First Nick Johnson. Is Javier Vazquez next?
Update: Yes, with LOOGY Boone Logan for Melky, LHP Michael Dunn, and pitching prospect Arodys Vizcaino. So who goes to the bullpen? Joba or Hughes? And does this mean Granderson’s in left with Gardner in center, or is there one more big move on the way?
Update: With Arodys Vizcaino in the deal, does your opinion of the trade change?
Twitter is all, um, atwitter with word that the Yankees are on the verge of trading for a Mystery Pitcher. We know it’s not Aaron Harang, believe it’s not Carlos Zambrano, and the Daily News‘ Mark Fiensand says “it’s not a salary dump.” So, who is it, and what are they giving up to get him?
You won’t get the chance to kick Jason Marquis around, ya snot-nosed punks.
Since we hail from the Bronx, it is high time we served-up some Boogie Down Productions.
Here’s a classic from the second BDP record:
Fresh! For ’88, You Suckas!
Click here for the original sample from Stanley Turrentine.
The movie Crazy Heart is dedicated to a musician, the late Stephen Burton. My pal John Schulian, an avid country music fan, e-mailed me this weekend about Burton:
Bruton was one of those classic Texas guys. His daddy, Sumpter Bruton, owned the best jazz record shop in Fort Worth. Bruton himself settled in Austin and played guitar and mandolin in bands that backed Bonnie Raitt, Kris Kristofferson and Billy Joe Shaver. Only late in life did he gain confidence in his own singing and songwriting, and he wrote some great damn songs. I’ll send you my favorite from youtube. Every Sunday night he and a bunch of other great Austin musicians got together at the Saxon Pub and played in a band called the Resentments. Yeah, I’ve got a T-shirt and all the albums they put out as a result of popular demand. Bruton was a good guy. I met him a couple times between sets while he was hanging around outside having a smoke — and there, I suppose, is the bad habit that killed him. But he kept picking until the end, working on Kristofferson’s last album and helping Burnett with the Crazy Heart score.
How about this for a Jeff Bridges Film Festival?
The Last Picture Show
Fat City
The Last American Hero
Thunderbolt and Lightfoot
Cutter’s Way
Starman
Tucker
The Fabulous Baker Boys
The Fisher King
American Heart
The Big Lebowski
Crazy Heart
Today’s update is powered by some classic LL Cool J:
Damon has only himself to blame. Here’s a guy who has made $97.2 million in his career and for an extra $6 million he sacrificed happiness and contentment and all the other perks associated with playing for a world champion team in New York. If he really wanted to stay a Yankee, he should’ve told Boras: “Go shop around for a three-year offer, but at the end of the day just make sure I’m still wearing pinstripes.” Instead, he drank the Boras Kool-Aid and came out looking like just another baseball mercenary. Happy trails, Johnny.
I love gibberish.
We had a decent snow storm in New York last night, so I was up early this morning digging out Emily’s car. Which felt good because I was looking for a way to make up for being a schmuck about countless other things around the house (can you actually say that your wife is a nag if you are a lazy dope who turns her into one?) My neighbor Louie was out there too. His wife’s car looked ready to run a race. “I was out here at five a.m.,” he said.
Louie worked for an insurance company located in the Twin Towers but was at a doctor’s appointment that fateful Tuesday morning. He lost all of his co-workers, more than 500 in all. He says he hasn’t been the same since. He isn’t as lively as before. But he got married to a nurse, a great gal named Bee (half-Mexican, half Puerto Rican, Louie calls her a “Chicarican”). Louie has had a tough time finding work ever since but his pension kicks in starting in February. He wants to have us over to celebrate.
Meanwhile, he’s a great neighbor, always looking for a way to help, looking to keep useful. He gave me some rock salt this morning as I was digging out my wife’s car and then we went over to the cafe to pick up breakfast.
According to Tyler Kepner in the Times:
[Johnny] Damon said in a text message Friday that the Yankees had offered two years and $14 million, while he had offered to return for two years and $20 million. That was true, a Yankees official confirmed, but by then, the Yankees and Johnson had nearly finished their deal and it was too late to turn back.
The official, who was granted anonymity because the Johnson deal has not been announced, said that Damon’s agent, Scott Boras, wanted a two-year, $26 million deal when he spoke with General Manager Brian Cashman on Wednesday.
In a telephone interview, though, Boras said the Yankees did not begin negotiations with him until Thursday at 4 p.m., when they proposed the two-year, $14 million offer. Boras said he soon countered at two years and $20 million, and Cashman rejected it.
Why didn’t they want Damon back at two-years, $20 million?
Not sure I’m understanding the Yankees’ thinking here.
I went to see Crazy Heart last night and was not disappointed. It is a good, unaffected movie that provides satisfying pleasures, notably getting to watch Jeff Bridges in the lead role. He’s a great American actor and he’s in top form here. It is a story that we’ve seen countless times–it made me think of the Verdict and the Wrestler, but without the tension–but while it is familiar it doesn’t feel stale. It also isn’t self-consciously “small.” The tone feels spot-on (and so does the music), slack, just like Bad Blake (Bridges).
The photography is excellent, and the director, Scott Cooper, cuts between tight shots of Bridges on stage–you feel as if you are in his whiskers–and long shots of the big open sky in the southwest. Bridges carries the movie with grace. He doesn’t make a false step, and the supporting cast of Maggie Gyllenhaal, Colin Farrell and Robert Duvall are outstanding too. I don’t think Gyllenhaal has ever been lovelier–she’s radiant. She comes to interview Bad Blake in his hotel room and he says something about how she makes the rest of the room look ugly, and he’s right. She blushes and he says he can’t remember the last time he’d seen somebody blush and that feels so right too.
Farrell plays Bridges’ former protoge who is now a big star. The filmmakers and Farrell display admirable restraint in his scenes which would have been easy to turn into a satire. He plays a cheese-ball pop singer and he sounds like one too, but he isn’t ridiculed for it, lending his scenes on stage with Bridges depth and subtlety. Actually, that is what the movie really offers, some nice, subtle moments. Actors at the top of their game, working together, nothing showy. Duvall shows up half-way through and threatens to ruin the continuity because he’s “Robert Duvall.” But he slides right into the story, and he’s crackles. His scenes with Bridges are wonderful, especially the one where they go fishing together (I love the camera move in that scene as well).
The ending doesn’t really work, but it didn’t disturb my enjoyment much. The pleasures this movie offers might be humble but they are sustaining.
Right on time for Friday night, one of my favorite cuts of ’em all:
And here’s the Sister Nancy sample:
Topps issued this card, its final regular card for Mickey Mantle, during the spring of 1969. The listed position of “first base” doesn’t seem quite right for an all-time great outfielder, but “The Mick” looks good here, still handsome and his weight under control. Yet, he didn’t play that season. After reporting to spring training, Mantle decided that his aching knees, along with the rest of his diminishing skills, simply mandated that he call it quits. I wish that Mantle had played a little bit longer, if only to allow me to have remembered seeing him play.
Even thought I have no first-hand recollections of Mantle, that doesn’t mean that I never saw him take the field. Quite the contrary. My family occasionally delights in telling me how I used to walk up to our black-and-white television set as a small child, and then begin jumping and screaming when I saw Mantle step up to the plate. This would have been in 1967 or ’68, when I was either two or three years old. So you can see how I wouldn’t remember these episodes. But my family assures me that they actually did happen.
What can a three-year-old know about baseball? I suppose I could have recognized a home run when it was hit, but my knowledge of secondary leads, the roles of middle relievers, and the intricacies of the infield fly rule must have fallen a bit short of diehard standards. I’m not even sure how I knew Mantle was the man on those Yankees. After all, he was at the end of his career, struggling to play a new position at first base, and merely a shell of the five-tool ballplayer who had helped center field become the position of glamour in New York City during the 1950s. Perhaps my father clued me into Mantle’s importance. I can just hear him whispering to me, “One day, this guy will be in the Hall of Fame.”
In spite of my early obsession with Mr. Mantle, I somehow lost touch with his legacy. During the 1970s, I had little interest in Yankee history; I was far more concerned with Bobby Murcer (and then Bobby Bonds), along with Thurman Munson and Mel Stottlemyre, followed by the wave of winning that came to town in the form of Jim “Catfish” Hunter, Ron Guidry, and Reggie Jackson. By then, the Yankees of the 1960s had become forgotten. I had no memories of those teams; if anything, I was tired of hearing that the Yankees’ last period of glory had come to an end in 1964.
Ken Rosenthal says enough already, the Yanks and Johnny Damon/Scott Boras all need to recognize: they need each other.
![2003 Topps Nick Johnson (Topps All-Star Rookie) [Note: this was Johnson's only regular issue Topps card as a Yankee, his 2004 card showed him in an Expos uniform.]](http://bronxbanter.arneson.name/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/Johnson-Nick-2003.jpg "2003 Topps Nick Johnson (Topps All-Star Rookie) [Note: this was Johnson's only regular issue Topps card as a Yankee, his 2004 card showed him in an Expos uniform.]")
Mere days after Hideki Matsui agreed to join the Angels on a one-year contract worth $6 million, the Yankees have come to terms with Nick Johnson on a one-year deal worth a reported $5.75 million plus incentives to replace Matsui as their designated hitter. The decision to sign Johnson, so it seems to me, was less one the Yankees had made entering the offseason and more one that was made as a result of other decisions made by and about departing free agents Matsui and Johnny Damon.
Though many believe Matsui signed with the Angels because Halos manager Mike Scioscia promised him the opportunity to play left field once or twice a week (though, actually, Scioscia only promised him an opportunity in Spring Training to prove he could still play the field, which he likely can’t), and The Daily News‘ Mark Fiensand reported late last night that the Yankees opted not to resign Matsui primarily because of the state of his knees, I have another theory.
Based on a piece by Matsui’s agent Arn Tellem that appeared on the Huffington Post on Wednesday, I believe Matsui took the Angels’ offer without giving the Yankees a chance to match or beat it because he was afraid the Yankees, who had been focusing on negotiating with Johnny Damon, might either not make an offer (true if you believe Fiensand’s unnamed source), or might take enough time doing so that the Angels would rescind their offer. Here are the key passages from Tellem:
Hideki’s overriding concerns have always been winning and playing for a quality organization. Over his 17 seasons in pro ball, his only two teams have been the Yankees and the Yomiuri Giants. Each is the premier franchise in its respective league. Beyond the Yanks, his preferences were the Angels and the Boston Red Sox, two dominating franchises with superb players, coaches and management. But with David Ortiz entrenched as Boston’s everyday designated hitter, the Red Sox were never a real option.
[snip]
Hideki chose to accept Angel’s offer rather than wait for Yankees to decide whether they wanted to bring him back. Failure to act quickly might have caused L.A. to withdraw its offer and forced Hideki to sign with a weaker team, thus forfeiting a shot at another World Series. Conflicted, Hideki stayed up all Sunday night mulling his final move in this limited game of musical free-agent chairs. He didn’t want to be left standing.
Now, I realize that almost everything an agent says in public is spin, but I see no reason for Tellem to basically admit to being the first to blink in a game of contract chicken other than having actually done so.
The catch here is that, while the Yankees might have preferred to bring back Johnny Damon as their designated hitter (he’s clearly no longer qualified to play the field, either), Damon has been firm in his desire for a contract that comfortably exceeds Bobby Abreu’s two-year, $19 million re-up with the Angels in both years and annual salary. The Yankees have wisely balked at Damon’s demands, which suddenly left them searching for option C.
Enter Nick Johnson, the once and future Yankee. As an underpowered on-base machine, Johnson is a good fit as a replacement for Damon in the number-two hole in the Yankee lineup, and as an oft-injured, defensively challenged first baseman who hit just eight homers last year in 574 plate appearances, he was willing to take a one-year deal with a base salary even lower than Matsui’s.
That’s all well and good, but there are a lot of reasons to be underwhelmed if not outright dissatisfied with the Johnson signing. First and foremost among them is his fragility. Yes, Johnson’s on-base percentage of .426 was surpassed only by MVPs Joe Mauer and Albert Pujols among qualifying batters in 2009, but it’s getting into the batters’ box in the first place that has been the challenge for Johnson. The 133 games he played in this past season were the second most of his major league career and he played just 38 games over the previous two seasons combined.
Here’s a quick look at Johnson’s injury history:
Johnson has had his share of fluke injuries, chief among them the foul ball that bounced back up and broke his cheekbone in 2004 and the broken leg he suffered in a collision with right fielder Austin Kearns in 2006, but the frequency and severity of his injuries is no fluke. Johnson is truly fragile and when he breaks he takes longer to heal than most players (to cite two recent examples, he was expected to return from his soft-tissue injury in 2008, but didn’t, and that broken leg, which kept him out of action for more than a calendar year, also took far longer to heal properly than was anticipated).
So, yes, Johnson’s on-base skills (.402 career OBP) would look mighty fine in the two hole, helping to set the table for Mark Teixeira and Alex Rodriguez, but there’s a good chance the Yankees will need someone else to fill that spot for a significant portion of the coming season, and if that person is Curtis Granderson (who would otherwise likely hit fifth behind Rodriguez), they’ll need someone else to take Granderson’s spot lower in the order.
Who didn’t like Nick Johnson? He was a good kid, a pleasant, chubby-cheekedguy with a sweet swing and a good glove. Larry Bowa’s nephew. The one who never could stay healthy. A nice Yankee that fell away.
Well, according to Ken Davidoff, he’s back, to the tune of one-year and five-and-a-half million. Why Johnson and not Godzilla Matsui? I can’t call it. Davidoff goes on to say that this surely spells the end of Johnny Damon in pinstripes. So no Matsui, no Damon, but Nick Johnson?
All I can think of is that noise that Scooby Doo used to make when he was confused, “BBBOORRPP?”
It’s not that I’m unhappy to see Johnson back–I’ve always liked his game and he’ll make an ideal number 2 hitter behind Derek Jeter–but I wonder if he can stay healthy and more to the point, I wonder what else the Yanks have up their sleeve. Johnson alone is not enough. Or am I missing something?
Hmmmm.
They say I’m ugly but it just don’t faze me.
This one was suggested by Diane. I always smile when I hear this record, just never tire of it (from back when Tupac was one of the Underground’s back-up singers).
And dig this, a fun mash-up that a friend of mine did, mixing Lovely Rita with the Humpty Beat.
Powzers.
Was Tim Raines a greater player than Roberto Clemente? Yes, according to Joe Posnanski who makes a case for Raines as a Hall of Famer.
