SPORTIN’ WOOD

There was an interesting feature in the Times the other day, titled “Going Against the Grain,” by Bill Pennington, which chronicled the efforts of the Massachusetts high school system to banish metal bats in favor of wood bats. Opinion is split, and the debates are heated, but I like the concept behind the move. I grew up playing with metal bats, and I appreciated how they were easier on the hands, and how they gave me an inflated sense of myself as a hitter.

Some high school coaches are complaining that using wood bats will ruin the chances of their kids to compete for scholarships. While this may be true, anyone who is worth their salt is eventually going to have to use a wood bat if they make the minor leagues, let alone the majors, anyway. Why not get ’em started early?

Besides, who prefers the ping of a metal bat over the crack of an old fashioned wooden one?

“I’m worried about the future,” said Frank Carey, the baseball coach at North Redding High School, who made an impassioned plea at the hearings. “Kids have trouble with failure and metal makes it easier to hit. Nobody likes to hit .200.”

Alex Campea, the baseball coach at Catholic Memorial High School in West Roxbury, suggested that wood bats would improve the quality of games. “Those kids will also become better fielders and better bunters,” Campea said. “We will have 2-1 games with speed and strategy. It’s not supposed to be about who hits it farthest. We had too many 15-12 games. Those are football scores.”

LIFE LESSONS

Last month Barry Bonds was talking about how much he picked up watching David Eckstein play when they toured Japan together last fall. Today, Peter Gammons has a column on the story:

“He’s one of my favorite players ever,” Bonds said. “I told him that he’s a gift from God. Everything is difficult for him, yet he gets it done and done well.”

…”He sat around with me and a lot of the guys for hours almost every day, talking baseball and teaching,” Eckstein said. “He never stops learning.”

Like Buck O’Neil recently told Bronx Banter: “When you stop learning, you’re through.”

And they say Barry Bonds isn’t a role model.

Bullshit.

BOW DOWN TO A PLAYER THAT’S GREATER THAN YOU…

Alex Rodriguez became the youngest man to hit 300 home runs yesterday, crushing the mark set by Jimmie Foxx. Lordy.

Don’t throw rocks at the throne, man.

Meanwhile, old man winter threw a gust of wind at Sammy Sosa in the 6th inning of the Mets 4-1 win over the Cubs last night at Shea, and knocked down what looked like was going to be Slammin’ Sammy’s 500th career home run. Sammy thought it was gone, and so did Al Leiter. In August, that ball easily reaches the bullpen. The blast would have tied the game. Instead it was a long out. But you should have heard the buzz at Shea after the ball landed safely in Cliff Floyd’s glove. Anybody would can generate that kind of excitement when he makes an out is a player to remember.

A real superstar.

CHARMED

It has often been said—and rightfully so, that Derek Jeter has led a charmed baseball career. Even though Jeter’s famous luck ran out on opening day in a collision with Toronto catcher Ken Huckaby, the Yankees future captain must have sprinkled his last batch of gold dust on rookie Erick Almonte, who had a spalshy debut last night, with 2 hits, including a home run in the Yankees 9-7 victory over the Blue Jays.

The game itself was a bloated, tedious affair. The Yankees jumped out to a 9-1 lead, and then watched the Jays slowly chip their way back into the game. No lead is safe these days. Mike Mussina was not sharp, and Jose Contreras was awful in relief. But Chris Hammond came in and recorded a big strike out, before Juan Acevedo closed the door in the 9th and helped the Yankees gain their first sweep of a series on the road to start a season since the World War II.

Todd Ziele started at third base, batted in the 2-hole, and collected 3 hits including a homer in his first at bat. Hideki Matsui narrowly missed his first home run on American soil, and wound up with 2 hits, and an RBI.

Derek Jeter was on the Yankee bench during the game, arm in a sling, smile on his face. Jeter goofed around in his usual sunny manner, which must have come as a welcome sight for Yankee fans. At a time when he should be at his lowest, Jeter put on a good face, and brought his optimism and good cheer to his teammates.

Jeter is scheduled to have an MRI later this afternoon in Tampa. Phil Nevin, the Padres slugger who will miss the entire 2003 season because of a dislocated shoulder offered his empathy to Jeter.

Jeter’s disposition may have alleviated any undue pressure Almonte may have put on himself. Almonte is a big kid, and gasp, may even be prettier than Jeter. Lil’ Sexy was welcomed by his Yankee teammates, especially by fellow countryman Enrique Wilson, who will share duties at short for the time being with Almonte. Wilson, who looks more like a Dominican Hobbit, took Almonte out to lunch and bought him a pair of shoes earlier in the day, taking care of the rookie just like Manny Ramirez had once looked out for the young Wilson when he came up with the Indians:

“I don’t make much money ($700,000 this season), but he makes less,” Wilson said, about his Dominican soulmate from Santo Domingo. “We come from a poor city. We stay together. It’s the same thing when American players come to our country. It’s kind of hard.”

…”He did everything as good as you can do it,” JoeTorre said. “He doesn’t say anything. He’s really tough to read, but he certainly had a smile on his face when he hit the home run.”

Joel Sherman reported in the Post:

“It doesn’t surprise me [about Wilson],” said manager Joe Torre. “It’s a real sign of class for Enrique to do what he did today. I’m real happy he did it.”

Wilson felt he was just honoring his own heritage. Breaking in with the Indians in 1997-98, Wilson was prevented from reaching into his pocket by Manny Ramirez, who took care of food, clothes and housing, “Because he told me, ‘Rookies don’t pay.’ “

As for Jeter, we should know something by the end of the day, or early tomorrow about his immediate future. Reports around New York have been overly optimistic I think, but then again, I always dwell on the worst-case scenerio.

Travis Nelson, over at Boy of Summer, makes a convincing case for Mike Bordick as a possible replacement at short.

And Jay Jaffe, The Futility Infielder, has an excellent write-up on the entire Jeter story too.

Check ’em out.

JUST WHERE DO YOU THINK YOU’RE GOING?

According to Lee Sinn’s ATM report today:

Indians GM Mark Shapiro says if the Yankees are interested in Omar Vizquel, he “ha[s] no intention of trading him.” Meanwhile, Vizquel has no trade rights, by virtue of being a 10 and 5 year man and has said he doesn’t want to go anywhere, except he’ll consider returning to the Mariners.

Harumpf.

YANKS ROLL; BOSOX BEAT D-RAYS IN 16

Led by Jason Giambi’s 2 homers, and a decent outing from Andy Pettitte, the Yankees rolled over the Blue Jays 10-1 last night in Toronto. Each Yankee regular had at least one hit. Erick Almonte, who joined the team prior to the game will get his first start tonight.

Meanwhile, the Red Sox survived a late home run from Rey Ordonez, got some good pitching from their bullpen and eventually beat Tampa, 9-8 in 16 innings.

THE WORLD ACCORDING TO NEYER

Rob Neyer is probably the most famous popular sabermetrican not named Bill James. Although I value his insights as much as the next guy, what I enjoy most about Neyer is his unpretentious and self-depricating writing style. Neyer has a trio of columns this week that are worth checking out: one, one the fate of the Yanks now that DJ is down, another on the next revolution in baseball, and finally Rob’s prediction that the Red Sox will win the World Serious this fall.

Here is Neyer’s take on the Yankees’ shortstop situation:

Do the Yankees have an alternative at shortstop? Not at hand, no. They have nobody in the minors who even remotely resembles a major-league shortstop. Minor leaguer Erick Almonte might become a decent player someday, but at this moment he’s no better than Wilson. And platooning isn’t in order, because Almonte bats right-handed and the switch-hitting Wilson has fared significantly better against left-handed pitchers.

So if the Yankees want a good shortstop, they’re going to have look elsewhere.

Why the Sox? And why now? Does this have anything to do with the fact that Neyer’s old boss, Mr. James now works for Boston?

Because I can, and because I want to.

…But the truth is that winning the World Series isn’t about being the best, it’s about being the luckiest. Yes, I know the 1998 Yankees were the best team, and of course they won the World Series. But weren’t the 2001 Mariners also the best team? Well, they nearly lost their Division Series before getting crunched in the ALCS. I thought the Angels and Giants might actually have been the best teams in their leagues last year, but they both needed a bit of luck to get where they got.

So if you make me pick a World Series winner, then I might as well have some fun. I think the Red Sox are going to win something like 100 games, and I’m not going to not have fun just because it’s been 85 years since the Sox got lucky.

And what of the next revolution in baseball? Neyer thinks it concerns the new generation of general managers coming into the game:

There are, today, baseball executives who are actively seeking guidance from brilliant men from other disciplines and professions. This is happening, in large part, because the new breed of baseball executives is both incredibly bright and incredibly educated, and so they’re not intimidated by other people who are incredibly bright and incredibly educated.

I’m not suggesting that the “traditional baseball man” isn’t bright. Of course he’s bright. I’ve spoken to a dozen traditional baseball men in the last year, and I can report that not one of them wasn’t bright.

…Most baseball executives, even the bright ones, don’t want to try anything new, because new is hard. Instead, their goal is to do things the way they’ve always been done … but better. And that can work. Both of 2002’s World Series teams were (and are) run by men who have little use for this newfangled objective analysis that everybody’s writing about, and it’s hard to argue with their results. If you do it well enough and you get lucky enough, it can work.

Which is, of course, true of just about any approach. But everybody can’t be the best and the luckiest, and there’s an advantage to being among the first to figure this out.

In case you missed it, don’t forget to check out Michael Lewis’ lengthy profile on Billy Beane, adapted from ”Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game,” which will be published in May.

FRESH, FOR APRIL FOOL’S, YOU SUCKAS!

Looks like the story about Miguel Tejada signing an extension with the A’s was a practical joke from the good folks over at Baseball Prospectus. This is how you get got, huh? Thank goodness I’m not an Oakland fan. And here I was worried about phoney reports concerning Jeter yesterday.

At least I wasn’t the only chump out there. John Perricone, who after a month of technical difficulties, has returned with full force to his terrific site, “Only Baseball Matters,” was duped too.

If a sucker is born every minute, then I guess I’m only tree-an-a-half-years-old.

NOW, THAT’S WHAT I’M TALKIN BOUT

During the course of the afternoon today, I came to grips with the fact that the Yankees will likely play the entire season without the services of one Derek Jeter. Erick Almonte and Enrique Wilson are all good and fine in a pinch, but this is George Steinbrenner’s universe, and they are not the type of players who start for a long stretch of time—like a full season, for this kind of Yankee team. This is not Horace Clarke’s Yankees.

Who is out there? Freakin’ Rey Sanchez is playing in Queens for cryin out loud. Mike Bordick? Gulp. Melvin Mora? It would be the end for my cousin Gabe. Nah, fuck all that shit, what about Omar Vizquel? He’s the last man standing in Cleveland, and his contract is up next year.

Wouldn’t Vizquel be the perfect fit?

I called my cousin Gabe and told him what I was thinking.

“You Yankee fans have to learn how to control your id somehow,” he said.

But that’s the thing about being a Yankee fan. We do live in a universe where we know the owner to going to spend the money and grab the ‘name’ player; it’s only natural when our fantasies are greedy too. We know they can come true. You can’t help being greedy. (You just have to balance it out with humility and respect.)

So why not Vizquel?

I wasn’t the only guy thinking about the Tribe’s most controversial author/player today either. I wrote to Aaron Gleeman, and asked him if he had John Sickels’ scouting report on Erick Almonte. I also asked him what he made of Almonte.

Here is Gleeman’s repsonse:

I got my Sickels book out and was all set to tell you what Sickels said about Almonte when I realized that Almonte isn’t in the book! Which should tell you all you need to know about him (there are like 800+ guys in the book).

As for my take…

He’s young (25 in Feb) and I actually think he could be a decent starting shortstop. However, he isn’t the type of guy that could start for the Yankees and keep his job for very long. I’d say his true level of performance in the majors, in a good year, would be something like .260/.315/.410, which would put him as a pretty much “average” shortstop (shortstops hit .265/.324/.398 as a group last year).

I really think the best fit would be Vizquel, who would make a nice 1 year replacement and who the Indians are almost certainly willing to give up pretty cheaply.

See ya
Aaron

If the Yankees improve defensively at short with Jeter out—which is entirely likely, they will be hard pressed to duplicate Jeter’s offense. The man from Cleveland is as good a fit as you can imagine. The Yankees need a defensive short stop more than they need an offensive one. The Yankees offense can take the hit. But Omar has a little bit of O and a whole lot of D…

Boy, Jeter is going to drive himself mad rehabing all summer. He’s never had to deal with anything remotely like this before. In a couple of days, when he knows for sure what’s going to happen, some of his fear will subside and then that kid is going to start getting pissed. And he’s going to be pissed all summer too. Yeeeesh.

MIGGY SIGNS EXTENSION WITH A’S

According to Baseball Prospectus, the Oakland A’s have reportedly signed short stop Miguel Tejada to a 5-year extension worth $58.5 million.

A’s General Manager Billy Beane announced today that the Oakland Athletics have signed AL MVP Miguel Tejada to an extension through the 2008 season.

“We’re very pleased to have gotten this done,” said Beane, “and it’s a tremendous load off my mind to know that we’ll have Miguel in Oakland for many years to come. It’s important to the success of the A’s and for our fans. I couldn’t be more pleased.”

The terms of Tejada’s deal include a $3.5 million signing bonus, and escalating salaries through the 2008 season averaging $11 million annually.

WHAT’S UP DOC?

Will Carroll of Baseball Prospectus weighs in on the Jeter injury in his “Under the Knife” column today. The prognosis doesn’t look good for Jeter or the Yanks:

Traumatic injuries are one thing that a team cannot plan for explicitly. However, even if it’s a “break glass in case of emergency” type player, everyone has a Plan B. The question is: Does Plan B prevent you from executing the rest of your strategy to win? In the case of the Yankees, one place they have almost no depth is shortstop. With Derek Jeter’s health never a problem, this was an area where Brian Cashman and crew skimped a bit.
One play changes everything.

On a brutal, but legal and well-done play by Blue Jays catcher Ken Huckaby, Derek Jeter took the point of Huckaby’s knee (covered in high-impact plastic) to the shoulder. Even with TiVo, I was going back and forth. It appeared from most angles that Jeter’s initial move was to grab at the area that would indicate a broken collarbone. From a later angle out of the center-field camera, Jeter’s hand appeared to go to the shoulder. As teammates surrounded him, an ESPN camera got a good shot of Jeter saying: “It popped out.” Mat Olkin saw the same thing–I should take a course on lip-reading–and when Jeter finally got up, the way they held the arm told a lot. Had it been a collarbone, the arm would have been held across the body, much like where it would be in a sling.

The official diagnosis is dislocated left shoulder. Where have we heard this before? Phil Nevin, of course. Digging through the list of injuries, there are some frightening comparables. Nevin is clearly negative, as is Danny Bautista. The best comparables however are other shortstops–Alex Gonzalez (Florida version) and Rafael Furcal. Neither of these play in the same way nor have the body type of Jeter, but they’ll do for our purposes. Furcal is a switch hitter, but all three players injured the left (non-throwing) shoulder. Both Gonzalez and Furcal were forced to have surgery after having previous problems with lax shoulder capsules. Jeter had some problems in his acromioclavicular joint in late 2001. Where Jeter’s injury differs is in the mechanism; Jeter absorbed a football-type collision, while both Gonzalez and Furcal had the injuries occur during dives.

The outlook is not good. I cannot find a situation where a player was able to come back in-season from this type of injury. Furcal’s injury happened pretty late in the season, so that makes timing this pretty difficult, but looking at the others, things can’t be stated positively. The best-case scenario is that after reduction (having the dislocated bone “popped back in”), there would be no ligament or labrum damage. In this case, it’s possible that Jeter could be back in as little as four weeks. The worst case, of course, is similar to Nevin or Gonzalez, where Jeter would be done for the season. What the most likely case is won’t be known until the results of imaging are in some time Tuesday. Brian Cashman will have to trust Enrique Wilson, commit to Erick Almonte, or hit the phones quickly. (“Hello, Billy? Yeah, yeah, you’re the best-looking GM in the game. About that Tejada kid…”)

Expect Cash to hit the phones and hit ’em hard.

TOUGH OPENER FOR METS, BOSOX

Tom Glavine was roughed up in his debut for the Mets, who took it on the chin, losing the home opener to the Cubs 15-3.

The Red Sox got a good outing from Pedro Martinez, but their bullpen lost the lead in the 9th, as Carl Crawford hit a dramatic, game-ending 3-run homer off Chad Fox to win Lou Pinella’s first game as manager of the Devil Rays.

While the alarm is sure to sound in Boston, Pedro remained calm:

”It’s only the first game,” he said. ”That’s all I can say to the Boston fans. Please keep the faith because we’re going to battle hard tomorrow and hopefully we’ll win some games and be OK by the time we get home.”

Ed Cossette, who runs Bambino’s Curse, didn’t panic either, though I’m sure his digestion took a hit last night.

NO FOOLIN: YES-CABLEVISION REACH DEAL; YANKS WIN OPENER; JETER HURT

The Yankees and Cablevision agreed to a one-year deal minutes before game time last night. For those of you who believe in karma, the Yanks were punished for screwing with their fans for so long, as the Bombers suffered an unexpected and startling injury. The Yanks defeated the host Blue Jays, 8-4. led by Roger Clemens, and Alfonso Soriano, but lost Derek Jeter in the top of the 3rd inning. Jeter dislocated his left-shoulder in a collision with catcher Ken Huckaby. It was the kind of heads-up hustle play that we’ve come to expect from Jeter:

Jeter sustained the injury on an unusual play in the third inning after drawing a one-out walk. With Jason Giambi, a pull hitter, batting, the Blue Jays shifted their infielders to the right side, leaving third base uncovered.

Giambi bounced softly to the pitcher, Roy Halladay, who threw to first baseman Carlos Delgado for an out. Jeter crossed second and kept running, expecting no fielder to cover third.

The strategy worked for Jeter in a game here last August, but the Blue Jays were prepared this time. Huckaby raced down the third base line as Delgado fired across the infield. Huckaby caught the ball just as Jeter slid headfirst, and the umpire Paul Emmel signaled safe.

But Huckaby could not stop his momentum. After catching the high throw, he careered into Jeter with his knees, his shinguards crashing into Jeter’s left shoulder. Jeter’s helmet flew off and he instantly grabbed his shoulder. He was knocked off the base and Huckaby tagged him, ending the inning.

Asked if Huckaby’s play was dirty, Jeter said: “I don’t know, it’s tough. He was running full speed trying to get to third base.”

Huckaby called Jeter during the game and left a message in the Yankees’ clubhouse. He said he intended no harm.

“The pitcher is supposed to cover on a ground ball to the infield, but the ball was hit back to him, so he couldn’t get there,” Huckaby said. “Derek did that to us last year, where he went from first to third with Giambi up on a ground ball, and I just reacted and took off for third base.

“When I caught the ball, the only way I could stop my momentum was to go down to my knees. I wasn’t trying to block the base. I was just trying to go down and stop, so I could put the tag down. I was hoping I’d fall short, but I landed right on top of him.”

I saw the play live, and it was immediately clear that Jeter was seriously hurt. It was a clean play by Huckaby, but a violent one all the same, just the kind to bring your blood to a boil if you are a Yankee fan. Especially when the catcher seemed to lay on top of Jeter for an extra second. But as Jeter continued to lay on the ground, the second-year catcher was clearly rattled:

“The longer he laid down the more I felt that (the Yankees) would think it was a cheap shot and I felt horrible for what happened,” Huckaby said. “It wasn’t a cheap shot at all. It was one of those fluke plays. How many times do you see a catcher covering third base on a throw to third? It never happens. For me, I was in a place where I didn’t belong normally in a game.”

…”I didn’t know where the base was and I was going full speed,” Huckaby said. “The only way I could stop was to go down on my knees or else I’d over run the base. I wasn’t trying to block the base. And I didn’t want to go down like that at all…I’m not looking for anyone to get hurt,” he said. “I felt real bad about it. If I could not put his arm there I would.”

According to the Post, Jeter is likely to miss 2-4 months:

“There are two options,” the former Jets and Islander orthopedic surgeon and the director of the Nicholas Sports Medicine division at Manhattan’s Lenox Hill Hospital told The Post last night. “One, you put it in a sling for a short period of time, let it heal and rehab it. That takes a couple of months. The other option is arthroscopic surgery in which you sew the ligaments back to the shoulder. Usually you allow the athlete four months before returning to his activity.”

Nicholas said that the shoulder is a ball and socket joint and when it’s dislocated the ball is no longer on top of the socket when it slides out of the joint.

“When athletes are involved in injuries you can push [the recovery time] but it’s at least six to eight weeks with this,” Nicholas said.

All considering, if the Yankees can get Jeter back for the second half of the season, healthy for the stretch run, they should consider themselves fortunate. They could lose him for the entire year. I sent an e-mail to Will Carroll of Baseball Prospectus, the injury-guru, and asked him what we can expect. When I hear back from him, I’ll post his response asap.

In the meantime, it looks as if Erick Almonte will be called up to play short. Almonte was once a highly regarded prospect. Apparently he can hit, but isn’t much of a fielder. Ralph Wiley thinks he’s the Yankees secret weapon. I’m not so sure.
Look for Boss George to make a trade sometime soon.

It will be interesting to see how the Yankees recover without their team leader. They have enough fire-power to play well without Jeter, but they will certainly miss him.

David Pinto considered what Joe Torre will do with his line-up before the game was over last night.

Aaron Gleeman was sad to see Jeter go down, however:

I did think it was funny that Karl Ravech (on Baseball Tonight following the game) said, “Our thoughts will be with Derek Jeter tonight.” I think that is just a tad over the top. I mean, the guy hurt his shoulder, he didn’t get paralyzed or anything. And since when is Jeter the first guy ever to suffer a semi-serious injury? Do you think Karl Ravech would have said the same thing if Nomar had separated his should yesterday against the D-Rays? I doubt it and I think that is why a lot of people aren’t the biggest Derek Jeter fans.

Seconds after Ravech said that, Peter Gammons said the following: “A lot of people come up with stats saying how Jeter isn’t a great player, but none of that matters, he is one.” I have one question…what stat is there that says he isn’t a great player? People need to learn that a player can simultaneously be great and overrated at the same time. Or even more importantly, can be great and still have major flaws (for example, defense).

OPENING DAY EXCLUSIVE

BRONX BANTER INTERVIEW: BUCK O’NEIL

“When you stop learning, you’re through”

I was lucky enough to meet Buck O’Neil, the legendary Negro League ballplayer, nine years ago when I was working as a production assistant on the Ken Burns documentary, “Baseball.” I escorted him around town before a screening of one of the episodes, and it was easily one of the most memorable days of my life. You hear about people who have a presence, who light up the room when they enter it? That is Buck O’Neil.

I caught up with Buck a few weeks ago, and I thought our interview would be the ideal way to kick off the 2003 season.

Enjoy.

(The following conversation took place on Saturday, March 22, 2003.)

BUCK O’NEIL INTERVIEW

Q: How is it in Kansas City this morning?

Buck: It’s a beautiful day, a beautiful day. It’s supposed to get up in the 60s today.

Q: Well, it’s over 60 already here in the New York City, getting ready for Opening Day. It’s going to be especially great this year because it’s been such a long, trying winter.

Buck: It has been a tough winter for you folk out there.

Q: What exactly are you up to these days, Buck?

Buck: Running all over the country, running my mouth. Since the Ken Burns documentary, literally, I’ve been all over. I do some public relations for the Kansas City Royals, and I’m the chairman of the board of the Negro League Museum, here in Kansas City. When you get out here, you got to come see it. Last night, I went to see this baseball team over in Kansas City, Kansas. It was professional, but they don’t belong to any one organization. They call themselves the T-bones. That’s from Kansas City; you know we are Beef people. They call themselves the T-bones, so I was over there talking to those people. They in a league, but they don’t belong to any organization in the Major Leagues. After that, I went to a club, and they were having Ladies Night, so these were ladies who sung jazz, famous jazz and blues singers, they called it, “Just entertaining the Ladies.” And they put on a show. And tonight I’m going to the Gem Theater. The guys are going to come in, the horn players, the alto players. Two great alto players going play at the Gem Theater tonight, it’s going to be Charlie Parker night. They have a Charlie Parker Week here. I’m going tonight.

Q: Buck, how did your participation in the Ken Burns “Baseball” series effect your life?

Buck: Oh, man. I haven’t rested yet. I’m still going. Mm-hmm. Well, my life took off again, after the Ken Burns documentary.

Q: Buck, I’m working on a biography on Curt Flood, which is aimed at a teenage audience. Could you explain what it was like to come up through the minor leagues in the mid 1950s for black players?

Buck: Well actually in the middle 50s, if you were a black major leaguer you were on top of the world. You were on top of the world during that time. With guys like Curt Flood: Now, Jackie, what happened to Jackie wasn’t nothing like what happened to guys like Curt Flood. Because Jackie was here with the [Kansas City] Monarchs and Jackie’s first job with organized baseball was with Montreal. Where with Curt Flood, it might have been Macon, Georgia. The difference was night and day. Those guys who played in the lower minor leagues, played in the south and they had a hell of a time. It was really tough for them. But with Jackie, playing in Montreal, that’s just a different culture altogether.

Q: Robinson was accepted more openly.

Buck: Of course.

Q: What were your impressions of the Cardinals in the late 50s and early 60s?

Buck: One thing, see was that the Cardinals had some outstanding black ballplayers. That’s what happened with the Cardinals: they had outstanding ballplayers all around too. The black population really took to the Cardinals. With Curt Flood, Curt Flood was first class all the way. Baseball was actually cruel to Curt Flood. When Curt wouldn’t go to Philadelphia Curt actually changed baseball. When he wouldn’t accept that contract to go to Philadelphia. During that era, the owners in baseball had all the control over baseball players. They paid you what they wanted to pay you; they would send you where they wanted to send you. And I’ve seen people during that era in organized baseball; I’ve seen so many guys that actually played minor league baseball all of their careers when they were qualified to play Major League Baseball. This was not only black players but white kids too. Teams like the Yankees owned all the players in their chain. And you had to stay on the Yankees team, unless they traded you. You didn’t have any out. And that was true for all of baseball. They paid you what they wanted to pay you. But when Curt Flood reneged his trade, this is where you came up with the union. Mm-hmm.

Q: Were you surprised when Flood sued Baseball?

Buck: With Curt Flood? No. I figure it would have to be someone like Curt Flood to have done it.

Q: Had you met Flood when he was a younger player?

Buck: Not until he went into organized baseball. I met him when he was with Cincinnati, before he went to St. Louis. Outstanding young man. You know you kind of figure baseball players were guys who just made money and were not that educated. During that era, I’d guess that maybe 5% of Major League Baseball players were educated. Because the Major Leagues wanted the kids right out of high school. Uh-huh. Get them when they 18 years old, 19 years old. These guys would maybe get to the Major Leagues when they 23, 24. Where, as the college man, you don’t sign till he’s 20-something years old. Flood didn’t go to college, but he was smart like the college men.

Q: Bob Gibson and Bill White were both college guys. What about George Crowe? I’ve read that he was a veteran role player who had great influence on the younger black guys like White and Flood.

Buck: What a guy. George Crowe was the type of man who was a student. He was kind of different from the average baseball player. This was a George Crowe. Just like a Jackie, and a majority of guys: you see 40% of the Negro leaguers were college men. The reason why the Negro Leaguers were college men more so than the Major Leaguers, [was because] we trained in a college town. We would go to spring, always go to spring training in a black college town and we played [against] the black colleges. The black colleges were like a minor league for the Negro Leaguer. Mm-hmm. Crowe played some years in the Negro Leagues. He spent some time in the minors now, but the guys I’m talking about that spent a lot of time in the minor leagues were more or less, white ball players. That was before Jackie.

Q: Crowe’s influence was supposed to have been formative for Bill White, and Flood, and Gibson.

Buck: Oh, Bill White. Bill White is first class, now. Still. Mm-hmm. Bill White was the type of guy that any ball player would look up to. Because of his character. And another thing too: he could play. He could play. When blacks would come to the Major Leagues they noticed that when they went to St. Louie, New York, Harlem, he wouldn’t be going to the dives in those places, he would go into the first class places. And ball players would follow his lead.

Q: You became a scout for the Cubs in 1956. Was that your first job in Major League Baseball?

Buck: Yes. And I’m still doing some things for the [Kansas City] Royals now.

Q: How did you come across Ernie Banks?

Buck: Oh Ernie Banks? Well, the Monarchs had a traveling team we called “The Baby Monarchs.” We had so many black ball players, we couldn’t play them all. When we went to spring training, we’d maybe have 40 people there. Uh-huh. When we got ready to cut, we pretty much knew who the regular guys were going to be, but the other kids we’d put them on the little Monarchs team. Cool Papa Bell was running this ball club. They went to the northwest, and they would travel from Omaha all the way up north to Canada to play. That’s the team I started with in 1937. They were like a farm team for the Monarchs. Cool Papa Bell was running the Little Monarchs for us and he saw a team, saw a ball player from one of those semi-pro teams in Texas. When their season was over, they came into Kansas City, and Cool said, “Buck, I saw a kid on a team from Dallas, Texas, and he could play short stop for you.” I said, “Yeah, that sounds good.” This had to be Nineteen-and-forty-nine. 1949. Early in the spring of 1950, I went down to Dallas and signed this kid Ernie Banks. I hadn’t seen him play; Cool had seen him play. I signed him and he went to spring training with us in 1950. Played the season with us: good-looking kid. Went to the service in ’51 and ’52, came back in ’53, played with us, and that’s when the major league teams started scouting him. Now the Cubs We used to play our East/West Game in Chicago. Always played it at Comisky Park. And we played Ernie in the ballgame and after the ballgame that night, Tom Baird, who owned the Kansas City Monarchs called me and said, “Bring Ernie Banks out to the ballpark,”-the Cubs ballpark—“they want to sign him to a contract.” So Wendell Smith, who wrote for “The Pittsburgh Courier” and “The Chicago Defender,” he came, picked us up, took us out to Wrigley Field and that’s when they signed Ernie Banks.

Q: This is before you worked in the Major Leagues, correct?

Buck: This is 1953, but um, when the general manager of the ball club was getting ready to sign Ernie Banks. He said, “Buck, you know this Negro League Baseball is about to close, because Tom Baird is going to get rid of this ball club [the Kansas City Monarchs]. When he does, I want you to come work here as a scout for the Cubs. And so your first job is right now, I want you to sign Ernie Banks. You signed Ernie Banks to a Negro League contract, now I want you to sign him to a Cub contract.” So I signed Ernie Banks twice.

Q: When did Lou Brock come around?

Buck: This was several years later that I saw Lou Brock at Southern University in Baton Rogue.

Q: Was he an outfielder at that point?

Buck: Yeah. He was playing right field. Fast kid, he could really run and make contact. Steal bases.

Q: Tough loss for the Cubs when you guys traded Brock to the Cardinals in the middle of the 1964 season.

Buck: Yeah, well the one thing about it is when I go to St. Louis now they give me a standing ovation for Lou Brock.

[Laughter]

Because see, they called me in when they wanted to trade Lou Brock. They called me in, and said, “What do you think? Would you like for us to trade Lou to St. Louis?” I said, “Oh, well, that’n be alright because Billy Williams in the outfield, we got Sweet Lou Johnson in the outfield, we got George Altman in the outfield. We didn’t need outfielders, what we needed was pitching. And Broglio had won 20 games the year before, so this was a good trade, we thought, for us. We didn’t know Broglio had the bad arm. Hmm-hmm.

Q: How personal was your relationship with Ernie Banks and Lou Brock?

Buck: Oh, they’re like my sons. Mm-hmm.

Q: Where in the hell did you find Oscar Gamble?

Buck: In Montgomery, Alabama. Montgomery, Alabama. What I’m doing, is scouting the colleges, and I go to a Sunday ballgame, and this is the city club. They playing ball, and I’m scoutin them. And I saw this kid in center field, and I asked him, “Well do you play with any other teams besides this one?” He was a high school boy. And he said, “Yeah, we gunna play, next Saturday, I’m playing on a team that’s not an old man team, but a team of kids in some spot not far from Montgomery. And actually they played on a field out there: it was one-way in, and one-way out. But it was actually, once you got in there, they had a beautiful little diamond. And they were having a picnic, and I went, and he was on this ball club, and I saw him again playing and said, “Oh, man, this is what I’m looking for.” And so that’s when I signed him. This had to have been in the late ’60s.

Q: Gamble has a reputation as a real cut-up. Was he like that as a kid?

Buck: Actually during that time he was kind of a quiet guy, when I first met him.

Q: I know he didn’t play for you, but what did you think about Minnie Minoso?

Buck: Oh well, Minnie Minoso. Well Minnie Minoso, I first saw as kid in Cuba. In 1946 he played in Cuba. I was playing in Havana and he was playing for another team. Third base. Good-looking ballplayer. Good-looking kid.

Q: Think he should be in the Hall of Fame?

Buck: He did have quite a Major League career, and Minnie was a good ballplayer, very good ballplayer, but when you speak about Hall of Fame, you speaking about great. Cause think that everybody that played in the Major Leagues at the time was a good ballplayer. You had to be a good ballplayer to play in the Major Leagues. But actually, you are not talking about good ballplayers when you talk about Hall of Famer, you talking about great ballplayer. Uh-huh. And I imagine in Minnie had gone into the Major Leagues at say 21, he would have more on the board than he does now. Minnie’s such a personable fella. And everybody likes Minnie. Uh-huh. He was a good ballplayer.

Q: What was the role of statistics in the Negro Leagues? Did you walk around thinking, “Oh, I’m a .300 hitter,” “He’s a 30 home run guy?”

Buck: Yeah, we felt that, we felt that. As far as statistics were concerned Now when we played in Kansas City, [we had] the “Kansas City Call,” a black weekly. “The St. Louis Organ,” a black weekly, “Chicago Defender,” black weekly, “Pittsburgh Courier,” black weekly, “Amsterdam News”—that’s New York city: black weekly. All them now. Now when we played in those cities, somebody was there. All the stats: we got ’em. But when we left those places if we played in KC, we knew the “Call” would cover it. Because the white paper, which was “The Kansas City Star,” they didn’t cover our ball. Neither did the New York papers. Only the black media covered [black] baseball. When we were in those cities, they would cover us. When we moved out of those cities, which we did quite often like, we’d play in Washington, but after that we’d go to Richmond. Uh-huh. And other cities too. Unless we were in the cities with the big papers, that was the only times we’d get the coverage. So we didn’t get the complete stats we should have had. Let’s say we would keep up with it here in KC, and when we were on the road we our traveling secretary would keep track of our numbers. He was really on stats. He would keep up with ours. And so would somebody say with the New York Black Yankees. But it didn’t get into the Major Leagues and the big print.

Q: Did you pick up “The Amsterdam News” when you were in New York during those days?

Buck: Oh yeah. But actually, what we would pick up with that they would tell me what happened with the Black Yankees played in New York City or Philadelphia or Washington. But they don’t have the stats when they played in Albany, New York. Or Buffalo.

Q: Did you read the stats for the Major League players?

Buck: Every day. Oh yeah, sure.

Q: In the “Baseball” movie you talk about being part of the jazz culture in Kansas City during the 30’s. Count Basie, Lester Young, Ellington, Armstrong. In fact, I put on an Inkspots cd this morning before I called you, just to get in the mood. Which group did you prefer, the Inkspots or the Mills brothers?

Buck: I liked them both. I liked them both. I liked them both. Oh, great entertainers. They were great entertainers. They were contemporaries, Mm-hmm. Then I guess the Inkspots—we started hearing them here and there, before the Mills brothers.

Q: What about the 1950s? Did you listen to other jazz after swing? Did you listen to more modern guys like Clifford Brown, Lee Morgan, or Horace Silver?

Buck: Yeah. See, actually, I’ll tell you a story. You know, you hear the different sounds, but it’s all music. I remember once sitting in a club with Count Basie. We sitting there, it was actually a jam session. They were jamming. All of them had finished their work on the regular job, in Kansas City. And we’re in this club, and they’re jamming. We had played baseball, and that night I go to the club, we call it the ‘Subway,’ and I’m sitting there with Count. The other guys were jamming; he had played. A kid comes in with a horn. And they said, ‘Let him blow.’ He started blowing, didn’t none of us know what he was blowin’, but we had to listen to it, cause he’s makin’ some sounds we’d never heard before. Uh-huh. He was turning’ those notes, you know, different ways. And, that was Charlie Parker. He was still a kid. Uh-huh. He was still in high school. So actually, the music, the music, changes, but it’s still music.

Q: You keeping up with the latest Rap records?

Buck: Yeah. Yeah, I listen to it. Anytime you play music, I want to hear it. Mm-hmm. I want to hear it.

Q: You still follow the pro game these days?

Buck: I just got back from Arizona. I still do some things with the Royals. So I went out to their spring training. But every year, I’ve been going to spring training, been going to some parts of spring training, for the last 70 years. We got some good-looking young ball players. You going to hear something about them. Got a center fielder [Carlos Beltran], that’s a good ball player, and our first baseman [Mike Sweeney] is first class. Great hitter.

Q: What seems to be the biggest difference from when you played?

Buck: The only difference made in Baseball since Baseball started was the DH hitter. Baseball is still the same. The players playing now are in better shape than we ever were. They’re stronger. But the difference is, in my era the best athletes in the world played baseball, cause that’s where the money was. Football, basketball was more or less college sports. Made a living professionally, you played baseball. So the best athletes in the world played baseball. But right now, the best athlete in the world could be teeing up the golf ball, you know, or hitting a tennis ball a hundred-and-something miles per hour. There is so many ways to make a great living now. So the best athlete in the world might not be playing baseball.

Q: Willie Mays and Jackie Robinson would be football stars.

Buck: That’s right. Cause Jackie might have played football if would have come along today. So many of the guys that I know, would have played basketball.

Q: Was the competition more intense in the ’30s and ’40s than today?

Buck: Sure. The supply was greater than the demand, really. Say, in the ’40s. Cause everybody played baseball. They were so many baseball players. This is why a guy could stay in the minor leagues for 10 years. Because he couldn’t go no place else, unless his team would move him. But right now, the demand is greater than the supply.

Q: How do you feel about watching Barry Bonds rewrite the record books the past couple of seasons?

Buck: Outstanding, outstanding. See Barry Bonds has always been an outstanding athlete. He got bad press. But hell, he been the top guy, up there with people like a Willie Mays, an Ernie Banks–people who may have received more favorable media coverage than he did, but honey: He can do it all. Right now, you talk about a great athlete out there, you got to say, A-Rod. Mm-hmm. Great ballplayer, down there in Texas. I was with him last year. We gave him an award. The Negro League Museum gave him the Josh Gibson award last year. Went down there to Texas, talked with him. Fine young man, fine young man. Going down to sign autographs with him next month.

Q: There were a couple of flare-ups in spring training this year between teams, with guys getting plunked. Talk about the lost art of the brush-back pitch.

Buck: Well, it’s changed, it’s changed. It’s made a lot of home run hitters. Because you can’t—if you pitch inside, and throw the ball, say two inches inside of the plate, you get the umpire coming out with his finger in your face. Mm-hmm. This is baseball now. We didn’t have that problem. We didn’t have helmets either. I know I hit behind Willie Brown, who was a home run hitter, I’d hit behind him. He’d hit the home run, and I knew I was going down, but I didn’t know on what pitch. (Laughs) A lot guys lean over the plate now, but they don’t get it. One thing about it is, actually, you could get hurt, really. And getting hit with the ball did hurt a lot of people. Now, the main thing, the worst thing is the strike zone: they made it so small. Uh-huh. With that high strike. That high inside pitch we used to get for a strike, you don’t get it anymore. And that low, outside pitch we used to get for a strike, you don’t get that anymore. Mm-hmm. They trying to rectify the small strike zone. They need to put it, making the strike zone where it should be, from you arm pit, down to your knees. Some umpires call that now, but not all of them.

Q: It’s all about promoting offense.

Buck: They lowered the mound. When we had Bob Gibson, and all the 20-game winning pitchers, the mound was higher. They lowered the mound because they wanted more offense. They thought the people would like that. The home run would bring the people to the ballpark. During my era a good ballgame was a 1-0 ball game, a 2-3 ballgame. A good ballgame now is a 7-8 ballgame.

Q: Do you get bored watching 3, 4 hour games?

Buck: I’m never bored. I’m never board at a baseball game because I’ve can always see something. Mm-hmm. I can always see something. I like to watch ballplayers. Because I see a kid and it feels like it did when I saw Lou Brock and said, “Hmmm. Cool Papa Bell.” Mm-hmm. Like now, I see Ken Griffey, I say, “Oh, Ken Griffey? Look like Turkey Stearnes.” When I see ballplayers now I equate them with great ballplayers I’d seen long time ago. I see a kid swing the bad good, “Hmm. Ted Williams. Aaahh.” So that’s why baseball is so interesting to me.

Q: So you are not all caught up in thinking, “Oh it was so much better in my day, it’s lousy now.”

Buck: That’s always the way it’s been. When I came in with the Monarchs, they said, “Buck, you a good first baseman but you’re not as good as the fella that came before you.” I came up with a kid when I was a manager, a Cuban kid [who] played first base for me, and could play first base. They’d say, “You a good first baseman, but you’re not as good as Buck O’Neil.” You know what I mean? This is what the older folks will do. Just like the guy said, “Inkspots good, but they not as good as the Mills brothers.”

Q: What does Opening Day mean for you? Does it still get you excited?

Buck: Of course, of course. It’s a brand new season, a brand new year. The first thing: it’s spring. You understand what I mean? Baseball opening the season, that means this is spring. Mm-hmm. Spring. And I always get up with spring every year. I’m going to see some kids that hadn’t seen before. Right here, at Opening Day in Kansas City, the 31st, I’m going to be at the ballpark, right behind home plate.

Q: Are you still learning things about baseball?

Buck: Let me tell you something: when you stop learning, you’re through. Mm-hmm. I’m 91, but I’m still learning. Not only about baseball, about others things [too]. Yeah, yeah. You should always keep learning, as long as you live. You’re going to write. You’ll learn something. And not only that, you’re going to teach things. Cause what you’re going to write about now a lot of people, could be baseball fans, don’t know about. Mm-hmm. Of course, you learning, you teaching, that’s life. That’s life. And right now we going through a tough time. Over there now, you hope that we’ve learned from the last time we were over there. [This time] it’s going to be different. Mm-hmm.

Q: You have an amazing sense of optimism about the world.

Buck: That’s what you should have. Cause always figure that tomorrow is going to be better. Don’t care how good today is, tomorrow is going to be better but it is exciting though to get up. It’s like the first time you see a Willie Mays, huh? “Mm, look at this.” (Laughs)

Q: Us Yankee fans a feeling that a little bit these days with the kid Soriano.

Buck: Hey, you got to. How you think I felt when I saw him? Huh? That kid. How can he generate that kind of power? Oh, man. (Laughs) It’s amazing, isn’t it?

Q: It’s like his bat has batteries or something like that. It’s supercharged.

Buck: I’m telling you. He’s got great wrists. And, oh man. You look at him and say, “This is going to be another superstar.”

Q: You think he’s going to last?

Buck: Of course, of course. Yes. Man. A kid like—Boy. It’s still there. I’ll tell you one thing—you know what worries me about baseball? (Pause) The black kid in the inner city stopped playing baseball. Going to basketball. You know the white kid, 170 pounds, 175 pounds: Pee Wee Reese, Phil Rizzuto, that white kid. He stopped playing baseball now [Dave Eckstein notwithstanding]. Mm-hmm.

Q: Why is that?

Buck: It’s just the difference in the times. Now, all those kids used to play baseball, but what they do now? They play soccer, they doing other things. A lot them actually, don’t play baseball. They on the computer. They doing a lot of things that we never did. I remember in my time, you hear the mama [say], “Alright now, its time for you to come in.” Now you got to tell the kids, “Why don’t you go out and get some sunshine? Go outside and get some sunshine.” But there’s so many things he can do inside the house, you couldn’t do in my era. I remember the southern white boy: he was hungry. He wanted to get out of that cotton field just like the black kid wanted get out of the inner city. Baseball was the out. That’s it. Baseball is the out for the Latin kids; baseball is the out for the Japanese kids. Uh-huh. You understand? This is his way out. And this is why they playing.

OPENING DAY GEMS

The Times ran their Baseball Preview over the weekend and there were several notable articles…

Jack Curry has a good profile on the ace of the Atlanta Braves, Greg Maddux, who is always interesting, no matter how boring he might seem:

“Why am I so good?” Maddux said, repeating a question. “I think it’s probably because I understand myself as a pitcher, somewhat. I have an idea of what I can and can’t do on the mound. That’s probably the only reason I’ve lasted for the last five or six years.”

…While Maddux’s fastball rarely exceeds 89 miles per hour, it is a pitch he hones extensively and a pitch that enables him to be so masterly. Maddux’s fastball has tremendous movement and he can usually hit a one-inch box from 60 feet 6 inches. Since he controls it like a yo-yo, it enhances the rest of his repertory. Maddux counsels teammates to spend more time controlling their fastballs and less on curveballs or sliders.

“It’s unbelievable the amount of time he puts on perfecting the command of his fastball,” Mazzone said. “It’s his No. 1 priority. In his mind, if you can command your fastball and change speeds, there isn’t a heck of a lot more you have to do.”

…”I think what separates him is he’s so much better at recognizing what the last pitch dictated and gathering information from that than most guys are,” Glavine said. “Most guys say: `I threw a fastball in. Now I’m going to throw this.’ Why? They don’t know. It might not have anything at all to do with the last pitch. I think that’s what he’s good at. Seeing the hitter’s reaction and using that information on the next pitch.”

Allen Barra, one of the best baseball writers around, has a column on Barry Bonds. I don’t know if this is just a guest shot for Barra—who regularly writes for the Wall Street Journal and Saloon.com, but the Times sports department would improve significantly with someone like Barra on board.

Lastly, Michael Lewis wrote an amazing article on Oakland GM Billy Beane in the Times Magazine yesterday, detailing the art of the deal.

The story centers around Beane’s last-minute moves before the trading deadline last summer.

Having kept the team close enough to hope, he could now go out and shop for whatever else he needed to get to the playoffs. When he set off on this shopping spree, he kept in mind five simple rules:

1) No matter how successful you are, change is always good. There can never be a status quo. When you have no money, you can’t afford long-term solutions, only short-term ones. You have to always be upgrading.

2) The day you say, ”I have to do something,” you’re in trouble. Because you are going to make a bad deal. You can always recover from the player you didn’t sign. You may never recover from the player you signed at the wrong price.

3) Know exactly what every player in baseball is worth to you. You can put a dollar figure on it.

4) Know exactly who you want and go after him. (Never mind whom they say they want to trade.)

5) Every deal you do will be publicly scrutinized by subjective opinion. If I’m the C.E.O. of I.B.M., I’m not worried that every personnel decision I make is going to wind up on the front page of the business section. Not everyone believes that he knows everything about the personal computer. But everyone who ever picked up a bat thinks he knows baseball. To do this well, you have to ignore the newspapers.

Beane, who looks like a younger, more attractive Kevin Spacey, comes off like a character in a David Mamet play, minus the contrived Mamet-like cadences. This article is long, but well worth it. It’s the best profile I’ve read on Beane to date.

Don’t sleep.

NO JOY IN CABLEVISONVILLE: GETTING OVER IT

Determined not to let the latest set back between the Yankee-owed YES network and Cablevision—who just happens to be my local cable provider—get me down too tough, I got up early Saturday morning and went to stand on line with cousin Gabe, the Mets fan, to see the Leonardo Da Vinci show at the MET. This was the final weekend of the exhibition, and the mobs had been turning out all month for a look at what has hyped as a once-in-a-lifetime showing.

The Saturday papers did a good job of covering the YES story, which essentially boils down to George Steinbrenner being an ogre again. The monster has been loose all winter. Jeter got it, Torre got it, Boomer’s getting it, and so, once again are all the innocent Yankee fans who have the sad-ass misfortune to be Cablevision subscribers. In the words of Mike Lupica, we’re all getting ‘Georged.’

Speaking of the lip, Lupica, a veteran of this kind of Yankee stunt, penned the kind of dead-to-rights piece on the whole affair that reminds you of how good a tabliod columnist he can still be:

…Finally Leo Hindery, who is the CEO of YES in name only, and James Dolan of Cablevision got in a room with Gerald Levin and Richard Aurelio, two big-time New York guys acting as mediators, at the mayor’s house. They came out a few weeks ago and announced what is now known as an “interim” deal that would put the Yankees on Cablevision and into those three million homes. We all cheered. Because of the fans.

Only now Steinbrenner, hiding behind Hindery and his Crack Television Committee the way he always hid behind his Crack Baseball Committee when something used to go wrong with the Yankees, backs away from a deal he knows everybody agreed to as if he’s Guillermo Mota of the Dodgers and here comes Mike Piazza.

He backs out of the deal, and blames it all on Cablevision, of course, and lets Hindery stand there and take the weight for him. Why? Because something never changes, the way George M. Steinbrenner never changes.

Which means nothing can ever be his fault.

Now Steinbrenner doesn’t want to open his books as part of the deal, because no owner ever does in baseball. No owner wants you to know how much he’s making. Particularly Steinbrenner, who’s already getting murdered with revenue sharing. What is one of the biggest reasons he wanted his own network in the first place? Because it could be Yankee revenue that wasn’t officially Yankee revenue.

In all matters, he wants it all. Now this interim deal that has turned into no deal at all.

“The best part of this,” Dolan said yesterday, “is that (Steinbrenner) wants people to believe he’s not running the show.”

Cablevision is a monopoly, big, bad, greedy, occasionally real lousy. And makes no secret of that. Steinbrenner is a different kind of monopoly, his greed just as blatant. He just dresses his in pinstripes.

Bob Raissman, the media columnist for the Daily News, lays a good share of the blame on Cablevision.

(The Times reports on Sunday that the Yankees have made a self-serving counter-proposal to Cablevision in a last-ditch attempt to get the team on the air by Opening Day.)

I read the papers on the train, and felt better. Lupica’s column had hit the spot. I was able to forget about the whole mess, and concentrate on the DaVinci show, just ahead.

Of course, my unlce Fred the painter, had seen the show about 4 or 5 times. I got on the 1 train at 231st street at approximately 8 am. It should take a half an hour to get to 79th street, where I then transfer to the crosstown bus, that lets me off on 5th avenue and 79th street. The Met opens at 9:30, so we figured on meeting at 8:45—which was pretty lax I must admit.

The train ride was running smoothly and by 8:20 we were on 110th street. Right on time. At 103rd street, the doors stayed open extra long, and then somebody exited the car ahead of mine, and yelled, “Somebody’s having a seizure!” A weird stillness that fell over my car, which was crowded for a Saturday morning. We didn’t hear any commotion.

Had we heard that right? Nobody continued yelling for help. There was a kid in scrubs in our car who was eventually summoned. Everything was happening painfully slowly. And the feeling of collective helplessness was papable. Later, it reminded me of watching Geoff Jenkins busting his ankle last season. There wasn’t anything that happened in 2002 that enraged me more than how long it took to get medical attention to that kid last summer. The Brewers medical staff moved in slow-motion. It was like like Double A at its finest. I felt so helpless watching it at home. No wonder nobody wants to go play in Milwaukee.

At 8:26, we were still in the station when my old friend Ricardo walked onto the train. We ran in the same group for a while a couple of years ago, and hadn’t seen each other in a minute. I saw him first, standing across the car from me. He scanned the car when he first walked in, and we made eye contact, but dude didn’t recognize me. Homeslice rocks some thick ass glasses, and I know he didn’t pick me up.

Another minute passes before he does recognize me. He comes over and I fill him in on the seizure story. We chat for a mintue and then we split. The EMS had still not arrived. I felt guilty leaving the scene. We decide to walk down to 96th street—he was on his way to work (Ricardo is a copy editor for the AP). I caught him up on my life-in-a-nutshell, on the walk down Broadway. We exchanged cards and I ran off to catch the crosstown bus at 96th street—which had just rolled up the block.

I jogged up to Amerstam avenue, but and watched the light change against me and the bus get smaller and smaller. So I did something I rarely do—I hailed a cab. It was 8:35. Fug it. Had a nice conversation with the cab driver too, a Kurd with a great name: Sham Shawali.

I made it to the Met by 8:40. There were already lines along both sides of the front steps. I checked for my cousin, didn’t see him, and got in the shortest line.

Stood next to this older dude who eventually started up some small talk. In no time we got around to chatting about baseball. This guy had one of those strawberry-sized-W.C. Fields, Father Rosacea shnozola’s that are mesmerizing. It’s the only part of the guy you can look at. He was a funny old character, bitter and hung-over and hostile. He must have been in his late 50s-early 60s. He was one of the these guys who don’t want to have a conversation, they want to rant at you.

Well, I can’t have that, so I didn’t let him talk at me too long. We ended up having a decent chat.

Gabe showed up by 9:00, when the lines were getting hairy. A third line had developed down the center of the steps. By the time they opened the doors, it was a bonafide bum’s rush. People rushed in from all directions. Middle aged ladies had their kids, walked up, cutting all lines, and buffaloed their way in.

It was pretty funny. There was a kind of general panic that made everything seem like a little bit too much like a Mel Brooks sketch. But since when is that bad? As I made my way through the bag search I over heard a screatchy Upper East Side Joan Rivers-like voice say, “Which way is Leo? Which way is Leo? I gotta see Leo.”

People were basically sprinting to the Da Vinci exhibit.

At it was crowded. First, they roped us into lines like cattle. Then we made it into the show and the first two galleries were very congested. But after a couple of minutes of adjusting, I found some rush-hour commuter patience, and managed to get a good long look at every picture.

And it was so worth it. The show was absolutely amazing. Despite the viewing conditions. All of the drawings are unbelievably small, and intolerably fine. Walking through the show felt like walking through a genius’ hard drive. The guy was like a freakin’ computer. He was into everyting—science, art, medicine. And the show has something for everyone.

There was an amazingly animated quality to the studies and drawings of horses. As cerebral and mathematical was Da Vinci was—he is a draftsman in a true architectural sense, his drawings have an expressiveness of an artist, not a mere clincical illustrator.

Gabe and I brought our mitts to have a catch, but we were so hungry after the show, we skipped the catch and headed straight for delicious brunch.

Mmmm, delicious brunch.

Oh, man. It was enough to make me forget the YES-Cablevision screw-job for a minute, that’s for sure.

NOT SO FAST…

Earlier this afternoon I was talking to a friend of mine about being able to watch the Yankees on Cablevision this coming season. I said, “Even though everything looks good, I can’t get excited yet. I won’t believe it until I see it.”

Sure enough, things aren’t looking so good for about 3 million Cablevision subscribers, as talks have broken off between YES, and Cablevision.

Excuse me if I wearily shrug my shoulders and say, “I told you so.”

The collapse of the talks came less than a month after the two sides vowed to work out their differences on behalf of the fans. The Yankees start their season Monday.

“Unfortunately, at the moment, Cablevision and the YES Network are unable to agree on the details of the previously announced agreement to have Yankees games carried on the Cablevision cable systems,” Mayor Michael Bloomberg said in a statement.

Both sides are blaming one another for a change.

More mud-slinging, and broken hearts to come.

SPRING TRAINING FINALE

My good friend Mindy, aka Minnie Minosa, aka the Big, Fat Milejio, recently went down to spring training with two of her baseball buddies—Anne and Allison. These ladies are all in their early 30s, and are wild Yankee fans. I don’t know Allison too tough, but my girlfriend Emily and I went to a Yankee game last summer with Mindy and Anne, and well, they were a sight to see. What a pair of loud asses. Damn, it was like sitting next to Frick and fuggin Frack.

Mindy is one of the smartest people I know, and while she’s always been a baseball fan, she has really delved into the culture and history during the past year. Her curiosity and passion are infectious, and we had many spirited conversations and debates throughout the long winter. She may have a bod like Boom-Boom Belinda, but the beauty part is that she’s a Tom boy, and a brainiac to boot. (People often think she’s Latina cause of pa-dapp over here, and ba-bam over there, but Minosa is 100% Pizzan all the way.)

Anyhow, the Gleesome Threesome had been planning a trip to Tampa all winter long. Mindy even made Allison and Anne a little picture book of names and faces of famous Yankees, past and present, so they could identify some of the old bastards they may run into in spring training. Sure enough, they had a blast, and when they returned Mindy was kind enough to write up the following report.

Enjoy.

YOGI, GATOR, PUFF ‘N’ STUFF

By Mindy DePalma

My friends, Allison, Anne, and I arrived in Tampa for Yankee Spring Training on Thursday afternoon, March 13th. This was our first time at spring training and we only really had hopes of seeing some great baseball and getting some sun. We weren’t interested in autographs and we certainly didn’t have any expectations of meeting any baseball players, past, present or future.
We arrived at our hotel and while we were waiting in the lobby to check in, a cab driver walks through the door and yells, “Whitey is here.” This nearly sent me through the roof since Whitey Ford just happens to be my all-time favorite Yankee. Unfortunately, it ended up being a different Whitey (or a sick joke) because he had left the hotel a few days before we arrived. However, it must have been a sign of things to come because as soon as we checked our bags, we grabbed our bathing suits and headed out to the pool. As we were rounding the corner toward the pool, we see Yogi Berra standing in our path. My jaw dropped to the ground as I raced by toward the door. However, my friends were not going to let this moment pass. After much pushing, shoving and nagging, Anne finally persuaded me to go over and ask him for an autograph. I did. He was nice, and shy; luckily the two men he was with broke the ice and started chatting with me for a few minutes. The two men ended up being his son, Larry and his nephew, Angelo.
That night we went to the exhibition game against the Red Sox. Andy Pettitte started, and faired pretty well. He looked healthy and lasted about 3 or 4 innings. Shea Hillenbrand and Trot Nixon got a couple of knocks off him, but no serious damage was done. I came to realize that starters only last 3 or 4 innings during spring training games. Brandon Claussen followed Andy, and then Mo closed it out. Much to my relief, Mo was spectacular. He blew away the Socks with a couple of strike outs and a pop out.
The next day we attended the Yankee/Devil Rays game, and arrived early to watch batting practice. We caught the last 15-20 minutes of Jeter, Giambi, Soriano, and Zeile. The fence surrounding home plate was packed, but we got a great view of the guys waiting in line to swing. Off to our side, was a desperate 8-year-old screaming his little heart out (“Mr. Jeter, Mr. Jeter!”) for Derek Jeter to come over and sign his baseball. Jeter eventually yelled back and said, “I can’t do it now because I’m working, but I’ll come over in a little bit.” Which he did. Finally, this poor child’s vocal cords were restored.
This game was our first look at Jose Contreras (his stuff was good, but he got a little beat up in the first couple of innings). We sat behind 3rd base and had some time to kill before the game started. I spotted the bullpen from across the field and quickly left my friends to check out Contreras warming up. I also hoped to catch a glimpse at my main man, the Gator, Ron Guidry, who was in camp as a pitching instructor. When I ran over, there were a bunch of people leaning over the walkway overlooking the bullpen. A few guys were milling around, but there was Gator sitting in a chair in the corner of the bullpen. He would occasionally glance up at the crowd uncomfortably as if he felt like he was trapped in a fishbowl. Finally, I yelled down and said, “Hey Gator!” and waved. He looked up, smiled, and waved back. Oh the joy!
Finally, Contreras came out and started warming up with a softball. He tossed a few light rounds and then slowly threw harder and harder for about 10 minutes. Finally, he switched to a baseball. Contreras threw for a while with what seemed like a nice degree of heat; his form looked great. Finally, he seemed thoroughly loosened up. After he walked out onto the field to throw a few to Jorge Posada, Mo Rivera came walking out to the pen. Most of the people on the walkway had left at that point, so I gambled, and again couldn’t restrain myself and yelled, “Hi Mo!” Like Gator, he looked up, gave a dazzling smile, and said hello. My bullpen session was complete. The game was starting, so finally after about a half hour or so I rejoined my friends.
After the game, we returned to the hotel and headed down to the pool. We ran into Larry Berra and his cousin Angelo, and their friend Robert. We chatted, told them about our day and went off to our room. Later, that evening as we finished dinner at a nearby restaurant, our new friend Robert came over and invited us to a Yankee cocktail party. I looked at Robert in disbelief.

All he said was, “Ron Guidry is there.” I flew out the door.
When we got to the cocktail party, we said our hellos to Larry and Angelo. Everyone was outside on a patio by the water. As soon as I walked in I went to grab the closest chair at the furthest table from the crowd and who was sitting there but Ron Guidry. I just stood there and looked down in disbelief as he looked up at me. Earlier in the day I was just giddy over seeing him in the bullpen and now here he was a few inches from me. Larry said, “Go ahead, you can sit there.” As soon as I sat down next to him, Guidry looked over, extended his hand and said, “Hi, I’m Ron Guidry.” Fuck, yeah you are! I said, “Yeah, I know. I’m a really big fan of yours. You were my favorite player growing up.”
Guidry’s form has barely changed since his pitching days. He was still tall and lean. He lacked the middle-aged man gut that haunts many guys his age. His hair was slicked back and had almost no gray in it. He could not have been more handsome. His slow Louisiana drawl eventually worked at calming my nerves enough to engage in a conversation. So I peppered him with questions. He was more than happy to chat, and here is some of what he said
I asked Gator how he felt about his role as a special instructor and if the players really listened to his advice during spring training, and he told them that some do,

“But you will always get young, cocky guys who don’t want to hear what you have to say and that’s fine. The veterans don’t really need much advice, but they tend to be very respectful.”
He particularly noted Mo Rivera as a great guy. “Then, there are some of the young kids who want to ask a question but they are too intimidated,” he said. “For example, the other day there was this kid in the bullpen who kept looking over at me and I knew the kid wanted to ask me something. So finally I went up to the kid and said, ‘I know you want to ask me a question so why don’t you just come out and ask. That’s what I’m here for. If you don’t ask me, I can’t help you.'”
I told Gator that Whitey Ford is one of my all-time favorite Yankees and that I was disappointed to hear that he had left because, someone told me, that the young guys don’t really listen to people like Whitey anymore. I asked if he sensed the same thing:
“Well the game has changed a lot and so have the attitudes.” Gator said when he first came up and Whitey Ford was a pitching coach and then a special instructor he was just awed by Whitey. He was thrilled to just be in his presence. “You don’t always find that anymore.”
I asked him what he thought of some of the arm problems Andy Pettitte has been experiencing over the past couple of years. I suggested that perhaps his workouts with Roger [Clemens] has been affecting his pitching since Roger is a power pitcher and Andy is a classic finesse pitcher.
Gator said, “The conditioning that Andy has experienced has been good for his body, however he’ll never have a body like Clemens and he knows that. Second, if you will remember when Andy first came up he had a stronger fastball and when he stared experimenting with change-ups, he not only lost speed on his fastball but he started experiencing arm problems.”
Guidry said that whenever a pitcher starts to change his style he always runs into problems with his arm. Which is why, he noted, he only threw 2 pitches (fastball and a slider). “So, really Andy is going back to his original form.”
Gator asked me if I was really old enough to remember him, and I assured him that I was, I delved into some Bronx Zoo talk. I asked him what he thought of Billy Martin as a manager.
“I liked Billy. I never really had a problem with him. However, he didn’t really understand pitchers.” He said when they first hired Goose Gossage as a closer his freshman year with the Yankees was pretty rough. He got knocked around a lot. In fact, Ron said, “I told Billy I don’t want that guy closing my game. Now, Goose is one of my closest friends and he was a great pitcher, but back then [that first year] I didn’t want him closing for me.” I said, “You wanted Sparky Lyle instead?” He said, “Well yes.” But eventually Goose got his game together and went on to become one of the great closers in baseball.
Gator spoke very highly of Gossage, so I told him he was one of my favorites as well and that I was a bit surprised that he didn’t get the votes for the Hall of Fame this year. Ron said, “Aw, he’s got plenty of time to make it. Hopefully, he’ll do it.”
At one point during our conversation, Guidry got up to refill his drink. I took that as a sign to scram and apologized for monopolizing his time. He turned and said, “No, I’m not leaving I’m just going over to the table to get a drink. I’ll be right back. Can I get you something?”
He returned in about 30 seconds (just enough time for my friend Anne to run over and say, “Are you totally dying right now?” I quickly said yes and scooted her away as I saw him approach the table.) When he returned I said, “I’m sorry for chewing off your ear. You must get sick of being bombarded by fans all the time”
“Well it depends upon the approach. When you came over and told me that I was one of your favorite players and sat down to chat, I have no problem with that. There is nothing wrong with wanting to have a conversation. But some people don’t approach you that way.” He didn’t elaborate on the wrong approach, but I think he meant if you are trying to eat a meal or if a fan gets in your face aggressively, that’s when it is a problem. I was grateful for his reassurance since I was nervous enough just talking to him and did not want this moment to end any time soon.
As I was sitting there talking to Ron, I looked to my left and there was Yogi Berra and Don Zimmer at a table nearby. When I turned toward the other direction, I spotted Mel Stottlemeyer, his wife, and Bobby Mercer at a table. It all seemed very surreal. I looked at Guid and said, “Wow, there’s Mel Stottlemyre and Bobby Mercer!” Ron turned to me and said, “Why don’t you go over and say hello. They are two of the nicest guys you will ever meet.” I looked at him and said, “No, that’s okay. I would rather talk to you.” There was no way I was going to pry myself from Guidry, however I did notice my friends Anne and Allison chatting with Mel and Bobby. Anne couldn’t resist because next to Derek Jeter, Mel is her favorite Yankee man. Anne and Allison were with Larry Berra, who introduced them as fans who “like old Yankees!” Everyone got a good laugh out of that!
I asked Ron if he was looking forward to Ron Guidry Day later this summer. He didn’t seem too enthused over the attention, but was appreciative for the day. I asked him which former teammates would be joining him. Goose Gossage was the first person that he mentioned. He also listed Graig Nettles and Sparky Lyle. I can’t remember the rest because we got sidelined by my friends, who had come over to brag to him that I had already purchased tickets for his Day.
Ron Guidry was incredibly nice, polite, and patient with my enthusiasm over meeting him. He sat and talked baseball with me for well over an hour, joked around with my friends and me, and could not have been more of a gentleman. After we ended our conversation and parted ways, he even came over to say goodbye to me before he left. Though I was incredibly nervous talking to one of my favorite Yankees it was without a doubt the highlight of my visit to Spring Training.
Toward the end of our conversation, Guidry and I were standing around and suddenly, out of no where, up walked Graig Nettles. I had asked Gid earlier if Nettles had left because I thought I had seen him. Gator responded, by saying, “You never know. That’s why he’s called Puff. He’s there one minute, the next he’s gone.”
Luckily for me, Puff reappeared. So when he walked up to us, Gator turned to him and said, “Puff, this Mindy.” Nettles turned to me, extended his hand, and said, “Hi. I’m Graig Nettles.” I said, “Yeah, I know,” with a smile plastered across my face. I couldn’t believe it.
After being introduced to Graig, veteran Daily News beat writer, Bill Madden, walked up and started discussing the latest Jeter/Boss George incident. Nettles defended Jeter by saying he was a great kid and a terrific ball player and that there was no reason he shouldn’t be made captain. Nettles said, “After all, if he made someone like me captain, why the hell wouldn’t he make Jeter captain. It doesn’t make sense.”
Puff was funny, and honest. I found him to be more humble and friendly than I could have imagined. He hung out with us for the remainder of the night. He was incredibly nice to fans at the local bar where our entourage settled. A few fans approached him to sign some autographs and talk some baseball. He happily did both. One of them even bought us a round of drinks, much to his immediate embarrassment. When the fan insisted on buying them, Nettles turned to me and said, “I’m sorry about that. I hate when that happens.” I said, “Why? He’s a fan and he is just happy to talk to you. You shouldn’t feel embarrassed by that. You just made his day!” Graig said, “Yeah, I guess you are right,” and proceeded to chat with him for a while much to the fan’s delight.
Neither Nettles nor Guidry seemed entirely comfortable with a fuss being made over them. They both seemed to be adamant about just being looked at as regular guys, which made them all the more appealing and cemented their standing on my all-time favs list.
We stayed in Tampa for the remainder of the weekend and caught a couple of more games. On Sunday’s game our seats were right next to the bullpen so we got to see Clemens warm up (he was the starting pitcher.) At one point, Reggie Jackson came out to stand in as a hitter. I was sitting directly above him in my seat. It was my first and only close look at Jackson and it was definitely a treat to seem him standing at the plate again (even without the swing.)

On Monday, we were invited out to a ballgame in Clearwater by a friend of ours whose father in-law is Bill Giles. The Phillies were playing the Yankees, so we got to sit in the coveted seats behind the dugout. Since we were with the Giles’ we sat behind the Phillies dugout, which gave us a perfect view across the 3rd base side to the Yankee dugout. We missed the end of the game because we had to leave early to catch our flight back to NY, however we did get a wave from Derek Jeter who stood stranded at 1st base talking with Lee Mazzilli. Jeter seemed a little puzzled by people on the Phillies side waving to him, but he was a good sport and waved back. Anne nearly collapsed into her Philly cheese steak.
We owe a big thanks to Larry Berra and his friends for making our vacation so memorable. Who knew the turn of events that would take place when I stopped to chat with him about his dad on our first day at the hotel?

SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME

It’s very tempting to sit down and make predictions for the coming season, but this year, I’m going to pass. For the past two years, I’ve said that the Texas Rangers will improve and Ken Griffey will have a comeback season. I could repeat myself again, but why bother? It’s not a matter of being right or not, I just don’t think I’m even-handed enough to make an interesting crop of predictions, especially when it comes to the AL East.

I’m a pessimistic and superstitious fan by nature. I always think of the worst case scenerio, and then expect that it will come to fruition. That’s why each year I pick the Red Sox to finally beat the Yanks. It has to happen at some point, right? Forget what the realities are, what the numbers say, I hunker down, and prepare for inevitable failure and disappointment.

Hell of an attitude coming from a Yankee fan, huh? I sound like a fuggin Sox fan, fer cryin out loud. Well, I don’t like coming off like a know-it-all, boasting about how monstrous the Yankees are. It’s just not my nature. There are enough arrogant Yankee fans to go around, anyhow. I’ll stay cautiously optimistic, nervous and appreciative.

My friends accept my superstitions and therefore don’t listen to a thing I say. My credibility with them is shot. Oh, well.

A few days ago, I sent my cousin Gabe an e-mail that said, “Neither the Mets nor the Yanks will make the playoffs this year.” I was trying to get a rise out of him, and of course, I did.

Here is his response:

What did you do, consult an oracle? Thanks for spoiling it for the rest of us!

I have no illusions about the Mets making the playoffs, or at least no illusions about the them winning a lot of games. If it’s possible to win the NL East by going 90-72 then I guess the Mets have a shot. I don’t see this team winning 95+ and therefore don’t see them winning any wild card.

As for the Yankees, I understand you need to protect yourself, but what indication have the Yankees given that they won’t win between 95-100 games this year, thereby putting themselves in decent position for a playoff berth? I mean, do I think there’s a chance that the Yanks will win 94-97 games and not make the playoffs? Sure. But I’d say the odds of them getting in are about 1:1, at worst. Probably better. There’s a better than 50% chance the Yankees will win the division. If they don’t do that, there’s maybe a 25%-35% chance they’ll still get in the postseason.

CONE-GRATS, OLD MAN

It looks as if David Cone will not start the season in Florida after all. According to the Times, Cone will likely pitch a week from tonight against the Expos:

At age 40, Cone has a finite number of pitches left, and the Mets determined that he, and they, are better off if he throws them against major leaguers instead of minor leaguers. So Cone will pitch in an intrasquad game Sunday and, if he recovers normally, he will start next Friday against the Montreal Expos at Shea Stadium, completing his ascent from retirement to the Mets’ fourth starter.

“I was a self-proclaimed long shot coming in,” Cone said, “but I think everybody probably gave me longer odds than that, almost a no shot.

“To have this chance right now,” Cone added, “it’s tremendously exciting.”

I don’t know whether having the 40-year old Cone as your 4th starter is an encouraging sign if you are a Mets fans, but at least it’s an entertaining story for the rest of us. Just keep Roger Angell away from him and he just may do alright.