, but with teams wearing t-shirts instead of uniforms, players with wide-receiver numbers, and pitchers jogging around the warning track while a game is being played, it just doesn’t feel like baseball to me.  Sue me.)  Those first few weeks of the regular season are like gold, but not for the reasons you think.  I’m a Yankee fan, you know, so it’s been sixteen years since I needed the false hope that Kansas City fans cling to in April.  For me, those games are a reunion with old friends.  “Look, there’s Nick Swisher!  And hey, Robinson’s swing looks just as quick as it was last year.  Wait a minute, can Derek Jeter possibly have — gulp! — grey hair?”  Even Michael Kay’s voice, absent from my living room for six months, is welcomed back with a smile.

The second part of the season begins on a different date each year.  The day after the Yankees clinch their playoff spot, I take a break.  I have little need for what usually amounts to five or six games of makeshift lineups and anticlimactic results, and the freedom from the nightly pull of the game feels like a vacation.  Auditions for the 25th spot on the playoff roster remind me too much of spring training, and after living and dying through 158 games, I just don’t have the energy left to care about who Royce Ring is and whether or not he might make the postseason roster.  If I see him standing on the chalk on the first Wednesday of October, I’ll pay attention.  (I must admit, though, that I loved Joe Torre’s old tradition of allowing one of the elder Yankees to manage the final game.  Who can forget watching Clemens come to the mound to pull David Wells, or, as Emma reminded us, Bernie Williams sending himself to the plate for a pinch hit double.  Good times…)

The third part begins today, and it’s the only part that really matters.  You sweat and bleed with the team for 162 games spread over six months, and suddenly five games in seven days will determine the value of the season.  The Yankees will match up against the Twins in the first round of the playoffs, and I can’t even pretend to be concerned.  Sure, once I sit down in front of the TV there will be butterflies, and I’ll get nervous if Minnesota manages to jump out to an early lead, but right now I keep coming back to one thing — it’s the Twins.

We’re not supposed to say things like that.  Somehow the characters I string together here are suspected by the superstitious to have some affect on CC Sabathia’s fastball or Alex Rodríguez’s psyche.  If I predict victory, or worse yet, if I assume victory, I’m somehow casting some terrible jinx over the team.  Rubbish.  Jinxes are for little girls who say the same word at the same time and count to ten to silence their best friend.  There are no jinxes in baseball.

So here’s how things will go.  CC Sabathia is CC Sabathia, so let’s just write down Game 1 as a Yankee win and move on.  In Game 2 the Twins have the audacity to pitch Carl Pavano.  I can’t find a link to support this, but I’ve also heard that they’ve brought in Jeff Weaver to relieve in that game.  This is the Twins’ only hope.  Pavano throws eight solid innings, Weaver comes in for the save, and the entire island of Manhattan bursts into flames, taking the Bronx down with it.  But since I can’t see that fairy tale coming true, I’ll put my money on the Yanks in that game also.

When the series shifts to New York for Game 3, Phil Hughes will finally get a chance to erase any bad memories he might have of last October when he takes the mound in the potential clincher.  Like a lot of folks, I think it might’ve made more sense for Hughes to pitch in Minnesota, but Joe Girardi surely made that decision because he preferred Andy Pettitte over Hughes in a possible Game 5.  What Girardi doesn’t know, though, is that there will be no Game 5.  Hughes will cruise in Game 3.

Yankees win, the Yankees win.  Cue Sinatra.

Let’s get some opinions out there:

[poll id=”65″]

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and the most important one . . .

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The Yankees roster is set.

AJ Burnett isn’t all bad, after all. Dig this from Chad Jennings:

“It would be silly for Hughesy not to start,” said Burnett.

…“Joe’s the best manager I ever played for…He’s done more for me this year probably than any manager has ever done. He cares about me as a person and as a player. I’ll be down in that pen and be ready to get one out or two outs or whatever I’ve got to do for him.”

Cliff breaks down the line ups for the ALDS like only he can.

Jay roasts it up at BP.

And Steve Goldman’s always droppin’ science:

Andy Pettitte starts Game 2: This isn’t necessarily a bad decision, because if healthy, Pettitte is a terrific, experienced pitcher who any team would like to have on the mound in a tight spot. That said, foregoing the opportunity to let Phil Hughes pitch before Target Field’s wall of wind (“The Air Monster?”) seems like an error.

…Greg Golson makes the postseason roster: This is not a bad call as Golson can play defense, pinch-run, and swing at a southpaw in an emergency. Hopefully, Joe Girardi can remember not to make moves with Golson that he wouldn’t have made during the regular season. Otherwise, Golson will pinch-run for Nick Swisher in the fourth inning of some game and then end up getting three at-bats.

[Picture by Chris Giarrusso]

Lasting Yankee Stadium Memories is now in bookstores.

To celebrated its publication, dig this piece about Todd Drew from one of his dearest friends:

By Peter Zanardi

We never talked but then Todd Drew didn’t reveal a bit of himself. We never parted without making some kind of future plan. I’m totally convinced that would have continued if he lived to be 100.

The last time we met, Todd talked mostly about his own blog, Yankees For Justice, and his contributions to Bronx Banter. He also expressed his admiration for Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders. An unabashed liberal, Todd called Sanders “my favorite Senator.” Because I have Vermont connections, and because Sanders (who is actually Brooklyn born) is so approachable, I made a mental note to see about getting a personalized item for Todd.

My wife Jane and I would give it to him when we returned to New York for a weekend that would definitely include Jazz at Lincoln Center.

Todd’s mind had many, many rooms, and I’ll be forever thankful that I got to visit a few of them. There was, of course, baseball in general and the Yankees in particular. In the last years of his all-too-short stay, that was the warmest, coziest, most comforting of the rooms. He kept the cleanest scorebook I’ve ever seen, and I’m guessing the room was equally tidy.There were also spaces for ballet, jazz, history, politics, and especially the written word. The love between Todd and his wife Marsha was in every room. You couldn’t escape it.

I often marveled at what this son of a Syracuse bartender had become. He was a damn good writer, as evidenced by his Yankees For Justice and Bronx Banter contributions. I loved his style of driving home points with short, jab-like sentences.

Writing this, I now marvel at what I became just knowing him.

Considering the company, Todd’s joy in being one of the contributors to this effort would have been immeasurable. He was more than aware of all the others. His bookshelves rivaled some small town libraries. He loved to discuss particular books, stories, and opinions.

He read. He read a lot because he was convinced that was the route to becoming a better writer. The passion was always there—a divine gift perhaps. His sense of right and wrong, received from his parents Richard and Linda, was evident very early. He recalled, with pride, walking a picket line at age five or six with his Dad, then a Carrier employee in Syracuse.

The writing skills were not so easy to come by.

Auto racing brought us together. He was working for NASCAR handling media for a northern series. He had gone south to work for Dale Earnhardt. Among the things he brought back north was Marsha. I was involved in racetrack publicity at the time and delighted in listening to Marsha’s drawl.

Soon we wound up at the same auto racing weekly outside of Boston. I was sort of a “Dutch Uncle” at first—not more talented but a generation older. I watched Todd labor over columns. He’d spend an hour finding the right three-or-four word phrase. He’d ask so many questions.

He read living writers and dead writers, and he would experiment. “Where did you get that?” I’d ask. “Furman Bisher, Red Smith, Joe Falls,” he would answer. He’d write in the first person, in the second, in the third. He’d play with quotes, change paragraphs around. Sometimes it would work, and sometimes it wouldn’t, but he battled on.

He moved to a magazine. He started winning some acclaim including an honorable mention in a Best American Sports Stories collection. Bones Bourcier, the award-winning auto-racing writer, and I would kind of talk behind his back about how badly he wanted to be a great writer.

Bones and I were both in Oklahoma when we heard of Todd’s passing. We talked of his desire again, wishing, praying even, that this time he heard us.

The auto-racing run ended. Todd took Marsha back to Syracuse where his folks ran Poor Richard’s Pub. Times were not always good, the truth is he struggled, but the love he had for his native city showed through. He loved its baseball team, its fairgrounds, its place in New York State history, and its people. He wrote for some small newspapers.

I recall sitting in a diner in Baldwinsville outside of Syracuse talking about the Erie Canal. We drove to Rochester to see a ball game because Syracuse was away. The next day we were at the famed Oswego Speedway.

Then I heard Todd and Marsha were moving to New York City. He was taking that passion and that sense of right and wrong to the American Civil Liberties Union. “How perfect is that?” my wife, Jane, asked.

Soon they were living on the Upper West Side, going to Yankee games, to the New York City Ballet, to Birdland and Lincoln Center. He was an active member of the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR).

When we visited we took good shoes because we were going to walk. That, he said, was the way to appreciate his new home. He and Marsha would walk up to Harlem to jazz joints. When the subway workers went out, he walked the many blocks to work. He got to the Stadium as early as he could. He often left as late as possible.

Todd loved showing off his new home to his old friend. He taught Jane and me not to be afraid of the city, to enjoy its multitude of possibilities. His writing reflected the same love of New York’s people.

My wife was born in Brooklyn. She still had memories of the house her grandfather, an immigrant from Sweden, had built there. Her maternal grandfather, an English immigrant, was one of the founders of a church a few blocks away. Todd, Marsha, and I decided we would take Jane to those places that are in an area of Brooklyn now largely populated by minorities.

After a long subway ride, we walked many blocks before stopping in front of the house where Jane’s father was brought up. Then we walked on to the church. We couldn’t get in at first. A church elder, an immigrant himself, happened along and, hearing the story, invited us in.

Jane asked about the baptismal font that was dedicated in her grandfather’s memory some 50 years earlier. Sure enough, it was there, still being used. The plaque memorializing her grandfather was intact.

My wife’s eyes filled up. I’m almost sure Todd’s eyes did as well. He appreciated grandfathers and heritage. It was an incredible, very human moment. The fact that Todd Drew, who refused to dwell on differences—be they religion, color, income, education, whatever—was there made it more special.

I’ve was blessed to traveled a lot of miles with Todd Drew. I watched many races with him, went to Yankee Stadium and Shea Stadium with him. We talked and argued, always gently, about many things including the designated hitter (I dislike it) and modern versus traditional ballet. I truly not only loved Todd Drew, I loved being with him.

My lasting memory of Todd is that moment in that church in Brooklyn.

Todd and I went to the Stadium that night, Marsha graciously giving up her ticket. The next day, she took it back, and Jane and I enjoyed New York by ourselves.

“I believe in baseball and an equally free, open, just society for everyone,” Todd wrote. He hit that right on the nose.

According to reports, Andy Pettitte will pitch Game 2 and Phil Hughes will start Game 3.

Yesterday afternoon I got the chance to go to a blogger roundtable conversation with Bernie Williams. (Many thanks to Amanda Rykoff, aka the OCD Chick, for putting me in touch with the organizers). He’s in town to promote a new MasterCard program, and if you care about new MasterCard programs you can check that out here, but we got that out of the way in the first few minutes and then just talked baseball. We got a solid 50 minutes with Williams, with six of us asking questions. He’s spending most of his time on music these days, promoting his last album (rather directly titled “Moving Forward”) and planning the next one, and had just gotten back from a few weeks on tour.

As I’ve written before, Bernie Williams was my favorite player growing up – mostly because when he arrived in New York, he seemed shy and had big dorky glasses, like me (though of course unlike me, he also had incredible grace and athletic ability and went on to become a wealthy icon beloved by millions). I was at Yankee Stadium with a press pass on his last day as a player in the regular season, October 1st 2006, when he served as manager – a Joe Torre tradition when the division was already well in hand. He put himself in as a pinch hitter and lined a solid double, though the Yankees lost to Toronto 7-5; afterwards, in his press conference in Torre’s office, he joked that he was expecting Steinbrenner to call and fire him.

Williams has always been articulate, and throughout the conversation yesterday he was engaged and thoughtful, with lots of eye contact. He was also more forthcoming than I expected, especially about retirement, on which more later. I’ve talked to my share of players in locker rooms, and based on the admittedly small sample size, talking to former players in bars is a lot more constructive. Here are some of the highlights.

He said that as impressive as the new Stadium is (“They did a magnificent job”), “I’m always going to be partial to the old stadium, because it’s where I played my whole career.” Then someone asked him if he would’ve wanted to play at the new Stadium:

“Would I? Yeah! I mean the first year, first couple of months, all they talked about was that jet stream thing — everything that was hit to right-center was going out. So yeah, I would have loved to play there.”

I asked him how much baseball he watches these days, Yankees and otherwise:

“I rarely watch any other teams. If I see a game on TV, I scan through it, I look for players who played with me, and I try to follow what they do… but for the most part, mostly I see Yankee games, because I have such strong ties to the organization. I like to see my guys do well, the guys I grew up playing with. Even if I don’t watch the games I’ll try to see what they did, if they won, they lost, who’s hurt, who’s struggling, who’s having a good year. So I try to keep up.”

He was asked about the Yankees’ chances in the playoffs this year:

“…To me it’s gonna come down to the pitching – they have three, hopefully three solid starters in C.C., and the fact that Andy may be even more rested now, coming back from his injury, may be a little benefit; I think having the opportunity to have Hughes establish himself as a big-time pitcher, that’s a great opportunity for him.

After that, then you have… you know… guys who have to pitch. Hopefully they have it in mind, this mentality like they have something to prove in the postseason, because their season has been somewhat disappointing. So, you know, if they’re gonna go down they’re gonna go down swinging. I know that they’ll be able to hit, I think it’s going to come down to their pitching.

Williams talked about how he was part of the shift in the Yankees’ strategy in the early 90s, when the team started holding onto its young players instead of trading them. He talked about the role of home-grown players in the Yankees’ success, and then went on a bit of a tangent, mostly unprompted:

“By the way, I think they’ve come into a situation where it kind of backfires on young players coming up these days, because they can’t afford the luxury of struggling the first two years. Guys like Ricky Ledee, Melky Cabrera, people that have come into the organization at a time that expectations are so high… they have become very impatient with young players. So I think in a way it has backfired… I think in a way it’s kind of ironic, the one thing that has made us successful is working against young players nowadays.”

That, he added, is why he’s been so impressed by what Robinson Cano has been able to do:

“He’s just taken off, taken second base by storm, and I think in the next couple years he’s going to be definitely considered one of the best players in the game… So when you’re good, you’re good.”

“Being part of the Yankees for six years, with no options – not having the free will to decide my own destiny – I think I sort of owed it to myself to explore the possibilities. Maybe just see what’s out there, not necessarily that I wanted to make a change, but just to see what was out there. And when the Red Sox came with their offer – it was the Red Sox, Arizona, I think it was Detroit also – I was like wow, man, this is kinda cool, going into the free market now. But at the end of the day, it came down to the fact that I had been with the Yankees for such a long time – that I was so used to the city, the system, my teammates – so, deep down inside, I know that I just want to remain a Yankee.

–

So you’re trying to work with the agents, the people who are negotiating the deal, to try to accommodate that desire for you. But I thought it was a little bit too late, because I thought – you know, at the time, Joe was sort of wining and dining Albert Belle [laughs]. And I was like, well, maybe this is not gonna happen.

And actually it took, I called George from my house in Puerto Rico – this is a true story – I called George from my house in Puerto Rico. And I said to him, ‘George, Scott and Brian have been talking, and you know, I don’t think they’re getting it done the way that I want to get it done. And I just want you to hear it from me that I want to become a Yankee, I want to remain a Yankee, I want us to work this out.’ And he said, ‘What do you want?” And I said – at the time, Piazza was the guy that was getting kind of a comparable contract – I told him, ‘Well George, I think I want to get a contract similar to the one Mike Piazza has with the Mets.’ And he said, ‘Okay. I’m gonna discuss it with my people here, give me some time, and I’ll give you a call.’ I think it must have been a couple hours, maybe two or three hours, and he said ‘Okay, here’s the deal’.

…And that’s how it happened, it was between me and George, we were just negotiating – after all this, you know, great contract negotiation with agents and general managers, it came down to two people.”

The second phone call came one year when the Yankees unexpectedly canceled their annual Family Day, a time when players could bring their kids onto the field to play before a game, which Williams’ young children loved and looked forward to.

I called him. Well actually, I talked to Joe Torre, I said ‘Joe, what happened? Why don’t we have Family Day this year?’ He said ‘Well, it’s coming from up top, it’s been suspended, I don’t know.’ And I said, ‘Well, we can’t have this. My kids are looking forward to this, I’m in a tough situation.’ And he said, ‘Well, you wanna call George? Give him a call.’ And I said, ‘Okay, I will.’ And I gave him a call- it’s a funny story cause I called, and I don’t think he was expecting a call from me, I mean, obviously. And I said, ‘Hey George, how’re you doing-‘ — well, no, actually I said ‘Mr. Steinbrenner, how’re you doing?’ And he said, ‘Good, what can I do for you?’ I said ‘Well, I heard we’re not having Family Day this year, and I was wondering why we’re not having it, cause I know my kids are looking forward to it, and I’ve been one player who, I really don’t ask for much, but I really would like you to reconsider this decision, because it’s really important for me and my family,’ and this and that. He said ‘Okay, I’ll get back to you on this.’

And I think – I think it was because the Yankees, we won that day. So he said ‘Okay, we’re going to have Family Day tomorrow.’

Finally, I asked: “So, as far as I know you’ve never actually, technically, officially made a retirement announcement. Is there any particular reason for that? Do you have any plans to ever do that?”:

“Yeah, I do have plans – you know, at the time – I think it’s been four years now? Like the first year or two, I was going through somewhat of an… existential crisis, I guess. So to speak. Because you know it takes, it takes you some time to adjust – and you have this possibility of maybe playing for another team, and so many options running in your head. And, you know, you just start missing the game, and going through the World Baseball Classic didn’t help – cause I was like “Oh man, I can do this again!”. But I knew deep down inside, you know, it was a situation in which I would have to move on and do other stuff, like my music, that I have a lot of passion for. But I sorta kept it open, I think maybe just trying to fool myself into thinking that maybe one day I could come back, but every year that passes obviously it’s just harder and harder and harder to get back into it. And I think, you know, if it’s not this year, then probably next year I’ll just make it official. But it’s been unofficial for quite some time now.”

That’s not a surprising answer, really – it’s probably what most of us assumed. But I didn’t expect him to be quite so up front about it; when he was in his prime, I never thought of Williams as a tear-the-uniform-off-me kind of guy. And if it was this difficult for Williams, an intelligent guy with a second career in music that he seems to love, you can only imagine how hard retirement must be for someone less well equipped for post-baseball life. 

In fact, the conversation ended on a rather wistful note. Williams was asked if the Yankees had approached him about possibly retiring his number, and about what it meant to him to be considered one of the Yankee greats:

“I have no expectations, as far as that goes, that’s their decision… What I can take with me, which is something that nobody can take away from me, is my experience, the years that I played with them, the World Series rings, the batting title, the Gold Gloves, all the relationships that I have within the organization. Even though I left on not the best terms, I’m still able to feel that I’m part of this great organization, and that’s something that nobody can take away from me. In my head, that I have this great experience – and I’m, I don’t want to say great career – but this great experience that I have, being part of the Yankees for such a long time.

…At the end of the day, you know, it’s just about the memories. It’s about the time that you spent that you’ll never be able to forget – the ticker tape parades, the goofing around in the clubhouse, spring training, running around the field – it’s just the little things, to me, it’s what made the difference. Now that I’m moving into this other period of my life, with the music, it has become even more prevalent – to be able to remember those little details.

And I have absolutely no complaints whatsoever.”

I don’t think most Yankees fans have too many, either.

Odds and ends:

-Asked about playing guitar while Paul O’Neill played drums: “We jammed all the time,” he said, before and after games, during rain delays. O’Neill used Ron Guidry’s old drum set, which was kept in the bowels of the old stadium in “the Paint Room” (which in fact was full of paint).

-In talking about how the team developed into the late 90s dynasty, it was clear 1995 still stings: “The first round of the playoffs, still – I still remember those games… they were HORRIBLE. Losing three straight…” He trailed off.

-On how important home field advantage is in the playoffs: “I think it helps a lot; I don’t think it’s critical.”

-Williams’ manager said that Williams was probably the only man with a World Series ring and a Grammy award… but Amanda pointed out that Jay-Z does, in fact, have a World Series ring. Still: not a lot of dudes.

-This October 23rd, Williams will play a concert in Suffern, NY; part of the proceeds will go to support the Vincent Crotty Foundation and The Christopher Konkowski Memorial Scholarship Fund, charities set up in the memory of two local high school baseball players who were killed in a car accident last year.

There were lots of questions I wanted to ask, but didn’t get the chance to: Who’s the toughest pitcher you ever faced, and why; What was it like playing guitar with Bruce Springsteen; What do you miss most about playing, and what do you miss least; Do you even like the song “Disco Inferno”?

What would you have asked?

Dig this interview with me over at Gelf. I’ll be part of the next Varsity Letters Reading Series, this Thursday at 7:30 in Brooklyn.

Why the Twins Will Beat the Yankees…

My college roommate hailed from Edina, Minnesota. Eric was a catcher with an arm-shaped cannon (he’s unavailable to suit up for the Yankees Wednesday night) and remains a die-hard Twins fan. When we played stickball in the park in the sweltering June heat, he wore a turtleneck. When he went out to retrieve the Washington Post from a snow pile in February, he wore shorts and sandals. These Minnesotans are built differently than us New Yorkers. We save our shorts for the summer and bundle up in righteous indignation when it snows.

When the Yankees fell into their September funk, I began envisioning a brief, chilly, miserable series in Minnesota, with their ecstatic fans stomping their flip-flops and Robinson Cano inappropriately smirking from within the latest Gore-Tex innovation in hood-masks as he went oh-fer eight. Weather reports from Minnesota predict sun and warmth, so the Yankees will luck out in the first two games of the ALDS weather-wise. Hopefully it’s the first of many breaks that will go their way, because if they don’t catch some futher good fortune, this is the year the Twins get over the hump and beat the Yankees in the ALDS.

Minnesota set the tone for their 2010 season on March 21st. That’s the day they signed their franchise-player and reigning American League MVP to an eight-year, $184 million contract. The contract was almost Yankee-like in terms of length and amount. It was a commitment to the player, sure, but it was also a commitment to the team and the fan base. In concert with opening a new stadium, the organization was assuring any doubters that the Twins intended to compete with the big spenders.

It was only a few years ago that the Twins desperately peddled Johan Santana to the Yankees and Red Sox. After realizing they were being used as the target in an organizational pissing contest, they turned, dazed and confused, and accepted whatever crappy deal was still left on the table from the Mets. Santana has been good for the Mets, but the Twins are probably thrilled that they’re not the ones paying him right now, with or without shoulder surgery. But I can’t believe that either the fans, players or the management was happy about being the shuttlecock in a game of badminton between Brian Cashman and Theo Epstein.

Now the Twins have a new outlook, beginning with their new ballpark and continuing with a payroll that added 50% from 2009. The payroll still doesn’t come within half of the Yankees’, but for the players and fans in Minnesota, it must feel liberating. It must feel like they have finally joined the big time. And I think this optimism and confidence will fuel the upcoming ALDS. It’s their house; it’s their time. (more…)

It’s cool in New York this morning. I can only imagine it will be nippy in Twinkieland come tomorrow night. Playoffs in the air…never gets old.

[Drawing by Larry Roibal]

Here are some of the notable Yankee numbers from the season that just ended:

TEAM

• 859: runs scored, 56 fewer than 2009.
• .267: batting average, 16 points lower than 2009, and lowest since .268 in 2004
• 662: walks, 1 fewer than 2009.
• 201: homers, the 12th time in franchise history with 200 or more roundtrippers, and 43 fewer than 2009.
• 5: players with 100 or more strikeouts (Brett Gardner / Curtis Granderson / Derek Jeter / Nick Swisher / Mark Teixeira), tied for most in team history (2002).  Jorge Posada ended with 99 strikeouts and Alex Rodriguez had 98.
• .989: fielding percentage, a franchise record (.986, 3 times).
• 32: triples, 11 more than 2009.
• 4.06: ERA, lowest since 2003, but seventh in AL.
• 42: unearned runs allowed, fewest since 1998 (37).
• 7.09: K/9, highest since franchise-record 7.26 in 2002.

(more…)

“The Silent Season of a Hero,” a collection of Gay Talese’s sportswriting, got a rave review in the Times over the weekend. Gordon Marino writes:

Early on, Talese studied fiction with the strange intention of writing nonfiction, of elevating real life to literary life. Taking note of his way of setting up scenes, his oddly angled story lines and realistic dialogue, Tom Wolfe credited Talese with stirring a revolution in reporting that Wolfe christened the “new journalism.” This pronouncement was neither fiction nor hyperbole. Gay Talese’s outré method of framing and developing his “factual short stories” (as Rosenwald describes them) was as groundbreaking as it is still arresting. As this marvel of an anthology makes manifest, Talese transformed sportswriting into literature that is both serious and delightful.

Talese wasn’t the first writer to apply novelist techniques to non-fiction–WC Heinz and John Lardner had been doing it for years. In a recent interview for the Paris Review, Talese explained:

My first job was on the sports desk, but I didn’t want to write about sporting events. I wanted to write about people. I wrote about a losing boxer, a horse trainer, and the guy in the boxing ring who rang the bell between rounds. I was interested in fiction. I wanted to write like Fitzgerald. I collected his work—his short stories and journals. “Winter Dreams” is my favorite story of all time. The good nonfiction writers were writing about famous people, or topical people, or public people. No one was writing about unknown people. I knew I did not want to be on the front page. On the front page you’re stuck with the news. The news dominates you. I wanted to dominate the story. I wanted to pick subjects that were not the ordinary assignment editor’s idea of a story. My idea was to use some of the techniques of a fiction writer: scene setting, dialogue, and even interior monologue, if you knew your people well enough. I was writing short stories, and there were not many people on the Times who were doing that. Once, at an NYU baseball game, I overheard a conversation between a young couple who were having a lovers’ quarrel. I wrote the dialogue and I told the story of the game through what they were watching and what they were saying. At the St. Patrick’s Day parade, I wrote about the last person in the procession, a little guy who was carrying a tuba, and behind him came the sanitation trucks. I followed the parade from the vantage point of this tuba player.

…I could not contain myself within the twelve-hundred-word limit of daily journalism. Wherever I was, I thought that there were stories that other people weren’t telling. When I was going into professional athletes’ locker rooms, for instance, I would just listen to the chatter and look at the bodies of these men who had been in locker rooms with other men since they were little boys. There’d be other sports writers there, and they’d be asking the athletes questions about their performance in that night’s game, but I thought, No, there’s a different story here. These men are fascinating not as performers but in the way in which they mingle together. They’re freer with each other than homosexual men in a bathhouse. These other reporters didn’t even see the story, they just saw their job. Yet because it was a daily newspaper I was always being pulled away from these stories. I couldn’t do them at any real depth. That was really why I couldn’t do the job anymore.

At the same time, in the mid-sixties, Tom Wolfe and Jimmy Breslin were having fun at the Herald Tribune. They were able to write what they wanted to write and I wished I had that kind of freedom. I was getting a lot of freedom by the standards of the Times, but not compared to them. I wanted more room and I wanted to go anywhere I wanted.

Talese wrote memorably about Floyd Patterson and his Esquire feature on Joe DiMaggio remains a classic.