Powered by A Bit of Fry and Laurie (hat tip to Jon Weisman for the link), here’s the news:

• At BP.com, Jay Jaffe puts on his GM’s hat and tries to fix the Yankees.  Here’s some highlights:

Withdraw the offer to Sabathia, which has been on the table since November 14.
Sign Teixeira.
Swisher becomes the primary right fielder, in a platoon with Nady.
Short-term CF solution by swapping Hideki Matsui to the Giants for Randy Winn.
Wang and Chamberlain are rotation locks, Hughes or Kennedy will take the number five spot. Alfredo Aceves is my seventh starter behind whichever of those two is sixth, and that at least one spare is stretched out at Scranton. That leaves a need for two starters. For one spot, I sign Derek Lowe.  Having signed Lowe, I’ll go high-risk/high-reward for the other spot. I’m going to sign Ben Sheets to a two-year, $30 million deal with a vesting option for a third year.

• As you probably know by now, Brian Cashman has met with Scott Boras regarding Mark Teixeira, and will talk to C.C. Sabathia this weekend as per Tyler Kepner at the Times).
• Think you have the Yankees’ next moves figured out?  Here’s some info from Buster Olney at ESPN:

They want to sign Sabathia, and if they cannot do that, then they intend to take the millions that would’ve been spent on the left-hander and chase after Teixeira, while bidding on Lowe. The Yankees also have had internal discussions about second baseman Orlando Hudson, whom they would sign, presumably, if they were to move closer to the long-considered swap of Robinson Cano to the Dodgers (or some other team). If the Yankees were to trade Cano to L.A., they almost certainly would insist upon an elite pitcher like Clayton Kershaw or Chad Billingsley in return, and in failing to get that, they’d lock in on outfielder Matt Kemp.

• Over at the News, Mark Feinsand has this quote regarding the Yankees’ concern over someone making Sabathia a better offer:

“He’s got one suitor besides us, and that’s Milwaukee,” said one Yankees official who dismissed San Francisco as a legitimate contender. “He’ll have to make a decision: Does he want to leave a lot of money on the table?”

• Feinsand also echoes the Times Kepner on Cashman’s meeting with Boras, but has the focus on a different Boras client:

… to discuss the 36-year-old righthander (Lowe). Cashman was not reachable for comment, but it is believed that no offer was made, though that could come later this week or during next week’s winter meetings in Las Vegas.  Cashman is also believed to have discussed other Boras clients, including Oliver Perez and Mark Teixeira, but Lowe was the focus.

• Pick-3: Over at LoHud, Pete Abe offers his readers a poll to choose which of Lowe, Sheets and Burnett the Yanks should sign.   There is also a “none of the above” choice.  (Sheets is leading at time of this post). Pete also has an interesting post on a study done by Sports Management grad students at Manhattanville College.  Here’s an excerpt:

The students charted the win shares and durability of frontline players and bench players and broke them down to hitters, starters and relievers. They then compared all 30 teams.

As you might expect, starting pitching is what separated the elite teams from the rest and there was a wide disparity. That was particularly the case with the Yankees. But what struck me was that the offensive production was in a pretty tight range. The frontline players of most teams played close to the mean.  In other words, starting pitching is what mattered, particularly the depth of starting pitching. The students, who are all fans of the Yankees, commented that Brian Cashman was doing the right thing by focusing on starting pitching.

(more…)

There’s Reggie Jackson lovers and Reggie Jackson haters.  I don’t think he cares which way they go so long as they shout, ‘Reggie!'”

Billy Hunter”

What was it that Pasternak said?  ‘Once in every generation there’s a fool who tells the truth exactly as he sees it.’  That’s Reggie.”

Jim Palmer

 
Tony Kornheiser wrote a great newspaer profile on Reggie at the end of spring training in ’78 for the Times. Reggie drove his Rolls to an exhibition game, Kornheiser rode shotgun, and got Reggie in fine form.*

Here’s how the piece, which is maybe 2,300-500 words, ends:

Jackson’s Lonely World, a Year After His Season of Hurt

March 27, 1978

By Tony Kornheiser

The uniform is tight and tapered, and he is into it in 15 minutes, ready to go. But the ride and the conversation have drone his insides dirty. Too much past dredged up. He needs something to keep his stomach down.

“There’s the man,” calls Dave Nelson, the Royal infielder, coming over to Jackson. “Congratulations, congratulations on a helluva World Series. You deserve it.”

Behind Nelson comes John Mayberry, the Royal slugger.

“Reggie!” Mayberry shouts.

“Rope, what’s up?” Jackson says.

“You, man. You, with your bad self.”

It is curious, but he seems most comfortable with members of other teams. With the Yankees, he is at his most comfortable at the batting cage, before games, when the other team’s players are close. You sense that is searching for vocal respect that only opposing players are willing to give him. It seems likely that still even after his Ruthian World Series, some of his teammates are either too jealous or too stubborn to admit that they were wrong about his ability as a player.

In the clubhouse Jackson is hesitant. Even now there is tenseness between him and many other Yankees. Yet, it may well be that he infers more hostility than actually exists.

“In the locker room I don’t feel like I’m one of the guys,” he says. “It’s hard for me to say this. I’d like to fit in, but I don’t. I don’t know if I’ll ever really be allowed to fit in. I need to be appreciated, even praised. I like to hear: ‘Nice going. Great going. You’re a helluva ball player.’ But I walk in feeling disliked. Maybe I’m overdoing it. Like I never get on anybody in the clubhouse unless it’s a situation where it’s obvious that it’s OK for me to say something. I stay in the background. I never talk to too many people, except maybe Fran Healy or Ray, the clubhouse attendant, or the press.

“I never small-talk with anyone; I don’t feel that anyone cares to talk to me. So I kind of shut up. I’m always the one who has to initiate the conversations. Sometimes I hear my voice in the locker room, and I wasn’t to take it back. I don’t want anyone to look at me or feel uncomfortable around me.”

These words are hard to hear and harder, perhaps, to say.

And then there is a game to play. He is at peace playing baseball. He starts in right field and plays five innings going to bat three times. Two outs and one RBI single. The people, who react to him as they react to no other Yankee—loud boos, even louder cheers—are satisfied. He has been held down, but not out.

With permission to leave early, Jackson showers, dresses and goes to his car for the drive home. There is a crowd, as usual. He sings autographs and discusses the care, its paint job and the reason he likes to park in the shades instead of the sun. Before leaving he takes a towel and wipes it down, wiping even the inside carpeting, making sure it is perfectly clean.

Forty miles outside Fort Myers he is playing his tape deck, and the chorus of the song repeats, ‘We’re all in this together.” Jackson is singing along. “All my life,” he says, “I wanted a car like this. I know it’s a rich man’s car. I’m proud I can afford it.”

“He should be happy,” says Chris Chambliss. “He has everything he could want.”

“Are you happy?” Jackson is asked.

“For print?” he answers as the car moves almost silently past the swamps on Alligator Alley.

(more…)

By Glenn Stout

It was a nothing game.

September 24, 1992. A Thursday night. The Yankees in fourth place and the Tigers in sixth, neither of them close to the Blue Jays, or, apparently, with any chance of ever getting close to the Blue Jays or anyone else atop the division for at least a few more years. A young Scott Kamienicki vs. an aging Frank Tanana, one-time hard thrower whose fastball had come and gone and left behind a pile of guts and guile.

We were down from Boston, my girlfriend and I. She’d recently moved back in with me after getting a grad degree from Columbia and living and working in Mount Vernon for a few years, and we had some business to take care of in the city.

It had already been a funny day. Taking a bus somewhere downtown I’d seen Liza Minelli poking around outside some antique bathroom fixture store. Down by City Hall I’d used of one of those high tech public bathrooms that had cost 50 cents and gave itself a shower afterwards, like something from the Jetsons. Then I saw Rudy Giuliani walking down the street.

We went to the game – a nice early fall night. Only about 12,000 people were in the Stadium, so we had pretty good seats, probably the best seats I’d ever had for a major league game anywhere at that point – the main boxes, not too high up, almost dead on a line with the left field foul line. We might have paid twelve dollars a ticket, which also would have been the most I’d ever spent on a baseball ticket at the time.

I saw Nicolas Cage. He had better seats, right behind the plate, but still 20 or 30 rows up.

There wasn’t a whole lot of care on display on the field that night. Mattingly played hard, as always, and cracked a couple of doubles, and this new kid in center field, Bernie Williams, had a good night. But almost everyone else one either team – Charlie Hayes, Rob Deer, Tartabull – was packing it in; you could tell.

Seventh inning. Yankees ahead 4-0. Tanana throwing changeups off changeups and the occasional big sloppy curve – nothing much over eighty miles an hour. The crowd was already starting to file out.

Leading off, Gerald Williams. Rookie. I remember liking Gerald more than Bernie at first. He moved like a ballplayer, while Bernie moved like an antelope still wet from birth.

Gerald Williams hadn’t done much so far – a fly out, a strikeout. But now Tanana, thirty-nine years old and in his nineteenth year of major league baseball, gave him a pitch.

Williams didn’t miss it. I’ll never forget the trajectory – almost straight down the line, a little hook to it like a golf shot, that one bright spot against the black going smaller…

And Gerald Williams watching it, and walking, slow toward first before, barely, breaking into a trot. His first major league home run.

I was watching him saunter toward first when I heard someone yelling, not just to get someone’s attention, but REALLY yelling, I mean angry “I’m gonna ruin your face” kind of mad.

It was Frank Tanana. Pissed. Chewing Williams’ ass out every step he took all around the bases for standing there and showing him up. And Williams did speed up – not much – just enough to let Tanana know he heard but at the same time not so much to let him think he had been intimidated. And Tanana kept yelling.

Baseball-Reference tells me that Pat Kelly followed with a walk and Bernie Williams, this time running like an adult antelope, tripled, knocking out Tanana, and the Yankees went on to win 10-1, but to be honest, I don’t really remember much else about the game.

But I’ve got a great excuse. You see, when I was down by City Hall earlier that day, my girlfriend and I had applied for a wedding license. We went back the next day and got married in a ceremony that took precisely 27 seconds.

Or about as long as it took Gerald Williams to run around the bases.

Glenn Stout is the series editor of the Best American Sports Writing and the author of many books, including Yankee Century.

I caught the YES Hot Stove show last night.  The panel featured veteran newspaper men Hal Bodley, Murray Chass and Jack Curry.  It has become all too easy to call out Chass which is a shame because he was so good for so long.  So I won’t pile on but he really didn’t come off well.  He monopolized the conversation and what he said…oy.  Bodley was fine if somewhat bland and Curry was good as usual. 

And our pal Steve Goldman distinguished himself in an oddly-conceived segment as the “Interweb Expert.”

Dig:

I lean on Red Smith’s words like the counter at the Crown Diner and the bar at Ballpark Lanes and baseball all the time.

“Over the years people have asked, ‘Isn’t it dull covering baseball every day?’ My answer: ‘It becomes dull only to dull minds.’ If you have the perception and the interest to see it, and the wit to express it, your story is always different from yesterday’s story.”

Those are the baseball-writing basics from one of the greats.

Everything starts with the basics. Pitchers locate the fastball and hitters drive the ball back up the middle. Newspapermen usually lean against the bar and deal with it all tomorrow.

Smith used to share the pages of the old New York World Journal Tribune with Jimmy Cannon.

Cannon was also one of the greats, but is probably best known for his often imitated one-liner columns titled: Nobody Asked Me, But…

I loved the style as a young reporter and used to carry a collection of Cannon’s columns around with me like a crutch. An old newspaper editor encouraged me to swipe the idea.

“You had better learn how to steal if you’re gonna make it in this business,” the editor said. “There are only so many good ideas out there and the smart guys usually get ‘em first.”

Cannon was one of the smart guys so I grabbed his idea and ran. I have pounded out many of these columns in past lives, but now I’m just another old righty taking the mound to see if I’ve got anything left on my fastball.

Nobody asked me either, but…

I hope Jason Giambi gets a good deal to play ball somewhere, but I don’t want it to be in the American League East. I would hate to pull against the Big G.

I’m at every Yankees home game and I watch every road game on television.

I know that’s not normal.

I realize I’m crazy, which means I’m not crazy. I think.

It’s really insane to score every game, but I do it anyway.

I’ve had good ideas: Blogging about baseball.

And bad ideas: Becoming an art student through the mail.

I bleed Yankees blue and will defend my team and everyone on it until my last breath.

I believe Derek Jeter is the most important man in this city.

I also believe Alex Rodriguez will lead this team through October.

And that Mariano Rivera will get the final out of a glorious baseball season.

I know that Jorge Posada is the toughest man in the world.

I have faith that Andy Pettitte and Bobby Abreu will be Yankees on Opening Day.

I believe Robinson Cano is going to have the biggest comeback season of all time.

And that Hideki Matsui will bounce back strong, too.

This will be Joba Chamberlain’s year.

But Chien-Ming Wang will win the American League Cy Young Award.

It’s impossible not to love Johnny Damon.

Phil Hughes is going to pitch a lot of big games in the Bronx.

Humberto Sanchez is already a big star in the Bronx and now everyone else will get a good look at him.

I certainly wish Mike Mussina well, but I have no idea how anyone can walk away from baseball while they can still play.

I like the World Baseball Classic, but I want to love it.

If I could pick one ballplayer – living or dead – to have dinner with it would certainly be Josh Gibson.

I’m proud to be on the staff here at Alex Belth’s Bronx Banter. But I think the blog might get more readers if it was called Derek Jeter’s Bronx Banter.

Pitchers and catchers report in 71 days. I’ll be leaning against the bar until then.

We made it to another Friday, so powered by The Two Ronnies, here’s the news …

• And on the Sabathia, C.C. rested: Tyler Kepner of the Times has an analysis of the dance between the Yanks and Sabathia to this point.  Here’s an excerpt:

Sabathia is a different case entirely, and the reason he is stalling, to those who know him, is just as the (anonymous) general manager suspected: his first choice is not New York. Sabathia is from Vallejo, Calif., near the San Francisco Bay Area, and it is well known that his preference is to play for a team on the West Coast. But the money is elsewhere.

“It’s not that he doesn’t want to be a Yankee; that’s not it at all,” said a friend of Sabathia’s, who was granted anonymity because Sabathia had not authorized him to speak on his behalf. “It’s just the aspect of being out there, his family, that kind of stuff.”

• First-degree Burnett: The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that the Braves have offered A.J. Burnett a four-year deal (with some reports that there is a vesting fifth year).  The annual salary is reported to be around $15 million.
• Lowe and (the Yankees are looking in from the) outside: Boston Globe’s Tony Massarotti writes that Derek Lowe has received two offers, one being from the Phillies and the other NOT coming from either the BoSox or Bombers.  However, according to a “baseball source”:

Yankees general manager Brian Cashman will visit with Boras today, when he could make a formal offer for Lowe. Red Sox officials similarly could present an offer to Boras later this week, though it is highly questionable as to whether the Sox have any intention of getting into a bidding war for any high-priced pitcher.

• Where can one find a good Baldelli in the Bronx?: The Post’s Joel Sherman writes that the Yanks are one of at least six teams interested in FA Rocco Baldelli.  Sherman opines:

For the Yankees, Baldelli would provide some DH support for Hideki Matsui and perhaps a righty bat to play in left field on occasion to rest Johnny Damon.

• Over at MLB.com, Bryan Hoch sets the table for the Yankees at the upcoming Winter Meetings.  He has some notes on players that could or should be gone from the club by Spring Training, namely Cano, Cabrera, Kennedy, Igawa and either Matsui or Damon.
• Pettitte to the Dodgers update: Ken Davidoff of Newsday reports that Joe Torre and Pettitte have indeed spoken, but:

“I talked to Andy,” Torre said. “His agent had called the Dodgers to find out about interest, and that’s when I called him. I had talked to Andy much earlier, asking him to come to my (Safe at Home) Foundation dinner. He was always married to the Yankees, the excitement playing for the Yankees.

“I called him only because his agent called (Dodgers’ GM) Ned (Colletti). I certainly would’ve kicked myself (if I hadn’t called). He never said no to anything, but just from talking to him, I know the Yankees are his first choice. I wasn’t about to talk him out it, knowing Andy like I do.”

• A-Rod will suit up for the Dominican Republic team in the upcoming World Baseball Classic, as per Gordon Edes of Yahoo!Sports.

(more…)

Pete Dexter is a hard guy. Dark. He writes hard–succinct, almost scary-clean prose–and he sure lived hard when he was a columnist in Philadelphia from the mid-Seventies through the mid-Eighties. Later, he became a novelist and wrote screenplays.  His newspaper columns and a few longer magazine pieces were compiled in the fine collection, Paper Trails.

I’ve heard Dexter compared favorably with legendary newspaper columnists Jimmy Breslin and Mike Royko.

Steve Volk wrote an excellent profile of Dexter a few years back that is worth checking out.  In Philly, Dexter was friends with the fighter Randall Tex Cobb.  Cobb and Dexter got into a brawl in a baroom that almost cost Dexter his life:

The night he was beaten near to death is Dexter’s signature biographical moment—the instant in time when his already colorful life story entered the realm of myth.

Dexter, so the story goes, was a hard-drinking Philadelphia newspaperman who met up with a bunch of Grays Ferry toughs. They were upset by a column he’d written about a drug-related death in the neighborhood. They beat him with baseball bats.

Dexter suffered a broken pelvis and enough broken skin to warrant 60 stitches. He recovered from his wounds, and—this is important—stopped drinking. Then he proceeded to become one of America’s best fiction writers.

There are, though, problems with the story.

For one, Dexter himself says the incident doesn’t look so important to him through his 63-year-old eyes—he didn’t hear a redemption song in the sound of his own pelvis cracking. Then there’s the matter of the baseball bats.

For a taste of Dexter’s work, take a look at this beautifully-crafted story he wrote for Sports Illustrated in the mid-Eighties:

Early on the afternoon of Feb. 4, 1982, a truck driver named Albert Brihn, on the way to a sewage-treatment plant off PGA Boulevard just outside Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., noticed something lying in a clearing of pine trees 60 feet off the road connecting the treatment plant to the street. It looked like a dummy.

Mr. Brihn delivered his load and headed back out. On the way, the thing in the clearing caught his eye again. Then something else—a buzzard, floating over it, banking again and again in those grim buzzard circles. Suddenly the thought broke, and Mr. Brihn knew what the thing was.

He stopped the truck and walked to the body. It was a man dressed in a black bikini bathing suit. There was a gold chain around the neck threaded through an Italian horn of plenty. He studied the body—there was a hole to the right of the nose, another at the right temple, both with muzzle burns, and there was a tear between the nose and the mouth where a bullet fragment had passed going out. As he stood there, the chest rose and fell twice. It was 1:30 in the afternoon.

A little more than 10 minutes later, the paramedics from Old Dixie Fire Station No. 2 arrived in an ambulance. If you believe the signs you see coming into town, Palm Beach Gardens is the golf capital of the world. It is home to a large retirement community—in this case a financially secure retirement community—so when one of its citizens expires, serious efforts are made toward not leaving the body lying around. Certainly not long enough to attract buzzards.

This particular body, of course, did not belong to someone of retirement age. The paramedics were there in 10 minutes anyway, and took it, the chest still rising and falling, to Palm Beach Gardens Community Hospital, where, at 3:36 p.m., the chest went suddenly still. Michael J. Dalfo was 29 years old, and the coroner’s report would say he died of two .25-caliber bullets, shot at close range into his head.

By Bob Costas

(as told to Alex Belth)

To me Yankee Stadium means the original Yankee Stadium. I know the 1976-through-2008 version saw a lot of great moments and houses a lot of memories but since I’m from a generation prior to that, at least in terms of remembering baseball, my earliest memories are of the classic Yankee Stadium where Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris, or for that matter, Bobby Murcer, played on exactly the same field with exactly the same dimensions as Ruth, Gehrig and DiMaggio. That’s what resonates most for me.

The first game I ever saw in person was the second to last day of the 1959 season. Saturday afternoon. It was one of those rare years in that era when the Yankees did not win the pennant. They finished third that year behind the White Sox and the Indians. I was seven-years-old. My father took me and my cousin.

My father was a huge baseball fan, very knowledgeable. His allegiances ran more towards the National League than the American. But there was that four season window, 1958-61, when the Yankees were the only team in New York. Most members of my family were either Giant fans or Dodger fans. But when I first became conscious of baseball the Yankees were the only New York team so they became my team. The Yankees televised a lot of games, even in that era. Mel Allen and Red Barber were in the booth along with the just-retired Phil Rizzuto. The games were on Channel 11 in black-and-white—I don’t think the Yankees started broadcasting in color until 1966.

Anyway, they were playing the Orioles that day. My cousin, who was older than me, was a Giants fan and loved Willie Mays just as much as I loved Mantle. Since the Giants weren’t involved he insisted on wearing an Orioles cap which infuriated me. I had a Yankee cap and we were seated in the lower left field stands. Not the bleachers but the lower left field stands, not far from the 402 sign that was just on the left field side of the bullpen.

There wasn’t that big of a crowd. My cousin and I had our gloves like kids always did and as the game moved along we moved down closer and closer because we were convinced that a home run or a ground rule double would soon land right in that area. And we weren’t just disappointed we were amazed that none did. The Yankees lost the game 7-2. I remember Johnny Blanchard hitting a home run. Mantle did not play which was an enormous letdown.

We didn’t keep score that day but we bought souvenirs. And I’ll be the one millionth person to testify to this but the thing you were struck by was the colors. Because your orientation to baseball, even if you were a very aware seven-year-old kid, was radio, black and white television and black-and-white pictures in the newspaper. And now you walk in and you’re struck by not just the color but how arresting the colors are. The orange of the warning track, how emerald green the grass was, how pure white the batter’s box and chalk lines and the bases were before the game started, the copper color of the façade. It was such an overwhelming place, the scale of it was enormous, and it was breathtaking, especially for a little kid.

Not to diminish the new Yankee Stadium, because many players and fans feel strongly about it and it had great features like Monument Park, but it wasn’t the old place. Not quite as awe-inspiring. The third baseball game I ever did on network Television was in 1980. I was 28-years-old. The Yankees were playing the Tigers on the last Saturday of the regular season. The Tigers were bad then, but they had beaten the Yankees the night before and that kept the Yankees’ clinching number at one. There were a bunch of other games—one involved the Dodgers and the other was the Phillies and Expos. These were supposed to be the featured games on NBC and the Yankee game was a back-up game in case of rain. And it did rain in Montreal and the game was delayed something like four hours. Eventually, the Phillies won that night, I think Schmidt hit a home run to clinch the division. So this combination of circumstances, a rain-out, the Yankees stalled at one, and suddenly this game went out to the whole country.

And I’m sure nobody outside of St. Louis had any idea who I was. I’m doing the game with Bobby Valentine. The Yankees win the game. Reggie hits a home run into the upper deck, his 41st and it ties Ben Ogilvie for the league lead. Gossage comes in and saves the game and they clinch the division. A memorable first time in the Yankee Stadium booth.

Subsequently, when I became part of the Game of Week team with Tony Kubek, we did many games at the Stadium. One happened to be Old Timers’ Day and Mickey Mantle came into the booth for a few innings. I tried to be as professional as I could, that is when I wasn’t pinching myself. Later, I did a number of playoff and World Series’ games there. But even with the pennant and World Series on the line I never heard the Stadium any louder than it was for Mickey Mantle Day in 1969. Mantle had retired prior to the ‘69 season and this was the final send-off day. They retired his uniform. The place was full which was remarkable because the capacity was huge back then and they didn’t sell out often. DiMaggio and Whitey Ford were part of the ceremony. Mickey’s remarks were simple, humble but in their own way eloquent and moving and there was a sustained 8-10 minute ovation. I don’t remember ever hearing a more appreciative reaction at a ballgame.

Bob Costas is the host of NBC’s Football Night in America and HBO’s Costas Now.

Butch lives way over in Parkchester and only stops by Juan Carlos’s coffee cart when he wants to complain about something.

The regulars usually spot him a block away and most gulp their breakfast and head in the other direction. A stubborn few – Javier from Walton Avenue, Fat Paulie from Gerard Avenue and Jon from Woodycrest Avenue in High Bridge – meet him head on.

“You’re early,” Javier says. “Bitching season doesn’t start for another three months.”

“It’s also nice to see you,” Butch says smugly. “Are you finally ready to admit that Cashman is screwing up this team?”

“No one around here thinks that,” Fat Paulie says. “There’s a lot of work to do this winter, but what makes you think that Cashman isn’t going to get it done?”

“He didn’t even offer arbitration to Abreu,” Butch says. “He should have, at least, set us up to get the draft picks. And why hasn’t he finished a deal with Sabathia and what’s he doing to resign Pettitte and maybe get Teixeira?”

“You don’t know anything about Cashman’s plan,” Jon says. “Why not let him finish rebuilding the team before you start complaining?”

“You guys look at everything through Yankee-colored glasses,” Butch snaps. “Someday you’ll have to admit that I’m right.”

“Why do you waste all this stuff on us?” Javier says with a shrug. “You should do what all the other experts do: Start your own baseball blog.”

“Do you really think I should?” Butch asks.

“Absolutely,” Javier answers.

The others nod, too.

“I’m gonna do it,” Butch says as he turns and heads for home.

“Don’t forget to write,” Fat Paulie says.

“Yeah,” Javier adds. “Make sure and blog it!”

Powered by Love Train – The Sound of Philadelphia, here’s the news:

• Pete Abe will be doing a live video chat event at LoHud today at 1pm.  Click here to access it.
• In case you have nothing to do for about three hours, you can read a 153-page PDF file with all the e-mails that went back and forth between the City and the Yanks regarding the City’s use of a luxury box (big props to PeteAbe for the link).
• Doing the Arbitration Tango: At BP.com, Joe Sheehan takes the Yanks to task for not offering arbitration to Abreu and Pettitte:

… to decline the services of above-average players or draft picks in the event of their departure is a stunning waste of resources. Bobby Abreu projects as a five- or six-win player, Pettitte a bit below that … those wins are valuable because they could be the difference between making the postseason and missing it.

… two days ago, the Yankees had assets in Abreu and Pettitte that could have been considered short-term investments with minimal risk and fairly certain benefit (were they to rejoin the club), or long-term investments with more risk and uncertain benefit, but higher upside (were they to become draft picks). Now, they have nothing. How a team with the cash reserves of the Yankees can make a choice like that is inexplicable …

• Oh Atlanta!: Mark Feinsand of the News reports that the Braves are readying a five-year offer to A.J. Burnett:

Burnett, considered the No.2 starter on the market, was expected to wait for Sabathia to make the first move. But with the Yankees, Red Sox and Blue Jays all apparently hesitant to give Burnett a fifth year, the 31-year-old might jump at Atlanta’s offer before Sabathia makes his decision.

• Feinsand also has a blog entry on why Sabathia isn’t a Yankee yet:

It’s very simple. Sabathia clearly doesn’t have the Yankees listed first on his list, preferring to pitch in the National League and/or in California. He’s waiting to see if the Angels, Dodgers or Giants will get involved before he does anything, but it doesn’t mean he’s decided he won’t wind up in pinstripes.

• Meanwhile, ESPN.com’s Jayson Stark echoes the possibility of Sabathia ending up a Giant:

He loves the Bay Area in particular. He even loves the Warriors — enough that he showed up at a Warriors game in person this week.

And no matter how much the Giants might want to prioritize offense this winter, if the most alluring free agent in the solar system keeps suggesting he wants to play for your team if you can make it worth his while, how can you not think about it? So the Giants keep thinking. And the Giants keep talking. Talking to Sabathia’s agent, Greg Genske. And talking among themselves to determine whether this is a road worth seriously driving.

• Over at MLB.com, Lyle Spencer notes that Angels GM Tony Reagins still places Teixeira at the top of his shopping list:

Regains said “there was nothing to” reports that had the Angels moving past Teixeira and focusing on starter CC Sabathia, adding that the club has “no concerns” about Teixeira’s left knee, which was subjected to arthroscopic surgery in 2007. A published report indicated the Angels were too concerned with the knee long-term to go past six years for Teixeira, triggering a move toward Sabathia.

• Jeter second (base) to none?: Rob Neyer at ESPN.com chimes in on Steven Goldman wondering whether Jeter could play second base at some point in the near future:

… which isn’t to suggest the Yankees should throw a billion dollars at Jeter next winter (or sooner). Because if they’re paying him a ton of money for five years, they’re going to feel like they have to play him regularly for five years, and in four or five years he will not be good enough to play every day. For the Yankees the money isn’t the issue; the issue is the games, the at-bats, the plate appearances. And as Goldman suggests, second base probably isn’t the answer. Even if he can actually play second base, whatever you gain in defense you’re likely to lose in positional scarcity.

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As a kid, my buddy Rich Lederer loved Pete Maravich and Joe Willie Namath.  They were his idols.  In fact, he loved Namath so much he named his first son after him.  There was something exceptional, something extra about both Pistol Pete and Broadway Joe (Mark Kreigel has written biographies of both of them). Come to think of it, Rich worshipped Nolan Ryan too.

So, here’s Maravich at his best:

And here’s Curry Kirkpatrick’s killer 1978 profile of Pistol Pete for Sports Illustrated:

Pistol Pete. For those who measure the passage of time in pop culture images, it may be difficult to realize that Pete Maravich of the flappy hair and the floppy socks and the outrageous shots and passes and turnovers and point totals; he of the childlike abandon and imagination and sheer, fundamental joy in the game; he who made basketball so much fun for so many of us, is 30 years old. And it ain’t no fun anymore.

If Pete Maravich is not the unique athlete of his time, he is close, and certainly he is one of the more misunderstood and controversial. His teammate on the New Orleans Jazz, Rich Kelley, calls him “an American phenomenon, a stepchild of the human imagination.” More simply, Maravich has always seemed to be misplaced: an individualist in a team environment; a perfectionist but not a purist; the white boy in the (now 75%) black man’s game; the people’s choice who feels that the people are against him.

Above everything else, Maravich has been an entertainer, the one-and-only, the star, a man who long ago chose style over substance as the best way to go. Cary Grant was like this and, more recently, Burt Reynolds, who made a few magazine covers himself. In another realm, Edward, Duke of Windsor, made a career out of style. Would the Duke have been able to rule? Can Cary and Burt act? Does anybody care?

The essence—and curse—of Pete Maravich is that he always has known the answers; too often he has shown that he knows. Honestly now, does it matter what team Pete Maravich plays for, or for that matter whether it wins or loses? Just so he performs. Just so he does another gig. Just so Pistol Pete shakes and bakes and makes the others quake. Just so the Pistol does it.

A Bronx Banter Interview

By Hank Waddles

I can pinpoint the exact date when I became a Dallas Cowboys fan. On January 15, 1978, I was a young boy living in a suburb of Detroit, Michigan, but without any attachment to the Lions when my Aunt Hazel and Uncle Tommy came over to watch Super Bowl XII between the Cowboys and the Denver Broncos. Uncle Tommy had bet money on the Broncos, so each time the Cowboys scored his face would twist into a painful grimace. Since I was an eight-year-old smart aleck, I thought it was hilarious and soon found myself quite naturally rooting for the Cowboys and against my uncle. When Dallas scored its final points, putting the game out of reach for the Broncos, Uncle Tommy actually slid off the couch in disgust, making me laugh out loud until my mother shushed me. My uncle passed away only a few years later, so that night remains my strongest memory of him. I’ll never know how much money he lost that night, but I gained a team.

Perhaps because I took pleasure in my uncle’s pain, the Cowboys rewarded me with a string of painful losses: to the Steelers a year later in Supe XIII (thank you, Jackie Smith); to Montana and Clark; to Riggins and the Hogs. Soon enough they descended into mediocrity and irrelevance, until Jerry Jones and Jimmy Johnson came to the rescue and rebuilt the franchise.

Any football fan can tell you what happened next. Jerry and Jimmy turned the team upside down, traded Herschel Walker, drafted Aikman and Emmitt, and started winning Super Bowls. Author Jeff Pearlman starts with what we know and goes deeper, talking to everyone who had anything to do with the team during that era, ranging from the players and coaches to the reporters who covered them to the women who slept with them. The result is Boys Will Be Boys: The Glory Days and Party Nights of the Dallas Cowboys Dynasty, a revealing and engaging look at one of the greatest teams in NFL history. Recently Jeff was kind enough to talk with me about the book. Enjoy.

BronxBanter
I’m guessing that this book was kind of a perfect storm – high profile football players that haven’t yet faded from the public consciousness, lots of Super Bowls, lots of sex, and lots of drugs. How long after you started this project did you realize you had hit a goldmine?

Jeff Pearlman
I would say I actually knew even before I started it. I’ll be totally honest with you – I haven’t even said this to anyone. I had a really, really, really good feeling about this book early on. Early on. This was basically my way of thinking. My first book about the ’86 Mets made the Times best seller list for six or seven weeks, and I didn’t expect it to. I had no expectations at all because I didn’t know what the hell I was doing, it was my first book, and it made it. My kind of way of thinking with this, the Cowboys were like the Mets on steroids. You’re talking about a team that’s probably the most popular sports franchise in the country, much more famous figures. With the Mets, yeah, you’re talking Gooden and Strawberry, but then Keith Hernandez and Gary Carter are big New York figures, but they’re not national guys. With the Cowboys – Aikman, Deion, Emmitt, Irvin, Switzer, Jerry, Jimmy… it was pretty bountiful.

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By Joe Posnanski

OK, look, I don’t really have a lasting Yankee Stadium memory. I mean, sure, I have them, but they’re no different than the 5,483,794 lasting Yankee Stadium memories that have been told the last six months or six years or six decades or however long this “Lasting Yankee Stadium Memory” series has been running.

So the only reason I’m even writing this is because Alex pretty much bullied me into it by noodging me about it three times a day, every day since before my second child was born. I just assumed he would forget about it at some point, assumed that even for him the expiration date on Yankee Stadium memories would pass, assumed that he would let me live in peace. No. This man, like Billy Martin, simply knows no peace. I am of the firm belief now that that the best way to find Osama Bin Laden is to have Alex Belth assign him a “Lasting Yankee Stadium Memories” essay.

Anyway, what kind of unique Yankee Stadium memory does Alex even think I have? Who am I, Robert Merrill? Hey, maybe my memory was the time that me and the other short-pants kids in the Bronx skipped school and slipped past the front guards at the stadium and caught the last of Larrupin’ Lou’s three homers, which just so happened to heal my sick little brother Tommy. Or maybe it was that day in ’78 when I was a kid sitting outside the stadium and Billy Martin first threatened to hit me in my fat face and then apologized (said he had confused me for “Steinbrenner or one of them”) and then invited me to sit by him and tell Reggie he was benched.

Or maybe, seven years old, and my dad takes me to Yankee Stadium. My first game. We go in through this long, dark tunnel underneath the stands. And I’m holding his hand, and we come out of the tunnel, into the light. It was huge. How green the grass was, the brown dirt, and that great green copper roof, remember? We had a black-and-white TV then, so this was the first I ever saw in color. I sat there the whole game next to my Dad. He taught me how to keep score. Mickey hit one out.

Yeah. Memories. Not my memories. But at this point does it even matter? Others have told all of my memories. Sure, I was there the night when Jeter hit the November homer and listened to the recording of Frank singing “These little town blues …” again and again and again. I was there when John Wetteland went to the mound – this had to be three or four hours after he had gotten Mark Lemke to pop out to clinch the Yankees first World Series in a generation. The stadium was almost empty, and Wetteland stepped on the mound, and he just looked around … it was like he wanted just one more look.

I was there to hear Bob Sheppard say “Yankee Way,” I was there to see DiMaggio’s two-hand wave, I was there to hear a real Bronx Cheer – and it is true that all others taste like grape juice to that fine wine. I was there to see Greg Maddux at his baffling best, there to see perhaps the second-greatest team in baseball history* destroy the Padres, there to see David Cone throw one of the guttiest games I’ve ever watched, there to see Albert Belle snap at some fans, there to catch a glimpse of Bruce Springsteen, there to see George Steinbrenner, there to see Spike Lee, there to see Rudy Giuliani, there to see Mariano Rivera close the door.

*I am writing a book about the 1975 Reds, so by law I must have the 1998 Yankees behind them, and the ’27 Yankees too, and also the ’61 Yankees.

And, yes the memory that Alex probably wanted, I stood in the rain in centerfield back in 1996, the day that Game 1 of the World Series was rained out. I stood out there where (more or less) DiMaggio stood, the Mick, Bobby, Mick the Quick, Bernie, Jerry Mumphrey. I looked around, took it all in, listened for the echoes, looked for the ghosts, all of that. There were a few policemen standing in the rain too, and I thought they were going to come get me, but they seemed to understand what I was doing.

In fact, as I trudged in I passed one of them. He said: “Getting your Lasting Yankee Stadium Memory for Belth, right?” New York police officers are wise.

Joe Posnanski is the author of The Soul of Baseball, columnist for the Kansas City Star, and superstar blogger for SI.com.

The 2 train was not part of the online revolution this morning. Everyone sitting, standing and leaning had their noses buried in a newspaper.

Robbie Ruiz from Mott Haven got his nose bent-out-of-shape when asked why he didn’t get his news online.

“Do I look like I’ve got a computer in my pocket?” he snapped. “They ought to try putting some more of that news in the paper so the rest of us can read it.”

Ruiz’s frustration came from The New York Times.

“They don’t care about us saps who read the paper,” Ruiz said. “I turn to page 4 and they tell me what’s on their Website: audio and video and special features. After I pay $1.50 they want to rub my nose in all the stuff they offer for free to people who have computers.”

The New York Times is still the standard for journalism in this country. And they show just how far that standard has fallen.

“You’ve got to dig for everything in this paper,” Ruiz explained. “The Metro section is part of the front section and the Sports section is buried in the back of the Business section. The first things I want to know are what’s going on in my neighborhood and what’s going on with the Yankees. They make me search for both and go online for the rest.”

There are some who say that online publications are the wave of the future. Declining circulations indicate that a lot of people aren’t reading newspapers anymore. But it was newspapers that first quit on readers a long time ago. They started by laying off reporters and photographers and then cutting pages and eventually whole sections. Some do it all online now and don’t even print.

Online publications may be good for business – there isn’t much overhead and they can certainly cater to the wealthy demographic that advertisers crave – but calling that journalism is like calling MLB 08 The Show baseball.

I know that newspapers are businesses, but I also understand that they are a critical piece of a functioning democracy. Limiting content and access can cause problems.

“I’m sure The Times is shafting me on the Yankees coverage,” Ruiz said. “Maybe they’re dumping more stuff online or something. They own a big chunk of the Red Sox and they’ve got it out for us in the Bronx.”

The standard for impartial journalism is certainly pretty low these days.

As our friend Will Carroll would say …. “powered by” the sounds of Guitar Shorty, here’s the latest news:

• Over at the Post, Joel Sherman will be keeping a careful eye on what Andy Pettitte does now that the Yanks decided not to offer him arbitration:

In his moment of need, when it was revealed Pettitte was both a liar and cheater, the Yankees stood by him last season. At that time, Pettitte was only too happy to say the Yankees were the only team he ever wanted to play for any more. He did not say he only wanted to play for the Yankees unless they offer him a paycut.The Yanks have indeed offered that cut. Pettitte made $16 million last year and, according to sources, he was offered $10 million to return in 2009. So far, Pettitte has rejected that bid while his camp has done nothing to dispel reports linking him to Joe Torre and the Dodgers.

• Over at LoHud, Pete Abe offers his non-ballot for the Hall (he doesn’t have the 10 years in the BBWAA needed to vote):

If I had a vote this year it would go to Blyleven, Henderson and Rice. … Rickey seems pretty obvious. People smarter than I have convinced me Blyleven belongs and I think Rice was the dominant hitter in the AL for a long enough period of time.

• Ken Rosenthal at FOXSports.com notes that the slumping economy even impacts the mighty Yankees, especially as shown in their not offering arbitration to Bobby Abreu.
• Bryan Hoch of MLB.com gives us a rundown of the Yankees Hot Stove activity leading up to next week’s Winter Meetings.
• At the News, Bill Egbert writes that with the demolition of the old stadium not starting till next April, a lot of neighborhood kids will be without a ballfield on which to play.
• While we are all cognizant of the declining health of George Steinbrenner, another team owner passed away Tuesday.  Ted Rogers, owner of the Blue Jays, died at age 75 (ESPN).
• Happy 48th birthday to Gene (not Jeff) Nelson.  Nelson pitched for the Bombers in his rookie season (1981), then was part of a package that brought the Yanks Shane Rawley.

I’ve been doing a lot of reading lately.  I can’t get into hoops, I’m not a huge football fan.  TV is dull.  It’s cold outside. So I’m brushing up on my sportswriting history.  Newspaper guys, magazine writers, guys who did both. Boxing writing.  You really have to dig to find a lot of the good stuff, especially newspaper columns. Not that much is on-line.  Only a small bit of it has ever been anthologized.  There are so many guys that are practically forgotten to younger generations. 

I’ve been through a bunch of Sport, some issues of True, the newspapers, of course.  I raided the Inside Sports microfilm at the library last weekend. That was a great magazine for a handful of years, maybe ’79-83ish, the early years. Tom Boswell was their baseball guy, Gary Smith became a star writing features about football, Pete Dexter did kick-ass profiles of boxers and assorted hardguys. Roy Blount, Jr and Robert Lipsyte had columns.

And you know else did some great bonus pieces for them? Tony Kornheiser. I’ve found stories he did on Nolan Ryan, Mike Schmidt and Bill Walsh, all of which are very entertaining. And he did a profile on Joe Namath that should be in sports writing anthologies.

Kornheiser had chops, he was a good reporter as well as a skilled craftsman.  He was able to apply the same loose intelligence and humor that he later used in his newspaper column and his TV persona to long-form magazine writing. 

Here are two random Kornheiser bits from when he was at the New York Times (’76-79):

Philadelphia was having its face slapped by a bully of a winter, and Jimmy was coming from practice where he had attempted murder on a few dozen tennis balls. He had a sealskin coat over his shoulders and the former Miss World on his arm. As he walked past a group of fans one of them called out in a fatherly way, “Button up, Jimmy. It’s cold outside.”

Jimmy didn’t bother to stop, he gave his exit line of his way out of the door. “This is seal, my friend–ever see a seal die of the cold?” The former Miss World began to laugh. Jimmy always leaves them laughing, even if most of his wisecracks can’t be printed.

Jimmy Connors is the master of the single-entendre. He says what he wants, when he wants, to whom he wants. He is a Star. Heis demeanor, his philosophy, is rooted in something the Fonz likes to say: Live fast, love hard, and don’t let nobody borrow your comb. The Fonz gets away with it because–aayy–he’s the Fonz. Connors gets away with it because he wins.

“The Star You Love To Hate”
April 10, 1977

Here is a nice little piece of writing from a feature story on Catfish Hunter:

Underneath the folksy, good-ol’-boy exterior, with all his talk about bird dogs, killin’ them hogs and farmin’ them soybeans, Jim Hunter is an intelligent, thoughtful, honest and astonishingly secure man, the kind of man who’ll wear raggedy overalls to town becacuse he’s a farmer and that’s what a farmer wears even if he has millions in the bank. He has a touch of Senator Sam Ervin in him, the ability to draw a perfect picture of a horse without having to label it “Secretariat.” “Cat doesn’t demand respect,” said Fred Stanley, his teammate, “he just gets it.”

July 3, 1978

Robert Motherwell

He was good.

This smokes.

By Charlie Sheen

(as told to Alex Belth)

I was born in New York but I’ve lived out here in L.A. since I was three. But I’ve always rooted for the Yankees. I also rooted for the Reds because my dad was a big Reds fan. Reggie was one of my childhood heroes and the reason I learned to hit left-handed. He took the world center stage in the Bronx. I was 12, 13 the perfect age. I remember the Reds sweeping the Yankees in ’76 when I was with my dad in the Philippines on Apocalypse.

But the first time I actually went to Yankee Stadium was in 1991. My dad was shooting in Pittsburgh and I flew in the nigh before he wrapped. He was a doing a movie-of-the-week or a mini-series. We decided to do a baseball pilgrimage. We went to game at the old Three Rivers that night. I think we saw both Bonds and Van Slyke go yard. After the game we got on the elevator to leave and Joe Morgan walks on. I happened to be wearing a Reds hat. And I had met him briefly at some point back in the day. He shook my hand and gave me a hug and I introduced him to my dad who was so impressed that I knew Joe Morgan.

The following morning we got out on the road and we took a road trip to Cooperstown to the Baseball Hall of Fame. We visited the Mecca. The next morning we drove to New York and went to a game that night at the Stadium. It was a trip because if I’m not mistaken they were playing Texas. Fifty-five has always been a recurring number for me and the first guy up was Brian Downing and he was wearing 55. You’d have to look it up if it was Downing but it was 55. I just remember thinking, “Wow, of course my first game and the first hitter would have to wear 55.”

We had a great time at that game. Pretty sure Mattingly hit a three-run bomb in the eighth to put it out of reach. When one of the security guys comes to us afterwards and says, “You guys want to see Monument Park?” Everybody’s gone and we got a private tour. Then we’re walking back across the field and I say to my dad, “Hey, let’s go to the dugout. Let’s see what this looks like from the players’ perspective.” So we’re sitting in the dugout and I look under the bench and there’s a ball wedged-up under one of the seat supports. So I pull it out and based on the tint of the ball—it had red clay on the stitches, it didn’t say ‘practice’ on it—I’m convinced that it was a used in a game. It was a foul ball that shot into the dugout and stayed there.

We kept it. I had to leave New York the following morning. I was digging through my stuff at the hotel room and I couldn’t find the ball. I’m like, Great, dad kept it. Okay, it was his first game, he’s entitled. So I’m on the plane the next day and about halfway through the flight I’m going through my carry-on and there’s the ball in a little plastic bag. It said, “Hey Charlie, Thanks for taking me out to the ballgame.” There was such a cool, full-circle feeling about that trip. Then of course, finding the ball on the plane. I still have it of course.

The other memory is a little bizarre. Went to a game in ‘96, mid-season before they started making their move. Took a buddy of mine, David O’Neill. He’s a director and a writer and an old friend of mine. We were in a box but he had never been there so he said, “I’m going to go see what this place is like, I’m going to go walk around.”

Comes back with a foul ball that he has caught off the bat of Paul O’Neill. What are the odds? And, another example of him being about the fifth person I took to their first game that got a foul ball. I’ve been to what, a thousand games in my life. Never even touched one.

I bought out the left field bleachers in Anaheim in the mid-‘90s in a game against Detroit. I bought 2,600 seats in the left field pavilion and I sat out there with three friends. I was going to force the hand of the baseball Gods and that didn’t even work. Nothing. Four balls hit the wall that night. And the next night, I watched on television as like maybe four or five landed not just in the section but pretty much in my seat of the day before. It was one of those reminders that you can’t force the organic flow of the American Pastime.

Charlie Sheen is the star of the CBS comedy Two and a Half Men.

My friend Javier almost never acts his age. Last night he played his music too loudly and started to dance around the apartment.

“I can’t help it,” he explained. “Chico O’Farrill always gets my feet moving.”

Some of the neighbors yelled and the guy downstairs pounded the ceiling with a broom handle. But the music blared until the old lady from across the hall banged on the door with a big ladle from her pot of minestrone.

“Are you deaf?” she yelled. “I’ve been knocking for 10 minutes.”

“I didn’t hear you,” Javier said. “I guess the music was too loud.”

The old lady shook her head.

“Kids,” she said.

Javier flashed the same smile he used on his mother back in Puerto Rico so many years ago.

“I can’t stay mad at you,” the old lady said. “You’re a good kid, Javier.”

Everyone in the neighborhood puts Javier’s age somewhere past 50, but the kid tag still fits. He eats too many chocolate donuts and swears a doctor once told him that onion rings are a vegetable. He shags fly balls before games in Franz Sigel Park and looks forward to Opening Day just like when he was, well, a kid.

“Baseball has always been music to my ears,” Javier said. “I guess it’s kinda like Chico O’Farrill.”

Javier broke out another smile.

“Bring on the horns and the big bats,” he said. “Then let’s dance.”

A Tuesday without “The Shield” …. sigh.  Here’s the news:

• As you probably know by now, the Yanks decided not to offer arbitration to any of the their free agents.  Pete Abe at LoHud has the lowdown from the mouth of Brian Cashman:

“The determination we made today was to make sure that we control what amount we’d be spending at least in the event that we’re fortunate enough to bring those players back. We did not want to put ourselves in a position of having that determined by a third party without knowing what that figure would be.”

• Joe Posnanski has an appreciation of Boss George at SI.com (you gotta go there if only to view the vintage SI cover of George on a horse).  Here’s an excerpt:

The story of King George is fascinating to me because, at the end of the day, the story goes wherever the narrator wants it to go. Do you want a hero? Do you want a scoundrel? Do you want a tyrant? Do you want a heart of gold? Steinbrenner is what you make him. He is the convicted felon who quietly gave millions to charity, the ruthless boss who made sure his childhood heroes and friends stayed on the payroll, the twice-suspended owner who drove the game into a new era, the sore loser who won a lot, the sore winner who lost plenty, the haunted son who longed for the respect of his father, the attention hound who could not tolerate losing the spotlight, the money-throwing blowhard who saved the New York Yankees and sent them into despair and saved them again (in part by staying out the way), the bully who demanded that his employees answer his every demand and the soft touch who would quietly pick up the phone and help some stranger he read about in the morning paper.

• Back over at LoHud, Pete Abe has some good news on the progress of Robinson Cano in the Dominican League.
• Rickey Henderson makes his first appearance on the Hall of Fame ballot this year, as reported by ESPN.  The Bombers are well-represented amongst the 23 names vying for entry.  Henderson joins Tommy John, Don Mattingly, David Cone, Tim Raines, Lee Smith and Jesse Orosco amongst one-time Yanks hoping for immortality.
• Is this surprising?: Sports Business Journal reports that the Bombers are the favorite out-of-market team (in terms of fan support outside their home city) in 2008.   They top the list of 122 franchises across the four major sports.
• Bob Kammeyer would have been 58 today.  “Kammy” had a non-descript brief trial with the Yanks in 1978, and then pitched in one infamous game in mid-September 1979.  In that game, he relieved to start the fourth inning, with the Yanks already trailing 4-0.  He allegedly took $100 from manager Billy Martin to intentionally hit Cleveland batter Cliff Johnson with a pitch.  His line for the appearance: eight batters faced, eight runs, seven hits (two homers), one HBP, all without retiring a batter.  That was it for his major league career.  He died from a pulmonary embolism at the age of 52.
• On this date in 1997, pitcher Steve Hamilton passed away, just two days after his 62nd birthday.