Everything is cool. The Yankees aren’t scoring any runs and I haven’t had a tantrum…yet. I watched the end of yesterday’s game and saw Alex Rodriguez strike out for the fourth time. He was caught looking in his first three at bats against B. Banny, and fell behind the count quickly his fourth time up. Then he fouled off a few pitches and laid off another couple of sliders just off the plate. I had a great feeling that he was going to hit the ball hard. That something good was about to happen. I generally don’t feel that way about him, which says more about me as a nervous fan of my hometown team, than it does about Rodriguez. But he eventually chased a ball out of the zone and went down swinging.

Someone is going to pay and soon. With our heroes Jeter and Posada* hurting, it’s up to the rest of the boys to get the lead out. That’s easier said than done, particularly with Mr. Grienke on the hill for the Royals tonight. Here’s hoping Ian Kennedy comes through with a nice effort.

Let’s Go Yan-Kees.

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We should come up with a list of our favorite pet peeves. As a New Yorker, I am driven to distraction by people who block the subway doors, who have conversations smack dab in the middle of the sidewalk, who walk down the street in threes side-by-side-by-side, who don’t know the golden rule that if you stay the right (walking down the stairs, a corridor, the block) you are right. One of my biggest peeves is sitting near someone on public transportation who is eating hot food. If it’s an untoasted bagel or a buttered roll, I can deal. But if it smells, I squirm. In the morning, it’s not surprising to see someone dogging a heart attack special (ham/bacon, egg and cheese on a roll) or a Cuban sandwich.

Just imagine how uptight I get.

One of the most amusing things about pet peeves is the inclination to think that your friends, family and other like-minded, sane people will share them. One day, I called up my great pal Lizzie Bottoms to rail about food on the train, assuming she’d feel the same way.

I go, “Dude, what’s your reaction when you smell food on the subway?”

“I get hungry.”

I stopped cold. Jeez, I hadn’t thought of that. Makes sense though. Then again Lizzie gets knuts when she sees people smooching and grabbing ass in public (PDA, public display of affection) where that generally doesn’t bug me at all.

Anyhow, I was on the subway this morning. We were still way uptown and the car wasn’t packed yet. An older gentleman sat two seats away from me. He was the kind of guy who looked like he was wearing a toupee even though, on closer inspection, it looked like his real hair.

He broke out a roll. I waited to see if a smell was going to soon follow, indicating that it was something warm. But it wasn’t. Just an plain buttered roll. Soon, a high school kid got on the train and sat between us. The older man asked the kid if he was taking math in school. The kid mumbled a response which evidentally gave the older guy–who, it soon became clear, was not only touched in the head but a math teacher himself–permission to give a uninterrupted lecture on trig, Isaac Newton and all sorts of stuff about math I never wanted to know.

The poor kid didn’t have it in him to tell the guy to shut up, so the old man went on…and on. I put down my book, unable to concentrate. The guy didn’t have any interest in making a connection with the kid, just on hearing the sound of his own voice. I wanted to say something to him and then thought, ah, don’t be such a hard ass, he’s harmless. Still, I was dumbfounded.

Finally, the old man got up and left. I asked the kid if he knew him and he said no. Then I started in about how incredible it is that some people can just go on like that. The kid tuned me out just as he had ignored the old man.

The subway was now downtown. We were stopped at a station and the doors opened and closed several times before the conductor got on the p.a. and said, “Hey, the kid in the back of the train that’s messing around, if you get killed, I get three days off, which is fine by me, so keep it up.”

Bing Bong.

Watch the closing doors.

I caught bits and pieces of the home opener at Shea yesterday and was struck by the backdrop of the new park that is sitting just behind the outfield. Last season, the construction looked like something out of Waterworld, but now the facade of Citi Field looks almost complete. It was a surreal but arresting image, one that has me curious to get out to Shea and see it up close.

Neil deMause, a freelance writer and contributor to Baseball Prospectus, has been following the construction of the two new stadiums in New York. I haven’t been paying close attention to the dollars and cents of it all, but here are three pieces by deMause that detail what’s what ( “>two and three). deMause is unabashedly critical of the financing of both parks, which again brings to mind Robert Lipsyte’s SI story about the rennovation of the old Yankee Stadium, “A Diamond in the Ashes” (April, 1976):

Myles Jackson, a lineman on Michigan’s 1951 Rose Bowl team, was not born in the Bronx, as Abrams and Garelik and I were, but he lives there now, a block from Yankee Stadium. Four years ago, rebuilding himself after a business failure, he found an inexpensive apartment in the neighborhood, which is basically commercial and industrial. The Bronx Terminal Market is nearby, and the Bronx County Courthouse stands on the highest hill.

Sometimes Jackson spent a dollar to sit in the bleachers. I have done that, too, and it can be a soothing place, as public or private as one might need it to be, a sun deck, a gambling casino, a patio from which to see green, a tree house of old August fantasies.

And sometimes Jackson went to jog in Macombs Dam Park, which includes a football field ringed with a cinder track that lies literally in the shadow of the Stadium. The track was poorly maintained by the city; it was often unusable. When the Stadium was closed for renovation after the 1973 baseball season and the little park deteriorated even more, Jackson became angry enough to found a local organization called the Committee to Save Macombs Dam Park.

“Yankee Stadium is a symbol of the value system by which this city, this country, bases its decisions,” he says. “They can spend all that money for a stadium, but when it comes to a little more for a recreational facility that will really enhance the quality of life through sports, there’s just nothing left.”

But symbols and chemistry are the name of the game, whether your city is New York or someplace else, whether your game is baseball or some other sport. The “new” Yankee Stadium is not the all-weather, all-purpose facility New York needs. But as an example of the state of the art of cosmetic architecture, it is a handsome improvement. When I take my son to his first major league game, it will be in a brighter, airier, more comfortable ball park. The pillars that obscured the view of too many of the old 65,000 seats are gone, replaced by a steel cable-counterweight system of the type used to support suspension bridges. Gone will be that chilling dankness of Giant football Sunday afternoons, when the pillars cast late-fall shadows on the seats behind them. Of course, gone, too, are the Giants (to New Jersey), and gone are 11,000 seats, a million baseball seats per season.

…Perhaps the most luxurious new appointments are the 19 private lounges, complete with televisions, wet bars and bathrooms, that open onto 14—and in two cases, 30—reserved seats in the second deck behind home plate. The larger lounges go for $30,000 per season, the others for $19,000. The first was rented by the Yankees’ principal owner, George Steinbrenner III, recently returned to active participation after his suspension from baseball following his felony conviction for illegal Presidential campaign contributions.

Ironically, one of Steinbrenner’s first public actions since his comeback was the edict last month that in the interest of “order and discipline” players may not wear beards or long hair. “I want to develop pride in the players as Yankees,” Steinbrenner explained.

Yankee Pride costs a pretty penny. And it ain’t so cheap out in Queens neither.

It rained all morning in Kansas City yesterday, and though the precipitation stopped in time for the Royals’ home opener against the Yankees, the weather remained cold, dank, and dreary. The two teams played accordingly, putting 30 men on base, but scoring just seven of them in a slow, sloppy contest which the Royals won by the surprisingly tidy score of 5-2.

Brian Bannister failed to execute his gameplan early on, throwing first-pitch strikes to just three of the first 11 men he faced. Phil Hughes didn’t fair much better, getting strike one on just four of his first dozen batters. Neither pitcher was sharp, and the weather was at least partially to blame, as Hughes seemed to spend as much time blowing into his pitching hand as he did actually pitching, but home plate umpire Mark Wegner’s strike zone wasn’t helping. Wegner’s performance behind the plate was one of the worst I can remember. There was absolutely no consistency to his zone not only from at-bat to at-bat, but within single at-bats. Both benches were riding him, both pitchers were frustrated, and batters on both sides couldn’t figure out what to swing at or what to take. In part due to Wegner’s embarrassing performance, there were ten walks and 19 strikeouts in the game, eight of the latter on called third strikes.

Things were bad all over. At the end of three innings, the game was tied 2-2 with both starters having walked four men. Brian Bannister had thrown 71 pitches and allowed eight baserunners. Hughes had thrown 79 pitches and allowed nine baserunners. Things tilted in the Royals’ favor when Bannister pitched around a Johnny Damon single in the top of the fourth and Phil Hughes came out and gave up a pair of singles to start the bottom of the inning. Those two at-bats pushed Hughes’ pitch count to 87 and, thanks to the baserunning of Joey Gathright (more on that below), gave the Royals a 3-2 lead. With a man on first and no outs, Joe Girardi went to his bullpen, hoping for a groundball double play from Ross Ohlendorf.

Ohlendorf delivered exactly that, then struck out Jose Guillen to end the inning, but after Bannister pitched the first 1-2-3 frame of the game in the top of the fifth, Ollie coughed up a pair of runs in the bottom of that inning to set the final score.

The Yankees got three more baserunners against lefty reliever Ron Mahay, but never staged a credible threat in the late innings as their last nine batters were retired in order by Mahay, former Yankee farmhand Ramon Ramirez, and the end-game combo of Leo Nuñez and Joakim Soria, thus wasting scoreless innings of relief by Ohlendorf (who saved the Yankee pen by going three full), Billy Traber, and LaTroy Hawkins (who again put two men on only to work out of his own jam).

Adding insult to injury, the Yankees played poorly in the field. Bobby Abreu made the only error of the game in the second inning when he tried to backhand a single on the run only to have the ball clank off the heal of his glove and the runner go to second, but there were several other misplays by the Bombers. Johnny Damon uncorked and errant rainbow throw from the outfield on an RBI single in the fifth that allowed the batter to go to second. Wilson Betemit, who otherwise acquitted himself well at shortstop, twice misplayed throws from Jorge Posada at the keystone, once having the throw clank off his glove and another time attempting, unsuccessfully, to take the throw while straddling the bag, narrowly avoiding a knee injury in the resulting collision with the baserunner. Most distressingly, the Yankees thrice correctly identified when the Royals were going to attempt a steal, twice pitching out and once throwing to first behind the runner, but failed to catch the runner in any of those three instances. In the last, Jason Giambi failed to get a good grip on the ball and never even made a throw to second.

Those issues with opposing basestealers were the most disturbing part of the game. Clearly aware that Jorge Posada had been struggling with a sore throwing shoulder, new Royals’ skipper Trey Hillman decided to run on the Yankee catcher at every opportunity. The Royals’ first batter, Joey Gathright, led off the bottom of the first with a single, then stole second. In the second, Hillman again found himself with a runner on first and no one ahead of him and had Tony Peña Jr. steal second. In the fourth, Gathright again led off with a single and stole both second and third in the next at-bat.

Posada singled in three at-bats, but his inability to control the Royals’ running game forced Girardi to replace him after six innings. Jose Molina’s record was promptly tainted by Ross Gload stealing on the pickoff botched by Giambi, but Molina announced his presence on the next pitch by throwing Gload out at third.

So here’s where things go from bad to worse. Adding injury to insult, Posada was scheduled for an MRI on his shoulder after the game. He says he feels no pain in the shoulder, but that his arm feels “dead,” a feeling he’s had before, but one that’s previously gone away with four or five days of rest. Posada rested three days last week and had Monday off, but obviously his shoulder is no better.

The thing is, with Derek Jeter also out of commission, Posada’s injury leaves the team with a two-man bench and Morgan Ensberg, who last donned the tools of ignorance as a schoolboy, as their backup catcher. Either man could be back in action by the end of the weekend, making a DL stay excessive in either case, but the Yankees may be forced to make some other sort of roster move in the meantime just to avoid being caught shorthanded. For example, farming out Ohlendorf in the wake of his three-inning, 36-pitch outing in order to make room for triple-A catcher Chad Moeller or an extra infielder might make sense. Ohlendorf would have to spend 10 days in the minors, but the Yanks could juggle the roster by replacing Moeller with Jonathan Albaladejo when Posada’s ready to catch again, then decide what do with Ohlendorf when he becomes eligible to be recalled (certainly Ollie’s ability to come in and get a groundball DP like he did yesterday is of considerable value, as is his 6:0 K/BB rate in seven innings thus far this season). Of course, Posada’s MRI could show that he’ll need to miss more time, making a DL stay and Moeller’s recall an easier decision, but we likely won’t know more about that until closer to game time. Stay tuned . . .

If there’s good news to be had here it’s in Molina’s performance thus far. Molina has picked up a hit in each of his four starts in place of the injured Posada, two of them doubles, and has thrown out four of the five men who have attempted to steal on him (not counting yesterday’s botched pickoff). If he can stay hot both at the plate and behind it, the Yankees won’t miss Posada too much provided he doesn’t miss any more than the 15-day minimum, preferably much less. That’s a lot of wishful thinking, but Molina has looked good in the early going.

Kansas City Royals

2007 Record: 69-93 (.426)
2007 Pythagorean Record: 73-89 (.452)

Manager: Trey Hillman
General Manager: Dayton Moore

Home Ballpark (multi-year Park Factors): Kauffman Stadium (103/104)

Who’s Replacing Whom:

Jose Guillen replaces Emil Brown and Shane Costa (minors)
Alberto Callaspo replaces Jason Smith
Miguel Olivo replaces Jason LaRue
Billy Butler takes over Mike Sweeney’s playing time
Ross Gload takes over the playing time of Ryan Shealy (minors)
Zack Greinke takes over the starts of Kyle Davies (minors)
John Bale takes over the starts of Odalis Perez and Billy Buckner
Brett Tomko replaces Jorge de la Rosa (minors) and Scott Elarton
Joakim Soria takes over Octavio Dotel’s save opportunities
Yasuhiko Yabuta replaces David Riske
Ron Mahay replaces John Bale’s relief innings
Ramon Ramirez replaces Joel Peralta (minors)
Hideo Nomo replaces Brandon Duckworth (minors)

25-man Roster:

1B – Ross Gload (L)
2B – Mark Grudzielanek (R)
SS – Tony Peña Jr. (R)
3B – Alex Gordon (L)
C – John Buck (R)
RF – Jose Guillen (R)
CF – Joey Gathright (L)
LF – Mark Teahen (L)
DH – Billy Butler (R)

Bench:

R – Esteban German (IF)
S – Alberto Callaspo (IF)
R – Miguel Olivo (C)
L – David DeJesus* (OF)

Rotation:

R – Gil Meche
R – Brian Bannister
R – Zack Greinke
L – John Bale
R – Brett Tomko

Bullpen:

R – Joakim Soria
R – Leo Nuñez
R – Yasuhiko Yabuta
L – Ron Mahay
L – Jimmy Gobble
R – Ramon Ramirez
R – Hideo Nomo

15-day DL: R – Luke Hudson

*DeJesus sprained his ankle on Opening Day and hasn’t played since.

Lineup:

L – Joey Gathright (CF)
R – Mark Grudzielanek (2B)
L – Alex Gordon (3B)
R – Jose Guillen (RF)
R – Billy Butler (DH)
L – Mark Teahen (LF)
L – Ross Gload (1B)
R – John Buck (C)
R – Tony Peña Jr. (SS)

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Here’s a question for you guys, and something I’ve been wondering about for a while now: Is Jorge Posada good at calling games?

Yesterday, for the second time in this brand-new season, Jose Molina was behind the plate for Mike Mussina. I don’t know if the Yankees are going to use Molina as Mussina’s personal catcher – Posada missed Moose’s first start with a sore shoulder, and last night was a logical day off because of today’s afternoon game. Still, given that last season Mussina pitched to Wil Nieves until July — you remember Nieves; incredibly nice guy, didn’t have a hit until May 9th — it seems that Mussina prefers, or at the very least has no objection to, throwing to someone other than Posada.

I don’t think this is a problem — Molina’s got to start sometime, and unlike other recent Yankee backups he’s a capable hitter; if Mussina likes working with him, so much the better. And Mussina can, as you may have noticed, be a bit persnickety about his pitching circumstances, so I don’t want to read too much into his apparent inclination towards someone a bit more defense-oriented.

Randy Johnson, in his brief and unhappy time in the Bronx, also opted for a personal catcher, the YES booth’s own John Flaherty*. Now, Johnson was so prickly that he makes Mussina look like a Teletubby, so you can take that with a grain of salt as well. Still, since Flaherty and Nieves, even working together, would be hard pressed to hit their way out of a paper bag, there must be some reason two of the best pitchers of their generation embraced such blows to their run support.

This is all just curiosity on my part, and no cause for concern — Posada’s game calling really isn’t a big issue. He’s so good offensively, even during an average season, that he makes up for any defensive shortcomings, and he’s been incredibly durable besides. Of all the mid-90s Yanks still around, he’s the one I think the team will find it hardest to replace. And besides, he’s been behind the plate for countless excellent pitching performances over the years, including a perfect game – obviously he can’t be that bad.

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The Yankees cruised to an easy 6-1 win last night to split their four-game series against the Rays and leave town with a winning 4-3 record. Mike Mussina was sharp, allowing just three baserunners, two hits, and a lone run in six efficient innings of work. He had his best curveball working and was able to throw it at a variety of speeds between 70 and 80 miles per hour while correspondingly varying the severity of the break from a slow 12-to-6 yakker to a quicker pitch that broke in the zone. He also had a good changeup. Moose only recorded three strikeouts on the night, but got 11 of his other 15 outs on the ground, which was largely the product of having his best curve. Fittingly, the one run Mussina gave up came on a hanging curve to Jonny Gomes. Gomes put a lumberjack swing on the pitch, his bat and body tilted at 45 degree angles to the ground, and drove it into the seats in left field.

That was the only run the Rays would get all night as Brian Bruney and Kyle Farnsworth pitched perfect seventh and eighth innings, respectively, combining to throw 19 of 24 pitches for strikes. LaTroy Hawkins came on in the ninth and struggled with his control, his confidence, and a contingent of jackass fans who began chanting “Paul O’Neill” after Hawk’s first pitch of the inning was a ball, but despite throwing just half of his 22 pitches for strikes, Hawkins managed to strand his two baserunners by striking out Gomes to end the game.

The Yankee offense, meanwhile, had it’s most productive game of the year thus far with season-highs in runs (6) and hits (11). Bobby Abreu got things started in the first with a two-run homer to the right-field corner, the third Yankee home run of the homestand to that spot, none of which likely traveled more than 320 feet. After making Mussina sweat out his six innings, the Yanks then added on in the bottom of the sixth when Abreu, who had singled in his second at-bat, tripled off the wall in right center, Alex Rodriguez singled him home, and Hideki Matsui doubled Rodriguez home to make it 4-1 Yanks. Mid-game replacement Morgan Ensberg picked up his first Yankee hit with one out in the seventh bringing Abreu to the plate with a chance for the cycle. Abreu, true to form, drew a six-pitch walk. After Alex Rodriguez was called out on strikes at the end of a seven-pitch at-bat of his own, Matsui singled home Ensberg and Robinson Cano, who was hitless in the game to that point, singled Abreu home to set the final score.

That five run-lead allowed Joe Girardi to bring in Farnsworth and Hawkins without being second guessed, though I was still troubled that for the second game in a row Girardi did not appear to consider using Billy Traber against the all-lefty top of the Rays’ order. That aside, while it was rough watching Hawkins in the ninth, the scoreless frame and game-ending K should serve him well, just as Farnsworth’s easy eighth should him. Good on Girardi for getting those guys in there for some confidence-boosting low-leverage work.

The one wrinkle on the night was that Derek Jeter left the game after two innings with what an MRI revealed to be a strained left quadriceps. Jeter hit into a fielder’s choice in the first and scored on Abreu’s homer, but you could see as he ran to first that his legs weren’t right, and he was stretching out the quad while standing on the bag.

Sez Jeter, “I felt something so I didn’t want to be stupid. . . . You can’t hide not running. If you can’t do that, you can’t [play]. I tried, but I felt something, so I thought it would be best to come out.” When asked how long Jeter was expected to be on the shelf, Joe Girardi said, “it’s gonna be a little bit,” but said that the team did not expect him to hit the DL. Jeter will not play in this afternoon’s opener in Kansas City. As he was last night, Wilson Betemit will be the shortstop while Jeter’s out.

The Yankees will close out their season-opening homestand tonight by trying to salvage a series split against the Rays and thus a winning mark on the homestand. The buzz around the team this first week of games has concerned the poor performance of the offense, which has scored just 2.83 runs per game, the fifth-work mark in baseball at this absurdly early stage. Me, I’m more interested in the excellent performance of the pitching staff.

All three of the Yankees’ wins have been close, low-scoring games, the type of games a team has to be able to win in order to advance in October. The Bombers have scored no more than three runs in any of their wins thus far. Last year, they were 5-35 in games in which they scored three runs or fewer and their third win of that kind didn’t come until after the All-Star break. This year they’re out to a 3-2 start in such games in the season’s first week. Call me crazy, but I see that as a positive.

It could be that runs have just been down all over in the cold, windy Bronx this week, but for those worried about the offense, consider what the pitching staff has done. Removing the performances of Ian Kennedy and LaTroy Hawkins, who allowed 13 of the 28 runs given up by the Yankees thus far in Friday’s ugly series-opening loss, the remainder of the staff has compiled this line:

2.17 ERA, 49 2/3 IP, 40 H, 15 R, 12 ER, 4 HR, 10 BB, 42 K, 7.61 K/9, 1.81 BB/9, 1.23 WHIP

Of course, that doesn’t include the three inherited runners that were allowed to score in Friday’s game by Jonathan Albaladejo (1) and Kyle Farnsworth (2), but were charged to Kennedy and Hawkins, respectively. Still, even if you add those three runs in above, the non-IPK/Hawk staff still has a strong 2.72 ERA.

This is all slightly meaningless, of course, given the small sample (only Chien-Ming Wang has pitched more than six innings thus far), but it’s certainly encouraging.

At the same time, one could argue that the concerns about the offense are legitimate. Look at who’s hitting and who’s struggling. Melky Cabrera, a young player primed for a breakout, is leading the team with a .364/.417/.636 line despite missing two games due to suspension. Alex Rodriguez and Hideki Matsui are both making strong contributions. Bobby Abreu is doing fine. Jason Giambi, Jorge Posada, Johnny Damon, and Robinson Cano, however, are full-on struggling, going a combined 10 for 71 (.140) thus far. You can be confident that Cano will get hot, though given his history it might take until after the All-Star break, but both Giambi and Posada are in their late-30s and have already missed games due to aches and pains (Posada’s throwing shoulder, Giambi’s groin). Neither is in tonight’s lineup. Damon, meanwhile, is a very old 34 and struggled mightily for the first half of last season with a variety of aches and pains of his own. As meaningless as the above pitching stats are, however, these first-week hitting slumps are even more so.

Tonight the Yankees face Jason Hammel, who is only in the Rays rotation because Scott Kazmir is on the DL once again with an elbow strain. Hammel hasn’t pitched since spring training. He had a 6.23 ERA in the spring, has a 6.70 mark in the majors, and a career 6.41 ERA against the Yankees. That is to say, he’s reliably terrible, and is the first pitcher who meets that description that the Yankees will have faced this year (Edwin Jackson isn’t much better in terms of results, but has the raw stuff Hammel lacks). All but one of Hammel’s confrontations with the Yankees (three of four starts and both relief appearances, the latter totaling just one inning) occurred last year. In the best of them, an early September start at the Stadium, he held the Yanks to one run on five hits, walked none, and struck out seven, but he only lasted five innings as he needed 97 pitches to get that far. It’s likely that Joe Maddon was thinking of Hammel yesterday when he used J.P. Howell to eat up three innings, thus saving the rest of his pen for tonight.

Hammel’s mound opponent is Mike Mussina, whose 5 2/3-inning/four-run outing in his first start is about all that can be expected of him at this stage of his career. Certainly, Girardi will need more than just Joba and Mo tonight, fortunately they were the only relievers he used yesterday. It could be that we’ll have our first high-scoring game of the year tonight. Or maybe the crisp Bronx night will keep the bats of both teams frozen for one more game before the Bombers head out to play 18 of their next 20 games on the road.

The first week of the baseball season presented a range of stories that provide no information out of the ordinary. Below are one man’s observations of what can be taken from the general coverage:

• In this, the last year of the current incarnation of Yankee Stadium, we should be nostalgic at every turn, and re-live every great moment in the Stadium’s history. Every living Yankee, past and present, will be asked how he feels about the new stadium, and what he will remember most about the old one.

• Joe Girardi has a tough task in front of him as new manager.

• With so much uncertainty on the Yankees’ roster, with the greatest mix of youth and veterans since 1995, the odds of them missing the playoffs altogether are about the same as winning the World Series.

• Andy Pettitte and Roger Clemens aren’t great friends anymore.

• Based on the season previews of all the major local and national outlets, while the Yankees are still a focal point of many discussions, the Mets are not to be taken lightly. And did you know Johan Santana pitches for them now? This is a big deal, supposedly, because he was not a Met last year, they choked in September, and the fragile Pedro Martinez is in the last year of his contract. Everywhere you look, if there’s a Met poster or picture, Santana’s face is on it.

AROUND THE HORN
• Best wishes to Bobby Murcer, whose ongoing battle with cancer kept him off the air on Opening Day. It was a goal of his to be ready to work by March 31, but that didn’t happen. Murcer was always accommodating, classy and gracious, not only in his TV work, but in his collaborations with us on YESNetwork.com. I would not be surprised to see him in the booth by the All-Star break.

• I don’t mean to sound like our good friend Phil Mushnick, but I don’t understand why on Opening Day, there is a predisposition to make such a big deal out of firsts. Of course everything that occurs is the first whatever of the year. Do we need to be beaten over the head with it? They won the game, and that was important. YES did a good job of highlighting the fact that the Yankees have set a new MLB record with 11 straight wins in home openers.

• Speaking of home-opening victories, you’d never know unless you watched the game or went online for a summary immediately thereafter that they did win. Why? Because Wednesday morning, the back pages glowered over Alex Rodriguez’s salary, specifically the report that he makes more than the entire Florida Marlins team. I thought A-Rod handled himself well in what must have been a tricky subject to have to comment on.

• Is it me, or during YES’s Yankees Post Game Show, when there’s a wide two-shot of Bob Lorenz and David Cone, if you look quickly it’s very difficult to tell them apart. They have the same hairline. It’s uncanny.

• Bronx Banter gets a mention in Kat O’Brien‘s story on Yankee fans’ blog sites. Don’t know if our fearless leaders Alex Belth and Cliff Corcoran were solicited for a quote, but it would have been nice to see something there as a differentiator between NoMaas, RiverAveBlues, WasWatching and Replacement Level. We’re a pretty tight fraternity and we all read each other. Maybe I’m biased, but I think and Alex and Cliff would have had plenty to add.

BACKPAGE WATCH: Yankees and Mets even with leads after one week. We’ll see how long that lasts.

Until next week …

Yo, I’m a total nerd. I don’t mind if people call me a nerd because I was never really a dorkasorous dweeb when I was growing up, so I can embrace the label without any personal scars. (The folks that tend to bristle at that label really were nerds and were ostrasized because of it back in their high school days.) One nerdy thing I love doing is hiding out in the microfilm room of the New York Public Library on 42nd street, scrolling through old magazines. On that note, I was geeked to find that I made the NY Public Library’s most recent newsletter.

Oh, and I just had to give a shout out to one of our most loyal readers (and commentors): Happy Birthday to our man Chyll Will.

Show of hands, how many of you out there were excited to see Joba Chamberlain enter the game with two runners on and nobody out in the seventh inning? Joba struck Willy Aybar out on three pitches, including a fastball that hit 101 mph on the scoreboard radar gun. According to Sean Brennan in the Daily News:

Did Chamberlain think his triple-digit fastball got into Aybar’s head?

“I think a little bit,” Chamberlain said. “But you can’t rely on that because then you get too complacent and you leave one over (the plate) and it doesn’t matter how hard you throw to these guys. They can come in 101 and it’s going to leave at 140 and go about 500 feet.”

…In all it took Chamberlain 16 pitches to nail down six outs, and the righthander seems to have grasped the notion that low pitch counts may be more effective than logging strikeouts.

“I’m probably a little smarter,” Chamberlain said. “I’m still young and dumb sometimes but that works for me. I just try to attack the zone and be aggressive. I’m a little more experienced (though), not necessarily any smarter.”

Leave the smarts to Joe G, son, everything else will fall into place.

The Yankees did not hit much on Sunday rounding off a lackluster first week for the offense. However, Joe Girardi was back in the dugout to watch Chien Ming Wang, Joba Chamberlain and Mariano Rivera combine to shut the Rays down and out, 2-0. Hideki Matsui’s two-run homer was the only scoring in the game (batting behind Alex Rodriguez, Godzilla had three hits in all). James Shields pitched well for Tampa, featuring a diving change up that struck Bobby Abreu out three times. Wang was in fine form as well–his pitches were moving, he had good control, and his slider was particularly effective. It wasn’t a great game–a sloppy fielding play by Robinson Cano (who later redeemed himself with a nifty double play), a botched suicide squeeze by the Rays–but it was played in just under three hours, good thing for the fans who braved the chilly and windy conditions. The Yanks are now 3-3 on the season, and look to salvage a split of this four-game series tomorrow.

I can never remember a time in my childhood when my family didn’t get the New York Times on Sunday morning. One time, when I was about nine and my dad was still living with us he sent me on my bike to get the paper. I had a heavy-framed, second-hand dirt bike that Kevin O’Conner was kind enough to dump on me for $25. I peddled over a mile to the local grocery store and then struggled to balance the bulky paper on the handle bars of the bike as I wobbled back home. I was so pleased with myself when I made it back that I brought the paper straight into my parents’ bedroom. My father was sleeping on his back. I carefully placed the paper on his swollen belly like Indiana Jones replacing a gold headstone in Raiders of the Lost Ark. I thought it would be the best way he could ever get the paper–just wake up and have it there waiting for him. He jolted up and yelled at me to get the damn paper off of him.

I always had to wait until dad was finished with a section–the sports section, in most cases–before I had a chance to read it. Or if I read a section before him, I had to make sure that I returned it to the state it was in when I found it. During those final years when my father lived with us not only did I read the stat leaders on Sunday (the one that was available just once a week) but I cut out the full-page movie ads in the Arts and Leisure section. I still remember the print ads for Altered States, The Competition, Fame, The Shinning, Times Square, Popeye, All Night Long, So Fine. I learned how to become sharp at finding the “Nina’s” in Hirsfield’s masterful drawings.

The oldest name I know in print is Murray Chass. The Yankees, Times and Chass. I never knew exactly how to pronounce his name but I always remember seeing it. My dad pronounced it CHHHUH’ass, with a thick Semetic, CHHUH. I always said Chase in my head even though I knew it was wrong.

I have a great deal of admiration for all that Chass has accomplished during the course of his career. He’s one of the outstanding newspapermen of the free agency era, specializing in covering the business side of the sport. I haven’t enjoyed his column for several years now but I still have a certain amount of affection for him because he’s the baseball writer I associate with the Times of my childhood. Hey, Ray Negron told me that Chass was the best ball playing sportswriter of his day. Said that Chass really ripped it up in the annual sportswriter’s game back in the seventies. I know that Chass has become a favorite whipping boy on-line these days, and why not? he’s an easy target who is forever adding fuel to the fire. But I sometimes cringe when I see the abuse he takes. It’s his own fault but it doesn’t mean it’s fun to watch.

Chass doesn’t like blogs, though he doesn’t seem to know much about them. He has simply dismissed the genre outright. That’s fine, but I think he sounds foolish. Jon Weisman wrote a terrific post about Chass, the mainstream press and the blogosphere this past week:

My roots are in sports journalism. I had my first story published in the Los Angeles Times in 1986, covered my first major league baseball game in 1987 and was full-time in the profession by the end of 1989, nearly 13 years before I began blogging. I value how hard it is to be a sportswriter, and I emphasized to Steiner today how that many bloggers rely upon the work of mainstream sportswriters to launch their posts. For that matter, I understand job insecurity. I was the hot new prodigy on staff in ’89 – by ’92, there was a hotter, newer prodigy, and I was on my way to being marginalized at the ripe old age of 24.

But I expect reciprocity. If I’ve done a good job as an outsider looking in, I expect respect, not dismissal. First, some of the analysis done by bloggers is flat-out better than anything you’ll see from a major paper – and it’s done without the support system of a major paper, often without any renumeration whatsoever. In some ways, it’s harder work.

Second, while there’s value in interacting with the players and management of a baseball team, I can testify that there’s often value in not interacting with them. It can give you a level of objectivity that is often missing from mainstream reporting. And at a minimum, many kinds of analysis don’t require a locker-room presence, yet can be of tremendous value when done right.

…If there’s one thing I could live without ever hearing again, it’s that stereotype of bloggers working in their underwear from their parents’ basements. I mean, I’ve had it. I’m not going to sit here and let mainstream baseball writers, who spend, God love ’em, 2,000 hours a year inside a ballpark, tell me that I or my blogger colleagues need to get a life. We have lives, thank you very much. Many of us have day jobs – many of us need day jobs – and many of us spend our weekends with our families and friends rather than with A-Rod and Jeter, and we see a world beyond the baseball field. Not saying that the mainstreamers don’t – just that we do. Our passion for baseball drives us to write about the game, but hardly monopolizes our existence. If anything, we might have the perspective that insiders lack.

But don’t let me dictate to you who’s good and who isn’t. Judge for yourself. Just judge after you’ve read an individual’s work, not before.

It is overcast and flat-out cold today in New York. What to cook? A stew, a soup, shepherd’s pie, a lasagna, a risotto? Mmmm. While I ponder what to make, let me repeat that I think the Yankees will score a bunch of runs this afternoon. Chien-Ming Wang, the Yankees’ stopper, is on the hill.

Let’s Go Yan-Kees.

They said it was gunna rain but it never did. Instead the sun was out and it was a lovely, crisp spring day. Still a little chilly but the buds are on the trees. Some trees are already in bloom. So Emily and I had lunch at a cute Belgian spot in Manhattan and then walked over to one of her favorite places–the Container Store. Once we got there, I kept telling her, “You can’t stop us, you can only hope to contain us.” Then, I’d crack up. She rolled her eyes. Em calls me her Jack Tripper (Three’s Company is one of those shows that was one of her friends, that kept her great company when she was a kid). Then I waited for her to set me up with a straight line so that I could say, “That’s what she said,” my other favorite cornball expression of the moment. That’s a line I can’t say enough. It always cracks me up. Em puts up with me and groans more often then she laughs.

Emily isn’t exactly straight-laced but she is formal and dignified in public places. She is mortified if I talk too loudly, nevermind if I pull the old’ knock-the-merchandise-off-the-shelf-for-laffs bit. Her eyes start to bulge and she speaks in short bursts trying to whisper, “Alex, No, what are you doing, don’t–Hey, I’m serious.” Today, I went to a shelf stacked with tiny little white ring boxes and started knocking them over. I picked them up and when I went to put them back I knocked more over on purpose. I had her going for a couple of rounds of that.

I like tooling around town with my wife, we have a lot of laughs. She’s a country girl at heart who doesn’t have the nature for city-living. The crowds, the traffic, the fast pace. It’s not her. But when we are out together she can relax because I make her feel safe. I know where we are going and I am always watching out over her. I make sure to walk on her outside, so that I’m closest to the street. I keep an eye out on the subway car as she closes her eyes and rests her head on my shoulder. It makes me feel good to have her back and create that sense of security for her. Nice to feel like the man and to know your woman wants you to be the man.

After the Container Store, we were standing in the sun on 6th Avenue waiting for the light to turn. A Good Humor Truck was parked a few feet away, a hot dog stand next to it on the curb. A gray-haired woman wearing a black overcoat held a chocolate dipped cone in her hand. I made a yummy sound as we waited for the light. She walked towards us; the light changed, and we crossed the street with her. “Boy, do you look happy,” I said. She smiled, a look of simple but deep happiness on her face. “Well, it’s my first of the year.”

You’ve got to love the seasons. Speaking of which, the flu season is still hanging over the Yanks who lost again to the Rays today, this time, 6-3. Joe Girardi missed another game, Andy Pettitte wasn’t great (“I just didn’t have anything today, man”), Jason Giambi hurt himself, and oh yeah, the offense came up short again. A waste of a perfectly beautiful day. I’m not sorry we missed it. Anthony McCaron and Pete Abraham kept entertaining tabs on the game.

Tomorrow, the bats will bring the rukus.

One of the most exciting events of the spring has been the recent launching of the SI Vault. Talk about an embarassment of riches. Dag. To my dismay, the site does not offer anything close to a complete author index, making finding stuff a frustrating experience at best. I can only hope that this is a temporary problem, because it would be a real shame for something as rich and varied as the SI archives to be needlessly difficult to navigate.

Still, here are a couple of gems for you as we wait for today’s game. No telling if the rain will mess with things this afternoon. It’s warm and foggy this morning and the sun is even shinning here and there in the Bronx. I’m gunna throw up this game thread now cause I won’t be around for the start of the game. If they get it in, Andy Pettitte will make his first start of the year. If there is a delay, grab another bowl of soup, and consider the following bag o treats from the SI vault.

Come Down Selector:

A Diamond in the Ashes: Robert Lipsyte’s highly critical take on the rennovated Yankee Stadium (April, 1976).

This Old House: William Nack’s essay on the Stadium (June, 1999), and The Colossus, his piece on the Babe (August, 1998).

The Play that Beat the Bums: Ron Fimrite’s look back at the Mickey Owens game and the 1941 season (October, 1997).

Mickey Mantle: Richard Hoffer’s piece on the legacy of the last great player on the last great team (August, 1995).

A Real Rap Session: Peter Gammons talks hitting with Ted Williams, Don Mattingly and Wade Boggs from the Baseball Preivew issue (April, 1986).

Yogi: Roy Blount’s takeout piece on the Yankee legend (April, 1984).

Once He Was an Angel (March, 1972) and Tom Terrific and His Mystic Talent (July, ’72), two classic portraits (Bo Belinsky and Tom Seaver) by Pat Jordan.

No Place in the Shade: Mark Kram considered this portrait of Cool Papa Bell to be his finest work for SI (August, 1973). And while we’re on Kram, check out A Wink at a Homely Girl, his wonderful piece about his hometown Baltimore that appeared on the eve of the ’66 World Serious (October, 1966).

Laughing on the Outside: John Schulian’s fine appreciation of the great Josh Gibson (June, 2000).

And finally, He Does it By the Numbers: Dan Okrent’s landmark essay, you know, the one that “discovered” Bill James (March, 1981).

There, that should keep you busy for more than a minute.

The rain held out on Friday night but Joe Girardi missed the fourth game of the season anyhow with the flu. On the YES broadcast, Michael Kay reported that Girardi was at the Stadium, suffering in his office. Then Ian Kennedy went out and pitched something like the way his manager must be feeling. It sure wasn’t pretty. Kennedy had no grasp of the strike zone, threw seventy pitches, and allowed six runs off four hits and four walks in two-and-one-thirds innings.

His counterpart, Andy Sonnanstine, retired six of the first seven batters he faced before running into trouble in the third–everything he threw was up–when the Yankees bashed six hits, kicked off by a cheap-o right field homer by Godzilla, and followed by three shots off the outfield wall (Molina, Jeter, Giambi). When Alex Rodriguez scored from first base on Giambi’s double, he had a wide, guileless grin on his face as he crossed the plate. It was a small, isolated moment, one that made Rodriguez look like a little boy. (It was easy to take pleasure in his enjoyment, something that is not always the case with Rodriguez.)

The Bombers scored four runs in the rally and then Sonnanstine went back to the junkyard, pitching six innings in all and retiring the last ten batters he faced. The Yanks got some handy work from the pen in the young law firm of Albaladejo, Ohlendorf and Traber, keeping the game close, at 6-4. Then LaTroy Hawkins was beat about the neck and face by Cliff Floyd and his pals. Pass the Robitussin, son. The crowd booed Hawkins and chanted “Paul O’Neill,” chiding the poor guy for having the nerve to wear O’Neill’s former number (Hawkins, who according to Pete Abraham, is an all-around swell guy in the locker room, is wearing 21 as a tribute to Roberto Clemente). When Hawkins was mercifully removed, Cooter Farnswacker replaced him and quickly served up a three-run moon shot to Carlos Pena.

13-4 was the final. Nothing a warm bowl of Jewish Penicillin and a good of sleep can’t fix.

Tampa Bay Rays

2007 Record: 66-96 (.407)
2007 Pythagorean Record: 66-96 (.407)

Manager: Joe Maddon
General Manager: Andrew Friedman

Home Ballpark (multi-year Park Factors): Tropicana Field (98/100)

Who’s Replacing Whom:

Jason Bartlett replaces Brendan Harris
Willy Aybar replaces Ty Wigginton
Elliot Johnson replaces Josh Wilson
Erik Hinske replaces Delmon Young
Nathan Haynes replaces Elijah Dukes and Rocco Baldelli (DL)
Shawn Riggans replaces Josh Paul and Raul Casanova
Matt Garza replaces Jae Weong Seo, and the starts of Casey Fossum and J.P. Howell
Trever Miller replaces Fossum’s relief innings
Howell replaces Brian Stokes in the bullpen
Troy Percival replaces Al Reyes as closer
Dan Wheeler and Scott Dohmann take over relief innings pitched by Shawn Camp, Juan Salas (minors), Jae Kuk Ryu (minors), and Grant Balfour

25-man Roster:

1B – Carlos Peña (L)
2B – Akinori Iwamura (L)
SS – Jason Bartlett (R)
3B – Willy Aybar (S)
C – Dioner Navarro (S)
RF – Eric Hinske (L)
CF – B.J. Upton (R)
LF – Carl Crawford (L)
DH – Cliff Floyd (L)

Bench:

R – Jonny Gomes (OF)
L – Nathan Haynes (OF)
S – Elliot Johnson (IF)
R – Shawn Riggans (C)

Rotation:

R – James Shields
R – Matt Garza
R – Andy Sonnanstine
R – Edwin Jackson
R – Jason Hammel

Bullpen:

R – Troy Percival
R – Al Reyes
R – Dan Wheeler
R – Gary Glover
L – Trever Miller
R – Scott Dohmann
L – J. P. Howell

15-day DL: L – Scott Kazmir, L – Kurt Birkins, R – Chad Orvella, S – Ben Zobrist (IF)
60-day DL: R – Rocco Baldelli (OF)

Lineup:

L – Akinori Iwamura (2B)
L – Carl Crawford (LF)
L – Carlos Peña (1B)
R – B.J. Upton (CF)
L – Cliff Floyd (DH)
S – Willy Aybar (3B)
L – Erik Hinske (RF)
S – Dioner Navarro (C)
R – Jason Bartlett (SS)

(more…)

The last Opening Day game at Yankee Stadium has already been treated with several heaping measures of media coverage. We can expect that level of coverage to be ramped up even higher—applied full throttle both locally and nationally—to the final regular season game scheduled for the Stadium later this year.

In contrast, the final game at the old Yankee Stadium was treated with relatively little fanfare. Only 32,238 fans showed up for the 1973 finale; barring a tornado, there will be a full house for the final game of 2008, scheduled for September 21 against the Orioles. Of course, there were several factors at play back in 1973. ESPN, Fox Sports, and the World Wide Web had not yet come into existence. (I’m not sure if Alex Belth, Cliff Corcoran, Emma Span or Will Weiss had even been born yet!) The Yankees were mired in the middle of their mediocrity phase, nine seasons removed from their last postseason appearance and still three years away from their first American League East title—and the start of a late 1970s mini-dynasty. And then there is the "reconstructionist" belief that the old Stadium and the new one are really one in the same, that the current incarnation was simply a renovation and nothing more. I don’t really buy the latter argument, not when you consider how drastically the renovation changed the look of the old Stadium, taking away the majestic old façade and those awful view-blocking pillars. (The pillars were necessary, though, in keeping the old Stadium from toppling to the Bronx floor.) The Stadium that we have enjoyed for the last 35 years, while still beautiful to these eyes, looks far different than the one that was originally created at the outset of the Babe Ruth Era in 1923.

Frankly, the final game in the old Yankee Stadium deserved a better sendoff. Although 35 years late in its delivery, here is a tribute to the final game at the original House That Ruth Built.

On the afternoon of Sunday, September 30, 1973, the Yankees and Tigers closed out their respective seasons with one final soiree before the massive two and a half year reconstruction of Yankee Stadium would take place. Although well out of contention for the American League East, the Yankees did have something to play for that afternoon. They needed a win to finish the season at .500, which would have given Ralph Houk’s final season in pinstripes some respectability.

(more…)

I have always been nervous about peeing at a urinal in a crowded public restroom. It is a leftover anxiety from childhood that I can trace directly back to my experiences at the men’s rooms in Yankee Stadium. Not that I can recall any one traumatic incident, but the overall mood of the place–loud, profane, rushed, pressurized–still makes me uneasy, the place filled with cigarette smoke and the smell of urine and beer. So I wait for a stall just like I did when I was a boy.

Last night, I went to my historic first game of the final year of Yankee Stadium. It is the earliest in the season I’ve ever been to a game. Some cherce seats landed in my lap the day before, and so here I was, in the “rattle your jewelry” section down on the field level, standing in a narrow, grey stall, trying to concentrate on peeing as I listened to a young boy crying hysterically in the stall next to me as his father, impatient and frustrated, tried to get him to stop. The walls felt as if they were closing in on me like the trash compactor scene in Star Wars, and it occurred to me that one of the benefits of the new stadium will be more spacious restrooms.

(more…)

Yesterday after work, I went down to the lower east side, between the Manhattan and Williamsburg Bridges, to meet an old friend for a bite to eat. The neighborhood is populated mostly by Asians, Jews (this is the land of the Jewish settlements), Dominicans, and, increasingly now, hipsters. Hipsters with money. Which is where my old friend fits in (as fate would have it, his apartment building is just two blocks away from where my pal’s grandparents first lived when they came to this country).

As I waited for my man in front of a playground on the corner of Essex and Strauss, I watched young Asian and hipster moms with their kids. I’m always intrigued by watching women with little boys. Sometimes, you will see women–mothers or nannies–curb little boys’ enthusiasm, their aggressiveness on the playground. But that wasn’t the case here.

One beautiful, but hard-looking young Asian mother pushed her son on a swing and occasionally looked at me warily. Another tall Scandinavian woman chased her son around a tree, and then led him to one of those jungle gyms that have stairs and a plank bridge and slides. She led the way and then waited for him to climb up the stairs. She stood several feet away as if to challenge him, but in a sweet, reassuring way. He then passed her and went down the slide. She followed, her long legs awkwardly bent like a stork attempting to sit in the kitchen sink.

I turned back to the street and saw a group of four boys, maybe all of 13 cruise down the street. The kid in the front, wearing all black, stood up on his bike, and cocked his head to the side with a cell phone pressed to his ear. He coasted through the traffic sign and his gang followed behind him. Just then, two Asian girls, maybe all of 10, walked past me. One of them clopped back and forth in that seasoned way of city kids, who look much older than they really are. This little girl, with absolutely no hips at all, actually had a switch, even though she had nothing to switch around. Man, these city girls are tough.

I listened to Slick Rick on my i-pod and stood in the fading sunlight. Old Asian women passed me, carrying transparent blue grocery bags filled with produce. I wonder what they’ll be cooking tonight. Behind them, a hipster with a takeout bag in one hand and a Whole Foods bag in the other, wearing over-sized sunglasses looked typically ridiculous.

Then a little girl, maybe 7 or 8, walked by. She looked up at me. She had a good shiner on her right eye. Her face was round and quizzical as she looked right in my eyes. She was wearing a purple jacket, red skirt, white tights with little cartoon characters on them, and bright red shoes. Like most kids, she looked like she was almost going to tip over from the weight of her backpack. She was holding hands with an older, squat man in a green coat. Just as she looked at me, “Mona Lisa” played on my i-pod and I heard:

If you see me walking down the street
And I start to cry…each time we meet…
Walk on by…walk on by…
Foolish pride
Thats all that I have left, so, let me hide
The pain and the hurt that you gave me
When you said goodbye…
You walked on by…

I looked on the ground and saw a little strip of white paper. A fortune cookie. I picked it up and it read, “Be tactful; overlook not your own opportunity.”

Tonight, Phil Hughes, gets his first start of the season, the first chance to take advantage of the opportunity the Yankees have given him. Jay Jaffe and I will brave the cold and be at the park.

Let’s Go Yan-kees!