Steven Goldman has a fine appreciation of Alex Rodriguez, and the third baseman’s impressive 2004 campaign in the most recent edition of The Pinstriped Bible. Looking at the numbers, maybe Rodriguez didn’t have an off-season after all:

The funny thing about Rodriguez having something to prove is that in 2004 he was largely consistent with his own standards and probably turned in the best offensive/defensive season ever by a Yankees third baseman. The first thing to note is that Yankee Stadium is a much tougher hitter’s park than Ameriquest Field in Arlington. The park formerly known as The Ballpark in Arlington gifts right-handed hitters with a lot of home runs. Yankee Stadium doesn’t do much for hitters at all, other than giving a mild boost to left-handed home run hitters. Decades after the left field “Death Valley” has shrunken to what Bill James called “Life Support Valley,” the ballpark in the Bronx is still a pitcher’s best friend.

At home, Rodriguez hit a good-but-not-stunning .280/.365/.492. On the road he batted .293/.386/.534, which is what he had been doing in neutral parks all along. As a Ranger in 2003, he batted .282/.384/.577 on the road but bulked up to .314/.407/.652 at home. Yankee Stadium doesn’t do that for anyone. It’s the Joe DiMaggio story writ small.

According to Joel Sherman in the New York Post, the Yankees may offer Ramiro Mendoza a minor-league contract. What’s old is new again. Joe Girardi and Luis Sojo are part of Joe Torre’s coaching staff, and Tino Martinez and Mike Stanton are back with the team. Who is next?

Although I read Malcom Gladwell’s piece on the nature of choking in sports, I had not read his wildly popular first book, “The Tipping Point,” when I picked up his second effort, “Blink.” I didn’t get too far into “Blink” before I understood why Gladwell is so well-liked; he’s a gifted writer, with the rare ability to make complicated ideas approachable to the average reader. His prose is conversational and lively, his enthusiasm contageous. “Blink” examines when we should and should not trust our initial reactions. As Gladwell writes in the introduction:

“Blink” is concerned with the very smallest components of our everday lives–the content and origin of those instantaneous impressions and conclusions that spontaneously arise whenever we meet a new person or confront a complex situation or have to make a decision under conditions of stress. When it comes to the task of understanding ourselves and the world, I think we pay too much attention to…grand themes and too little to the particulars of those fleeting moments. But what would happen if we took our instincts seriously? What if we stopped scanning the horizon with our binoculars and began instead examining our own decision making and behavior through the most powerful of microscopes? I think that would change the way wars are fought, the kinds of products we see on the shelves, the kinds of movies that get made, the way police officers are trained, the way couples are counseled, the way job interviews ar conducted, and on and on. And if we were to combine all of those little changes, we would end up with a different and better world.

Gladwell has been criticized for being a populist and watering-down sophisticated ideas, but I think his greatest strength is engaging his readers and stimulating thought and conversation. At least that’s what “Blink” did for me. It just got my mind racing, making connections between improvisational acting and basketball*, casting actors in a movie and the dynamics of personal relationships. I loved it. I don’t know if it’s a perfect book, but it’s a great read, and it has served as a catalyst for lots of great conversation.

I wrote Gladwell, told him that I appreciate his book, and shared a story about how changes in the process of film editing relate to decision-making. I won’t lie, I also was just dying to ask him if he thought the Yankee playoff collapse last fall could be considered choking. He wrote back, told me he was a huge fan of “Moneyball,” and that he didn’t think the Yankees had choked. In fact, he suggested that baseball is not a sport that lends itself to choking in a team sense like football or basketball do. If Bernie Williams is slumping that won’t necessarily impact how Derek Jeter performs. (Individual situations like what happened to Steve Blass or Chuck Knoblauch are different.)

I thought it would be fun to ask Gladwell some questions as he’s a big sports fan. However, with his book tour in full swing, he’s simply too busy to sit down to do the kind of extensive interview I usually like to do here. So at the risk of being flip, here’s six quick questions I recently asked Gladwell (for a longer conversation with him, check out Rob Neyer’s 2002 interview). I figure it’s best to be somewhat timely, instead of holding off for months. I hope it encourages you to consider reading “Blink.” When things calm down some for Gladwell, I’d like to continue talking with him about sports, so if you’ve got any questions you’d like me to ask, feel free to leave them in the comments section below.

BB: How did you come to write “Blink” and what is it about? Was it something that you had been mulling over for a long time?

MG: Blink is a book about what happens in the first seconds of any encounter. When you see someone for the first time, or hear a song for the first time, or have to make a decision in a blink of an eye, what happens? I got interested in the subject, weirdly enough, when I grew my hair out. I used to have short, respectable hair. Now I have a fairly wild afro, and the minute my hair changed my life changed as well. I started getting stopped by cops, and getting speeding tickets, and pulled out of airport security lines. Something was happening in that instant when people laid eyes on me that fundamentally changed the way I was perceived and treated by the world, and I wanted to understand what it was.

BB: You’ve got such an elastic mind, illustrating an intellectual concept with a wide variety of examples, from car salesman to food testers to scientists to musicians and improvisational actors. What draws you to using such an eclectic group of characters?

MG: Iím always interested in making the ideas Iím writing about seem relevant, and the best way to do that, I think, is to look for as many different manifestations of that idea as possible. So if I can explain something about what happened during the Diallo shooting by talking about autism (as I do in Blink) I think it helps to make the ideas seem more real.

BB: Youíve obviously got a knack for seeing things as others donít. Where does that come from? Did you grow up reading a particular writer or writers who did the same thing?

MG: I’m not sure where that comes from. It might be that Iím very accustomed to being an outsider. I’m the immigrant son of immigrant parents. I’m bi-racial. I’m left-handed. I’m only person to have grown up in Canada who neither skates nor swims. I suppose if you were to put all that together, you’d come up with the psychological portrait of someone who sees the world through a slightly different lens than others.

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Has anyone else noticed that it is getting lighter, earlier these days? I haven’t had to turn on the light this week as I’m getting dressed in the morning. Hot dog. We’re just a precious few weeks away from spring training, and Yankee star-power is already rearing its fabulous head. Here’s the latest on Yogi Berra, The Big Unit, Gary Sheffield, Alex Rodriguez and Derek Jeter. For a report on how the other half lives, check out the latest from Cliff Corcoran.

With spring training still weeks away, many fans are still catching up on their baseball literature. If fiction interests you, consider Lee Irby’s new novel, “7,000 Clams,”, a crime story about a bootlegger that features none other than the Sultan of Swat, Babe Ruth. I recently asked Irby, a history professor at Eckerd College, what drew him to writing the book.

Irby: One day at the library, I was doing research on what I thought would be a scholarly piece on the history of baseball in St. Petersburg. I decided it would be fun to delve into what the Yankees were up to when they hit town for the first time in 1925. In the St Pete Times I saw an article that mentioned Babe Ruth getting sued for $7,700 (I changed it to 7,000) by some bookies in NYC. The same story appeared in the New York Times; no Ruth bios mentioned it (that I found). I kept digging. During spring training in 1925, Ruth’s wife Helen came down to save the marriage (it didn’t work, they separated right after). He was drinking like a fish, sleeping around, and got pretty sick (he nearly died after he left spring training–The Belly Ache Heard Round the World). I figured all of that would work in a novel. I am a huge baseball fan. My father was a Yankees fan from the sticks of Virginia because my uncle, Red Irby, played shortstop in the Yankees farm system in the 1950s (he got to Triple A; he was good). Red, though, blew out his knee, drank and caroused, and yelled at his managers. Career over. Mine never got started. I loved the sport but couldn’t play it well.

BB: What kind of license did you take with the Ruth legend?

Irby: Very little, I hope. I tried to capture him, his spirit and his appetites, the best I could. I wanted a complete picture, warts and all. He was generous and selfish, larger than life and strangely childish. I followed him around through the St Pete Times. Everywhere he goes in my book, he went in real life during March 1925. The book climaxes at the running of the Babe Ruth Cup at Derby Lanes Dog Track. For his voice, I relied on his own book, Babe Ruth’s Own Book on Baseball, that was ghost written but probably from interviews with him. That helped with his cadence. It is a suspenseful tale that I imagined men and women would both like–I tried to put in everything but the kitchen sink. I spent four years writing it because I wanted the book to be well constructed. The plot twists and turns like a mystery; there is history for those who like it; a love story; hit men sent by Al Capone; and the Babe. I used slang from the Twenties so there are almost no “curse” words. I slaved over the details and sweated everything. The editor who bought the book at Doubleday, Jason Kaufman, was the editor for The Da Vinci Code, so I felt pretty good about my efforts. Lucky for me, Jason is a big Yankees and baseball fan.

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Bob Klapisch recently visited Alex Rodriguez in Miami and was invited to join the Yankee third baseman’s morning work out routine. Needless to say, Klapisch was left gasping for air, and impressed with Rodriguez’s drive. Further, he writes that, like Giambi, Rodriguez has a need to be liked. But, in a meeting with George Steinbrenner last week, Rodriguez was encouraged to worry less about being accepted in the Yankee clubhouse and concentrate on developing an edge, a mean-streak:

Steinbrenner told Rodriguez it was no longer necessary to defer to Jeter. Even though he rarely ventures into the clubhouse anymore, The Boss nevertheless zeroed in on the Jeter-A-Rod dynamic: It’s Rodriguez who has sought Jeter’s approval, not the other way around.

…”This is still Jeter’s team because he’s the captain, but my approach is not to be everyone’s best friend,” Rodriguez said. “My approach is to win championships. The only way to do that is to be myself, and to take care of my world. With my talent people will follow naturally.”

Watching the Yankees last year, it was obvious that Rodriguez deferred to Derek Jeter. While Jeter is the captain and a Yankee icon, Rodriguez is the superior player. If he needs to channel the inner-Reggie in him to play his best ball, so be it. It’d be sure to make the newspapers happy, but if winning is really the only important thing in Yankeeland, the end result will most likely make Yankee fans pleased too.

Tyler Kepner has an extensive profile on Jason Giambi in the New York Times today. According to Kepner, Giambi is a player who sincerely cares what people think about him. This leads Kepner to wonder how Giambi’s nice-guy personality with react to the jeering he will hear from fans everywhere in 2005:

When games start, he will face a season-long test of his mental makeup. Fans will be ruthless, and Giambi will care what they think.

“That’s both a strength and a weakness for him,” said Billy Beane, the general manager of the Oakland Athletics. “When you’re a major league player, it can be a character flaw. But it’s not a character flaw as a human being. He’s a good guy, and if it affects him, that’s because he does care.”

Will he run into trouble in the Yankee clubhouse?

“Jason’s a nice guy,” said Yankees reliever Mike Stanton, who was Giambi’s teammate in 2002. “He’s very personable, he’s intelligent, he’s got a good personality. I would think it would be tough for somebody to hold a long-term grudge on somebody you liked before it started.

“I’m not saying it can’t happen, but I think most of his teammates would probably say they just want him to get healthy.”

From a distance, former teammate Tony Clark thinks Giambi will pull through:

“The same commitment he had that made him a superstar in our game will be the driving force behind him excelling again,” Clark, who now plays for Arizona, said in an e-mail message. “It won’t be easy, but anything worth its weight usually isn’t. My hope for him is that through all of the adversity, he finds the strength he needs to have to be a contributor on the field and the inner peace to persevere off of it. I know he can do it.”

Jason Giambi, this is your life.

Jay Jaffe, the Peter Finch of baseball bloggers, looks at what the Yankees have done this off-season, and well, it makes him sick. Dayn Perry thinks the Bombers have done a poor job too, and I know that Steven Goldman, Cliff Corcoran and Larry Mahnken aren’t wild about what’s been going on in the Bronx either. But nobody goes for the jugular quite like Jaffe. Kick em in the grill, Jay.

I got a late start this morning and the sun was up by the time I was walking east on 231st street to the subway. The streets looked virtually white in the sunshine. As clusters of people waddled their way down the street, wonderfully long and narrow shadows were cast behind them. The shadows must have been three or four times longer than a persons actual size. When I got on the train, I read a bit in the Times about Jason Giambi. Talk about a guy with a long shadow. According to Tyler Kepner:

Giambi has finally made contact with Yankees General Manager Brian Cashman.

“I’ve had good conversations with him,” Cashman said yesterday. “He’s doing well, working hard, and all his medicals are good. We’re looking forward to him returning and having a lot to prove.”

In other Yankee news–and boy, there hasn’t been much to talk about in the past few weeks–utility man Damian Rolls has been offered a minor-league contract, and the team is close to offering a similar deal to Doug Glanville, to serve as a back up outfielder.

Carlos Delgado goes to the Fish unt the Mets get Minky. Happy?

On the way home yesterday evening, I was listening to my walkman and reading print-outs from Baseball Prospectus on the 1 train, when, at 86th street, I heard a commotion. It was coming from my left so I pulled the left earphone away from my ear and I heard a man talking loudly, and sternly. Like many New Yorkers, Iíve grown numb to the pleas of panhandlers (and there are far fewer homeless people on the trains than there was ten, fifteen years ago). Sometimes I listen to their stories and give them some change, sometimes I donít. Iím more inclined to dig into my pockets to the musicians who make their way through the cars.
A middle-aged, dark skinned man stood in the middle of the train. He had a beard, and was missing several teeth. He wore a wool cap and a large sweater, and had a fanny back strapped to his waist. A clear, plastic bag dangled from his right hand. I only caught the tail end of what he was saying, “

So, will Carlos Delgado be a Met, or what?

Larry Mahnken, who hosts the Replacement Level Yankee Blog, is in a tight spot. His apartment building burned down two nights ago, leaving Larry homeless. He didn’t have insurance, but fortunately, he got out in one piece and has his health. But he’s lost everything. One way we can help is by leaving a donation on his paypal account which is posted on his site. We’re thinking of you Larry and are thankful that you are still with us.

The hot air that fuels the Yankee-Red Sox rivalry is plenty warm here in the dead of winter. Even with most of New Englander focused squarely on the Super Bowl. Hey, here’s some breaking news for all you trash-talking Northeastern yentas out there: Alex Rodriguez doesn’t like the Red Sox, is hated by Red Sox fans and probably many members of the Red Sox organization too. Curt Schilling is not going to win a popularity contest in the Bronx anytime soon either. As if you didn’t know, the two superstars have exchanged barbs this off-season, with Mr. Rodriguez the latest to fire-away. Look for Rodriguez to be in the middle of another on-the-field brawl next season (though my hunch says that David Wells, and not Schilling will be on the other end of the exchange). I think it’s reasonable to expect a lot more barking back-and-forth from certain parties, as well.

Some people think Rodriguez is a manicured phony. But he is smart enough to be accountable:

“I played well at times, I played terrible at times,” Rodriguez said. “And at the end of the day, I feel like my job was a failure because I was basically taken there to be the final part of a world championship team. So if you have to blame someone or point a finger at someone, you have to look in my direction, and I take 100 percent of the blame.”

Jason Giambi could learn a thing or three from the way Rodriguez handles himself as a New York star.

On Friday afternoon a friend of mine called from the subway platform on the 7 line in Queens. He was above ground and freezing his tucchas off. He said that when New York is this cold, the streets white from the salt, he is reminded of the scene in “The French Connection” when Gene Hackman is shadowing the Fernando Rey character. Popeye Doyle is standing outside in the cold, shivering, on the stake-out, for what seems like hours, hopping in place, trying to stay warm, while Charnier is comfortably eating dinner in a toasty, upscale bistro. That’s what New York is like when it gets this cold, he told me. Gray and unforgiving. Ain’t it the truth.

Our weekend travel plans shelved, Em and I got up bright and early on Saturday morning and headed down to the big Fairway store, off 125th street and the West Side Highway, where we do our weekly shopping. We knew there would be a rush what with a snow storm on the way, but dag, by a quarter-to-nine in the morning, the place was ridiculous. “Dogs and cats, sleeping together…” It was retarded. Leave it to New Yorkers to get nuts over a foot of snow. We weaved and dodged our way through the panic and managed to get home a few hours before the snow actually hit. Ahhh, so what to do during a snow storm? Why make a home-made chicken soup, of course.

Which is how I spent my Saturday. In the evening, when cabin fever began to set in, Emily dragged my ass outside for a walk. She loves the snow, and we had a good time doing the snow-angel thing, trooping around the neighborhood, taking-in the silence, admiring big patches of virgin snow. We returned home for some hot chocolate and watched “Cutter’s Way,” a slept-on 1981 Jeff Bridges thriller, that featured John Heard’s breakthrough, if hammy, performance. Emily got distracted and was up puttering around about half-way through the movie. I hadn’t seen it years and think it holds up pretty well. But then again, I’m a sucker for Jeff Bridges, who is almost always good.

Not much happened in New York baseball over the weekend. The Mets are still in the hunt for Carlos Delgado…or are they? Meanwhile, the Yanks picked up Rey Sanchez to be their futility infielder. Sanchez played with the team briefly in 1997 and got along famously with Derek Jeter. I know the guy can’t hit, and I don’t know how much he’s lost in the field–he used to be reliable–but I’ve always liked him, scrub or not.

I think that many of the Yankee fans who read Bronx Banter would truly love to see Robinson Cano get an opportunity to play in New York this year. Many of us are already prepared to hoot and holler when Tony Womack inevitably starts the year in the lead-off position. Hopefully, that won’t last for more than a few months. Why? Ahh, I’ve got to go back to my man, Goldman, who addressed the Womack question sharply a few days ago. A Pinstriped Bible reader asked:

Why are you so down on Tony Womack? Cairo did have a good year, but he is an average player. What Womack has that Cairo does not, apart from speed, is that uncanny ability to make things happen. Flash. There is a dynamic quality to his game that isn’t always registered in the scorecard. Some players just have that, and Womack, albeit his shortcomings, seems to make the “highlights” more so than other players of his ilk. The Yankees, with their powerful lineup, can afford to lose a tad of steadiness in the hopes that Womack produces when it really counts.

Goldman: Womack canít hit. Period. He does not make things happen. He makes them unhappen. To make things happen a player has to reach base. Womack canít do that. The quality of his game is registered in the scorecard every day. The reason the “dynamic quality” escapes the scorecard is because it isnít there.

Didnít anyone watch the World Series? The 2004 baseball season? There is a reason that the team with Mark Bellhorn beat the team with Miguel Cairo. There is a reason that the team with Mark Bellhorn beat the team with Tony Womack. Iím down on Womack because heís among the ten most useless players in the game.

Not much gray area there.

Okay. Sticking with the bullpen, who will be the surprise contributor in 2005: Scott Proctor, Brett Prinz, or Colter Bean? Bean, was recently named co-Columbus Clipper of the Year:

Colter Bean came out of the Clippers bullpen 53 times, posting a 9-3 record with a 2.29 ERA, striking out 109 in just 82.2 innings. The sidearming right-hander originally signed as a free agent with the Yankees out of Auburn University in 2000. He was selected by Boston in the Rule V draft in December 2003, but was returned to the Yankees before the 2004 season started. In two seasons with Columbus, Bean has a 13-5 record with 5 saves and a 2.55 ERA. Colter had an outstanding 4.7 to 1 strikeout to walk ratio.

Steven Goldman has been raving about Bean for the longest.

According to the New York Post, the YES Network is considering David Justice as a possible replacement for Joe Girardi. Say it ain’t so, dude. The article goes on to say that Sweeny Murti is the leading candidate to replace Suzyn Waldman. I sure hope he gets it. He’s paid his dues and deserves a shot.

Chris Snow profiles four of Theo Epstein’s, bright, young employees today in the Boston Globe. The future is now.

What can we expect from the Yankees’ right-handed bullpen trio of Steve Karsay, Felix Rodriguez and Paul Quantrill this year?