Have the Yankees ever had a mascot?

Yesterday, I would have answered this question with a quick and confident “no.” But I would have been wrong.

In the early 80s, the Yankees hired the creators of the popular Phillie Phanatic. They were rewarded with “Dandy,” a fuzzy debacle that is apparently supposed to resemble some sort of bird — though looking at the little photographic evidence available, I can’t confirm that with any certainty. Dandy was an elongated white blob adorned with pinstripes, a Yankees cap, a flesh-colored ball for a nose, and a swath of bright material that is either meant to represent a big red mustache or, perhaps, wattle.

Fans reacted to this misbegotten Frankenstein the way you’d expect: with a potent mixture of fear and hostility. In the end the Yankees never let Dandy onto the field, into the dugout, or even out of the Stadium; instead he was limited to roaming the upper deck, where he was routinely heckled, harassed, and threatened.

How on earth did I not know about this? All the games I’ve watched, books I’ve read, fans I’ve talked to, and I never heard a word about it? I suppose it makes sense, really – I was too young to pay attention at the time, and nobody writes books or articles on the New York Yankees of 1982-1985. Those games never end up on YES as “Yankee Classics”. Besides, a little research reveals that most fans who lived through the Dandy era seem to have tried their best to forget. My father’s reaction was typical:

“Mascot? The Yankees never had a… ohhhhh, yeah, that’s right! God, people hated that thing.”

I felt a little better about my ignorance when I discovered that, back in 1998, not even Lonn Trost or George Steinbrenner remembered Dandy. The New York Times had the scoop:

Lonn Trost, the Yankees’ general counsel, said there are official Yankee hamburgers, hot dogs and popcorn. But a mascot? No, he didn’t think the team ever had one.

From 1982 to 1985, though, the Yankees had Dandy, a pinstriped character designed by Ms. Erickson.

Dandy was a failure. Mr. Harrison said that was because he wasn’t allowed out of the nosebleed area in the stands. Nor did he do any outside appearances. According to Mr. Harrison, George Steinbrenner, the Yankees’ principal owner, was less than enthusiastic about the mascot after Lou Pinella, the Yankee outfielder, got so angry at the San Diego Chicken’s clowning that he threw his glove at the bird (not a Harrison/ Erickson creation). Mr. Steinbrenner, through his spokesman Howard Rubenstein, said he had no recollection of the pinstriped mascot.

One of my neighbors, a fan since the 1960s, told me that in his recollection, Dandy lasted only a few weeks before he was beaten up by a group of angry or, perhaps, simply terrified nosebleed seat natives, after which the traumatized man in the suit resigned and was never replaced. I feel a little bad for finding this story hilarious, but in any case he seems to have exaggerated it a bit over the decades — by the Times’ account, Dandy hung in there for years, and I haven’t been able to track down any hard evidence that he was ever actually physically assaulted. Even if it isn’t strictly true, I like this outsized distillation of events, which seems to capture the popular imagination’s image of the lawless Yankee Stadium of the 80s.

In this summer of endless nostalgia, everyone goes on and on about how the Yankees will be tearing down the field where Ruth and Gehrig played, the site of 26 World Championships, blah blah blah… but do they ever mention that after this year, the home of Dandy will be gone, too? They do not. I say that poor bird(???) deserves better.

Anybody have any memories of Dandy that you’d like to share?

The Yankee offense gave Andy Pettite three leads last night and Pettitte blew every one of them, the last on Joe Mauer’s first home run of the season on a pitch that a irritated Pettitte later called “as ignorant a pitch as I could throw.” Brought into a 5-5 game in the eighth inning, Kyle Farnsworth gave the Twins their first lead of the game by surrendering doubles to two of the first three hitters he faced. Joe Nathan came on in the ninth to protect that last-minute lead and handed the Yankees a 6-5 loss.

Fooey.

If there was any good news to come out of the game it was that Farnsworth’s fateful inning was the only one pitched by the bullpen as Pettitte pitched efficiently, needing just 94 pitches to complete seven frames. That sets things up well for Joba Chamberlain’s 70-pitch start tonight. Still, the Yankees are coming home a game under .500 and just a half game out of last place in the East having gone 3-4 on their trip through Baltimore and Minnesota.

With the Yankees bobbing around in last place in the AL East, I haven’t spent much time looking at the standings thus far this year, but checking things out this morning, I see that a four-game losing streak has dropped the Orioles 2 1/2 games behind the Bombers, who are back at .500 and 6 1/2 games out of first place. They’re only 1 1/2 games behind the Blue Jays, however, and Toronto comes to the Bronx tomorrow for a three game series. That means a good week could bounce the Yankees up to third place with only the Rays and Red Sox, the teams with the two best records in the American League, and two of the three best records in baseball, ahead of them.

The Yankees can kick this week off right with a get-away win in Minneapolis tonight. Beating the Twins tonight would give the Yankees a series win (rather than the four-game split that would result from a loss), push them over .500, and give them the same record as the Twins, who are only a game out of first place in the Central entering tonight’s game.

Andy Pettitte will look to pitch the Yankees to that victory. Pettitte is coming off three straight quality starts in which he’s allowed a total of one home run and walked just three men while striking out 19 in 18 2/3 innings. He’ll face Livan Hernandez, who has a 6.08 ERA in four career starts against the Yankees. Of course, three of those starts came between 1997 and 2002, which is ancient history by now, but the most recent was last June and saw the Yankees tag Hernandez for seven runs in four innings including home runs by Alex Rodriguez, Hideki Matsui, and Jorge Posada.

Hernandez has an 8.74 ERA in his last two starts, and was most recently slapped around by the lowly Kansas City Royals. Despite giving up all those runs, he’s not allowed a home run in his last 23 2/3 innings, but then he’s only struck out three men over the same span (while walking only two). Hernandez’s single-game high for strikeouts this year is four, and it took him seven innings to do that, and he’s only walked three men in a game once all year. So one things for sure, the Yankees will be putting the ball in play tonight.

My cousin Jonah is an avid Met fan. He and his wife live in Brooklyn and they are great movie-lovers too. But they do not have cable TV, so Jonah listens to virtually every game on a small, old-fashioned transistor radio. When he’s out and about, he has a small, white earphone plugged into one ear to keep up on the action. When I’ve asked why he doesn’t just get cable like every other “normal” person he says that he doesn’t like the idea of being held captive in front of the television. The thought of it is oppresive to him, even in the age of Tivo.

He can do as he pleases and take the radio with him. I admire him for this quality. I can’t imagine doing such a thing, not with Lord Sterling as the Yankee play-by-play announcer–that would be too much to bear. Still, baseball on the radio can be a wonderful experience for the listener and many of my favorite childhood baseball memories are made up of evenings secretly listening to the Yankee broadcast while I was supposed to be asleep.

I got to thinking about all of this when I read a short essay, “Recalling the Joy of Watching Baseball on the Radio,” which is featured in the collection Diamond: The Baseball Writings of Mark Harris. Most famous for his Henry Wiggens trilogy, Harris doesn’t argue that radio is superior to television, just that they each offer distinct pleasures:

Radio left things to the brain, to the imagination, and to fantasy. On radio we saw the whole baseball field because we saw it in our minds through wide-agnled fantasy. We knew no limits upon our vision. We were our own camera. Pictures arose in our imaginations from the merest hints of things. Our minds were tubes that seldom blew.

This is not to say that radio was better than television, or that one age of mankind was better than another. But that radio was significantly different from televsion, and not always less efficient, cannot be denied. Radio was awe. The awe produced by remoteness…Television reduces awe.

The last bit reminded me of Nicholas Dawidoff’s new memoir, The Crowd Sounds Happy. In it, Dawidoff describes following the Red Sox of his childhood on the radio. Just yesterday, Dawidoff had a compelling piece in the latest edition of Play:

Recently I turned 45, which I think of as a mortal age for a baseball fan; by now, with the rarest exceptions, you are older than every major leaguer. What I notice at midlife is that the passion doesn’t abate; it simply changes. Thinking of the Red Sox as heroes was an innocent fantasy and, for that reason, a seductive one, but adulthood meant finally coming to terms with ballplayers as real people. That wasn’t so difficult in our time of heightened public scrutiny. We wanted to know them, and now we know them too well. Much of it is the money, the millions they earn while most of us are struggling with the rent. Our pastime is a big, mercenary business, and we’ve learned that players will deform themselves with steroids, cheating mortality and their opponents in an effort to stay forever young and powerful. Those of us who are offended by steroids may feel that what’s most unpleasant is that we can’t look at a juiced physique and still think, That could be me.

Athletes are often amazingly unformed as people, and much as I retain the naïve, nostalgic longing for them to be good in all ways, when they aren’t it helps to exercise a little circumspection. I can do that, because the older I get, the more I see that the fun of it is not the results but the process. What’s magical now about baseball is the continuity of having these splendid performers there for me month after month, year after year. I didn’t savor the Red Sox’ long-awaited World Series victory as much as I enjoyed the growing possibility that they could win. These days, I try not to know too much about the players. I want to care — and by being more distanced, I find I still feel close to them.

I recall having a conversation a few years ago with a couple of Baseball Prospectus writers. They wanted to know as little as possible about big leaguers, at least about their personal lives, because they didn’t want that to get in the way of what they were watching on the field. I can appreciate that. Having worked in the movie business, and to a lesser degree, in the world of sports, I understand what it is like to be meet a favorite actor or director only to find that they are lacking (or worse). I think it is critical to separate the artist (or the athlete) from their art. At the same time, I have a curiosity bordering on desire to not only want to know more about my favorite jocks and artists but also a childlike need to like them, to know that they are good people. As if their personality has anything to do with their gift.

Darrell Rasner had his worst start of the season (though he still lasted 5 1/3 innings and only allowed four runs), and the Yankee offense failed to pick their starter up as the Yanks dropped their first game to the Twins this season by a 5-1 score.

Three of the four runs Rasner had allowed in his four May starts for the Yankees were scored in the first inning, and yesterday he got into a jam right away as the Twins put men on second and third with one out in the first. Rasner got Justin Morneau to hit a comebacker that froze the runners for the second out, but Michael Cuddyer plating them both with a two-out single. Rasner got into another jam in the fourth when Jason Kubel worked a walk to load the bases with no outs. Rasner got two strikeouts and a fly out to get out of the inning, but the fly out came between the two Ks and plated the third Twins run. In the sixth, Morneau led off against Rasner with a booming shot into the right field gap. Melky Cabrera ran over to gather the ball, but in doing slipped on the warning track and fell on his tuchus. With Morneau speeding around the bases, Cabrera attempted to flip the ball to Bobby Abreu so that Abreu could throw it in, but Melky’s overhand flip sailed over Abreu’s head and rolled toward first base, allowing Morneau to come all the way around and score on what was ruled a triple and an E8. After getting Cuddyer to ground out for the first out, Rasner walked Kubel again and gave up a single to Delmon Young, but Scott Patterson, making his long-awaited major league debut, came in and stranded both runners, striking out Carlos Gomez to end the inning.

Morneau’s trip around the bases and Patterson’s debut at age 28 after a long career spent largely in the independent leagues were two of the incidents in this game that overshadowed the game itself, which was otherwise a rather dull loss for the Yankees. The only real threat the Yankees mounted came in the third when Johnny Damon doubled with one out and Derek Jeter and Abreu drew walks to load the bases for Alex Rodriguez, but Twins starter Nick Blackburn struck out Alex Rodriguez and got Hideki Matsui to ground out to escape the jam. The only Yankee run came on a Derek Jeter solo homer in the fifth that made the score 3-1. When Rasner left it was 4-1 Twins, and in the seventh Patterson gave up a run of his own on a walk and a Michael Cuddyer triple to set the final score.

In total, Patterson used 40 pitches, only 21 of which were strikes, to get four outs. Part of that is because of the seven batters he faced, four failed to put a ball in play (two walks, two strikeouts). Chris Britton followed Patterson and retired all four men he faced on 14 pitches, nine of which were strikes, on three groundouts and a flyout.

The big story of the game, however, was the fifth-inning comebacker off Bobby Abreu’s bat that hit Blackburn in the face. Abreu was swinging on a 3-1 count and the ball hit Blackburn on the right side of his face as he completed his follow-through, making an awful sound like someone tearing open a head of lettuce. Abreu grabbed his head as he ran to first, shaking his hands and appeared on the verge of tears as Blackburn did a backflop onto the mound, arms and legs akimbo with his feet facing up hill toward the rubber. It seems, however, that Blackburn’s dramatic fall was somewhat out of relief as he immediately popped up, spit out some blood and walked off the field with a trainer holding a towel under his bloodied nose. X-rays revealed no broken bones or lost teeth, meaning that bloody nose and a fat lip was the sum total of the damage done to Blackburn, who should make his next start. Abreu met with Blackburn after the game and both men are no doubt very pleased by the fact that Blackburn didn’t suffer any major injuries. It turns out that nasty lettuce sound was caused in part by the fact that the ball hit Blackburn’s glove before it hit his face.

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If someone told me in March that a matchup of the Yankees’ and Twins’ best starters on June 1 would pit Darrell Rasner against Nick Blackburn, I’d have thought they were crazy, but that’s exactly the case this afternoon as 26-year-old rookie Blackburn (4-3, 3.39 ERA) faces off against 27-year-old Rasner (3-1, 1.80 ERA).

Blackburn will be making his first career start against the Yankees. Rasner, who was the Yankees best pitcher in May, will be looking to keep things going in June. Rasner has given the Yankees a minimum of six innings in each of his first six starts, and after last night’s extra-inning win, the Yankees will want him to go deep again today, though Mark Feinsand reports that Scott Patterson has been called up off his own strong May to add a fresh arm to the Yankee bullpen. Morgan Ensberg, who was hitting .164/.239/.164 since April 15, was designated for assignment to make room for Patterson.

Rasner has allowed just one run in his last 13 innings, though that one was enough to get him the loss in his last start, which the Yankees lost to the Orioles by an eventual final of 3-1. Today his support features Wilson Betemit at first base with Jason Giambi getting the day off and, as has been the standard pairing, Chad Moeller behind the plate.

Em and I are down in Fort Lolipop, Florida visiting with Pat and Susie Jordan for a few days. We arrived yesterday and I think my wife, who doesn’t do well in the heat, has already melted. It’s middle-of-July hot down here, which is what we get for coming in the off-season. On the other hand, our flight was half-full, and our hotel isn’t packed either. In all, it’s a fine way to celebrate my 37th birthday which happens to be today. And it is all started with a smile when I checked Sportscenter this morning and saw that the Yanks actually pulled out that extra-inning game last night against the Twins. Hot dog.

Final Score: Yanks 7, Twins 6.

“A few days ago, we don’t win this type of game,” Manager Joe Girardi said.

Bobby Abreu knocked in the game-winner, Ross Olendorf was huge in relief, and Mr. Rivera earned the save by getting the final three outs on ten pitches. The Bombers are now one-game over .500.

Cool.

Dear Chien-Ming,

I have really enjoyed watching you pitch over the past few years. I know that you have run into a little bit of trouble recently and I just wanted to let you know that we’re still behind you and that we’ll be rooting for you tonight. Who cares that ground balls tend to zip through the infield out there in Minnie. Do your thing, Strech.

Sending all my best,

Alex

p.s. Let’s Go Yan-Kees!

Take the Mets’ struggles, add the Willie Randolph-SportsNet NY "Will he be fired" drama, and for good measure, bring Joe Torre’s return to New York into the mix, and you have a recipe for keeping Yankee news relatively quiet for a week. The big news, and rightfully so, is Ian Kennedy’s timely placement on the disabled list, which paves the way for Joba Chamberlain to mosey into the rotation Tuesday night in Toronto. Despite everyone, including me, espousing what they believe Joba’s role is best suited to be, this shift was inevitable. Given the dilapidated state of the rotation, he could very well become the most reliable arm in the quintet.

Mark Feinsand, in this morning’s editions of the Daily News, wrote that Joba should not be treated as a savior. He’s right, and so is Joe Girardi, who is no magician at concealing his disdain for the hype.

"It doesn’t matter what I say," Girardi told reporters. "Every time he came out of the bullpen people expected him not to give up a run. When there is a lot of hype around you it’s hard to control people’s expectations, and I understand that."

This means LaTroy Hawkins must figure out how to get people out in the seventh inning, provided Joe Girardi wants to enlist the former Cub tandem and disreputable law firm of Hawkins and Farnsworth to preserve leads in crunchtime.

I’m curious to see how things develop in terms of coverage, pressure from Steinbrenners the Younger, depending on Joba’s success.

One thing that we as fans and not-so-casual observers can agree upon: the rotation needs an anchor, and at this point, why not Joba?

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Yesterday I quoted a passage from Roger Angell about Reggie Jackson. Angell wrote that no matter what Reggie Jackson did at the plate–make a weak out, get a single or hit a home run–it was “full value.” I feel the same way about Alex Rodriguez in a way that I haven’t for any player since probably Reggie himself. At the very least, I don’t know that I’ve craved full value from a player more than anyone since Reggie. It’s an infantile reaction yet one that is also based on an adult’s appreciation of greatness.

At some point in my twenties I really started appreciating great players simply for being great. Players that I might have found a reason to despise as a kid–because I didn’t like their name or the way they looked–I became resigned to appreciating. It’s as if there was an invisible line in my mind and after a guy surpassed it and reached a certain level of excellence it was my responsibility to admire them first and foremost. Everything else was about my petty hang-ups. Unless of course I thought he was a mook because of something I knew about him off-the-field, like he beat his wife or something like that.

It’s not that Rodriguez necessarily provides full value in all of his at-bats, it’s that we demand it from him and when he fails it has a weight that seperates him from other players, even other great players. It’s the money, the looks and the talent. I’ve seen Rodriguez in the locker room and he has the self-possessed narcissicm of an elite model. He knows you want to stare at him. He looks like Superman and he’s pretty too. He almost glows. But most of all, it is the blinding talent. The pursuit of something perfect. I love the drama of that. That a strikeout or a failure to drive in a runner from second seems bigger, deeper with Rodriguez.

I derive full value from his at bats because of the expectations I place on them. For me, each of his at-bats holds the promise of getting to watch one of the great all time players do something great. It’s like sheer sensation. Rodriguez’s swing was mentioned as one of the finest thing in sports in a terrific thread over at YankeefanvsSox fan on Friday that was sparked by Mark Lamster’s appreciation of Mariano Rivera.

Just standing in the box, he looks like the ulitimate hitter. He’s greater than Reggie Jackson and yet lacks the thing that made Jackson great, separated him from the other great players, the thing that has made Jeter great. But there is value in watching Rodriguez fail because he is playing for immortality.

On Friday night against Glen Perkins, the Twins’ young left-hander, Rodriguez provided full value in each of his first three at-bats. Early during his first time up Rodriguez ripped a ball foul down the left field line. His swing was so quick, he hit it so hard that he smiled as he got back in the box. (According to Michael Kay, Rodriguez had put on a show during bp.) He worked the count and then smashed a line drive right at the shortstop, knocking him two steps back. Rodriguez’s swing was perfect and when he bounced out of his follow-through, he stood erect as if to punctuate just how hard he had just struck the ball. It was the move of a Roman emperor, regal, arrogant, justified. Even in making an out, Rodriguez had won.

In his next at bat, Rodriguez worked the count and then drilled a liner to left for an RBI single. He stood up again after his follow through. At first I was a little taken aback, thinking he might have had a chance at a double if he had been running instead of admiring. But after seeing the replay, his display, while no less cocky, was understandable because he knew that he had hit the ball too hard get a double. The next time up, Rodriguez crushed a line drive over the centerfielder’s head for an RBI double and drove Perkins from the game. But the at bat was such a pleasure to watch–Rodriguez locked in, laying off the weak stuff, getting good hacks at the rest, even the few that he swung through–that the outcome seemed secondary.

He was grazed by the second pitch the next time up and hit a high pop fly that dropped in front of a diving Carlos Gomez for a hustle double in the ninth.

In addition to Rodriguez, Abreu had three hits including two triples. Melky had three hits, and Hideki Matsui continued to deliver. He’s on such a hot streak that it seems as if his every blooper and bleeder drives in a run. The Yanks had 16 hits in all. Mike Mussina was hurt by Shelley Duncan’s error in the first which led to four runs, but he didn’t completely lose it, went six, and improved his record to 8-4. Farmadooke gave up an eighth inning solo shot to Justin Morneau which closed a Yankee lead to 6-5, before Mariano Rivera closed the door in the ninth.

Mike Lamb swung at the first pitch Rivera threw him, cracked his bat, and softly lined the ball at Rivera’s feet. The sound of the ball coming off the bat was piteful. Brendan Harris got in two good hacks, worked the count full and then took a cutter, low on the inside corner for ball four. A pitch Rivera usually gets. Gomez fouled off the second pitch from Rivera and broke his bat. He lunged and fouled off a cutter, outside, and then waved at another one, further outside, for strike three.

“School is in session,” said Ken Singleton on the YES broadcast.

Pinch-hitter Craig Monroe took a called strike on the outside corner then laid off a fastball, high. He swung late and through another cutter and ended the game looking down as a pee at the knees crossed the outside corner. Precision. Artistry. Something close to perfection.

Yanks 6, Twins 5.

Minnesota Twins

2007 Record: 79-83 (.488)
2008 Pythagorean Record: 80-82 (.495)

2008 Record: 28-25 (.528)
2008 Pythagorean Record: 25-28 (.480)

Manager: Ron Gardenhire
General Manager: Bill Smith

Home Ballpark (multi-year Park Factors): Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome (96/96)

Who’s Replacing Whom:

Carlos Gomez replaces Torii Hunter
Delman Young replaces Jason Tyner and Lew Ford
Brendan Harris replaces Luis Castillo
Adam Everett replaces Jason Bartlett
Alexi Casilli is filling in for Everett (DL) in the infield, while Howie Clark is filling in for Everett on the roster
Mike Lamb replaces Nick Punto at third base
Matt Macri is filling in for Punto (DL) on the bench
Craig Monroe replaces Jeff Cirillo
Nick Blackburn inherits Johan Santana’s starts
Kevin Slowey inherits Matt Garza’s starts
Livan Hernandez replaces Carlos Silva
Glen Perkins is taking the place of Scott Baker (DL) in the rotation
Baker inherited Sidney Ponson’s starts
Jesse Crain inherits the relief innings of Pat Neshek (DL)
Brian Bass replaces Ramon Ortiz
Craig Breslow replaces the relief innings of Perkins, Blackburn, and Julio DePaula

25-man Roster:

1B – Justin Morneau (L)
2B – Alexi Casilla (S)
SS – Brendan Harris (R)
3B – Mike Lamb (L)
C – Joe Mauer (L)
RF – Michael Cuddyer (R)
CF – Carlos Gomez (R)
LF – Delmon Young (R)

Bench:

R – Craig Monroe (OF)
R – Mike Redmond (C)
L – Howie Clark (IF)
R – Matt Macri (IF)

Rotation:

R – Nick Blackburn
R – Livan Hernandez
R – Kevin Slowey
L – Glen Perkins
R – Boof Bonser

Bullpen:

R – Joe Nathan
R – Matt Guerrier
L – Dennys Reyes
R – Juan Rincon
R – Jesse Crain
R – Brian Bass
L – Craig Breslow

15-day DL: R – Adam Everett (SS), S – Nick Punto (IF), S – Matt Tolbert (IF), R – Scott Baker
60-day DL: R – Pat Neshek

Typical Lineup:

R – Carlos Gomez (CF)
S – Alexi Casilla (2B)
L – Joe Mauer (C)
L – Justin Morneau (1B)
R – Michael Cuddyer (RF)
L – Jason Kubel (DH)
R – Delmon Young (LF)
L – Mike Lamb (3B)
R – Brendan Harris (SS)

(more…)

Excellent post by Tyler Kepner over at Bats today. I’m tempted to excerpt it but I like the whole damn thing and can’t make up my mind what to choose without lifting it all. So, just go over and check it out.

And speaking of dropping science, well, I just can’t resist.

Hey, check it out, I remembered to do another one of these! (For those who missed it, here’s the April Farm Report.) This month I’m adding bold faced names.

Triple-A Scranton Wilkes-Barre

The big news out of Scranton is the impending opt-out of Jason Lane and the recent signing of Ben Broussard. Lane has hit .287/.387/.521 in May and can opt-out at the end of the month (which is tomorrow). A righty outfielder who has been working out at first base, he’s just an older Shelley Duncan with more major league experience, but given the poor performance of the newer model, it may be worth giving the old chassis another kick.

Former Indian and Mariner Broussard is a 31-year-old lefty first baseman who can play the outfield corners. He was signed by the Rangers during the offseason and released by them earlier this month. His .225/.288/.393 career line against lefties in the major leagues makes him a bad fit for the Yankees and is the reason he was available in the first place. He has three doubles and a walk in seven plate appearances for Scranton.

Speaking of first-base depth, or the lack thereof, Juan Miranda is back on the DL after reinjuring his shoulder. He played just six games in May. Eric Duncan‘s promising April turned into a typically disappointing May (.205/.300/.269).

That .269 SLG for Duncan makes me wonder if the wind was blowing in all month, as Brett Gardner‘s April power surge also vanished in May as his game returned to it’s previous form with outstanding on-base (.431) and stolen-base numbers (15 for 18), but a sub-.400 slugging percentage. On the season, Gardner is hitting .285/.405/.442 with 19 steals in 26 attempts (73 percent success).

Shifting to the pitchers, with Phil Hughes and Ian Kennedy on the DL, Joba Chamberlain moving into the rotation alongside Darrell Rasner, Kei Igawa having shown that he’s made no improvements since last year, Steven White having been bounced to the bullpen, and Alan Horne having been on the DL since early April, the sixth starter on the Yankee depth chart is converted reliever Dan Giese, who posted a 2.59 ERA, 0.99 WHIP, and 3.38 K/BB ratio in five May starts. Jeff Marquez was better in May than he was in April, but still had just two quality starts in five tries. Jeff Karstens has yet to achieve the feat since being activated and optioned. He was awful in his last start. Daniel McCutchen could surpass Giese by the time I do my next Farm Report. His one triple-A start thus far was quality, though he gave up ten hits and took the loss.

Things are more encouraging out in the bullpen. After a rough April, Scott Patterson found his footing in May and posted a 1.59 ERA, a 0.88 WHIP, and struck out eight men against just one walk. He’s now the triple-A closer. J.B. Cox has yet to allow a run in triple-A and has a 0.55 WHIP, though he’s struck out just three men in 7 1/3 innings. David Robertson, who like Cox and McCutchen was promoted during May, has struck out 14 in 13 triple-A innings without allowing a home run and posted a 2.77 ERA, but has also walked 10. Once he gets those walks down, he’ll be ready.

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YES is broadcasting Game 6 of the 1978 World Serious tonight. I tuned in just in time to catch Reggie’s bomb of Bob Welch, a first pitch shot that served as revenge for Welch’s dramatic K of Jackson earlier in the series. Jackson admired the blast, though his posturing is tame by today’s standards, and then tipped his hat to the Dodger faithful after he crossed home plate. In a short, 1994 New Yorker tribute to Jackson called “Swingtime,” Roger Angell noted this home run as one of Jackson’s career highlights. Here’s more from the piece:

Coming up out of the dugout before his next at-bat in a big game, Reggie Jackson was always accompanied by an invisible entourage: he was the heavyweight champion headed down the aisle for another title defense. The batter’s box was his prize ring, and once he’d dug in there–with those gauntleted arms, the squashed-down helmet, the shades and the shoulders–all hearts beat faster. It really didn’t matter what came next–a pop-up or a ground ball, a single or a dinger, or one of those tunneling-to-Peru strikeouts that ended with his helmet askew, his massive legs twisted into taffy ropes, and the man lurching and staggering as he fought for balance down there in the center of our shouting–because what he gave us, game after game, throughout a twenty-one-year career, was full value.

…From first to last, he was excessive; he excelled at excess…His ego, like his swing, took your breath away, but the dazzled, infuriated beat writers and columnists had to concede that it probably arose from the same deeply hidden, unforgiving self-doubt that whipped him to such baseball hieghts, mostly in the hard late going.

I think Angell gets to the heart of Jackson’s gift–no matter what he did when he was at-bat, he always gave us full value. There aren’t many athletes you can say that about.

I know the NBA home office will be thrilled and delighted if the Celtics and Lakers reach the Finals, something that is a very real possibility (the Lakers can knock the Spurs out tonight, the Celts can finish the Pistons tomorrow). If that happens, we’ll see plenty of highlights from the 80s, when both teams brought out the best (and occasionally the worst) in each other and generally elevated the game to spirited heights of competiveness. And we’ll also hear from the old cast of characters, including Bill Russell.

Here is a classic story from "Second Wind: Memoirs of an Opinonated Man," by Russell with the historian Taylor Branch (1979, Random House; currently out-of-print). It’s about Russell’s grandfather and his mule, Kate. Russell’s family was from Monroe, Louisiana and he lived down there until he was about ten (his family later moved to the Bay Area where Russell played junior high hoops with Frank Robinson, who in turn played baseball with Curt Flood and Vada Pinson). He called his father’s father, The Old Man. When Russell was four or five (1938-9), he followed his grandfather and Kate around one day:

I could tell that Kate and the Old Man understood each other. One day I was walking along with them when Kate decided to go off and stand in a ditch. Being an honest mule, she had a stubborn, mulish personality, and she stood there with this determined look on her face. It was as if Kate were saying, Okay, I got you now. We’re going to do this my way." The Old Man did everything he could to get Kate back up on the road. I watched him talk to her, and push, pull, shove and kick—a tough job, because there must have been nine hundred pounds of mule there. The Old Man would get Kate’s front up on the raod and be cooing into her ear, but when he walked around to pull up her taile end, the front would sidle back into the ditch again—so he’d take a deep breath and start over. I was taking all this in, and I couldn’t believe that the Old Man didn’t lose his temper.

After a long ordeal, Kate finally wound up back on the road. The Old Man looked exhausted, and the mule must have taken some satisfaction from all the effort she’d cost him. She looked fresh and relaxed, standing there as warm and lazy as the country air. The Old Man leaned on Kate and rested there for a minute or two; then out of nowhere he hauled off and punched her with his bare fist. Wack, just once, right on the side of the neck. The thud was so loud that I must have jumped a foot. The mule gently swayed back and forth groggily; then her front legs buckled and she collapsed to her knees. Then the hindquarters slowly buckled and settled down too. Kate looked all bent and contorted, like a squatting camel, as she sat there with a vacant stare in her eyes. I was dumbstruck. Right in front of my eyes the Old Man had knocked out a MULE with one punch.

He never said a word to me or to the mule. He just let Kate sit there for a minute, and then he grabbed her by the head and picked her up. "Okay, let’s go," he said quietly, and we started off again as if nothing had happened.

That sight stuck in my mind so vividly that I learned a practical lesson from it. I got into very few fights when I played for the Celtics, but every single one of them was in the last quarter, after the game was decided. You have to choose when to fight, and that is the time. The Old Man knew he’d have been in big trouble if he’d knocked that mule down in the ditch, so he waited until it didn’t cost him anything. Then he relieved his frustration and gave Kate something to think about.

Eat your heart out Mongo.

Thanks to Pete Abraham, I caught Mike Hayes’ interview with Bob Sheppard over at a place called Busted Halo:

BH: What a lot of people don’t know about you is that you’ve been a speech teacher for most of your life at the high school and college level. Do you consider yourself a speech teacher first and the Yankee announcer second?

BS: I’m a teacher first and a Yankee announcer second or maybe third or fourth. Primarily, my whole training has been to be a speech teacher. That’s what I decided to do when I was early in college at St. John’s (University in New York). For many years I was teaching high school speech during the day, St. John’s in the late afternoons and evenings and some of the summer times, and in the meantime, I was still at Yankee Stadium doing the night games and the weekend games.

We will hopefully see Mr. Sheppard later this summer. The old place just ain’t the same without him.

For the past couple of seasons, Jay Jaffe’s blogging has slowed considerably as his writing for BP, the New York Sun, etc. has increased. However, Jay’s been back at it this spring at The Futility Infielder, which is good news for us. Check out this recent post on Doc Ellis and this fine one on his grandfather, Bernie.

Today gives Jay’s excellent piece on Marvin Miller. Peep, don’t sleep.

Last night, Andy Pettitte turned in his third straight quality start, the Yankee offense scattered four runs against Jeremy Guthrie and company, and Joba Chamberlain and Mariano Rivera, likely appearing as a relief tandem for the last time, combined to nail down the Yankees’ win.

The first two batters Pettitte faced reached base, but Andy wiggled out of the jam. In the top of the second, Hideki Matsui doubled and moved to third on a wild pitch, and Jason Giambi miraculously hit a groundball RBI single through the right side of a drawn-in and shifted infield that had three men lined up on the edge of the grass between first and second base.

In the third, Melky Cabrera led off with a double and moved to third on a groundout, but Derek Jeter struck out and Bobby Abreu was unable to pick his captain up. Brian Roberts began the bottom of the third with and infield single and Melvin Mora made it count with a two-run homer off Pettitte, but Giambi evened things up with a 410-foot shot to Eutaw Street (his second plaque-worthy shot in as many days) with two outs in the top of the fourth.

In the fifth, Jeter made up for his missed opportunity earlier in the game by hitting a sac fly to plate Cabrera from third with one out following another Melky double advanced by a Damon hit. Roberts doubled in the bottom of the inning, but Andy Pettitte picked him off second, catching him cold a third of the way off the bag. That was the key play in the game as the Yankees never relinquished their slim 3-2 lead.

Chamberlain came on with two out and none on in the seventh to face Mora, who had a bunt single, a homer, and a walk against Pettitte to that point. Mora singled off Chamberlain, and Joba walked Nick Markakis to put the go-ahead run on base, but he settled down from there, striking out Kevin Millar and cruising through the eighth with two more Ks.

The Yankees added a run in the ninth, which made the decision to leave Chamberlain in to finish the game seem like an obvious one given that he was scheduled to throw 55 pitches and had thrown only 28, but Joe Girardi proved he’s a slave to the save and brought in Mariano Rivera the day after his 31-pitch outing on Wednesday night.

Not that it was a terrible call, just a needless one. Mo pitched around an Alex Rodriguez error for a scoreless ninth to nail down the win, and Chamberlain finished his work in the bullpen, throwing 14 pitches, sitting to simulate an inning break, throwing pre-inning warmups, then finishing with 13 pitches to hit his 55-pitch goal.

It was a quick and easy game that helped the Yankees avoid embarrassment and head into their off day and trip out to Minnesota with a good feeling. All decisions on Joba’s next appearance and exactly who will replace Ian Kennedy in the rotation early next week remain to be made. It was just a good, solid 4-2 win in which nothing went wrong and no one got hurt.

I’ll take that.

The Yankees arrived in Baltimore looking to build on a five-game winning streak and continue their climb into the thick of the AL East race. Instead, they find themselves sending Andy Pettitte to the mound tonight in an attempt to avoid a sweep, while being guaranteed to arrive in Minneapolis as a last-place team, even if they pull out a win tonight.

Pettitte’s opponent, Jeremy Guthrie, is the only Baltimore starter who has not yet faced the Yankees this year. Guthrie beat the Yanks twice amid his 2007 breakout season, but stumbled against them in their final confrontation in August. With Erik Bedard in Seattle, Guthrie has responded to the responsibility of being the O’s best starter this year, following a poor Opening Day outing with eight quality starts in ten tries (and just missing in the other two). Guthrie has a 3.22 ERA over that span. Unfortunately, his teammates have only scored 3.09 runs per game for him, saddling him with a losing 2-4 record over that stretch. In his last two starts, Guthrie allowed just two runs in 13 2/3 innings, but lost both games by scores of 2-1 and 2-0. Given that the two teams just played an exhausting 10-9 11-inning affair last night, I wouldn’t be surprised to see a similarly low-scoring game tonight.

Pettitte is coming off a pair of quality starts in which he struck out 16 men in 12 innings against just two walks and no home runs. Chad Moeller caught both of those starts and he’ll catch Pettitte again tonight. Moeller is 4 for his last 12 with a walk and a hit-by-pitch, and in catching Darrell Rasner’s and Andy Pettitte’s recent successes could indeed be securing his roster spot beyond Jorge Posada’s expected return next week. This is why giving Jose Molina a two-year $4-million deal was a dumb idea. As I concluded my post suggesting the Yankees resign him: “Jose Molina is as good a choice as any, and he can be easily replaced mid-season if he fails to maintain a replacement-level performance.”

Funny thing happened on my way home last night. As I was walking across 6th avenue my ankle gave in. It’s the same foot I broke years ago and it remains prone to twisting. I got a cab home and then Emily took me to the emergency room. Fortunately, nothing’s broken–there might be a minor fracture, otherwise just some torn ligaments, a bad sprain. I got suited up with crutches and returned home to watch Mariano’s two innings. Then I went to bed. I didn’t even hear about Derek Jeter’s tough night until this morning. Pete Abraham called it one of Jeter’s worst games as a Yankee. In the most recent edition of The Pinstriped Bible, Steven Goldman writes:

Back in December, writing the Jeter comment for this year’s Baseball Prospectus annual, I said, “For years, Jeter’s offense has made him a net positive at shortstop despite his defense. The second half of 2007, taken together with his age, suggests that the day of reckoning may finally have arrived.” Emphasis on “may” added-if you have the book, you will note that the qualifier isn’t there. Cliff Corcoran, who reviewed the text in his sagacious way, and an experienced follower of the Yankees in his own right, argued that we should strike it, making the statement more definitive: “The day of reckoning has finally arrived.”

“Argue” is probably too strong a word for what Cliff did, as I didn’t argue with him. I noted the change and mentally shrugged, saying, “He’s right. By all available evidence, the time has come.” Yet, in the back of my mind, I was still hedging. “This is Derek Jeter! He’s got an edge, baby!” (Of course he does; he’s the only one who can afford the gas.) As time has gone by, I’ve become more convinced that that change was the right one, and become grateful for it, as Jeter’s performance has borne out the more emphatic prediction.

Tough times for Jeter and the Yanks right about now.