Since there’s no game tonight here’s a You Tube tasting session: one time for your mind.

First up on the bill…

Old Friends.

More funny…

Doity.

The King of Swing:

Music.

Mo, Mo, Mo…

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A guy I know sent me this picture of collectable toy trains…

Dope.

When a team plays well for an extended stretch of games, the intensity of the rumor mill tends to lessen. That’s certainly been the case for the Yankees, who have played well for the last month in taking a share of the top spot in the American League East. The only prominent name that I’ve heard linked to the Yankees in recent weeks is Cleveland’s Mark DeRosa, a player that the Cubs foolishly traded over the winter for three middle-of-the-road pitching prospects. Ravaged by injuries, the Indians are going nowhere in the AL Central. DeRosa is 34 years old and just a few months away from free agency; he is almost certain to be traded sometime between now and July 31.

So should the Yankees make a play for DeRosa? I’d say yes, but within reasonable limits. Let’s begin with DeRosa’s potential contribution. As well as the Yankees have played since Johnny Damon hit that three-run homer on a Sunday afternoon against the Orioles, their bench remains mediocre at best. Francisco Cervelli and Brett Gardner have been assets, but the Yankees have received precious little offense from their backup infielders and have virtually no power in reserve—at least until (or if) Xavier Nady returns. DeRosa would solve the latter two concerns. He can play third, second, or first, along with the outfield corners. He has above-average power, along with a team-first grittiness that would play well in New York.

Yet, the Yankees should be conservative in what they offer for DeRosa. After a career year for the Cubs in 2008, DeRosa brought back only three mid-level prospects on the trade market. In the midst of a mediocre campaign with the Indians, DeRosa’s value has decreased further. I might be willing to give up two young pitchers—pick two from a group that includes Anthony Claggett, Jonathan Albaladejo, Edwar Ramirez, and Christian Garcia—but no more. I’m not giving up Mark Melancon, or Alfredo Aceves, or even an injured Ian Kennedy. DeRosa would help, but he’s not currently worth a price tag involving any of those right-handers. If the Indians insist on any of the three, I’d suggest that Brian Cashman hang up the phone…

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Wednesday afternoon, Yankees GM Brian Cashman held a press conference in which he discussed Chien-Ming Wang’s return to the starting rotation.

“He’s a starter and he’s got a huge history of nothing but success,” he said. “It’s time to find time to slot him in.”

Now is, and was, that time. Wang made Cashman and manager Joe Girardi look smart for two innings, until he reverted to the pitcher whose ERA resembled the national debt ticker in midtown Manhattan. Was that what the Yankees were waiting for?

Speaking of waiting, the way the Yankees have treated Wang, admittedly rushing him back before accurately gauging his progress, one wonders if he was accelerated and placed in the starting rotation in order to be showcased to potential trade suitors. Cashman would never say that and no local scribes have gotten that provocative yet, but the possibility cannot be ruled out.

Newsday’s former Yankee beat man Jim Baumbach went there, sort of, giving some insight into the tenuous relationship the organization has had with Wang, going back five years.

The Yankees gladly would have traded Chien-Ming Wang in a package for Randy Johnson during the 2004 season if only the Diamondbacks had any interest in him. After the trade deadline passed with no moves, the Yankees even let Wang pitch in the Olympics, something they never would have done if they thought Wang was a legitimate prospect.

Is he right? Think about it. The Yankees could have signed Wang to a long-term deal last year, but opted not to. They instead signed Robinson Cano to a long-term deal and took Wang to salary arbitration, where the pitcher was awarded a $4 million contract. This year, the Yankees and Wang went to arbitration again, with the righty getting a $1 million raise.

Baumbach wasn’t done, though. In a column recapping Thursday’s victory, in which the Yankees got Wang off the hook, Baumbach wrote:

Seemingly every time the Yankees talk about Chien-Ming Wang, they reference how he won 46 games for them in the previous 2 1/2 seasons, as if that should count toward something here in 2009.

But we’re more than a third of the way through this season, and pretty soon the Yankees will have to come to grips with the fact that the pitcher who used to be their ace hasn’t been heard from since he hurt his right foot last June in Houston. And there’s no guarantees that pitcher is going to make it back this season.

It should be noted that the pitcher who won 46 games from 2006-08 only won one playoff game in that time frame. In 2007, his second straight 19-win season, he lost both of his ALDS starts, pitching just 5 2/3 innings over those two appearances and logging a 19.06 ERA. Why is this relevant? The Yankees told Wang what they thought of his ace status by shelling out $242 million in long-term contracts to pitchers they believed had a better upside. That the 2009 version of Wang looks more like the pitcher who faced Cleveland in ’07 as opposed to the one who helped lead that team to a wild-card berth hasn’t helped his case.

As far as Phil Hughes is concerned, he is in the bullpen now, and as Baumbach and others have written, the Yankees view his future in the rotation. The same is true with Wang. He’s viewed as a starter. But what happens if and when Brian Bruney or Damaso Marte return to their respective relief spots? Whose future is in the Yankees’ rotation then? Will the Yankees wait that long to make their move?

We’ll know the answers soon enough.

First things first . . . Happy Birthday to new daddy Cliff Corcoran!

Today’s news is powered by . . . a reallllllly old McDonald’s commercial:

• Burnett gets disciplined:

Yankees pitcher A.J. Burnett was suspended six games Thursday for throwing high-and-tight to Texas’ Nelson Cruz earlier this week.

Burnett appealed the penalty, which had been set to take effect immediately. He can continue to pitch until a hearing is held.

“You kind of expect something to happen when the ball comes that close,” Burnett said before New York played the Rangers in the series finale.

• MLB.com previews the Yankees’ plan for the upcoming amateur draft:

As always, the Yankees will shoot for quality over need at No. 29, but they must be sure they can actually sign the player since there is no compensation. A position player looks like a strong possibility. The Yankees believe the pool is more unique and balanced than past years.

The Yankees could highlight an athletic outfield prospect like California’s Brett Jackson on their Draft board, and there has been talk about Southern California shortstop Grant Green and Boston College catcher Tony Sanchez.
(Yankees scouting director Damon) Oppenheimer outlined desires for athleticism, power arms and left-handed pitching. “There are holes that we need to address — the system is in pretty good shape, but we need to continue to pound stuff in it,” he said.

• Sam Borden of LoHud.com wants folks to chill over the homer-happy Stadium:

First of all, it’s presumptuous to label a park a “hitters’ haven” or any other term after such a limited sample. While a park can’t necessarily “get better” the way a struggling (but talented) rookie might, there are any number of factors – starting with weather, wind patterns and surrounding buildings – that may or may not affect the way a ballpark plays as its history grows. At the very least, the new Stadium deserves a full season before it’s excoriated as a joke.

Beyond that, though, is this: Even if the park does turn out to be more homer-prone than its predecessor, even if it does yield more home runs than expected, there is nothing particularly wrong with that. It’s not better or worse than the old Stadium. It’s just different. It’s just the way it is. Consider: Home runs are a part of baseball. Baseball games are played at Yankee Stadium. So home runs are hit at Yankee Stadium. Where is the crime in that?

[My take: Well, as an example, MLB has rules that maintain that outfield walls must be a certain minimum distance from home plate.  Why would that be?  Because they don’t want football-type scores.  While it would seem MLB has been looking to pump up scoring in the last 40 years (via lowering the mound and instituting the DH), they’ve still maintained those distance standards.  When Coors Field was having football-type scores, MLB allowed the Rockies to use a humidor for the baseballs, and the scoring dropped to more “normal” levels.  I would expect MLB and the Yankees to do some serious studying of the Stadium’s wind currents in the off-season (once the old park is torn down).]

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Chien-Ming Wang looked like his old self over the first couple of innings Thursday afternoon. His sinker was clocking in at 94 miles per hour on the YES gun and showing good drop, and after striking out two men in his perfect first inning, his second frame went groundout, groundout, strikeout.

Things started to flatten out in the third, however, when Chris Davis led off with a ground rule double. The Rangers eeked out two runs in that frame, then added two more in the fourth when Davis again doubled, this time with two on and none out. In the fifth, Nelson Cruz crushed a pitch up in the zone into the visiting bullpen, driving Wang from the game 11 pitches shy of his intended limit of 80. Wang’s final line was 4 2/3 IP, 7 H, 5 R, 1 BB, 5 K, but that more than halved his season ERA (to 14.46), and 13 of his 14 outs came by strikeout or groundout. Those first two innings were worth building on, and he’ll take his next turn in Boston on Tuesday.

As for the Yankees, Johnny Damon led off the bottom of the first with a home run off Brandon McCarthy, but the Yanks couldn’t get much going for the next few innings while the Rangers were running up the tally on Wang.

After failing to plate a leadoff double by Mark Teixeira in the fourth, the Yankees entered the bottom of the fifth down 5-1 with Francisco Cervelli and Ramiro Peña due up. Surprisingly both rookie singled after which McCarthy walked Johnny Damon and Nick Swisher to give the Yankees their second run. Teixeira then hit a cue shot down the third base line that skipped under Michael Young’s glove and rattled around in foul territory near where the stands bend, giving all three runners time to score and tie the game on what looks like a ringing bases-clearing double in the box score. With Teixeira on second and still none out in the inning, Alex Rodriguez silenced the boo birds that had begun to chirp by singling Tex home with the go-ahead run.

Unfortunately, that lead only lasted a few minutes, as Ian Kinsler homered off Alfredo Aceves (and the left field foul pole) in the top of the sixth to tie the game at 6-6. Aceves, Phil Coke, David Robertson, and Texas’s Jason Jennings combined to keep the score there until the bottom of the eighth, when Ron Washington brought in lefty C.J. Wilson. Wilson had been throwing high-90s cheese in his scoreless 1 2/3 innings Wednesday night, but didn’t have the same snap on his pitches less than 24 hours later. Wilson walked Robinson Cano on four pitches to start the eighth, then after getting Hideki Matsui to fly out, floated a changeup to Melky Cabrera.

Melky deposited the pitch in the left field box seats for yet another big late-inning hit, and Mariano Rivera nailed down the 8-6 win in the ninth. The Yankees are now tied with the Red Sox, who also won on Thursday, atop the AL East with the best record in the American League. They’ll be in Boston next week, with Wang opening the series.

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Late spring mid-week matinee against the Rangers, not so terribly exciting, right? Wrong. Not only is this afternoon’s game the rubber game of the series, but the Yankees enter the day tied with the Red Sox atop the AL East and a half game behind Texas for the best record in the American League. Though it would surely be a temporary condition, a win today could put them alone in first place with the best record in the league. A loss could drop them to second place with the league’s third-best record.

That’s fun, but even more important is the return of Chien-Ming Wang to the rotation. To recap quickly, Wang broke his foot running the bases in Houston last June, missed the rest of the season, then opened 2009 by giving up 23 runs in six innings across his first three starts (34.50 ERA). He was placed on the disabled list with what the Yankees claimed was weakness in his hips stemming from the foot injury. After working out in Tampa, Wang threw 13 scoreless innings across two rehab starts for Triple-A Tampa, but the Yankees weren’t thrilled with the velocity or drop on his sinker and decided to keep him on the farm. Then, on May 21, Joba Chamberlain got hit with a comebacker and had to leave his start in the first inning. The resultant strain on the bullpen motivated the Yankees to activate Wang immediately and stick him in the pen. He pitched three moderately effective innings the next day, but in his two outings since then, he’s been excellent, throwing two perfect frames against the Rangers on May 27 and three scoreless against the Indians on Sunday, striking out five in those five innings.

With Phil Hughes having stumbled in his last start, the Yankees have swapped the two, starting Wang today and putting Hughes in the bullpen (count me among those glad to see them keep Hughes in the majors). The Rangers bats will tell us all we need to know about how well Wang is pitching, but I also go back to this great video analysis from the MLB Network’s Dan Plesac for a an idea of what to look for in Wang’s mechanics: balance on that right foot, a high leg kick, hands in close to the body, getting on top of his pitches, particularly the sinker, and throwing on that downward plain.

The Rangers counter Wang with former White Sox prospect Brandon McCarthy, who is finally healthy and pitching well. McCarthy has allowed more than four runs in a start just once this year and pitched fewer than five frames only in that same start. Last week, he shut out the Astros. In his last start, he held the A’s to one run on three hits over six innings.

Mark Teixeira, who sat out last night’s game having bruised his ankle on that take-out slide on Tuesday night, is back in the lineup. Francisco Cervelli gets the start behind the plate after Jorge Posada got hit with a variety of bats and balls in last night’s game. Derek Jeter also gets a game off, with slick-fielding Ramiro Peña starting behind the groundballer Wang and Nick Swisher moving up to bat behind Johnny Damon in the two-hole.

In other news, A.J. Burnett was suspended six games for throwing at Nelson Cruz the other night, so maybe Hughes will get another start anyway. Vicente Padilla, who has reportedly been placed on waivers by the Rangers, was merely fined.

Over at SI.com, Kevin Armstrong has a glowing profile of the Boston Globe’s glory days covering sports in the 1970s. It is a snap shot of a lost era and the piece comes at a good time, with the newspaper industry in peril. 

The Globe featured such talents as Bud Collins, Ray Fitzgerald, Leigh Montville, Leslie Visser, Bob Ryan and Peter Gammons. Armstrong details how Ryan and Gammons, both locals, were sports-mad, how they were enthusiastic, competitive reporters, and how, in some cases, they had cozy relationships with the teams they covered–Gammons shagged flies with the Red Sox and even “held a locker in the Sox clubhouse.”

Talk about a time gone by.

Yet the article left me feeling unsettled.  For instance, Armstrong writes, “The pieces all came together in 1975. As politicians tip-toed around Boston’s tinderbox of busing-related racial issues, the Globe prepared for an unprecedented run.”  According to Howard Bryant’s book about racism and Boston sports, Shut Out, the Globe did plenty of tip-toeing around racial issues as well. Armstrong writes about Will McDonough, “a tough-talking Irishman,” with affection, but does not call into question McDonough’s attitudes on race (detailed here in an article by Glenn Stout).  “McDonough wrote for all fan bases,” reports Armstrong. I don’t know if the brothers from Roxbury would agree.

But my biggest gripe with the piece is the lack of historical context. If the Globe was, as Armstrong contends, arguably the best sports department ever–and perhaps it was–who else is in the conversation? For some perspective, I e-mailed John Schulian, a former sports columnist with an encyclopedic knowledge of the great newspaper sports departments.

Here is Schulians’s reply: 

Call me a cranky old man if you must, but I think the piece is missing something very important — the names of all the great sports sections that are legitimate challengers to the Globe’s alleged omnipotence. Where’s Stanley Woodward’s New York Herald Tribune? What about the two glorious eras that the L.A. Times enjoyed? What about the wars in Philadelphia between the Bulletin and the Daily News? Just for the hell of it, I might even throw in Newsday when Jack Mann was preaching anarchy on Long Island and the irreverent New York Post of the Sixties and Seventies. And what, pray tell, about the staff that Blackie Sherrod put together at the Fort Worth Press when Eisenhower was in the White House?

If those sections don’t get at least a tip of the hat, Mr. Armstrong has written in a vacuum. Worse yet, he has failed to provide some much needed perspective. The Globe was splendid, all right, but part of the reason it scaled the heights it did was because it was pushed by the competition, in Boston and nationally.

I loved the Globe that Mr. Armstrong extols at marathon length, and I’m an enthusiastic admirer of any number of its writers for both their intrepid reporting and dextrous prose. But I think it’s fair to say that none of them ever matched the Herald Trib’s Red Smith and Joe Palmer word for word. (If Woodward had succeeded in hiring John Lardner to write a column, too, it would have put this best-section-ever nonsense to rest for eternity.) The rest of the roster wasn’t bad, either: Jess Abramson on boxing and track and field and college football, and Tommy Holmes on baseball, and Al Laney writing features, and the boss, Stanley Woodward, kicking ass whenever he found time to write a column. Roger Kahn, Jerry Izenberg, Jack Mann and Pete Axthelm came along later, as if the Trib’s literary needed more gloss. Think they could play in the same league as the Globe? I do.

There must be a lot of old Philly guys who think they could have held their own in that fight, too. At the Bulletin 30 and 40 and — it doesn’t seem possible — 50 years ago, you had true giants like Sandy Grady and George Kiseda working wonders with the language and investing their stories with social consciousness. Every kid the Bulletin hired learned by their example, from Ray Didinger and Mark Heisler to Alan Richman, Jim Barniak and Joe McGinniss. They had to hustle, though, because Larry Merchant was sports editor at the Daily News and he was bent on giving the paper a reputation for more than stories about pretty girls cut in half on vacant lots. He brought Grady and Kiseda to Philly, saw them defect to the Bulletin and responded by hiring away Bill Conlin. He found Stan Hochman in San Bernadino. And he had a beautiful madman named Jack McKinney writing boxing. By the time Merchant decamped for New York in the mid-Sixites, he had established a tradition that would last for decades more. Think of this, if you will: When I worked at the Daily News, from 1984 to 1986, my fellow columnists were Hochman, Didinger and Mark Whicker — any one of us by himself would have been enough for most papers —  and we had Conlin on baseball, Hoops Weiss on college basketball, Phil Jasner on the 76ers, Jay Greenburg on the Flyers and Paul Domowitch on the Eagles. When the subject of the Globe came up, we always said they had the best Sunday section going. But that was only because we didn’t publish on Sundays. The other six days of the week, we thought we were as good as anybody. Yes, even the Globe.

Forgive me for rattling on this way, but I want to make sure Mr. Armstrong realizes that history is littered with sports sections that could have given the Globe a run for its reputation. They didn’t always have a lot of money for travel, and they didn’t always have staffs that were two deep, but they were smart and inventive and indefatigable. They were also good. Think of how Jack Mann wove Newsday a world-class staff out of old-timers like Bob Waters, the boozy, eloquent boxing writer, and hot young kids like George Vecsey and Steve Jacobson. (Tony Kornheiser came later — and he was something special.) They were so good that Newsweek did a feature on them at a time when most managing editors were almost ashamed to admit their papers had sports sections. At the New York Post, meanwhile, Milton Gross — called “the Eleanor Roosevelt of the sports pages” by the Village Voice’s Joe Flaherty — was always catching a ride home with Floyd Patterson or Don Newcombe after they’d lost ingloriously. Leonard Shecter wrote a vinegary column, and when he moved in, Merchant took his place. Paul Zimmerman covered pro football and Vic Ziegel covered baseball and boxing and wrote slyly funny columns. Even Murray Kempton came down from Olympus to write a classic piece about Sal Maglie after he’d been done in by Don Larsen’s perfect game.

Meanwhile, out in the hinterlands, there were more sports sections catching fire. In Fort Worth, Blackie Sherrod found three kids — Dan Jenkins, Bud Shrake and Gary Cartwright — who were as irreverent as they were gifted and he turned them loose on the world. There was a fourth, Jerre Todd, who is said to have been every bit their equal, but he left the business to make a fortune in advertising. So it goes. But remember this: On a lot of days, the best writer in the joint was still Sherrod.

I can understand, however, why his Press gets forgotten. Hell, there was hardly anybody buying it when it was in business. Not so the L.A. Times, which had two eras in which it could hold its own against any sports section in the business. Indeed, it was the only one that had the space and manpower and budget to compete with the Globe. The Times’ first golden era was in the Seventies when Jim Murray was at the height of his powers as a columnist. But there was lots more to read after you finished his 900-word epistle, great long rambling stories by Jeff Prugh and Dwight Chapin and Ron Rapoport and solid beat reporting by Mal Florence and Ross Newhan and Ted Green. Hard as it is to believe, the Times was even better in its second dalliance with glory. Get a load of the talent they had in the Eighties: Rick Reilly, Richard Hoffer, Mike Littwin, Alan Greenburg, Randy Harvey, Mark Heisler, Scott Ostler, Bill Christine and . . . I know I’m forgetting somebody. Talk about an abundance of talent. When Reilly left for Sports Illustrated, the Times went out and hired Mike Downey, who was as good a columnist as there was. And the section never missed a beat.

You know what? I haven’t mentioned the Washington Post and the reign of George Solomon. I know George wouldn’t appreciate that. I was there in his early days as sports editor, when he was getting it past repeated ass-kickings by the Washington Daily News (Jack Mann again, and Andy Beyer) and the Washington Star (my old friend David Israel was its rowdy young columnist). George could wear you out with his boundless energy, but damn, did he have a great eye for talent. Not just prize imports like Kornheiser, Dave Kindred and Michael Wilbon, but discoveries like Tom Boswell and David Remnick and John Ed Bradley. And, really, how many other sports editors can say that the editor of the New Yorker once covered boxing for them?

Certainly nobody at the Boston Globe.

For another take on the history of sports writing, check out this piece, originally written for GQ, by Alan Richman.

Is there any doubt left that Alex Rodriguez is the most-hated great player ever to play in New York? Last night, Rodriguez collected an RBI single in his first at bat and then failed in his next three times up, including a rally-killing double play with the bases loaded. He was booed with increased intensity each time.

They even booed when he had two strikes against him. A two-strike boo? Really?

Oh yeah, the Yanks are still in first place. This in stark contrast to the reception that David Ortiz has gotten at Fenway Park.

Dag.

Today’s news is powered by  . . . a little . . . Sabotage!

• Me and my friends and Wang Time!:

No matter how well Phil Hughes was pitching in their rotation, the Yankees knew they could not keep one of the winningest starters in the American League shackled in their bullpen for long. And so on Wednesday, they made the decision that they had been avoiding for the better part of a week.

The Yankees announced that Chien-Ming Wang will start Thursday afternoon’s game against the Rangers, pushing CC Sabathia back to Friday and knocking Hughes to the bullpen.

“I kind of knew something had to give eventually,” Hughes said. “With the way Wang’s been pitching out of the bullpen, he looks like he’s back to his normal stuff. That kind of leaves me as the odd man out.”

But he’s hardly out. Largely because Hughes struck out 21 batters and walked three over his final three starts — posting a 3.50 ERA during that span — the Yankees decided to keep him in the bullpen rather than option him to Triple-A.

[My take: I’d prefer he not take on the still-potent Rangers in the jetstream of the Stadium on a warm Spring afternoon, but we’ll keep our fingers crossed.]

• How is that Swisher for Betemit deal looking now?:

According to a tweet by MLB.com’s Noah Coslov, the White Sox will designate infielder Wilson Betemit for assignment before Thursday’s game and call up top prospect Gordon Beckham. Beckham was the eighth overall pick in the 2008 Draft, and hit .318/.372/.512 in 184 plate appearances between Double-A and Triple-A this year.

• Jesus Montero has indeed been promoted to Double-A.

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So it rained before the game, and it’s raining now, but the heavens closed tonight just long enough for the Yankees to play a listless nine innings and lose, 4-2, to the Rangers.

During the game I was thinking that Phil Hughes may be back in the rotation sooner rather than later, because it sure seemed like something was off with Andy Pettitte. After the game he said he was fine, but his first couple innings tonight were a festival of walks and singles – both his stuff and his location were giving him trouble. It’s a testament to either Pettitte’s luck or his guile that he  limited the damage to four runs and then got himself through five innings, given how rough he looked in the early going. Could just be an off-night, or maybe his back still hurts and he’s  being macho about it, which (note: complete speculation) would be my guess.

Meanwhile Scott Feldman, going for the Rangers, was not exactly dominating but did do a good job of preventing the Yankees from stringing anything together. Alex Rodriguez singled in Nick Swisher in the first, and then in the seventh, Jorge Posada knocked a line drive over the right field wall, and that was it for New York.

Despite all their come-from-behind wins this year,  I never thought they’d pull one of those off tonight – the game just didn’t have that feel. Low-energy, and a bit of a comedown after the last two doozies, but hey, they were certainly due for one of these. My personal favorite moment of the game was Paul O’Neill’s extended shocked silence at the revelation that Randy Choate is currently closing for the Rays.

So, I’m off to sleep. Over the last few weeks I’ve been having really odd, vivid dreams, which I only mention because a lot of them have been baseball-related. There was one the week before last in which Jeter and A-Rod were kidnapped and for some reason I had to find them when the police couldn’t. Then I had one of those classics where you show up to class and discover there’s a huge exam you’re totally unprepared for, and all the questions were about the ’94 strike. Oddest of all, a few nights ago I dreamed I was… making out with Johan Santana at an Enrique Iglesias concert. (Please note that my admiration for Johan Santana is considerable, but platonic, and that I can’t stand Enrique Iglesias.) The subconscious is a strange place.

Anyone else have any weird baseball dreams you’d care to share?

Thunderstorms, says the weatherman. Hopefully, they’ll get the game in…

Let’s Go Yan-Kees.

Meanwhile, according to the intrepid Pete Abe:

UPDATE, 4:30 p.m.: Wang starts tomorrow. More to come later. Hughes to bullpen.

UPDATE, 4:49 p.m.: Hughes is a temporary bullpen fix, Cashman said. He’ll be a starter long term.

New York, New York Big City of Dreams (and everything in New York ain’t always what it seems)…

IRT Station, Inwood

I’ve got a good one for you.  Dig this boss site, New York City Walk.  Dude from New Mexico came to New York and walked every street in Manhattan.  Took him two years. And he kept a blog.  It’s fascinating.  Here’s a neighborhood-by-neighborhood breakdown.

There’s just no end to the cool people in this world, is there?

Jonah Keri and Rob Neyer on Jorge Posada’s chances of making the Hall of Fame.

Whadda think?

I saw the actor/director Tim Blake Nelson (pictured above with George Clooney) on the IRT this morning. He was with his son, taking the kid to school. I met Nelson when I worked for the Coen brothers and later adored him in their movie Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?  He was a friendly, unassuming guy.

Though I was sitting just two feet away from where they were standing, I chose not say hello.  I went back to my book, and looked up at them occasionally, not wanting to invade their privacy.  Nelson was warm and loving with his son.

Talented actor and director. Good man.

An apology to Star-Ledger Yankees beat reporter Marc Carig is in order.

On Monday, I wrote:

STAR LEDGER: Marc Carig copied off Erik Boland’s paper in that he had individual stories on Gardner and Wang/Hughes, But he had a couple of other tidbits: 1) His recap was short and had additional bulletpointed notes. I thought this was an interesting format. It reminded me of an anchor calling highlights and then reading key notes off the scoreboard graphic. 2) He had a full feature on Phil Coke and his blaming the umpire’s call on the 3-2 pitch to Trevor Crowe. Check out the last paragraph. Looks like he copied off Pete Abe’s paper, too.

I realize that the above block can be construed as an accusation of plagiarism, but it is not. The “copied off his paper” lines were meant to be tongue-in-cheek, to demonstrate that there is information overlap, and in some cases, quote and word overlap, in deadline situations. The fact that Marc Carig’s stories in the Star-Ledger were similar to the ones in Newsday and the Journal News was a coincidence.

These coincidences occur daily if you follow all of the media. For example, late last week, Michael Kay interviewed Mets GM Omar Minaya on his radio show in the afternoon and asked him, in a different order, nearly the same exact questions Craig Carton and Boomer Esiason did on WFAN in the morning. Michael may or may not have listened to the FAN show, but in analysis, I could have written, “It sounded like Michael Kay ripped his questions off the morning team at WFAN. Wouldn’t that add to the WFAN-ESPN rivalry?”

To Marc, I am sorry for the loaded nature of the statements above and for any fallout or criticism it has caused you in the past few days. I know the seriousness of that accusation and wouldn’t wish it upon myself or anyone else. Moving forward, I will do a better job of reading between the lines as I proof these pieces to make sure the words I choose are the right ones.

Thank you.

Let’s get right to it . . .

• Joe Sheehan weighs in on the never-ending “Joba to the pen” saga:

Joba Chamberlain is a fantastic starting pitcher. He’s the team’s second-best starter right now, and there’s a chance that he’ll be the best starter by 2010. His SNLVAR of 1.3 is just a fraction behind Andy Pettitte‘s mark of 1.4 for second on the team, a gap that would likely not exist had Chamberlain not been knocked out of his May 21 start against the Orioles by a line drive. Used exclusively as a starter this year, Chamberlain has a 3.71 ERA in 53 1/3 innings. Last night was his fifth quality start in ten, with one of the others being that injury-shortened outing. Durability is an issue, but it’s as much a created one-the Yankees continue to be hypercautious with Chamberlain-as it is a weakness in his game.

In his career, Chamberlain now has a 3.19 ERA in 22 starts, averaging a little more than 5 1/3 innings pitched per. He has 125 strikeouts, more than one per inning, and a K/BB of 2.6. There’s never been a team in MLB history that could afford to move that guy to the bullpen. Even if you were to say that Chamberlain is a six-inning pitcher, something that isn’t clear yet, getting 192 innings of 3.19 ERA ball in a season would make him a top 40 starter in baseball every season, a six-win pitcher in line to make tens of millions of dollars a year.

The conversation on whether to move a starter to the bullpen begins with whether the pitcher can be a successful starter in the majors. Chamberlain has proved that he can prevent runs with the best of them, so that’s not a problem. While he’s suffered nagging injuries on occasion, he hasn’t had the kind of durability problems that, say, Rich Harden has. By pitching standards, Chamberlain has a good health record, and the kind of record that doesn’t warrant a role change.

• Tyler Kepner profiles prospect Austin Jackson:

Through Monday, he was hitting .349, third in the International League, with 11 stolen bases in 11 tries.

A 22-year-old center fielder, Jackson is still developing in his first season at Class AAA. As well as he has played, including a .436 average with runners in scoring position, he has not hit a home run all season. . . .

“There’s nothing about Austin — defense, arm, base running, nothing — that gives me any doubts that he’s going to be a good player one day,” said the Class AAA hitting coach Butch Wynegar. “I just hope nothing happens at the big-league level where they yank him out of here premature. I’d love to see him stay here all year, see what kind of year he has and go from there. Because he’s not there yet.”

• Here’s how a Yankee Triple-A player can make it to the show.
• It’s nearly impossible to get a player’s autograph in the new Stadium:

The Yankees’ gleaming new ballpark opened this spring to mixed reviews, with criticism for sky-high ticket prices, obstructed views and the ease with which batters hit home runs there. But the difficulty in getting autographs at the new stadium has particularly chafed many fans, who routinely add three or more hours to their game outings for the chance at personal interaction with a player.

The situation is little better inside the stadium, where visitors continue to be restricted from the prime autograph areas — near the dugouts — during batting practice, unless they have tickets in those sections. The best of those tickets now go for $1,250, which reflects the Yankees’ recent 50 percent discount. The team had an even more restrictive policy, but eased it last month; fans can now watch batting practice from the field-level box seats in the outfield.

The loss of these traditional access points has fans complaining of the further widening of the already huge gulf between those who make millions playing the game and the fans who support the team with their hearts, time and money.

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“Payback is a pitch that lands in the bullpen.” — Yankee play-by-play man, Michael Kay

Before he signed with the Yankees I knew that Mark Teixeira was a very good player, even a great player, but I didn’t have much of a sense of him. He seemed professional and aware, unremarkable and sterile. My wife said he looked like a white Barry Bonds. That was his defining quality to me. Cliff ranted and raved all winter long that the Yankees needed to sign Teixeira or else the balance of power would remain in Boston for years to come and I had no reason not to believe him. Teixeira slumped in April but has otherwise been a marvel; a brilliant and exciting fielder, a wonderful hitter, and a spirited competitor. I didn’t figure on the competitor part–which we first glimpsed against Carlos Gomez a few weeks back–and didn’t know how much fun he would be to watch.

Teixeira had his signature moment as a Yankee on Tuesday night when he broke up a double play after being plunked in the rump by Vicente Padilla. It was the kind of play that inspires columnists and is later referred to by announcers as a “turning point.” It earned Teixiera a standing ovation and more importantly led to six extra runs as the Yankees pounded the Rangers, 12-3.

It was hard not to think back to 1998 when Armando Benetiz hit Tino Martinez square in the back. The brawl, the back-to-back Yankee home runs and the win. That was one of the most memorable and satisfying regular season games I’ve ever seen. I don’t know that this was as juicy (nobody threw a punch), or how good this Yankee team will be, but it sure  felt good. Damn good.

Padilla and AJ Burnett matched wits in a suck-a-thon shoot-out for the first few innings. The Yanks let Padilla off the hook once and then twice while Burnett was touched for a three-run dinger in the third. The next inning, with the score tied at three, the Yanks had runners at the corners with one out when Padilla drilled Teixeria in the ass. This after hitting Teixeira in the second inning.  Teixeira slammed his bat down and cried “Bullshit,” looking hard and angry at Padilla, a known red-ass who looks like a cheap, greasy bad guy from a Sergio Leone western. I don’t imagine they were the best of friends when they were teammates.

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The Yankees and Rangers enter this week’s three game series in the Bronx separated by a half game for the best record in the American League. Since the Yankees took two of three from the Rangers in Arlington last week, both teams won three games of a four-game series against a lesser opponent. Beating up on losing teams has been the Rangers’ m.o. thus far this season, but they’re just 5-10 against teams currently over .500, including last week’s series loss to the Yankees.

The Yanks, meanwhile, are flat-out rollin’, beating all comers. Dating back to May 8, they’re 16-6 (.727) and 6-1 in series. Their one series loss came at home against the NL East-leading Phillies, but their current run also includes series wins against the then-AL best Blue Jays and still-AL best Rangers. Since May 13, the Yankees are 14-4 (.778) and have not made a single error, setting a major league record with 18-straight errorless games. Just three American League teams have turned balls in play into outs at a higher rate than the Yankees (Texas is one of them), and no team in the majors is scoring runs more often than the Bronx Bombers.

The Yankees current run began after they were swept at home in consecutive two-game series by the Red Sox and Rays. After this week’s three-game set against Texas, the Rays return to the Bronx for four games after which the Yankees travel to Boston for three. That will be the real test, of course, but by taking two of three from the Rangers now, they could enter that gauntlet with the league’s best record.

As for the Rangers, they haven’t changed much since we last saw them save for tonight’s starter, Vicente Padilla, who returns from the disabled list to reclaim his rotation spot from the now-injured Matt Harrison (sore shoulder). Padilla ran off three impressive starts (23 IP, 4 ER) before landing on the DL with a strained shoulder two weeks ago, but had a 7.42 ERA entering that stretch, so who knows what to expect from him tonight. Last year, he faced the Yankees just once, allowing four runs in six innings in Arlington in early August.

Padilla will be opposed by A.J. Burnett, who ten starts into his Yankee career looks an awful lot like the same old A.J. Burnett. He’s struck out 21 men in 18 2/3 innings across his last three starts, but also walked 12 in that span and allowed three home runs in a loss to the Phillies two starts ago. Last time out, he held Texas scoreless on three hits (and four walks) over six innings to earn the win. Here’s hoping for a repeat of that tonight.