As Jason Varitek’s new deal–not to mention, exclusive new title—is sealed for the holidays, Javier Vazquez had some cherce words for the Yankees:

I’m disappointed that the Yankees are talking about trading me for having only a bad second half to the season,” Vazquez was quoted as saying yesterday in La Perla del Sur in Puerto Rico.

“I’ve had four consistent seasons in the major leagues, and for one bad second half it’s unfair that they want to trade me,” he added. “I still trust in my abilities, and if the Yankees trade me, they will regret it.”

“Good for him,” says Emily when I read her this quote. You can’t hardly blame Javey for being irked. I love the guy. Still, it seems increasingly unlikely that he’ll be returning to the Bronx in a Yankee uniform next year. Quite frankly, if I were the Bombers and could have either him or Randy Johnson–sentiment aside–I’d take my chances with the Big Unit. But I will also miss Vazquez should he leave. I expect him to have a great year no matter where he pitches. At least I sure hope he will.

This being the time of year when we count our blessings, let me say that I’m fortunate to have a guy as gifted as Christopher DeRosa contribute the occasional piece to Bronx Banter. For real. DeRosa, a professor of history, assembles a terrific review each year called the “Baseball Procrastinator” which he sends it off to his friends. I’m fortunate enough to be on the list and “The Procastinator” is just tons of fun. One portion that I especially enjoy is DeRosa’s book reviews. So with his permission, I’m going to reprint his 04 reading list here in this space over the Christmas weekend. I hope you enjoy em as much as I have. And hey, here’s wishing everyone a safe and heppy holidaze.

Book Review

By Christopher DeRosa

Buster Olney, The Last Night of the Yankee Dynasty (2004)

Here is the first good book about latest Yankee dynasty. The title refers to game seven of the 2001 World Series. On the cover, Mariano Rivera stands on the mound, hands on hips, back to the camera. On the back, Paul OíNeill sits in the dirt at second base, head buried in hands. However, they are in their home uniforms, in Yankee Stadium. Game 7 was in Arizona, so I donít know what thatís about.
Olney provides the sort of insights I crave into the inner workings of the greatest team of all time. Whereas most people portray Steinbrenner as a tyrant, Olney characterizes him as a quitter — it rings true. He is prey to the same anxieties I have watching a game, actually, but he lashes out at real people. Joe Torre, aptly described by Chad Curtis as a “social genius,” has George somewhat intimidated, “Heís stuck with me, and heís stuck with me.” Mel Stottlemyre comes off as surprisingly enthusiastic and unpretentious, one of the kindest people around the Yankees.
Thatís good. Iím sentimental about this team and Iím glad they were likable. Bernie Williams, depicted trying to comfort families of the victims of the World Trade Center attack, is also the nice guy I want him to be. Clemens has an appealing generosity. El Duque is amusingly paranoid. Mariano Rivera holds “wild thing” closer theatrics in contempt. For a while, he didnít even realize someone had tagged him with signature entrance music. Tino Martinez often seemed to me like an OK but clearly limited player, but in the clubhouse, he was one of the key motivating personalities. Itís no wonder the press has never warmed to his replacement. The happiest and saddest player was Darryl Strawberry, who lived his Yankee days as if he fully believed the team had saved his life. When cancer prevented him from going north with the club in í99, he immediately fell apart. The profile of Derek Jeter just confirms the image. What you see is what you get.

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So, it’s the Red Sox who end up with a fitting, if expensive, Christmas gift, while Yankee fans will probably have to wait until 05 for the Wright stuff. Ah well, such is life. Something tells me we’ll get more than our fair share of goodies before it’s all said and done.

By Edward Cossette

Closing in on two months since Keith Foulke casually underhanded the ball to first for the final out of Game 4 of 2004 World Series, I am very happy to report that I’ve neither lost my identity (which, as a Red Sox fan, was defined by loss according to the media) nor have my beloved Red Sox become "just another team" to me since winning their first World Series in 86 years.

No, no, the red of the two dangling socks of the Red Sox logo has never seemed brighter nor more deserving of of fan idolatry than it does to me now, awash in the cleansing, baptismal waters of triumph realized.

And I don’t use the baptism metaphor lightly; baseball, Red Sox baseball, has always been a spiritual circumstance for me, and I’m not drinking from the chalice of hyperbole when I describe the feeling of putting a lifetime of not-quite-enough-to-win-it-all behind me as one of rebirth and resurrection.

I am a Red Sox fan reborn.

Everything is different now. But, at least for me, not in the negative way so many media pundits, scribes, and philistines prophesied and continue to presage. Instead, the difference is one of affirmation and positivity.

The Red Sox fan I was is no more. The Red Sox fan whose relationship with the team was built upon a memory of the past, of loss and sorrow, has been transfigured and delivered into a new realm.

Red Sox fans everywhere are now living in what Dante called il punto a cui tutti li tempi son presenti, "the point at which all time is present" (Paradiso, xvii).

And this is why I had to end the Bambino’s Curse weblog. Why I had to let it go to dust and ashes. The blog represented a past I/We have been delivered from.

As I’ve written before, the notion of "the Curse" was never something I took literally. I instead described it as all of our collective Red Sox fan angst, heartache, and desire. Only in these days and weeks since the Red Sox won the World Series have I come to the realization of just how true that was.

So long as the mind is captivated by memory, and really feels itself to be that past image … it can do nothing to save itself; its sacrifices are of no avail, and its Law gives no life. For it is under the spell of abstraction, so that, in the language of symbolism, it is "formed of clay", or wandering in the wilderness, in a "dry barren land where no water is". And under this spell it remains hopelessly and helplessly captive, just so long as this dead
image continues to give any illusion of life … (Watts, Myth and Ritual in Christianity, p. 98).

When the final out was recorded in the bottom of the 9th in St. Louis, it was time for me to put the "dead image" of George Herman Ruth, the Bambino, whose ghostly presence was the central design image, both literally and metaphorically, of my blog to a final, peaceful, rest.

But baseball, like life, continues. And in its constancy, its endurance, day to day, season to season, from boyhood, to middle age, and beyond, it will remind me and counsel me to live not just in the moment, without past or future, but also to realize that it is the timeless, eternal moment wherein our real lives exist.

Or said another way, "Buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jack, I don’t care if I never get back."

See you in Spring when everything is new again. (You’ll find me not among the dead but the living.)

According to reports coming out of New York, the Dodgers indeed gummed-up the potential Randy Johnson blockbuster…for now. Here is the scoop from Bill Madden and Murray Chass. Meanwhile, Carl Pavano, who Bobby Valentine has dubbed the “New Italian Stallion,” was introduced as the newest member of the Yankees at a press conference in the Bronx yesterday. And Bronx Banter favorite, El Duque, agreed to a two-year deal with the White Sox. I hope he continues to pitch well. If he’s healthy, White Sox fans are in for a treat. I know I’ll miss him.

I love writing about rooting for the Yankees. That ain’t hard to tell, is it? But yo, one of the most satisfying aspects of hosting this blog is having a community of readers who stop by, time and time again. I can’t tell you how rewarding that is for me. Some of you make yourselves known in the comments section, while others prefer to just read along, keeping your thoughts private. I value both kinds of readers, of course.

Anyhow, I was thinking how I could best say thanks, while offering some small token of my appreciation at the same time. I’ve been absolutely swamped with my 9-5 of late, so the interview I recently conducted will have to wait until early next year (so much transrcibing, so little time). Instead, I contacted a couple of writers and asked if they would be willing to submit a guest article to help celebrate another fine baseball year. Lucky for me–and now you–a bunch of ’em said yes. So over the next week or so, I’m gunna post articles from some of my favorite Internet writers, who I’m also fortunate enough to call friends.

The first piece is by Tim Marchman, who writes for The New York Sun and The New Partisan. Hope you enjoy. Heppy holidaze guys. Thanks for helping make Bronx Banter a lively place to get together and shoot the baseball breeze.

Flawed Heroes: Then and Now

By Tim Marchman

You have to take all the recent talk about the death of the baseball hero in a fair perspective.

There are, apparently, hundreds of sportswriterís sons tearing down Jason Giambi posters from their walls and pronouncing the disgraced slugger a cheat and a fraud. Giambi is both, and deserves in some measure the scorn of his young fans; but I doubt that these children will suffer too greatly from their disillusioning. They may even end up the better for it.

I grew up in Queens following the Davey Johnson Mets, probably the sleaziest team in living memory. Because it was Queens and because the Mets were so great and the Yankees so consistently second-best both in their division and in the city, to be a Yankee fan was usually a matter both of family inheritance and inborn contrarianism, and thus something fiercely clung to, like a threatened faith.

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So, wha’ happened? The New York Times reports:

As yesterday began, there was widespread anticipation that the three teams involved in the Johnson trade would send a signed agreement to Commissioner Bud Selig’s office so that he could approve the deal. Instead, the Dodgers’ owner, Frank McCourt, informed Randy Levine, the Yankees’ president, and the Arizona ownership – in separate telephone calls – that he wanted out of the trade.

…Whether Arizona even wants Vazquez is uncertain. His value might have taken a blow yesterday when Dodgers General Manager Paul DePodesta, in a conference call with reporters to discuss the deal’s demise, said he had a health concern about one of the players. It was an apparent reference to Vazquez.

… One baseball executive said the Dodgers had come to believe that Vazquez did not want to pitch on the West Coast and might invoke his contractual right to demand a trade for the 2006 season. There was also speculation that Vazquez, to underline his opposition, might have refused to take a physical for the Dodgers, and that this was behind the health concern cited by DePodesta.

And according to the Daily News, Yankee president Randy Levine is not pleased about how the Dodgers handled themselves:

“Last Friday, the Dodgers, Diamondbacks and Yankees all unequivocally agreed on this trade with a window for the commissioner’s approval, to negotiate extensions and for physicals,” Levine said last night. “Over the weekend, this was confirmed by myself, Jeffrey Moorad, (D-Backs CEO) Ken Kendrick and Frank McCourt and both the Yankees and Diamondbacks proceeding by submitting paperwork (to the commissioner). The Dodgers, however, did not and for whatever reasons pulled out of the trade and from here on in, we will think long and hard before we ever do business with them again.”

Who knows? Was Vazquez really that unhappy about going to the Dodgers? Is he really not healthy? Did the Dodgers do business in bad faith? (Whatever their reasons, it apparently didn’t have too much to do with getting someone to replace Shawn Green, as Los Angeles reportedly agreed in principle with J.D. Drew to a five-year, $55 million contract late last night.) Does it really matter now? The Yankees and Diamondbacks are expected to continue to try and work something out for Johnson. Whether a third team will be involved or not is anyone’s guess right now.

Meanwhile, Boss George met with Scott Boras yesterday, kicking off the Carlos Beltran talks. No big Christmas presents for the Yanks, but there is still plenty in the works for 2005.

The Dodgers done gone killed the deal. The Yankee-Diamondbacks-Dodgers trade is caput. Looks like the Bombers won’t be getting the Big Unit for Christmas after all. Shoot. But hey, so long as they can get the big sombitch before Opening Day, Yankee fans will be plenty happy. For now, it’s back to square one with Arizona. Well, at least Yankee fans won’t have one K. Ishii to kick around.

The Dodgers are holding up the three-team, ten-player trade that features Javey Vazquez going to L.A., Shawn Green to Arizona and of course, Randy Johnson to the Bronx. The Dodgers want to make sure they’ve got somebody to play right field, namely J.D. Drew. According to the New York Post:

Early yesterday, the deal hit a minor snag when Dodger GM Paul DePodesta was quoted in the Los Angeles Times saying there was uncertainty in the organization about making Green part of the three-team trade without having a run-producing replacement lined up. Later in the day, however, after Dodgers owner Frank McCourt talked to Diamondbacks CEO Jeff Moorad and Yankees president Randy Levine, it was clear DePodesta’s worries had been calmed thanks to L.A. closing in on Drew.

What are the odds this deal gets done–or falls apart–by Christmas Eve?

Bud Selig is expected to sign off on the ten-player blockbuster deal today. Arizona and New York will then have a 72-hour window to negotiate extensions with Shawn Green and Randy Johnson. Nothing new to report, really. All we can do is wait. Meanwhile, El Duque and Ruben Ruben declined salary arbitration last night giving the Yankees until January 8th to sign them to a deal or lose the right to work something out with them until early May. I’d like it if they could keep Duque and dump Sierra but I think it’ll work the other way round. Jason Varitek also declined arbitration but my guess is that the Red Sox will sign him before all is said and done. Even if they have to over-compensate to keep him, I can’t see them letting Tek go.

The blockbuster trade that would bring Randy Johnson to New York is all but complete. It needs to be approved by Bud Selig. The papers are reporting that it should go through by the middle of the week.

With the Randy Johnson-to-the-Yankees deal still in the works–I didn’t know that Kaz Ishii was part of this now–the Boston Red Sox acted swiftly yesterday, agreeing to a deal with Matt Clement (three years, about $25 million). After over-paying for Edgar Renteria, I think the Clement contract is very sensible. I’m frustrated that Clement didn’t choose another destination; it’s too bad the Yankees didn’t go after him instead of Jaret Wright (or even Carl Pavano, you could argue). But, he’ll pitch for Boston instead. He isn’t a control pitcher but he’s got nasty stuff. This deal keeps the Yankees and Sox extremely close in talent, don’t you think?

In other Red Sox news, all you yentas out there check out the Pedro Martinez–Curt Schilling melodrama.

Book Excerpt

From Red Sox Century

By Glenn Stout and Richard A. Johnson

(Part 1, 2, and 3)

His remarkable streak began in Detroit. After Boston jumped out to an early 3-0 lead, the Tigers came back to tie the game 4-4, then went ahead. But with one out in the ninth, Yaz turned on a Fred Lasher fastball and drove it into the upper deck to tie the game again, and then a Dalton Jones home run won it in the tenth. The win tied Boston with Detroit for the lead.

The next night, Detroit was leading 2-1 when Adair singled and Yaz walked. Scott tied the game with a hit and Yaz scored the game-winner when he raced home on a wild pitch. The next night in Cleveland, with the game tied 4-4 and two out in the ninth, Yaz singled, Scott walked, and Reggie Smith singled Yastrzemski in with the game winner again. They stretched their winning streak to four games with a 6-5 win, then got blown out 10-0 in the first game of a doubleheader in Baltimore.

But Yastrzemski wouldnít allow the Sox to stay down. With Boston trailing, Yaz led a comeback and Boston rolled to a 10-3 win. The following day, his 42nd home run of the season put Boston ahead, but the bullpen failed and the Orioles won 7-5.

Next to Yaz, Jim Lonborg was the most important player on the team. In the last game of the road trip, he proved it, holding Baltimore scoreless through six innings as the Sox built a 7-0 lead. Then Dick Williams, daring to think ahead for the first time all year, gambled and pulled his ace to save his arm in case he was needed in the next few days. The Sox held on to win 11-7 and returned to Boston for two games against Cleveland and two against Minnesota to end the regular season. With only four games remaining, the Red Sox were in a dead heat with the Twins for first place, while Chicago trailed by

The day after Pedro Martinez was introduced to the media as the newest member of the Mets, the Yankees still managed to kick their cross town rivals off the back pages. According to reports, the Yankees are close to trading Javey Vazquez and their two best prospects (Dioner Navarro and Eric Duncan) to the Dodgers in a three-team trade that would bring Randy Johnson to the Bronx. John Heyman broke the story late yesterday for Newsday. The Times, News and Post all have slightly different spins on the story. The complicated trade could involve a fourth team before all is said and done.

Who knows if it’ll actually happen. So much can go wrong. I’ll believe it when I see it. My initial reaction when I heard the news last night was one of happiness. The Yanks got their man. It was quickly followed with concern that they were losing two valuable chips in Navarro and Duncan. The concern didn’t last long. What are prospects for, after all? (Just ask the Braves who shipped three of em to Oakland in exchange for my man Tim Hudson yesterday afternoon.) Duncan wasn’t going to get any burn with Alex Rodriguez playing third in the Bronx, and Navarro? Is he worth holding up a deal like this? Hardly. Then, I felt sad about the possibility of Javier Vazquez moving on so quickly. I am a big fan of his, and thoroughly enjoyed rooting for him last year, inspite of his poor second half. But sentiment aside, I think two years of Randy Johnson over three years of Vazquez is a risk that is well worth taking.

Anyhow, I’m getting ahead of myself. The deal ain’t done yet.

Book Excerpt

From Red Sox Century

By Glenn Stout and Richard A. Johnson

(Part 1 and 2)

For the first time in over a decade fortune smiled on the Red Sox. On August 21, after power-hitting outfielder Ken Harrelson was quoted referring to Aís owner Charlie O. Finley as “a menace to baseball,” Finley released him. The Red Sox were drawn into the first free agent bidding war in modern baseball history.
The ability to add a player of Harrelsonís ability so late in the season without giving up a player was a unique opportunity. Knowing he could prove the difference in the pennant race teams in both leagues scrambled after the slugger.

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Pedro Martinez passed his physical yesterday. The Mets have scheduled a press conference for 11:00 a.m. to introduce Prince P to New York. The Yankees will officially announce the signings of Carl Pavano and Jaret Wright early next week.

Pedro Martinez is not officially a member of the Metropolitans yet, but that hasn’t prevented folks from weighing in with their take on his situation. Tom Verducci and Peter Gammons do not think it is an especially wonderful deal for the Mets. I asked Edward Cossette, author of the now deceased Bambino’s Curse website, for his reaction:

I’ll always have great memories of Pedro, from his incredible sick from flu relief appearance against Cleveland in the ’99 ALDS to all the goofy antics he pulled in the dugout — But it’s been a couple of years now since I felt secure as a fan watching him pitch. In that sense, I’m actually relieved that he’s gone. No more wondering if every pitch will be his last. And this frees up a lot of cash for other signings, like Edgar Renteria, which is breaking news that he signed with the Sox as I type. Theo doesn’t waste time.

Apparently not. Another Sox fan, ESPN’s Bill Simmons, writes:

I can’t emphasize this point strongly enough: Pedro’s shocking departure was the worst possible thing that could have happened. Losing the most exciting pitcher in the history of the franchise was bad enough. Losing him because he leveraged the good will of the championship season into a far-too-generous offer from the Red Sox, then leveraged that offer into a suicidal contract from the Mets — four years and $54 million for a six-inning pitcher with a history of shoulder problems — I mean, how are we supposed to feel about this guy now?

Did he care about those seven years in Boston at all? Was he another hired gun like Clemens? Were all the stories about him true, that he was a prima donna who only looked out for himself? And most importantly, would this change the way we remembered his contribution to the first World Series title in 86 years? We spent the past three months basking in the glow of October, reveling in everything good about sports. Then Pedro did his best to ruin the moment. I don’t know if I can forgive him.

In the Times, Harvey Araton has little sympathy for the Red Sox organization:

In the mythologized sports world we wish could still exist, if it ever did, Mart”nez would remain in Boston with all the others who undid 86 years’ worth of October disillusionment, and we would find out next season what these Yankees – still without the southpaw pitching to neutralize the murderous left-handers in the Red Sox lineup – can do without their stolen front-runners’ swagger.

It just does not work that way, in any sport, on any team, least of all the Boston Red Sox under the calculating leadership of Larry Lucchino and Theo Epstein. Loyalty? Where is it for Derek Lowe, who has averaged 17 victories for them over the last three years, who saved Game 5 of the division series against Oakland in 2003, who won Game 7 against the Yankees last October and closed out the Cardinals in the World Series?

To this point, the Red Sox have offered Lowe arbitration or an escort to the Rhode Island border, cast him as an unwanted party boy, and turned around to hand a fat contract to the bloated and the injury prone bar-hopper David Wells, age 41. Loyalty? This time last year, the Red Sox put Mart”nez’s good friend Manny Ramirez on waivers, and plotted to unload Nomar Garciaparra, finally dealing him last summer to the Cubs.

Loyalty? The other day, the word out of Boston was that the Red Sox were firing Bill Morgan, their 2004 postseason most valuable physician, whose improvisational suturing of Curt Schilling’s right ankle kept the World Series dream from rupturing altogether.

Meanwhile, what about the Yankees in all of this? Well, in the latest edition of Pinstriped Bible, Steven Goldman, ‘splains the awful truth about the Yankees new second baseman, Tony Womack:

This is the worst move by the Yankees of the last decade. Womack is a player without redeeming features. He canít hit. He is a poor fielder. His main skill, stealing bases, has little relevance to a power-hitting offense. A career .274/.319/.362 hitter, he reached a late peak last year, hitting .307/.349/.385. Not only are these numbers unexceptional by the standards of the league, but it is highly unlikely that Womack will reach them again.

Reaching for Womack when there were better, albeit more expensive options on the market again suggests the Yankees are trying to reign in their spending. Itís wasted effort because at the All-Star break, Alfonso Soriano will be back on the organizational radar screen. It would be in the organizationís best interest to give Robinson Cano a legitimate shot to win the job at spring training, and failing that to promote him at the soonest opportunity and reduce Womack to reserve status.

What gets me going is the thought of Womack leading off. But you know what? Even if Torre starts the season in that manner, it won’t be long before Womack will be batting ninth, don’t you think?

According to the Boston Globe, the Red Sox have signed the stellar shortstop Edgar Renteria to a four-year, $40 million deal. Renteria is a player that I’ve always appreciated and admired. The “Our shortstop is better than yours” debates live on.