Monday Monday (la la la la la la) …. here’s the press:

• Over at WasWatching.com, the Yankees’ “Top 10 Prospects” are listed, as per Baseball America.  OF Austin Jackson heads the list.
• PeteAbe at LoHud.com notes that Andy Pettitte filed for free agency, but only wants to play for the Bombers for a one-year deal.  Abraham suggests $12-13 million should do the job.
• Mike Lupica of the News joins the list of columnists piling on Mayor Bloomberg for the funding of new stadiums for the Mets and Yankees given the City’s budget cuts.
• John Perrotto of BP.com makes some educated guesses at where the premier free agents will land.  He expects the Yanks to land Sabathia (its all about the Benjamins, at the end of the day).  Also, Derek Lowe will be wearing pinstripes in 2009.  He sees Abreu re-signing, but not for the three years he was seeking.
• Happy 30th birthday to Jorge DePaula.  Happy 44th to “The Gambler”, Kenny Rogers.  Jack Clark turns 53.
• On this date in 1978, the Bombers traded Sparky Lyle and four other players to the Rangers, getting back top pitching prospect Dave Righetti and four others.
• On this date 80 years ago, Knute Rockne delivered his famous “win one for the Gipper” halftime speech to the Notre Dame team during a game at Yankee Stadium.

Some of my favorite magazine pieces by Pat Jordan are about his past–his failed baseball career, and his childhood growing up with a father who was a professional grifter.  Here’s a fine example of the latter, from the SI swimsuit issue in February, 1987.

Bittersweet Memories of My Father, The Gambler:

I remember the day I first became aware of the pervasiveness of my father’s gambling in our lives. I was eight years old and just beginning my love affair with baseball, which was encouraged by my parents. We were Italian-Americans and my mother loved the Yankees—DiMaggio, Rizzuto, Crosetti, Lazzeri, Berra, Raschi. She hated only Eddie Lopat and, later, Whitey Ford (my secret idol) with their pink, freckled Irish faces. (Today, approaching 80, my mother has a photograph of Dave Righetti taped to the mirror in her kitchen.)

My father was a Yankee fan, too. Only for him they were less a team he could point to with ethnic pride than one he could confidently lay 9 to 5 on.

One Sunday afternoon in July, my father invited three of my “aunts” and “uncles” to the backyard of our suburban house for a cookout. None of them was, in fact, my real aunt or uncle—they were my father’s gambling cronies—and, even more significantly, my father was not a cookout kind of guy. He took no pleasure in neatly mowed suburban lawns, especially if he had to mow them.

…The afternoon of my father’s cookout was hot and sunny. My “uncles” stood around the barbecue fireplace under the shade of a maple tree and sipped Scotch. They made nervous small talk while simultaneously listening to a Yankee-Red Sox game coming from a radio propped on the kitchen windowsill. My father was bent over the barbecue, lighting match after match and cursing the briquettes he was unable to ignite. He was a dapper little man who dressed conservatively—gray flannel slacks, navy blazer—and he always wore a tie, even around the house. He was very handsome, too, in spite of his baldness. He had pinkish skin, youthful eyes and a neatly trimmed silver mustache. He truly fit the part, at least in his dress, of a suburbanite entertaining guests. Even if those guests did look as if they had just stepped out of the cast of Guys and Dolls.

…My mother, a dark, fierce little birdlike woman, and my “aunts” sat around a circular lawn table that was shaded by a fringed umbrella. They were sipping Scotch, as well, while playing penny-ante poker—deuces and one-eyed jacks wild—and chatting. I stood behind them and followed their play of cards.

Soon I got bored with the adults and I lost myself in the baseball game. When DiMaggio hit a home run for the Yankees, I shouted, “Yaa!” and clapped my hands. Suddenly, I was aware that everyone was looking at me. My father’s face was flushed. I caught my mother’s eye. Her lips were pursed in a threatening smile. She called out sweetly, “We musn’t root for the Yankees today, Sweetheart! Uncle Freddie is down 50 times on the Red Sox.”

For those of you who are so inclined, I hope you took the Jets and the over today.

It’s a tough job. Not many people want it and even fewer can do it. Maybe that’s why everyone is always looking for the next great leader.

I’ve listened to a lot of talk about past leaders and present leaders and future leaders and I keep coming back to the way Charlie Manuel led the Philadelphia Phillies to the World Series title.

Manuel gave everyone a good look at what it means to be leader during the National League Championship Series when he told reporters:

“If I had never gone and played baseball in Japan (where he hit 48 homers for the Kintetsu Buffaloes in 1980), I don’t think I would have been a coach or manager. What I learned was there’s a lot of different people in the world, and there’s more people in the world than Charlie Manuel. And I mean that I learned to respect things more. I learned to care about more things.”

That helped mold Manuel into the best kind of leader: One who understands that everyone is different, but we are all the same.

It’s a simple lesson with a confusing past and an uncertain future. Figuring it out helped make Manuel a better person, a great leader and eventually a champion.

Before you settle in front of the tube for an afternoon of football, here’s what is going on:

• PeteAbe from LoHud gives us audio clips from various Yankees and general gossip while at the Joe Torre event Friday night.
• Over at Newsday, Ken Davidoff compares the organization-building philosophies of the Yanks and BoSox.  Here’s an interesting quote from Theo Epstein on the philosophy they employ:

“I think the goal is always to build a healthy organization. We try to keep that in the front of our mind,” Epstein said this past week at the general managers’ meetings in Dana Point, Calif. “If we ever get too focused on having to fill this hole, or having to get better in this area, we take a step back and say, ‘Does this make sense for what we’re trying to do over five to 10 years?’

• The Post’s Kevin Kernan has a nice piece on star pitching prospect Dellin Betances, who conceivably could be with the big club in 2010.
• ESPN reports that Willie Randolph was named to be bench coach of the Milwaukee Brewers.  Good luck Willie!
• From the “Does the construction union know about this?” department, “with the help of a few legendary players and Bronx teenagers, the New York Yankees carried pailfuls of dirt taken from home plate and the pitchers’ mound at their old home to a new one Saturday.” (Source: Canadian Press).  Here’s MLB.com’s coverage of the “event”, including video.
• Today’s birthdays: The only player in ML history whose last name begins with Mm, Kevin Mmahat, turns 44.  Kevin’s “career” consisted of 4 games in 1989, giving up 13 hits and 8 walks in 7.7 innings.  Dion James is 46.
• On this date in 1953, the United States Supreme Court rules 7-2 that baseball is a sport and not a business and therefore not subject to antitrust laws. The ruling is made in a case involving Yankees minor leaguer George Toolson, who refused to move from Triple-A to Double-A.
• On this date in 1998, Catfish Hunter announces that he is suffering from Lou Gehrig disease.  Hunter will succumb to the disease less than a year later.

I was a little too young for the original SNL.  I remember the end of the Bill Murray years and when I was in middle school the Eddie Murphy-Joe Piscapo was a big deal.  A few years later, I loved the Billy Crystal-Martin Short–Harry Shearer–Christopher Guest stuff–which you never see in re-runs these days–but I never really loved the show after that.  Some bits and performers here and there, sure, but never as an “event.”

Anyhow, thanks to You Tube, here’s a Saturday Night Revue of silliness for you:

Warming Up

First Course

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It’s about time.

While scoping the coverage of this week’s GM meetings and perusing the papers, blogs, TV, etc., a shift occurred in the news flow, particularly with the timing of how and when stories broke. Understanding the sensitivity here between sports and politics, it should be noted that the major professional sporting leagues and the media coverage of them are one of the last true bastions of traditional conservatism.

(For an example of this, check out this link recapping Thursday night’s Broncos-Browns game, and Brandon Marshall’s thwarted touchdown celebration. Dave Zirin’s analysis at The Nation can be found here. Mike Shanahan’s sound bite is especially telling.)

It’s big businesses assessing a big business; rarely in the mainstream will you find writers like Zirin or Will Leitch of Deadspin openly challenging the establishment. Nor would you look to the supposed leaders in coverage — the mainstream newspapers — aiming to break new ground in reporting, scooping, or information presentation to their reader base.

This week, there was a noticeable change, and it occurred for a number of reasons:

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I’m going to be one of the guests on the Baseball Digest Daily Live podcast today at noon, which you can listen to live. I’ll be talking Yankee hot stove, of course, and will be preceded by BDD’s Rob McQuown, who will be talking Jake Peavy, and followed by Baseball Prospectus’s Christina Kahrl, who will discuss the Mike Jacobs trade. Check it out.

Update: The online player here doesn’t seem to work for me, but if you go here you can download an MP3 of today’s show. I come in at the 21:21 mark, and do stay tuned for Christina, who follows, as she’s always interesting.

Peace to James for sending me a link to this mp3 medley of “Impeach the President” tunes.

Dizzy Gillespie played a Sax?

BEFORE YOU READ THIS POST: Some will probably be wondering why I’m still writing about the election. It’s a fair question so I’ll give you the numbers up front: Barack Obama received 88.2 percent of the presidential vote in the Bronx. Derek Jeter would have received 100 percent if he was on the ballot. You can finish the math after the story.

A young girl leaned comfortably against her mother on the 2 train this morning. They shared a newspaper and kept smiling at each other.

“It’s good news,” the mother said. “All the news is going to be good from now on.”

Fingers were crossed behind her back because the mother knows that the news is never all good. But nothing was going to ruin this – the first Saturday morning after Barack Obama won the country and inspired world – for her daughter.

“She’s always been more into Derek Jeter,” the mother said. “She watches all the games with her father, but she started following the presidential race with me after the baseball season ended.”

“I love Derek the most,” the little girl said, “but I like Obama a lot.”

The mother beamed.

“She even helped me vote. We pulled the lever together didn’t we, honey?”

“Yeah,” the little girl answered. “We did it together because I’m too young to vote.”

She’ll still be too young in four years, but the quality of the rest of her life depends on Obama’s ability to deliver.

“He’s going to make everything better for all of us,” the little girl said. “It’s like when Derek comes up and you just know he’s going to get a big hit.”

That kind of hope can lead to just about anything.

The GM meetings are over …. so let’s kick back and catch up on the news:

• Newsday reports that the City Comptroller William Thompson found that the Yanks had underpaid the city by $11 million over a three-year period. The team is supposed to pay the city a percentage of all revenue from tickets, parking and cable television.  The team is in the midst of paying it back.
• In the “we’ll pay you to take this off our hands” department, Peter Abraham reports that no one has contacted Brian Cashman regarding the readily-available Kei Igawa.
• The Times Jim Dwyer takes Mayor Bloomberg to task for assisting the Yankees in the funding for the new Stadium, while slashing the City budget.
• Abraham also has some fun facts gleaned from his attendance at the Joe Torre Safe at Home charity event Friday night:

1. Girardi revealed that Mussina told him after the season that he planned to retire. He has not heard from Moose since.
2. Pettitte, contrary to some reports, wants only a one-year deal and only to play for the Yankees.
3. Posada and Rivera said their respective shoulder rehabs are going well and both expect to be ready for spring training.  Posada said he is a catcher and has no interest in playing first base.
4. Don Mattingly said he wants to manage.

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Although his name can be found right below that of the already-legendary Alex Rodriguez in reference books like Total Baseball, he has been mostly forgotten since his playing days ended in 1983. That’s more than a bit sad, partly because the original “A-Rod” left such a distinct impression on me—first as an opposing player and then during a late-career turn with the Yankees.

Aurelio Rodriguez couldn’t hit like today’s more well-known “A-Rod,” but he was one of the most graceful defensive third basemen of the 1970s. Rodriguez had the range of a shortstop and the throwing arm of a right fielder; along with his smooth hands, those skills combined to form a delightful package at the hot corner. In fact, I’ve never seen an infielder with a stronger arm than Aurelio. (A list of such arms would have to include recent infielders like Shawon Dunston and Travis Fryman or current-day players like Rafael Furcal and Troy Tulowitzki. All terrific arms, but all a notch below that of Rodriguez. ) That cannon-like right arm, which Ernie Harwell often described as a “howitzer,” made him a treat to watch during his many stops with the White Sox, Orioles, Yankees, Padres, Tigers, Washington Senators, and Angels.

A product of Cananea, Mexico, Rodriguez struggled with English during his early major league career with the Angels. As Rodriguez once said without bitterness, he knew only three words of English during his first ten days with California. “Ham and eggs” became a frequent refrain, resulting in a less-than-balanced diet for the young Rodriguez.

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Kid Koala’s Drunken Trumpet Style

Can you guess the name of the record with the horn that he’s manipulating?

By Todd Drew

Memories Are Forever

The memories will not stop. Sometimes they come in the middle of the night and you have to walk. So you head down five flights to Walton Avenue. You pass the spot on East 157th Street where a bat boy once found Satchel Paige asleep in his car after driving all night from Pittsburgh.

Memories say it was 15 minutes before the first pitch when the boy shook him awake. It also says that Satchel asked for five more minutes and then threw a two-hit shutout.

Memories say things like that.

You cut over to Gerard Avenue where a Mickey Mantle home run would have landed if the Stadium’s roof hadn’t gotten in the way. That’s how the memories tell it anyway.

You walk up River Avenue behind the bleachers of the old Yankee Stadium. There will be no more games here, but you keep coming back because this is where your memories are.

You move past the millions that have huddled in the cold and the heat and the rain and sometimes the snow for tickets. The line wraps around the block and down East 161st Street near where a Josh Gibson home run once landed.

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Prior to my postmortem this morning, I’ve been relatively quiet this week. The main reason for that is that all of my attempts to write about baseball have come out looking something like this.

Still, baseball is never far from my mind, and that was all the more true this week as the election results proved something I’ve known for a long time: Nate Silver knows a thing or two about statistics and projections. By using the sort of corrections and adjustments Baseball Prospectus has long used to normalize baseball stats, Nate normalized the polls and predicted Obama’s popular vote win down to within a tenth of a percentage point based on the votes counted thus far. As for the electoral college, out of the 50 states, the only one he projected incorrectly was Indiana, which he had as a slim red state and wound up just going blue by less than a percentage point, backing the Democratic candidate for the first time since 1964. It seems he also will have missed the one electoral vote for the Omaha area of Nebraska, but that vote was so close, it still hasn’t been called one way or the other. Still, that’s all he missed.

If you need further proof that the BP statisticians know what they’re doing, check out my last post and note how VORP, SNLVAR, and WXLR explain the difference between the 2007 and 2008 Yankees down to the win. Some who know that I’ve edited and contributed to several Baseball Prospectus books might accuse me of being a shill for the group, but those who know me well know I wouldn’t have participated in those projects if I didn’t believe in the quality of the work they do. I just hope they’re smart enough to cash in on Nate’s newfound fame.

We made it to Friday!  Here’s the latest:

• The Boston Globe’s Tony Massarotti handicaps the race for Manny Ramirez in a blog piece.  He lists the Mets, Phillies and Dodgers as favorites, with the Yanks, Angels and Giants (!?) in the next tier.
• Peter Abraham at the LoHud blog reports that the Yanks have been eliminated from the Peavy sweepstakes.  Its down to three NL teams: the Braves, Cubs and either the Cards or Astros.  He also clues us in on a potential cross-town battle for Derek Lowe.
• Joel Sherman and George King of the Post report that a Mike Cameron for Cabrera and pitching swap might be in the works with the Brewers.  Also, Wilson Betemit may also be on the move.
• At Newsday, Ken Davidoff reports that the Yanks declined their option on Damaso Marte.  He also chimes in on the possible Cameron deal, stating that Ian Kennedy would probably not be included in any package.  An update: No deal will get done until the Brewers know for sure whether Sabathia is staying (he and Cameron are buddies, and the Brew Crew don’t want to do anything to jeopardize the chances of re-signing C.C.)
• Over at ESPN.com, Brian Cashman keeps an open mind on the future of Phil Hughes, “”He’s a significant piece for us as we move forward.  But that doesn’t mean he can’t be traded, either. He continues to be a guy that gets asked about quite often, so he must being doing something right despite the ’08 season.”  Cashman also seems happy to hear that Andy Pettitte would like to return next year.
• Congrats to Mike Mussina on winning his 7th Gold Glove award.  He was the only Yankee so recognized.
• Happy 40th birthday to a guy who made his ML debut with the Yanks at age 23, pitched 14 games for them in 1992, and has since pitched for 7 other teams, Russ Springer. The big 7-0 to a Yankee broadcasting favorite, Jim Kaat.  Also, a happy 70th to the man that preceeded Munson behind the plate, Jake Gibbs.
• On this date in 1963, Elston Howard becomes the first African-American to win the A.L. MVP Award.
• On this date in 1978, Jim Rice edges out Ron Guidry for the A.L. MVP.  Rice led the AL in homers (46), RBI (139), hits (213) and SLG (.600), and became the first AL player to accumulate 400 total bases since DiMaggio in 1937, while Guidry posted a 25-3 record with 248 Ks and a 1.74 ERA.
• On this date in 1997, the bombers trade Kenny Rogers to the A’s for a PTBNL, which turns out to be Scott Brosius.

“What went wrong?” seems like a natural question given the fact that the Yankees’ 13-year streak of playoff appearances came to an end this season, but before we begin to sus out the answer to that inquiry, it’s worth asking, “How wrong did things go?” The answer might surprise those Yankee fans who had become spoiled by a playoff streak that was nearly as old as this fall’s high school freshmen.

To begin with, the Yankees had the fourth best record in the American League this year. Their 89-73 mark was a half-game better than that of the AL Central champion White Sox, who needed a tie-breaking 163rd game to pick up their 89th win. Over in the NL, just three teams won more than the Yankees’ 89 games. Joe Torre’s Dodgers, who took their skipper past the first round of the playoffs for the first time since 2004, won just 84 games while playing in a division in which the other four teams had a combined .449 winning percentage. By comparison, the four non-Yankee teams in the AL East had a combined .535 winning percentage. Here are the aggregate winning percentages of each of baseball’s six divisions:

.535 AL East*
.515 NL Central
.501 AL Central
.490 NL East
.487 AL West
.463 NL West

*not including the Yankees’ .549

Playing in a division in which just one team had a winning percentage below .531, the Yankees had the toughest row to hoe in all of baseball in 2008. Even so, they performed at a 90-win pace against their own division—40-32 (.555)—splitting their season series against the Red Sox and Blue Jays and going 11-7 against both the Orioles and the pennant-winning Tampa Bay Rays. The Yanks were even better in interleague play (.556), and against the AL West (.563) despite once again struggling against the Angels, and stayed above .500 against the AL Central (.525). They had just two losing months all year, combining to be just three games below .500 in April and August, and played .582 ball after the All-Star break (a 94-win pace over a full season).

In fact, for all of the injuries and disappointing performances from young players that they endured this year, the Yankees won just five fewer games than in 2007 and actually won two more games than the 2000 Yankees, the last Bomber squad to win the World Series. Then again, that 2000 team was the only Torre-era Yankee team to win fewer than 92 games, and with the Rays having finally arrived atop the AL East, even 92 wins is unlikely to return the Yankees to the playoffs any time soon. Still, when asking what went wrong, it’s worth noting that, while the 2008 Yankees failed to live up to the standards of the franchise’s 13-year playoff streak, they didn’t miss by that much.

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By Kevin Baker

There are so many choose from, it’s hard to pick just one. There’s my first (and only) game in what was truly the old (pre-1976) Stadium, the first major-league game I ever attended, back in 1967. It was against the California Angels, and as I recall Horace Clarke hit a home run, and Joe Pepitone lost the game on an error. Par for the course for the Yankees of that year.

There were the World Series clinchers in both 1996 and 1999. The 1996 game was especially thrilling, a very close contest with the crowd roaring continuously, and the stands literally shaking. It also featured tens of thousands of Yankees fans, waiting to get in, breaking into a “F**k the Bra-a-a-ves!” version of their tomahawk chant. Afterwards, people were carrying around a coffin, marked Atlanta Braves, like something from four or five decades ago. The 1999 clincher was a little less exciting—the Yanks already had a 3-0 lead in games, and Clemens shut the Braves down for most of the game—but it does stand out for watching Mariano Rivera break Ryan Klesko’s bat three times in the ninth, reducing a team that was about to be swept in the World Series to helpless laughter.

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For years, John Sayles’ third movie, Baby It’s You  (1983) was unavailable on DVD.  But I saw it on the Netflix site last week.  What a pleasant surprise.  It hadn’t been released because of something to do with clearing music rights (Altman’s buddy movie, California Split, had similar troubles, though it too now is on DVD).  Baby It’s You was the first theatrically released movie to feature the music of Bruce Springsteen. 

I first saw it on VHS more than fifteen years ago and thought it was a charming coming-of-age story about a tough Italian kid (the Shiek, played by Vincent Spano) and a middle-class Jewish girl (Jill Rosen, played by Rosanna Arquette) set in Trenton, New Jersey in the Sixties.  Arquette has never been better.  I don’t know if Sayles has either.  

Sayles has made some interesting, thoughtful movies, but I’ve always found his directing style clunky.  The story here is nothing innovative but the direction, the cinematography, the performances (and yes, the soundtrack) all have an emotional directness that is winning.

In the original Times review, Janet Maslin wrote:

Music is a major part of ”Baby, It’s You,” as the title may indicate. The score consists of rock songs that more or less correspond to the time, although Sheik’s entrances are accompanied by Bruce Springsteen songs; these may be anachronistic, but they suit Sheik to a T. These touches, as well as the generally impeccable period details and the evocative cinematography by Michael Ballhaus (who shot many of R.W. Fassbinder’s later films), suggest that ”Baby, It’s You” was a labor of love for everyone involved.

Netflix it.

The old barbershop just off West Broadway can be a tough place to play. It’s cramped and cluttered and the ceiling hangs low. The men with razors use that to their advantage and they are always tough to beat.

Alexi – the toughest of the five-man crew – pointed me to his chair.

“What are the Yankees gonna do?” he asked before I even sat down. “Can they get Sabathia? And how about Burnett?”

Alexi fired up his razor and kept going:

“Will they go after Teixeira? Should they trade Cano? And what are they gonna do in centerfield?”

“Do I look like Brian Cashman?” I asked.

“Nope, you’re too ugly,” Alexi said.

“Agreed,” I said. “Next question.”

“Okay,” Alexi said. “Who’s gonna win the fight on Saturday?”

“Roy Jones,” I said.

“Joe Calzaghe can handle him,” Alexi said. “Jones is finished.”

I shook my head and said:

“Everyone thought Bernard Hopkins was finished and he beat Kelly Pavlik. They all thought Mike Mussina was finished and he won 20 games.

“That’s the only tip I’ve got for you,” I continued. “Don’t be so quick to write these guys off. They are world-class athletes who are capable of things that people like us can’t even imagine. And you’ll be glad that the Yankees didn’t trade Cano when his big, left-handed bat is parked in the middle of the order next year.”

Alexi nodded and then asked:

“What do you call a barber who can’t hit a curveball?”

I shrugged.

“A beautician,” Alexi said with a laugh.

“Okay, you win,” I admitted.

“I’m unbeatable,” Alexi roared.

William Bendix as Babe Ruth.  What?  You think Goodman was any better?