“Last year, we had close to $100 million coming off the payroll,” General Manager Brian Cashman said Wednesday. “This year, that’s not the case. Last year, we had more to spend. Every year is different. The talent pool available this year is different.”
(Kepner, N.Y.Times)

Okay, so maybe the Yanks won’t net a big fish this winter. Unless, of course, they make some kind of crazy trade. Right, Goldie?

Since new Blue Jays general manager Alex Anthopoulos let it be known that he would not object to trading Roy Halladay within the American League East, there has been much speculation about another Yankees-Red Sox competition for the veteran right-hander’s services. If true, this almost ensures that Halladay will be traded in the division, because these are two teams deep in resources who will be motivated to top each other, thus escalating their offers above and beyond what teams outside the division would be willing to offer.

This news is both exhilarating and depressing. The Yankees just won a World Series by leaning on three starters, and their 2010 rotation is unsettled beyond CC Sabathia and A.J. Burnett. Halladay is one of the best starters in the game and an additional asset in new Yankee Stadium given his groundball tendencies. The depressing part is that Halladay will cost a lot, particularly if the Red Sox and other teams are bidding up the price. It would be sad to see Phil Hughes and Jesus Montero blossom in a Blue Jays uniform. Halladay will be 33 next year, while Montero will be 20, so even if Halladay spends the next five years in pinstripes, Montero will still be in his prime for years after the Doc has checked out.

They will tweak things, for sure. Maybe shake ’em up more than somewhat. If I could just get rid of the peaceful, easy feeling that has engulfed me since the Yanks won the Serious, I’d be more serious about it all.

…There’s still time.

Produced by the amazing Willie Mitchell.

What’s fer lunch?

I caught part of a Hot Stove show on YES last night, featuring Bob Klapisch, Tyler Kepner and Mark Feinsand. It left me feeling how good these kinds of shows could actually be if there was more…banter. It wasn’t terrible by any stretch, just too formal for my taste, each guy guest getting the spotlight to say his piece. That said, I truly enjoyed what I saw.

I love listening to Klap talk about pitching and pitchers and wish that he’d be drawn out even more on that subject.

Tyler looked sharp in a purple shirt and he had an even, calm speaking voice that is refreshing, especially in a medium that values shouting.  He is not a hype-artist and I think his insights, using numbers as well as his first-hand observations, were excellent. Yes, more Tyler, please. (I think he’d benefit from a more conversational atmosphere because he tended to blink a lot when looking directly into the camera and less so when he addressed the other guys.)

And I thought Mark was a natural. Reminded me a little of Jeff Garlin–something about him just immediately puts you at ease. It doesn’t matter that I didn’t agree with everything he said–he’s exceedingly comfortable in that setting and I think has a real future on TV. Very appealing delivery, love his look. Camera loves him. He was terrific.

Hopefully, we’ll see more of these guys throughout the winter. Good job by YES. Now, it they’d just bring Steven Goldman into the mix, they’d really be cooking with gas.

…What is the question?

Tell you this much, as a fair-weather fan, I’ll watch more games if Iverson is around.

Tim Lincecum, in a close one, wins his second Cy Young Award. Adam Wainwright finished third, with the most first-place votes.  Go figure.

Here’s a story on the making of the 2009 World Serious video.

Here’s another trip down memory lane for us who grew up in the Seventies:

Terry Southern is one of those writers that keeps popping up, has for a long time. Nu? Why haven’t I read anything by him? I really should, shoudn’t I? Why don’t I see his books more in used bookstores?  Man, I’ve been meaning to read him for years now.

Southern is one of those characters that you hear about, time and again, yet his legend has outlasted his work. His two best know novels are The Magic Christian and Candy (co-writen with Mason Hoffenberg ), but he is more famous for the work he did as a screenwriter–Dr. Strangelove, The Cincinnati Kid, Easy Rider. (Peter Sellers, the story goes, bought 100 copies of The Magic Christian, gave one to Stanley Kubrick, and that’s how Southern got the job on Strangelove.)

Southern was briefly a writer on SNL during the Eddie Murphy years but apparently, not much of his material made the show. He was a guy who drank a lot and dig a ton of drugs, and his writing suffered as a result.

I’ve read a couple of pieces on Southern lately. Maybe I’m not missing much. There is this, from a New Yorker article about Easy Rider, “Whose Movie is This?” by Mark Singer (June 22, 1998).

Peter Matthiessen, who says that a Southern story from the fifties, “The Accident,” helped to inspire the founding of The Paris Review, told me recently that he though Southern had lost the energy and discipline to persevere as a serious writer. “I don’t believe there was much more work he wished to do,” Matthiessen said. “He was an observer anda commentator on modern life, and he had this quirky take on things. He was one of the founders of that school of irony–that cool style–and when he had a big splash with ‘Dr. Strangelove’ that irreverent, obstreperous take on things was all very startling and new. But, after that, everybody was into outrage. Terry’s style became diffused throughout the culture, and I think he’d already said what he had to say.”

And this, from an essay by Luc Sante, “I Can’t Carry You Anymore.”

Southern staked everything on effect. Thus he required a social context; he needed both an audience of cronies who would get it and an audience of squares who not only wouldn’t, but would turn purple and thrash ineffectually in offended protest. His was the strategem of someone with a lot to prove, and perhaps a lot to conceal. Other writers of his time similarly polarized the readership, but never quite in the same way. His old friend William Burroughs, for example, put all his contradictions on the line. He might have enjoyed provoking the enemy, but he hardly appeared dependent on the finger-popping approval of his frat brothers. Anway, his provocation had a point–there was a world of repression that had caused him misery and that he wanted to destroy. Southern never made it clear that he was in it for more than high fives and free drinks.

…Many of his riffs have failed to survive their context, and there wasn’t a whole lot in his work that transcended the category of riff. What we have here is a caution to the young, which might be summed up by one of Southern’s most famous lines: “You’re too hip, baby. I can’t carry you anymore.”

Here is a nice interview with Southern by his biographer, Lee Hill.

(more…)

This update is powered by a walk on the wild side:

• Joe Girardi finished 3rd in the AL Manager of the Year vote.
• CC Sabathia finished 4th in the AL Cy Young vote.
• Ian Kennedy is working on his two-seam fastball out in the Arizona Fall League.
• The Yanks declined their 2010 option on Sergio Mitre.
• Tyler Kepner details the Yankee bigwig brainstorming for the off-season.
• MLB.com Yankee beat writer checks in from the team’s fantasy camp.

Award winner.

Cliff and I talk shop about the Banter with Larry Koestler over at the Yankeeist.

I’ve never taken to Bruce Springsteen’s music but I’ve always like him as a personality. I admire what a great show he puts on, time and time again, and appreciate that he’s enjoyed inspired periods of musicianship and songwriting.

Here’s an old (1975) Baltimore Sun piece on The Boss from my pal John Schulian, “from the days when I was still learning how to write.” The article came out just before Born to Run dropped.

Dig this from Bruce:

“I don’t consider myself a writer, like a novel writer or a poetry writer. Writing songs is just something I do. It’s a real, natural, basic urge. The only thing I can compare it to is when you get hungry. You feel it and you do something about it.”

…”I play for the thrill, man, just like I have since I picked up the guitar,” he said. “Like tonight, I could have played forever if they didn’t have to close the place down at midnight.”

Historian Glenn Stout finds the smoking gun concerning Tom Yawkey’s take on African Americans. From a 1965 Sports Illustrated article on the Red Sox by Jack Mann:

“They blame me,” Yawkey says, ‘and I’m not even a Southerner. I’m from Detroit.” Yawkey remains on his South Carolina fief until May because Boston weather before then is too much for his sensitive sinuses. “I have no feeling against colored people,” he says. “I employ a lot of them in the South. But they are clannish, and when that story got around that we didn’t want Negroes they all decided to sign with some other club. Actually, we scouted them right along, but we didn’t want one because he was a Negro. We wanted a ballplayer.”

Stout continues:

But then comes the first of two smoking guns: “But they are clannish,” Mann quotes Yawkey as saying of African Americans, “and when that story got around that we didn’t want Negroes they all decided to sign with some other club.”

No single sentence could be more revealing – or more pathetic. First Yawkey offers that all African Americans share the same characteristics – in this case, being “clannish.” That kind of stereotyping is damning enough, but when he states that “when that story got around that we didn’t want Negroes they all decided to sign with some other club,” he fantasy land. Yawkey is making the claim that the reason the Red Sox remained white is the fault of the black ballplayers themselves. He is saying nothing less than “African Americans erroneously thought we were racist so therefore they refused to sign with us.”

Memory Lane.

New Yorkers of a certain vintage will remember this budget beauty:

Ah, too much time on my hands, man. Must be the heat…wait, a minute, it ain’t even hot no mo.

So many choices…

Over at Bats, Tyler Kepner examines the Yankees off-season:

After Sabathia, Burnett and Pettitte (assuming he re-signs), the Yankees have a slew of options still under contractual control: Joba Chamberlain, Phil Hughes, Ian Kennedy, Chad Gaudin, Sergio Mitre, Alfredo Aceves and (gulp) Kei Igawa. But what about a high-risk, high-reward gamble from the free-agent market?

Ben Sheets, Rich Harden and Erik Bedard have all been top-of-the-rotation starters in the recent past. All are free agents coming off seasons marred by injury. Really, the Yankees would have nothing to lose by signing one of them. The price would probably be low enough that the Yankees could afford to outbid other teams, and if they sign someone and he gets hurt again, they are protected with the starters they already gave.

Yeah, this is really cool, isn’t it?

World Series Time-Lapse by Robert Caplin from Robert Caplin on Vimeo.

“My idea of a tough guy is a guy who can wear a wool suit with no underwear.”–Lenny Bruce

I know it is a classic and all, but I don’t love all of the classics. John Huston’s directorial debut, however, is as perfectly realized a movie as has ever been made, don’t ya think?

Your American League Cy Young Award Winner.

Good story, better pitcher. Congrats to Zach Greinke.

(Photographs via Sports Illustrated.)

Over at Fox, Dayn Perry writes about ten off-season moves that need to happen:

5. The Yankees should worry about Johnny Damon and not Hideki Matsui.

The reigning champs have some decisions to make. They need to coax Andy Pettitte into pitching one more year, and they need to re-sign Johnny Damon. Damon — when not throwing the ball — gives the Yanks plus defense in left, and he has maintained his offensive skills quite nicely. Damon needs a platoon partner, but he’s still a valuable regular against right-handers. So long as he’s willing to settle for a two-year deal or two plus a team option, the Yankees should make the necessary overtures. Matsui, meanwhile, is replaceable. Plenty of DH types on the market — Jim Thome, Jermaine Dye, Russ Branyan, Vladimir Guerrero — can come close to Matsui’s numbers at perhaps a lesser cost.

What about Jermaine Dye as a replacement for Matsui? Does that make any sense? Or is that crazy talk?