In the Times, Ben Shpigel writes about Mariano Rivera, who has not pitched in nine games:

Manager Joe Girardi saw no need to insert him into any of the three blowouts in Boston over the weekend, and the Yankees never led in their 5-4 loss Monday.

“I wouldn’t imagine we’d go much longer, but these weather conditions aren’t the most conducive to a guy that had a little irritation in his oblique,” Girardi said. “I don’t consider that to be a problem, but if he’s coming in just to get some work and it’s going to be 42 degrees, I’m not sure I want to do that.”

Tonight’s game has been called on the count of rain. They’ll play two tomorrow.

Unknown, found via Uniwatch

Since we’re on a Reggie kick today, here’s a tune from Tribe’s fourth record with a reference to Buck Tater:

Our old pal Josh Wilker will be in town later this week (and into early next week) to promote his critically-praised memoir Cardboard Gods. First up, Thursday night. Josh will be featured at a No Mas event at the Nike Store in Soho from 7:30-9:30. He’ll be reading from the book and signing copies too. Oh, and there’ll be a bubble-blowing contest as well.

I’m so there.

“When you unwrap a Reggie bar, it tells you how good it is.” – Catfish Hunter

I don’t remember the first time I met Dayn Perry but it must have been about five years ago now. This was back when he was writing for Baseball Prospectus in addition to Fox Sports. We hit it off immediately and have remained pals ever since. Dayn’s got that easy Southern charm that makes for wonderful company. When he told me that he was writing a book about my boyhood hero Reggie Jackson I was more than somewhat eager to see what he’d come up with. We spoke about Reggie and the writing process often while he was working on the book and Dayn went so far as to mention me in the acknowledgements.

The book, Reggie Jackson: The Life and Thunderous Career of Baseball’s Mr. October, drops today. Dayn and I caught up recently to chat about all things Reggie and what it was like writing a biography.

Dig:

Bronx Banter: There are two big biographies out this spring, one of Willie Mays and the other on Hank Aaron. Both books are well over 500 pages and aim to be the definitive work on their subjects. Your book is leaner at 300 pages. What was behind your thinking in making this a trimmer rather than an exhaustive narrative?

Dayn Perry: Part of it was that the publisher wanted me to stay as close as possible to 100,000 words. The initial manuscript I submitted was about 20,000 words longer than the final product, so I undertook some heavy editing toward the end of the process. On another level, though, I wanted a brisk, readable book that included all the important events in Reggie’s life and aspects of his character. My hope is that we’ve achieved that.

BB: You wrote this book without Reggie’s participation. Was that because he didn’t want to talk with you?

DP: On a couple of occasions, I spoke with Reggie’s business manager and requested an interview, but I never received a response. My understanding is that he didn’t want his cooperation to detract from the book he was working on at the time with Bob Gibson and Lonnie Wheeler. That’s understandable, of course.

BB: What, if any, obstacles did it present?

DP: It made it easier because I much enjoy the solitary aspect of writing, and the more of that I’m allowed the better my work is going to be. I still conducted 50 or so interviews for the book, and they made it a better work, I think. But I think of myself more as a writer than a reporter, so the nuts-and-bolts writing–the craft aspect–is the most fulfilling part of the job. Also, I think cooperation with the subject can sometimes lead to a varnishing or leavening of the work, even if it happens unconsciously. Obviously, I had no such concerns. It’s an honest, fact-based account, but I didn’t have to worry about satisfying him at every turn.

BB: Did Reggie prevent anyone from speaking to you?

DP: Not to my knowledge. A number of former teammates of his declined to speak with me once they learned Reggie wasn’t cooperating with the project, but so far as I know he didn’t actively work to undermine my efforts.

BB: There has been so much written about Reggie, particularly during his years in New York. What does your book offer that is new?

DP: My book sheds new light on the Mets’ decision not to draft him and covers his Angels years and retirement for the first time. Some people are going to be familiar with his Oakland years, and even more people are going to be familiar with his New York years. But so much of that time is forgotten or neglected by history. I think the totality of his life–the scope of his life–is something most people haven’t grasped yet.

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Sergio Mitre took the ball to the hill for an emergency start against the Tigers tonight. That’s not a good initial ingredient for a victory, but his opposite number was also a fill-in named (checking his name…) Brad Thomas. So there was some reason to hope. The Tigers cracked Mitre for four runs, but the Yankees merely dented Thomas for two. And after some radar-gun frying relief pitching, the clearing smoke revealed a 5-4 victory for Detroit.

Both starting pitchers were bad, but Jim Leyland tossed his pea-shooter aside earlier than Joe Girardi. The bridge to the endgame flame throwers featured only an annoying run charged to Boone Logan’s suspiciously modest account (Is he hiding runs in an off-shore ERA?).

Zumaya, Chamberlain and Valverde took turns trying to short circuit the radar gun – Zumaya winning bragging rights by going over 100 mph several times. However, he almost lost the game, as the Yanks did manage to get to him for two runs in his third inning of work. Jeter had a particularly brutal game at the plate, but almost delivered the game-changing hit with the tying and go-ahead runs on with two outs in the eighth. I never thought it was going to fall, but at least he worked the count and hit it hard. The game ended on six straight K’s and only one of the victims even managed a foul ball.

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There are a lot of interesting stories surrounding the Tigers this year.

Miguel Cabrera, who drew headlines when police were called to break up a domestic dispute that got physical in his home on the morning of his team’s one-game playoff against the Twins last October (a game Detroit lost despite Cabrera’s three-run homer in the third), went to rehab for his alcoholism over the winter and has opened 2010 as one of the majors hottest hitters (.370/.457/.639 with a major league best 33 RBIs).

Dontrelle Willis, who arrived with Cabrera from the Marlins in a trade during the 2007 winter meetings but had been limited to one win in 14 starts over the past two years by leg injuries and mental illness, has emerged from his struggles to lead the rotation in ERA in the early going, though he’s been scratched from his start tonight due to the flu.

Jeremy Bonderman, the former Moneyball draftee who went to the Tigers in the Jeff Weaver/Ted Lilly deal with Carlos Pena, was a part of Detroit’s pennant winning rotation in 2006, but had been limited to three wins in 13 starts over the past two years by the after effects of heavy workloads in his early 20s, is also back in the rotation and pitching effectively. He’ll face Phil Hughes, whose innings limit was surely partially inspired by Bonderman, on Wednesday.

Joel Zumaya, the rookie fireballing relief sensation of the 2006 team who has suffered a variety of arm injuries since, including one stemming from too much Guitar Hero and one suffered while moving his belongings out of the way of the California wildfires of late 2007, is also healthy and dominating out of the pen having struck out 23 men in 18 1/3 innings without allowing a home run or a walk.

Then there’s Austin Jackson, the Yankee center field prospect sent to Detroit in the three-way deal that brought Curtis Granderson to the Bronx. It was widely believed that the 23-year-old Jackson needed a bit more seasoning in Triple-A, but the Tigers made him their Opening Day center fielder and leadoff hitter and he has responded by blowing everyone’s damn minds, leading the league with a .371 average, the majors with 49 hits, and producing a total line of .371/.420/.508 with six steals in seven attempts.

I was a Jackson doubter (his .300/.354/.405 average for Scranton last year looked like a lot of empty batting average, which is performance thus far this year might prove to be as well), but then I doubted Robinson Cano, too (he was, after all, a career .278/.331/.425 hitter in the minors). Sometimes talent and athleticism win out over prior performance, particularly with young players (Cano was 22 when the Yankees installed him at second base), and in Jackson’s case, particularly with a young athlete who had primarily focused on basketball before the Yankees backed a truck full of money up to his house at draft time.

If Jackson is anything close to the player he has appeared to be in the early going this year, the Granderson trade is going to look like a major bust. Remember, it wasn’t only Jackson, but Ian Kennedy, currently sporting a 3.48 ERA and 3.18 K/9 in the Diamondbacks’ rotation, and Phil Coke, who has been a big part of the Tigers major league best bullpen this year, who were dealt for the currently-injured and previously-slumping Granderson.

Seeing Jackson and Johnny Damon start things off for the Tigers while their replacements, Granderson and Nick Johnson languish on the disabled list won’t be much fun for Yankee fans in this series, nor will any game that pivots on the relative abilities of Coke and Boone Logan. Still, it’s important to remember that the Yankees are thisclose to the major league’s best record, while the Tigers are a decidedly average team.

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The Dog, By Francisco De Goya (1820-22)

From Dwight Garner’s review of The Last Hero: A Life of Henry Aaron:

Mr. Bryant’s book can be read as a companion piece, and a reply of sorts, to “Willie Mays: The Life, the Legend,” the recent biography by James S. Hirsch. These two ballplayers were both born in Alabama during the Great Depression (Mays in 1931, Aaron three years later), and both were among the last Hall of Famers to have played in the Negro Leagues. Their years on the field overlapped almost exactly. But they could not have been more different as personalities. Mays was joyous and electric, on the field and off, while Aaron was introverted, sometimes painfully so. They became lifelong, if low-key, antagonists.

Mr. Bryant, a senior writer for ESPN magazine, quotes the sportscaster Bob Costas as remarking, about Mays, that we “associate him with fun” and remember him with fondness. With Aaron, he added, “it is all about respect.” That quotation lingers like wood smoke over “The Last Hero.” These biographies of Mays and Aaron, taken together, are a striking and elegiac assessment of race relations in America during the 20th century. They are elegant portraits, as well, of two different ways of being a man. Wrap them both up for the 14-year-old in your life. The volume that’ll be left standing when the major book awards are handed out, though, is Mr. Bryant’s, I suspect. His is the brawny one, the one with serious and complicated swat.

…Aaron is clearly a hard man to get to know, and I’m not sure Mr. Bryant entirely does. His life off the field is detailed haphazardly: his two marriages, his children, his passions. His own words, quoted here, are mostly unmemorable. But “The Last Hero: A Life of Henry Aaron” had the forceful sweep of a well-struck essay as much as that of a first-rate biography. In an era in which home runs are now a discredited commodity, Henry Aaron looms larger than ever: a nation has returned its lonely eyes to him.

[Photo Credit: Rich Lederer of The Baseball Analysts]

This comes from Bags:

I grew up in Detroit. Used to go to old Tiger Stadium with my Dad. He once finagled seats right behind home plate for a game with the Yankees. The thing I remember most vividly was Dave Winfield. The man was huge. Just huge. Wait. Not huge. More like a giant. And he had this regal air about him. We were both speechless. I actually think that was the seed of my Yankee fandom, right there. I wasn’t as amazed by Dave Winfield as I was by the idea of New York City.

Tiger Stadium was near the epicenter of one of the great quirks of Detroit. There is a food phenomenon in Detroit known as the Coney Island Hot Dog. (It has nothing whatsoever to do with the place near Brighton Beach.) It is a natural casing dog that is fried on a flat griddle. Ever so slightly spicy. Then it goes on a soft bun. And is topped with a meat chili. And a lot of finely diced onions. And old school yellow mustard.

There are Coney Island restaurants all over Detroit. Coney Island is a food genre. Sort of like Famous Rays here. Anyone can open a Coney Island. But the ones in Detroit are “sub-branded” as they say in advertising. So there is a Layette Coney Island, and an American Coney Island, and a National Coney Island, and all kinds of other Coney Islands, scattered all over the city and the suburbs.

But here is the part I love. The two original Coney Islands are in downtown Detroit, on Lafayette Street. A short walk from old Tiger Stadium. And they are dead next door to each other. The food at one is indistinguishable from the other. But they compete. American versus Lafayette. Lafayette versus American.

They’ve been at it for 40 years. I vaguely recall going there as a very little kid with my Dad and having to walk past the gauntlet of guys out front representing the two places trying to get you to go into theirs and not the other one. Just a classic bit of Detroit weirdness that goes back to when Detroit was this vibrant place full of life and comfortable people and great (now vanished) places like the Lindell AC and the London Chop House.

Anyway. Long way around the bend, here is the story to go with the photo:

I found myself about two hours from Detroit a year or so ago. Had a noon flight back to NY. It was a Sunday. I got up at 5:00 am and drove to downtown Detroit and had myself 4 Coney Dogs with everything. For breakfast. At 6:52 am. Just me and the counter guy and the cook and some belligerent drunk. Beautiful.

Then I drove to the airport and had one more at the Coney franchise in the new terminal there.

For dessert, as Kris Kristoferson would say.

Lena Horne died last night in Manhattan. She was 92.

Bill Madden’s new book, Steinbrenner: The Last Lion of Baseball will be released next week. I’m not sure what new ground the book will cover, but Madden was given access to the personal musings of former Yankees GM Gabe Paul–who tape recorded his thoughts–by Paul’s son, Gabe Jr. Early buzz has it that Madden’s book is especially strong on Steinbrenner’s early years in New York (again, I’m curious how it’ll be an improvement on Dick Schaap’s outstanding, Steinbrenner!)

The Daily News has two excerpts from the book: one and two.

Madden will be out at the Yogi Berra Museum and Learning Center this Thursday to discuss the book. If you are in the vicinity, stop by and check him out. Should be fun.

In a rare turn of events, I didn’t take a swipe at A.J. Burnett’s reliability in my preview of Sunday night’s finale at Fenway. Burnett was a key contributor to the Yankees’ 27th world championship in his first year with the team and had gotten off to a strong start in Year Two (4-0, 1.99 ERA entering last nights game). I was finally beginning to soften on the guy.

Then, with a chance to push his team into first place following a Rays loss earlier in day (to a perfect game by Dallas Braden, of all people), he shows up on the hill at Fenway without his fastball command and coughs up nine runs in 4 1/3 innings, setting the Yankees up for a 9-3 loss.

After dominating the Red Sox in his walk year with the Blue Jays, Burnett gave up 22 runs in 12 2/3 innings across three starts at Fenway Park last year, but in his first game of 2010, which also came in Boston, he pitched relatively well, allowing just four runs, three earned, in five innings as his team won 6-4. Sunday night was 2009 at Fenway all over again.

To be fair, Marcus Thames helped the Sox get on the board for the first time in the second by misplaying a catchable Jeremy Hermida fly ball that would have been the third out of the inning, taking a bad route, then having the ball glance off his glove for a two-base error that allowed J.D. Drew to score. Then again, Drew was in scoring position after singling and moving to second on a wild pitch by Burnett, and though Hermida’s drive was catchable, it was struck well and did require Thames to retreat toward the warning track in left.

Thames’s day wasn’t quite as bad as Burnett’s, but that error was ugly, he went 0-for-3 with a hit-by-pitch at the plate, and after his inning-ending strikeout in the fourth, he got his manager ejected by starting an argument with homeplate umpire Tim McClelland over the called third strike.

The Sox did the bulk of their damage in the third, loading the bases on walks to Marco Scutaro and Kevin Youkilis sandwiched around a Victor Martinez double. With one out, Drew scored Scutaro with a sac fly. David Ortiz then hit a ground-rule double to deep rightfield that plated Pedroia. Youkilis had to hold at third because the ball hopped into the stands, but he and Ortiz both came around on Adrian Beltre’s subsequent double, and Jeremy Hermida, who later drove Burnett from the game with a two-run homer over the Green Monster in the fifth, singled home Beltre to put the Sox up 6-0.

Nick Swisher and Alex Rodriguez got two back with solo homers over the Monster in the bottom of the third, but that was all the Yankees were able to get against Boston starter Jon Lester, who struck out seven and allowed just two other hits in his seven innings of work.

If there was a positive to this game, it was the 3 2/3 innings of one-hit relief provided by Romulo Sanchez, who not only pitched well, but finished the game for Burnett, saving the rest of the bullpen. Then again, with Sergio Mitre and Javier Vazquez starting the next two games, it would have been nice if the Yankees could have saved Sanchez for one of those two games.

So, Friday night I try to explain that the Red Sox don’t suck, and then they go and lose the first two games of this weekend series by a combined score of 24-6 against a Yankees team that is suddenly as fragile as Nick Johnson’s wrists (Alfredo Aceves, come on down . . .). Ingrates.

Not that I’m complaining. The Yankees have won four of five against the Sox and clinched yet another series win. All that remains in this set is for them to complete a sweep on national TV.

The Sox have their best chance at a win in this series tonight, not because the Yankees are throwing A.J. Burnett, but because the Sox have Jon Lester on the hill. Lester has been untouchable in his last three outings, allowing just one run in 20 2/3 innings while striking out 23 and not allowing a single home run.

Fortunately for the Yankees, Robinson Cano is back at second base, and Jorge Posada is taking Johnson’s place at DH, his first start at any position in almost a week. Following those two are Marcus Thames in left, the red-hot Francisco Cervelli, and Brett Gardner back in his customary nine hole thanks to Nick Swisher batting second. It says something about how well the Yankees are playing thus far, and how much every man on the roster is contributing, that this is a lineup I’m happy to see.

If Posada makes it through tonight in one piece, he should catch the opener in Detroit on Monday. That’s good news with regards to Posada’s health, but bad news with regard to lineup optimization as it will bench Cervelli and open the DH spot to a revolving door that means more starts for the rest of the bench.

Alfredo Aceves, who left Saturday’s game with a stiff lower back is day-to-day. Nick Johnson is on the 15-day DL with inflammation in a tendon in his right wrist. He missed most of the 2008 season due to a torn tendon in that wrist, so I wouldn’t expect him back soon, and the Yankees have already said he’ll be gone more than the minimum 15 days.

Kevin Russo takes Johnson’s place on the roster. Russo impressed in camp with a strong plate approach and the ability to hit the pitch he’s given. The 25-year-old second baseman can also play third and has been working at short and in the outfield, but he doesn’t have much power (as evidenced by his .302/.383/.425 line for Triple-A Scranton this year) and isn’t a natural defender. Still, he should provide some good at-bats and flexibility when needed. Russo had a nine game hitting streak going for Scranton when he was called up. His first appearance for the Yankees will be his major league debut.

Sending much love to all the moms out there. Hope everyone has a great day.

My cat Moe Green was sitting on the window sill in my office this afternoon when a gust of wind knocked his ass down. I heard him land and looked up to see him on the floor looking back over his shoulder at the window, slunk down low. I sat up to see if a bird had gotten to close to the window but this was no bird. Just the wind.

A few hours later, I walked up to Johnson Avenue where I saw parts of two big trees on the sidewalk–a huge branch was hanging on the telephone line above. Police barrier outside of the Hunan Balcony. I walked home with my groceries and heard a rumbling like the wheels on a skateboard. But it was a cluster of trees just behind me, thrashing.

It was some serious wind, man. And Moms Nature was ‘spressin her own bad ass self from Philadelphia to Boston this afternoon. The Mets won in extra innings again today against the Giants at Citifield and the sharp late afternoon light and shadows covered the field. In Philly, the shadows were just as daunting a short while later. I know about the Phillies because Fox cut to their game when the Yanks and Sox were delayed with two outs in fourth inning, Yanks up 6-3. CC Sabathia was on the mound pitching to his old catcher Victor Martinez. CC was in his rhythm, not rushing, and  didn’t anticipate how quickly the storm was going to hit. But it went from no rain to downpour within thirty seconds.

Cut to the Braves-Phils, and start grinding your teeth.

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The banged-up Yanks are even more banged-up today after a painful win on Friday night in Boston. Cano is out today; Nick Johnson is headed to the DL. But CC Sabathia is on the hill. He’ll go against Clay Buchholz, who has been Boston’s best starter this year.

Never mind the payback, just win, baby.

[photo credit: Yohei Yamashita]