Our good friend Ken Arneson has the last word–okay, many words–at Baseball Toaster. And that’s as it should be. He was the head, and we formed like Voltron around him.
It is a sprawling, ambitious post that is followed by an engaging comments section. If you’ve got the time, I suggest checking it out.
And don’t forget to turn that radio dial.
Milton Parker, the back-of-the-house partner at the Carnegie Deli, passed away yesterday. He was 90. From the New York Times:
According to savethedeli.com, a Web site that celebrates delicatessens nationwide, Mr. Parker’s business card read “Milton Parker, CPM (corned beef and pastrami maven).” Mr. Levine’s card reads “MBD (Married Boss’s Daughter).”
Besides the quality and belly-bulging portions of the Carnegie Deli’s menu items, several other factors brought fame to the restaurant. Dozens of delis dot the streets of the theater district. For years, the Stage Delicatessen — near the Carnegie, on Seventh Avenue — had a superior reputation. But in 1979, Carnegie pastrami was judged better by The New York Times. That touched off what newspaper articles called the Pastrami War. Both establishments fared well, with customers lining up down the block.
“Them?” Mr. Parker said at the time of his rival. “They’re living off our overflow.”
It certainly did not hurt business, five years later, when Mr. Allen’s movie “Broadway Danny Rose” was released, with some scenes shot at the Carnegie.
Kind of makes you hungry, no?
Powered by quite possibly the best 5 minutes ever in “Taxi” …
Here’s the news:
Someone skeptically asked if Cashman was really satisfied with the situation in center field, and he responded that he expected Melky Cabrera to bounce back after a dismal season last year.
“At the same time,” he said, “I’ve got a kid named Brett Gardner that’s hungry and wants that job.”
“He told me he didn’t want to tell any tales or have it be a tell-all book,” Verducci said. “That’s exactly what we told publishers.”
Things got more complicated when Torre left the Yankees, and Torre did tell some tales many believe violated the sanctity of the clubhouse.
Verducci said he warned Torre “people will pull things out of context,” but he dismissed the notion the book crosses any lines.
“I don’t think the book goes into any rooms that were unlit,” Verducci said. “He may illuminate things further, but you think about Alex Rodriguez fitting into the clubhouse; was that a surprise he had trouble?
[My take: Detailing that Kevin Brown was found hiding and curled up in the corner of a room after an awful pitching performance isn’t (almost literally) “going into any rooms that were unlit”?]
There was hardly a shock in the well-written pages, no reason to stop a single press, nothing hotter than PG-13. OK, here’s one thing that might have a shelf life: Expect a bunch of headlines this season playing off the nickname A-Fraud.
A-Rod needs careful handling? David Wells isn’t David Niven? The night Kevin Brown cried? (Who knew the indifferent Brown had tear ducts.) Torre and Brian Cashman were drifting apart? None of that should have surprised even the casual baseball fan.
For some reason, though – maybe because the book was touted as an inside-out look at the Yankees – a few pre-publication leaks suggested the perfect storm. No, sorry, “The Yankee Years” is no tsunami.
If there’s a mystery here, or a complaint from the e-mailers who love to complain, it’s why this book was written in the first place. Why did Torre, who insisted everything that happens in the Bronx stay in the Bronx, decide to break the 11th commandment and violate the sanctity of the clubhouse? Funny, but Torre doesn’t think he was The Great Violator.
Lebron’s line against the Knicks tonight: 52 pernts (on 17-33 from the field), 11 assists, 10 boards, 2 blocked shots.
The Cavs win as James is the first player to record a triple double while scoring more than 50 points since Kareem back in 1975.
Eh. He’s pretty good.
Here’s taking the This or That concept to a scary new level.
(Warning: Foul Language Ahead.)
Brute Force:
Or Squirm City?
Fender Session.
Tele:
Or Strat?
I flipped through the paper on the subway this morning, my fingers smudged with newsprint. More layoffs, this time the cosmetics industry. Hard times here, more ahead.
I looked up and a short, smartly dressed couple stood in front of me. They were both attractive, well-groomed and pinched-looking, and they spoke softly to each other. It was almost as if they were just mouthing the words. So many couples are loud in New York and they were just the opposite.
I went back to my paper and then looked back up at them. They both had small mouths, and now they were both thinking, looking away from each other, lost in thought, concerned. I thought about how many times I see dogs who look like their owners. It was almost too perfect that these two people would find each other.
They stood about a foot apart and the man reached out and tugged gently on the woman’s handbag. She looked up at him. He held out his hand. She took it and they held onto each other, silently. I thought about Raging Bull, about all the slow-motion, close-up shots of hands, and how expressive hand gestures are (I talk with my hands all the time).
It’s cold outside today and the news is hard. This couple seemed worried, but I couldn’t tell if that was just their natural disposition or something else. At least they have each other.
Powered by this really creative use of Legos, here’s the news:
While the “A-Fraud” talk was among the more prominent issues that made waves, Torre rejected the idea that he had broken the time-honored code of the clubhouse — in short, what you see here stays here, a message that Torre himself sent to players during his 12 years.
“I don’t think I really volunteered anything in this book that at some time or other — sitting in the dugout, sitting in the clubhouse, talking to media — that they haven’t heard before,” Torre said.
In part to assure that, Torre said that he had “read and re-read” the final text, making changes along the way with his co-author, Verducci.
[My take: Well … the “they” in that 2nd paragraph excerpt refers to the media and players, not to the buying public. If Torre HAD said some of those things in front of the media, why hadn’t the media passed it onto the public? Some media person would have “leaked” something during the past 12 years, don’t you think? How many of us (the general public) knew of “A-Fraud”, or Damon’s “burnout” or some of those juicy quotes BEFORE this book? Count me on the side of “he broke the code of the clubhouse”.]
I don’t blame Torre for writing a book, for being proud of what he achieved in New York. The Yankees treated him shamefully at the end and were classless in excluding him from the Yankee Stadium finale. I just wish Torre would say he told it as he saw it and stop pretending that there is nothing in “The Yankee Years” more incendiary than a rundown of his starters for a four-game series in August.
He continued on Tuesday to characterize the “A-Fraud” reference to Alex Rodriguez as an inside joke, “tongue-in-cheek, in front of him.” Even if that were the case, now that Torre has revealed it publicly in a book receiving spectacular national attention, how humorous will it be for A-Rod when he is serenaded with the chant on the road next season and possibly at home for leaving the bases loaded with two out in the eighth?
There is a cute little girl in our building who kitty sits for us when we are out of town. She’s thirteen now, so she’s not such a little girl anymore. But she’s a sweet kid, thoughtful and bright. Her parents are cool too–the old man is a professor. They are in their mid-fifties I’d guess, hip, and know a ton about music. Last year, the mother had a stroke, or at least they initially thought it was a stroke. Turns out she has A.L.S.
At first, her speech was slurred. Now, she can’t talk anymore. Instead, she types into a small laptop computer that speaks for her. But she is deteriorating and there is no telling how long she has to live–two years maybe?
My wife Emily has crohn’s and has become something of an expert at dealing with insurance companies. She has gone downstairs to our neighbhors apartment and spent hours sorting through their insurance complications. It makes her feel good to help, to be of some use, to put her own long, often exasperating experiences to work.
I’ve gone down a few times too but it’s almost too painful to bear. I saw the parents on the subway a few weeks ago and buried my head in my book. They didn’t notice me and they got off a few stops later, far from our usual stop. I felt ashamed, like a coward.
The thought of the husband losing his wife, of the girl losing her mother, is overwhelming. When I see them, I am bright and cheery, but look for a way to make the encounters as brief as possible.
A.L.S. is cruel fate for anyone. Which is why I felt a measure of comfort reading George Vecsey’s column in the Times today.
Baseball is doing a good thing.
During his three seasons with the Cleveland Indians, Oscar Gamble’s big hair made for quite a sight at Municipal Stadium and other American League ballparks. According to former Hall of Fame senior researcher Russell Wolinsky, fans frequently serenaded Gamble with chants of “BO-ZO!” in tribute to the popular TV clown of the 1960s and 1970s who featured a similarly large tuff of hair. Clearly, political correctness was far less in fashion than it is today.) By the end of each game, Gamble was usually left with a particularly bad case of “hat hair,” with his Afro suffering severe indentations from both cap and helmet.
Gamble’s oversized hair posed another problem. He could rarely complete a turn around the bases without his helmet falling to the ground, while long chases after fly balls in the outfield would similarly result in the unintended departure of his cap from his head. Caps and helmets simply didn’t fit over his Afro, the largest of any player in the major leagues and one that rivaled the hairstyles in the American Basketball Association. (For those who remember Darnell “Dr. Dunk” Hillman, Gamble’s Afro was nearly as massive and majestic as the one grown by the former ABA standout.) The “problem” reached such extremes in 1975 that Gamble held a contest in which he asked Indians fans for recommendations on how to wear his hats. “We’re open to all suggestions, except a haircut,” Gamble informed Cleveland sportswriter Bob Sudyk.
As much notoriety as Gamble (seen in his 1976 and 1979 Topps) accrued for his “head piece,” he acquired a colorful reputation for additional reasons during his journeyman career in the major leagues. Recognized as the flashiest dresser on the Indians, Gamble once wore a pair of red, white, and blue plaid slacks, accentuated by red elevator shoes. Gamble was also one of the few major leaguers who could claim ownership of a disco. He opened up the establishment in 1976, turning over the day-to-day operations of the disco to his brothers.
(more…)
Last Friday night, I went out to dinner with my cousin Donny. He’s my mom’s age so I call him my uncle, even though he’s really a cousin. I met him at his mother’s apartment downtown. She passed away in December and he’s in the process of fixing the place up to be sold.
Donny let me take three books from her collection–a Jimmy Breslin novel; a collection of letters by the legendary editor Maxwell Perkins; and Liebling Abroad, a collection of war and food writing by one of our of most influencial journalists.
I didn’t find any bookmarks in them, but Michael Popek, more commonly known around these parts as “unmoderated,” sent me a link to his terrific blog about the hidden treasures that are left in books: forgottenbookmarks.com. Michael runs a used bookstore so he comes across a lot of interesting momentos.
Check, check it out.
I am sad today. As Alex posted here, Baseball Toaster, the former home of Banter and many other cool blogs, is closing up shop. I wish the proprietors of these blogs only the best in their future endeavors.
Now onto the news:
And yet, “The Yankee Years” masterfully interweaves these larger issues into a detailed account of the rise and fall of Torre’s dynasty, a team that won four World Series in the first five years he was managing — and then did not go all the way again.
The credit for this belongs to Verducci, senior baseball writer for Sports Illustrated and SportsIllustrated.com. He is, if truth be told, the real author of “The Yankee Years,” which is not a memoir, regardless of how it’s been portrayed.
Written in the third person, the book is more an extended piece of reporting interspersed with long quotes from Torre and many others, which at times makes for an interesting tension between the manager’s recollections and Verducci’s broader point of view.
[My take: My cynical side thinks that the Times gave a positive review in order to keep on Torre’s good side … keep a nice friendly “working relationship”. But then I realize that the reviewer isn’t part of the sports department … he’s the books editor, and my cynicism can rest easy.]
But the Yankee second level is not impressive at present, unless they keep both Nady and Swisher. They still have the same all-field/no-hit backup to Posada in Jose Molina. The backup infielder will either be Cody Ransom or Angel Berroa. And the backup outfielder would be the loser of the already dubious center field battle between Melky Cabrera and Brett Gardner. I see some defensive ability with Molina and Berroa, speed with Gardner, a flawed switch hitter in Cabrera and perhaps some righty pop with Ransom. But for a $200 million payroll, this is poor insurance.
But if the Yanks keep Nady in right and Swisher as a super-sub, it gets, at least, a little bit more attractive. Swisher is an above-average defender in left, right and at first. He is a switch-hitter with power and patience. He could play center field in an emergency.
[My take: Sherman is preaching to the choir here … we Banterites have been barking about the subpar bench for a few years now, especially in light of the massive payroll invested in an aging roster.]
MJ: double-nickel. Bernard: 60.
Kobe: 61 against the Knicks tonight: no asterisk, son.
19-31 from the field, 20-20 from the line.
The most points ever scored in an NBA game at the Garden.
Bow Down to a Player Who’s Greater Than You.
It was a terrific run, but Baseball Toaster is closing up shop.
This, from the always pugnacious Allen Barra:
We’ve mentioned Warner a couple times in this space during the postseason, but the lack of ink he got today after his amazing performance Sunday demands one more statement, and we’ll make it: Kurt Warner is the greatest quarterback in the game and, at his best, better than Peyton Manning, Tom Brady or Brett Favre. His postseason stats alone leave the others in the dust with an 8-3 record, not so gaudy as Brady’s 14-3, but Warner has thrown for as many TDs, 26, in 11 games as Brady has in 17, and Warner has averaged 8.4 yards per throw to Brady’s 6.6.
That was a good Super Bowl … but let’s get back to business …
… Wade was G.M. of the Philadelphia Phillies when Abreu played there, and he called him “one of the most underappreciated players in the game.”
“He’s a sabermetrician’s dream, from the standpoint of what he produces statistically,” Wade said. …
“Aaron Rowand came in there and in one year found the only exposed piece of metal in the ballpark and ran into it; some people wanted to build a statue in his honor,” said Wade, recalling the former Phillies center fielder who famously crashed into a wall at Citizens Bank Park.
“Aaron Rowand is an outstanding player and he brings that blue-collar type of energy to the field, and that’s great. Fans gravitate to that, especially in Philadelphia. Bobby’s so good at what he does and so smooth at doing it, he tends to be underappreciated.”
Torre said he stands behind everything in the book, even though it is written by Verducci in the third person. That means, he fully approved Mike Mussina’s insensitive critique of Mariano Rivera on Page 312: “As great as he is, and it’s amazing what he does, if you start the evaluation again since I’ve been here, he has accomplished nothing in comparison to what he accomplished the four years before. He blew the World Series in ’01. He lost the Boston series. He didn’t lose it himself, but we had a chance to win in the ninth and sweep them and he doesn’t do it there. . . . That’s what I remember about the ’04 series.”
One of the reasons I enjoy reading Joe Posnanski’s blog is because he relishes talking about sports the way fans do. He takes bar room topics, often in list form, and riffs, with reason and humor and a sense of fun. Who was the best so-and-so, what was the greatest such-and-such. The enthusiasm he shows for this kind of banter is what makes Pos so appealing–and he’s as well-liked a sports writer as I’ve ever met. The sabr-numbers crowd dig him and the mainstream guys like him too.
I was in Pos-mode the other day when I read Chris Ballard’s SI cover story on LeBron James. King James is only 24, a man-child, physical-mental freak of historically great proportions. The guy is twenty someodd pounds shy of 300, for crying out loud. I had no idea he was that big. And he’s so fast. He could play strong safety in the NFL.
Along with Kobe Bryant, James is the greatest player in the game and he’s only getting better. So I thought, when we talk about the greatest basketball players in the post-Jordan Era, it’s got to be Shaq, who you can’t really compare with Jordan because of the position; Kobe, who has won three titles and is certainly great, but not at Jordan’s level, especially off the court in terms of mainstream popularity and influence; and James.
Of course the league has been filled with other iconic players since Jordan level, including Allen Iverson, Tim Duncan and Kevin Garnett, but not ones whose appeal crossed over to a wider audience. They are just hall of famers in the game. Nobody has reached the level Jordan attained. Jordan followed the greatestness of Magic and Bird seemlessly and he brought it to a crescendo that was peerless.
I thought about guys on that level—Jordan and Tiger Woods, Babe Ruth—as I read an old GQ article by the novelist William Kennedy. In 1956, Kennedy was a kid reporter working for the Albany-Times Union when he interviewed Louis Armstrong, who was in town for a gig. Kennedy went up to his hotel room and talked with him for an hour and a half. He wrote a short nothing piece on it for the paper but saved his notes.
My awe and reverence for Louis continued to grow through the ensuing years, and somewhere in the late 1970s I conducted an after-dinner poll as to who was the most valuable person who had ever lived, and Satchmo won, with five votes. William Faulkner got four, Michangelo three, Beethoven, Muhammad Ali and Tolstoy two each, and Dostoyevsky and Busby Berkeley one each.
…He was a giant in his youth: the first major soloist in jazz, the man to whom every last jazz, swing, modern jazz and rock musician after hism has been and is indebted, some via the grand-larceny route. Music has changed radically since the seminal days of jazz, but Satchmo’s achievement has not been diminished. No one has superseded him in jazz eminence the way Crosby superseded Jolson and Sinatra superseded Crosby and the Beatles superseded Elvis, and I will never know who or what really superseded the Beatles.
Who else, in sports, in the arts, in popular culture, is on this level?
For much of the 1980s and nineties, I had the pleasure of learning baseball from Bob Fowler. Formerly a beat writer for the Twins, Fowler had become the owner of the Utica Blue Sox, a minor league team that I covered as part of my duties at WIBX Radio. Bob knew the game thoroughly—from the 1960s to the current day. Whenever I interviewed him, or just talked to him off the cuff, my knowledge of the game grew considerably.
I found it fascinating that Bob, a former sportswriter, had “graduated” to become an owner. Unlike many minor league operators, he knew the game from two vastly different perspectives. As a beat writer, he once listened to Rod Carew threaten him with a baseball bat. As a team owner in the New York-Penn League, he worked for many years out of a trailer, cramped and muggy. With those kinds of experiences, Bob Fowler became an interesting guy to know.
As a fan of baseball, I already knew the names of many players I had grown up with in the sixties and seventies. Bob helped flesh out those names for me, attaching personalities to the baseball cards. One of those characters was former Twins right-hander Jim “Mudcat” Grant. “He was really the catalyst of that [Minnesota] team,” Fowler told me years ago. “First of all, he was black. I think that was very significant to the Minnesota franchise. He wasn’t Cuban. He was [an American] black… Mudcat came in and he was a loosy-goosy guy. But the Minnesota team basically was a white team, outside of the Latins we had. It was basically a white team. And he came into that clubhouse, and he was the synergy of that ballclub. Harmon [Killebrew] was a quiet guy. Bob Allison was a quiet guy. We had a clubhouse of quiet guys. And Mudcat was sort of the spark, really.”
Bob also gave me great insights into the versatile Cesar Tovar, briefly a Yankee and one of the game’s eccentric but loveable characters. Bob told me how Tovar was a packrat. At the end of each season, he would collect as much baseball gear as he could find, from gloves to bats to catcher’s chest protectors. As Bob pointed out to me, Tovar didn’t gather the gear for himself; he collected those bats and balls and gloves for underprivileged kids in his native Venezuela.
A little over a decade ago, I set out a course of action to write my first book, a large volume on the Oakland A’s dynasty of the early seventies, I realized that Bob would provide a terrific source of information. He was more than happy to help—and provide me with a few surprising revelations. “Well, the best guy, the best guy on the A’s, the guy I really enjoyed the most—and I don’t mean that we became buddy-buddy—I liked Reggie Jackson,” Bob said. “I mean, Reggie Jackson was a real businessman. Reggie Jackson knew what you wanted. I don’t know that he had ever been schooled at Arizona State in media relations, but he could sense what was a good story, what was a good quote. And he was willing to give it. Other writers said, ‘Oh, he’s an egotist.’ I don’t feel that way at all. He knew his role; he knew your role. He was happy to give you his part of the mutual relationship, the working agreement that you had. And then that was it. He would go his way and you’d go your way.”
Any discussion of the A’s invariably included a debate about the merits and pitfalls of Charlie Finley. Much to my surprise, Bob appreciated Finley more than most sportswriters. “Oh yeah, great guy,” Bob informed me during a memorable interview. “Great, great, great guy. Charles Finley was… he was a character, obviously. I have to personally qualify this. I like different type of people. People that are of the same ilk from a media point of view weren’t interesting to me. I liked the different kind of guys. Certainly Charlie was that way. But the thing I like about Charlie—he was articulate. He was always willing to give you a quote. Now, all the people said, ‘Well, he’s an egotistical whatever.’ I always felt he was cooperative with me. He would answer your questions. He wouldn’t duck them.”
Bob didn’t duck questions either. I asked him questions on a variety of topics, whether it was running a minor league team or ripping a major leaguer in print. (Bob, by his own admission, could be very tough on Twins players.) He always gave me his opinion, whether I agreed with it or not. At times, he could be gruff, sometimes downright intimidating. On one occasion, Bob disagreed with me vehemently when I chastised local Utica fans for not coming out to watch the Blue Sox on opening night. I could tell that he was very upset with me—heck, the listeners could have told you that—but he carried on with the rest of the interview as if nothing had happened. There was no grudge. He just disagreed with me, that’s all, and was more than willing to move on to the next day.
Earlier this week, I came across an obituary on the Internet. I discovered that Bob Fowler, former sportswriter and former minor league owner, died earlier this month from Lou Gehrig’s disease. He had struggled with ALS for two and a half years before finally losing the battle at the age of 69. I felt bad that I had lost touch with Bob, felt bad that I didn’t even know about the diagnosis.
But I’m awfully glad that, for nearly the last twenty years, I had the good chance to know him. Thanks, Bob.
Bruce Markusen worked for WIBX Radio in Utica from 1987 to 1995.
Let’s get this out of the way …
[poll id=”4″]
And let’s have a little competition … over at ESPN:
“Super Pick’em” challenges you to answer a series of questions directly related to the Big Game. The questions range from which team will come out on top to how many touchdowns will the home team quarterback throw. The more you get right, the closer you are to the grand prize. It’s FREE to play.
Get in the action now:
http://games.espn.go.com/super/group?groupID=3380
Group: Bronx Banterers
Password: arod
OK … back to the really important stuff … ladies and gentlemen … “Author” Joe Torre!
