It’s cool, gray and rainy in the Bronx this morning.

Reminds me of Belgium.

[photo credit: thepetitfour and Last Night’s Dinner]

The first five innings of Friday night’s series-opening tilt between the Yankees and Red Sox were crisp and closely contested. Josh Beckett came out blazing, spotting 96 mile-per-hour heaters and dropping hammer curves. He struck out the side in the first, two of three batters in the second, and struck out Derek Jeter for a second time to strand a Francisco Cervelli single in the third. Phil Hughes kept pace, retiring the first seven men he faced, then following a walk to Beckett’s personal catcher Jason Varitek with two strikeouts to strand him.

The Yankees finally broke through in the fourth when, with one out, Mark Teixeira battled back from 0-2 to work a walk and Alex Rodriguez followed with a single that moved Teixeira to second. Beckett rallied to strike out Robinson Cano on four pitches, then made Nick Swisher look silly on a check swing on a cutter inside before spotting a 96 mph heater on the outside corner for strike two.

At that, Swisher spun on his heel and took a walk out of the batters box, seemingly to gather himself. Swisher has a deserved reputation as a flake because he’s a motormouth and a goofball, but that doesn’t mean he’s not a smart ballplayer. In the bottom of the inning, he made a great play in right, sliding in front of a would-be double to cut it off and hold J.D. Drew to a single. On this occasion it was obvious that Swisher was determined to win the mental battle with Beckett as well as the physical one.

After stepping back in, Swisher took a fastball well high, then took a curve in the dirt and stepped out again. Bat under his right arm, lips drawn tight, eyes peeking out toward Beckett, Swisher had a look on his face like he had figured something out, as if he thought he knew something Beckett didn’t. He then stepped back in the box and hit a curve up in the zone over the wall in straight-away center to give the Yankees a 3-0 lead. After the game, Swisher said he was lucky to run into one. He’s humble, too.

The Sox got one back in the bottom of the fourth on Drew’s single (the first Boston hit in the game), another by Kevin Youkilis, and sac fly by David Ortiz, but when Boston threatened again in the fifth with two out singles by Darnell McDonald and Marco Scutaro that put runners on the corners, Hughes got Dustin Pedroia to fly out to center to strand them.

Then came the top of the sixth. Alex Rodriguez led off with a low line-drive through the shortstop hole that was hit so hard it rolled all the way to the wall for a double. Beckett then threw a 1-0 cutter down and into Robinson Cano and hit the Yankee second baseman on the top of the right knee. The impact was loud and frightening as Cano let out an audible shout. After a visit from the trainer, Cano took his base, but two pitches later he took himself out of the game (he’s day-to-day and likely won’t play Saturday).

Beckett’s 1-1 pitch to Swisher was a fastball, but Varitek, expecting a curve, lowered his glove and the ball hit off his left arm and rolled toward the Yankee dugout, moving the runners (Rodriguez and pinch-runner Ramiro Peña) up. After the Red Sox’s trainer visited Varitek (who later came out with a bruised left forearm), Beckett struck out Swisher, but then curiously intentionally walked Brett Gardner to face Francisco Cervelli with the bases loaded and one out.

Here’s where things got weird. In his previous at-bat, Cervelli had called time while Beckett was taking a long set to freeze Gardner at first. Beckett responded by coming up and in to Cervelli and making him jump out of the way. In this at-bat, Cervelli battled the count full, then called time on Beckett again. Again Beckett’s next pitch was up and in, but this time it was ball four and forced in a run. The first time it was clearly intentional, but Beckett wouldn’t throw at a guy to force in a run in a two-run game . . . would he?

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This just in: the Red Sox don’t suck. Sure, they stumbled out of the gate, losing the opening series to the Yankees and falling six games out of first place just 13 games into the season after being swept by the Rays and falling to 4-9. Sure, they suffered an embarrassing sweep at the hands of the Orioles last weekend that dropped them to seven games behind the surging Rays.

Yet, over their last 15 games, the Red Sox are 10-5, the exact same record as the Yankees over their last 15, and if you push it to 16 games, the Sox are 11-5 to the Yankees’ 10-6. Setting aside the fluky Baltimore series, in which two of the O’s wins were one-run victories in extra innings, the Sox have lost just three other series all year, to the Yankees, Rays, and Twins, the cream of the American League who enter today’s action with a combined .702 winning percentage. The Sox followed up their embarrassment in Baltimore by sweeping a four game set at home against the Angels, which pushed their record over .500 for the first time since the second day of the season, and prior to their trip to Baltimore, the Sox had won seven of their last nine games. Oh, and they’re doing all of that with two thirds of their outfield on the disabled list.

Yes, the Sox got off to a bad start, but they’re not a bad team, and the Yankees and the rest of baseball would be foolish to write them off this early. Remember when everyone was wondering what was wrong with Jon Lester? Well he’s a perennial slow starter (5.40 ERA through six starts in 2008, 6.07 ERA through ten starts last year). After three duds, he has put up the following line over his last three starts: 3-0, 0.44 ERA, 0.87 WHIP, 20 2/3 IP, 10 H, 1R, 8 BB, 23 K, 0 HR. He faces A.J. Burnett on Sunday.

Josh Beckett, who starts against Phil Hughes tonight, got off to an even worst start, but his last time out he held the O’s to two runs over seven innings, striking out six against no walks or homers. Twenty-five-year-old Clay Buchholz, who starts Saturday against CC Sabathia, has been very good for a fourth starter, posting a 2.97 ERA with solid peripherals. The Yankees are going to miss John Lackey in this series, but five of his six starts this season have been quaility, and if you take out his one dud against the Rays, his ERA drops to 2.14.

At the plate, J.D. Drew got off to a miserable start, but has hit .352/.422/.667 over his last 14 games. David Ortiz homered just once in April, but has three jacks already in May and is finally being platooned with Mike Lowell (a move I had been expecting all winter). Kevin Youkilis and Dustin Pedroia remain among the most productive players at their positions (Robinson Cano has nine homers and 21 RBIs, Pedroia has seven taters and has driven in 21 as well). Adrian Beltre is hitting .343, and Jason Varitek has found new life coming off the bench (11-for-34 with five homers), which is important as Victor Martinez is one of the few Boston hitters still scuffling (though he did go 6-for-17 with two doubles and a homer in the Angels series).

Mike Cameron, out with a sports hernia, and Jacoby Ellsbury, out with broken ribs, have both resumed baseball activities, and though he hasn’t pitched well in two starts, Daisuke Matsuzaka has returned from the disabled list, pushing Tim Wakefield to the bullpen and assorted detritus (Scott Atchison, Fabio Castro, Alan Embree) off the roster. The Red Sox are righting their ship. Given that they’ve been keeping pace with the Yankees for more than half of the season despite the struggles of various individual players, that’s a legitimate concern.

The Yankees enter this weekend’s series in Boston with a five-game lead on the Sox, but there are 135 games left on the Yankees’ schedule. Certainly those five games give the Yankees some margin for error, but with injuries cascading through the roster, they just might need it. Meanwhile, with the Rays off to a blinding start (in addition to their major league best 21-7 record and .750 winning percentage, they have tied the 1984 Tigers with the best run differential after 28 games by any team since 1961 [hat tip: @lonestarball]), the three-way battle in the AL East that we expected each of the last two years but didn’t get due to the shortcomings of the Yankees and Rays, respectively, looks like it will be a reality this year.

I still like the Yankees’ chances of taking this series, because of the starters they have lined up and because of how well they’ve been playing all year, but any thoughts of being able to kick Boston while they’re down are misguided. The Red Sox are good. You heard it here first. (more…)

I just like the lines.

Long time Banterite Bags took this picture. Gunna be showing a lot more of his pictures from now on. So, lucky us ya hoid?

;

Sripraphai could be my favorite restaurant in New York these days (they’ve just opened a second location). I’ve been about a dozen times over the past three or four years and still have yet to try so much on their extensive menu.

If you like Thai food, what are you waiting for already?

[Photo Credit: Kelly Bone and ext212]

In filling the Glenallen Hill role for the 2010 Yankee, Marcus Thames has been terrorizing left-handed pitchers to the tune of obscene on-base and slugging percentages. If he could continue this pace for the balance of the season, he would boast one of those monstrous Strat-O-Matic cards that would have you tempted to play him every day. But, then again, you’d probably want to restrict him to DH duty because of his dreadful defensive play in the outfield. Thames would likely grade out as a ‘4’ on the Strat card. For those not familiar with Strat-O-Matic, that’s the absolutely worst fielding grade you can achieve.

How badly has Thames played in the outfield for the Yankees? Every time the ball is hit in his direction, diehard Yankee fans begin to clutch their chests. Thames gets bad breaks on the ball, struggles in trying to track the ball, and then, even if he reaches the ball, has trouble holding on to it. That, friends, is the Triple Crown of fielding incompetence.

Thames’ play in left field has been so historically bad that it has me thinking of the worst defensive outfielders I’ve ever seen. I’ve been watching baseball since the early 1970s, giving me a chance to observe about 40 years of horrific outfield play. All of the following players could hit, but they each managed to play the outfield with such a lack of skill that the results bordered on the comical.

(Left Field) Kevin Reimer: Remarkably, Reimer averaged an error for every ten games he played in the outfield. He was particularly bad on those rare occasions when his teams dared to put him in right field, where he posted an .875 fielding percentage. This former Rangers and Brewers outfielder tried real hard, but he had no instincts, couldn’t run, couldn’t catch, and couldn’t throw. When it comes to awful fielders, Reimer had it all.

(Left Field) Greg “The Bull” Luzinski: The Bull played like the proverbial “bull in a china shop,” in left field, combining incredibly slow feet with a weak arm and a general awkwardness. Having to play on the artificial turf of the old Veterans Stadium only underscored Luzinski’s lack of speed and coordination. It remains a mystery why the Phillies ever moved him from his original position at first base.

(more…)

The Sox come into the weekend series on the upswing, having just swept four from the Angels. But, as Tyler Kepner notes, so far in 2010, it’s not the same old Red Sox:

“You have to have enough time to get into the season, usually a couple of months, before you can draw any conclusions,” General Manager Theo Epstein said. “I don’t think anyone here was drawing any conclusions; we were just acknowledging that we weren’t playing sound baseball. We were beating ourselves. We were making a handful of mistakes a game, basically not doing the little things the right way that collectively put us in a tough position to win ballgames.”

The Red Sox focused last winter on preventing runs, tightening their defense at several positions and spending $82.5 million on a five-year contract for starter John Lackey. But results have been hard to quantify.

Through Wednesday, Boston’s 4.63 earned run average was about a half-run higher than the A.L. average, and their fielders had committed 20 errors, the most in their division. Statistically, errors can be misleading; range is more important. But the first inning Thursday showed why the Red Sox tried to emphasize defense in the first place.

Oh, yeah, and then there’s this: the Rays, who were 32-49 on the road last year, as 12-1 away from home to start the season.

From A.O. Scott’s review of Iron Man 2:

“Iron Man 2,” the first superhero sequel of the summer, fulfills the basic requirements of the genre, which can be summed up as more of the same, with emphasis on more. Having introduced its physically and intellectually gifted, emotionally tormented protagonist in both his regular and alter egos, a comic book franchise will typically set out, in the second installment, in search of new villains, bigger suits, brighter gadgets and tendrils of plot that can blossom in subsequent sequels.

But sometimes — for instance in the recent Spider-Man, X-Men and Batman cycles — the second time is a charm, as filmmakers and actors use the reasonable certainty of financial success to take chances and explore odd corners of their archetypal, juvenile stories. “Iron Man 2,” directed by Jon Favreau from a screenplay by Justin Theroux, doesn’t achieve the emotional complexity of “Spider-Man 2” or the operatic grandeur of “The Dark Knight,” but it does try something a little bit new and perhaps, given the solemnity that has overtaken so much comic-book-based filmed entertainment, a little bit risky. It’s funny.

Not funny. Anything but that. Nooooooooooooo.

I’m sitting on the train this morning, listening to my iPod, bopping my head, when I notice a six or seven-year old boy standing in the middle of the car. I recognize him, he’s a regular. He’s wearing a red shirt, shorts, standing next to a pole, leaning back and catching the pole just as it looks like he’s going to fall. Just entertaining himself, not showing off.

We make eye-contact and he half-waves to me with his right hand. I see that he recognizes me too and I try to remember if we’ve ever had any exchange other than a head-nod. I can’t remember but I tilt my head up and give him the Dude’s “what’s up” and then I look away. But when I look back I see the smile on his face. Couple of stops later we do it again. This time he’s more sure of his wave. Big eyes, nice smile.

Feels good to make a kid feel cool. Go figure that, old man.

[Photo Credit: BBC]

Costas and Smoltz are calling the Red Sox-Angels game. Angels got four in the first, Kazmir’s given half of it back.

It’s much cooler in the Bronx tonight. Ideal, really. Only a handful of nights this lovely every year in the city.

The picture was taken by Bags.

Early Sunday Morning, By Edward Hopper (1930)

There is a big Hopper exhibition in Rome right now. Last weekend, there was an interesting piece in the Times by Michael Kimmelman about the the show:

I quizzed some Italians and also a few New Yorkers at the exhibition, and it wasn’t that the Italians didn’t “get” Hopper, or didn’t like him. He’s world famous by now, beloved, and the Italians easily brought up the links to film noir and Antonioni. But New Yorkers, naturally, spoke quite differently about him.

…It’s about projection, in other words, which all good art provokes, whether by Sargent, Zille, Moore or Hopper, whose laconic and merciless drawings can, seen by a New Yorker passing through Rome, have a kind of Proustian eloquence. I stared at the ones he did of summer in the city and the sun splashing across Lower Manhattan before carrying my tracings of two of them to a favorite Sicilian bakery a few blocks away from the Piazza Colonna. It was unconscious, deciding to go there, but I realized it was because the cannoli reminded me of ones I fetched as a boy from a cafe on MacDougal Street, where the owner used to pack them in little white cardboard boxes tied with striped red string. I carried the pastries home to my family, past the Hopper-like brownstones, through the concrete park that faced our house, and across Sixth Avenue to our apartment, under what in my memory was forever a dusky Hopper sky.

Since the Yanks are headed up to Boston for the weekend and all…

The Yankees have gone 10-5 since I introduced this feature on April 19. On the season, they have won eight of their nine series, sweeping two. Their only series loss came in Anaheim against the Angels two weekends ago, a series in which both teams scored 15 runs in three games. The Yankees visited the White House and the Walter Reed Army Medical Center the Monday after that series and seemed to have a bit of a hangover from that day in their loss to the Orioles on Tuesday. Since then, they’ve won seven of eight despite a mounting list of aches and pains and one major injury to an every day player.

Curtis Granderson suffered a Grade 2 strain of his left groin in the Yankees’ one loss in the last eight days and is expected to be on the shelf for at least a month. With Brett Gardener shifting over to center field, Granderson’s place in the lineup is being filled by a left-field platoon of Randy Winn and Marcus Thames, while his place on the roster is being taken by Greg Golson. Golson has thus far made just one appearance, as a defensive replacement in center pushing Gardner back to left (a head-scratcher of a move, but one that seemed to pay off with Golson making a key eighth-inning catch up against the Yankee bullpen to preserve a 3-1 lead, though I imagine Gardner could have easily made the same catch).

Winn had made just three starts before Granderson’s injury and had just one hit in 13 plate appearances, but in his two start since, he’s gone 2-for-6 with a stolen base and a three-run home run that was the difference in a 4-1 win over the Orioles. In the game after Granderson’s injury, Thames took his first 0-fer of the season, but did get on base via a hit-by-pitch and is still hitting .429/.515/.643 on the season.

Gardner, meanwhile, is 12-for-27 in his active eight-game hitting streak, homered the day after Granderson’s injury, is second in the American League in steals (and has only been caught once), and is hitting .346/.430/.432 on the season. Rounding out the outfield, Nick Swisher seems to have finally conquered his home park, going 9-for-23 with three homers on the just-completed home stand, raising his season line to .295/.380/.547.

The Yankee offense as a whole has been remarkably reliable. Just once in their first 27 games have the Yankees scored as few as two runs in a game and they are averaging 5.6 runs per game, second only to the world-beating Rays in all of baseball. Robinson Cano remains among the league-leaders in most major categories, having hit .379/.446/.707 since I last checked in. Derek Jeter is off to another fine start (.310/.341/.474), is on pace for 25 homers and 130 RBIs (the latter thanks to strong performances from the bottom of the order, Gardner in particular), and has gone hitless just five times in 26 games. Mark Teixeira, a slow-starter who had his worst April ever (.136/.300/.259), has gone 7-for-20 since the calendar flipped to May. Alex Rodriguez, however, remains cold, having hit just .208/.241/.264 since last homering on April 20.

(more…)

Tasty new spot on the Upper West Side. Corner of 81 and Amsterdam Ave. Twenty-five years ago there was an ice cream shop called American Pie in the same space. Used to serve pies from Umanoff and Parson–the strawberry rhubarb was slammin. The place didn’t last long but my brother, sister and I spent many hours there with our old man, who worked down the block in a hardware store.

The neighbhorhood is much different now, but the Tangeled Vine is worth the trip, especially the Pork Montaditos (Berkshire pork belly sliders, pickled radish,garlic dijonaise) and the Grilled Hanger Steak (duck fat smashed potatoes, watercress, red wine escargot butter).

I also loved the Charcuterie but I’m a sucker for that stuff on any day.

Dig this column the late Ron Fimrite once wrote about his old man for Sports Illustrated. A friend e-mailed me about it, said he was 14 when he read it and it made such an impression he tore it out of the magazine and kept it in his wallet:

Then, inevitably, we drifted apart. No, that’s not it; our split was a lot more like atomic fission. The shrinks say this is perfectly normal, that the son must metaphorically slay the father in order to live his own life. But as close as we had been, our breakup was pretty painful for both of us. Suddenly, Trux and I couldn’t agree on anything. His politics seemed to me to have moved overnight from New Deal liberalism to somewhere to the right of Calvin Coolidge. The very man who had put food in my mouth during the Great Depression now looked to me like some sort of Babbitt. For his part, I was headed straight for hell in a handbasket. I didn’t know the meaning of a dollar, and I insisted upon living in San Francisco, a city that, he felt, made Sodom and Gomorrah look like Peoria and Waukegan. The bay that separates Oakland and San Francisco might as well have been an ocean. We had even lost our shared interest in sports. He was an Athletics fan; I was for the Giants. He loved Al Davis’s Oakland Raiders; I was a 49ers man. We didn’t like the same movies. He wouldn’t read the books I sent him, most of which cruelly portrayed the American businessman as either misguided or pathetic. I turned down his suggestions that I “grow up” and buy a house in the suburbs. It was not a good time for Trux and me.

Hilarious profile of Buzz Bissinger by Sandy Hingston at Philadelphia Magazine. I knew the guy had the red ass but dag, he comes across like the lead in an Oliver Stone movie:

The funny thing is, Buzz’s Inquirer writing verges on the sort of Internet screed he says he despises. He utilizes a blogger’s ramped-up emotional outrage. And while the columns draw on his reservoir of knowledge of the city, they don’t break new ground. “That’s become the norm in the blogosphere and increasingly in print — strong opinion without a lot of new reporting,” Stalberg says. All that sound and fury runs the risk of signifying nothing. Buzz has gone after his old hero Rendell harder than he has anyone, but when Cohen’s asked what Ed thinks of Buzz’s handiwork, “I don’t think I’ve ever discussed the column with the Governor,” he says.

Still, Buzz is proud to be bucking the trend. “Steve Lopez told me, ‘You’re the only person in America who’s gone back into newspapers,’” he says, like it’s a badge of honor. He views his column as a reaffirmation of the power of the press, and to those of a certain age, it is. “Your average newspaper columnist still has considerable influence today,” Stalberg says, “because it’s print, and it stays there.” Well, no. Print gets recycled. Words only live on forever on Buzz’s bête-noire Internet. (“By the way,” Stalberg says, “is he still wearing those leather pants?”)

Speaking of Lopez, when you repeat Buzz’s “eradicate the memory” quote to him, he retorts: “He’s going to eradicate my memory? How, with eight columns a year? Tell the little sissy to write three a week and get back to me.” Then adds, “I love the bastard like a brother.” Buzz has devoted friends, and they cut him the slack they feel he deserves. “Nobody I know is more miserable in success,” Lopez says of his old buddy. Asked if writing his column makes Buzz happy, Ceisler says, “Buzz is not the type of person who strives for happiness.”

I don’t know if there is anything particularly noble about Bissinger returning to the newspaper business. He’s one of the few writers who can afford to make that move. Still, he might have the right amount of ego and outrage to blow up the spot.

Nick Johnson is still coming to bat to the Miley Cyrus earworm “Party in the USA” (a song so insidious that even our own Cliff Corcoran, normally a pillar of taste and decency, could not stop humming it at Monday night’s Yankees game, until I threatened to stab him with a pencil). But I will not make fun of Johnson for that today, because he got on base all five times he came to bat, with a home run, a double, and three walks. The Yankees ended up needing every run they could scrape together, as seven innings of fairly stress-free cruising turned into a nail-biter thanks to Andy Pettitte’s early exit (with elbow stiffness) and the twitchiness of the Mariano- and Joba-less bullpen; New York held on by their fingernails for a 7-5 win and a sweep of the Orioles.

The Yanks are increasingly banged up, and today it was Battlecat Pettitte’s turn to leave the game early with stiffness. This came shortly after the fourth inning, in which he loaded the bases with one out, got Matt Wieters to strike out, walked in a run, and then wriggled out of further trouble with a Craig Tatum groundout – the quintessential bend-don’t-break Pettitte of recent years. Early reports are that his subsequent MRI indicated mild inflammation, which doesn’t sound too bad… but then, who knows – multiple members of the 2009 Mets left games with a mild inflammation and were never seen again.

The New York hitters never exactly bludgeoned O’s starter David Hernandez, but they knocked him around for a few innings, much like my friend’s cat behaves when it has a spider cornered. He wasn’t helped by a number of sloppy plays and lackadaisical baserunning on the part of his teammates, and neither, I’d wager, was Dave Trembley’s blood pressure. Nick Johnson hit a booming home run in the first; Nick Swisher homered in the second; Alex Rodriguez singled Jeter home in the third. In the fourth the Yankees put together a messy rally through walks, singles, a bunt and a fielder’s choice, knocking Hernandez out of the game and putting the score at a then-comfortable 6-1.

Sergio Mitre kept things under control for several innings after Andy Pettitte’s departure – and maybe earned himself a spot start if Pettitte needs to miss a game – before giving up a two-run homer to Ty Wigginton (ASIDE: I only just realized I have been incorrectly writing “Wiggington” for many, many years). Damaso Marte got New York out of the eighth, but Joe Girardi’s Reliever Roulette luck ran out in the ninth: Dave Robertson was awful, giving up two homers and swelling his ERA to 14.21, and Boone Logan could not staunch the bleeding, getting one out but walking two Orioles, and leaving the game with the go-ahead run at the plate. Finally, Alfredo Aceves came to the rescue and induced a fly ball from Wigginton. No harm, no foul, but nothing shakes up a baseball fan’s soul like a terrifyingly unpredictable bullpen — and for Yankees fans, pretty much any bullpen that does not have Mariano Rivera available qualifies as terrifyingly unpredictable.

***

Meanwhile, it seems Dallas Braden has still not recovered from the emotional scars he received when his pitching mound was stepped on several weeks ago. He also actually said the words “We don’t do a lot of talking in the 209,” with “the 209” apparently referring to Stockton, California. This is now officially the most inane, ridiculous baseball story we’ve had in quite some time, and I have to say I’m enjoying it immensely.

It’s hookey-gorgeous in the Bronx this afternoon as the Yanks look to sweep the Orioles. Been a good series so far. Andy Pettitte is on the hill for the Bombers.

Go git ’em boys.

[Photo Credit: Lassie, Get Help]