LET IT SNOW, LET IT SNOW: SPRING IS HERE

I’m an early bird by nature. New Yorkers usually get fed up with the lingering winter sometime around mid-March, early-April. I hit the boiling point somewhere right after the Super Bowl. At some point, something just snaps inside of me, and no matter how much winter is left, I’ll make the mental transition to spring. That way when spring finally does roll around, with the great smells of dirt, and worms, and flowers and baseball, I’m way ahead of the game.

By the time New Yorkers are finally able to shed the layers of old-man winter, and the city becomes a sea of exposed flesh and hormones, I’m be there with a shit-eating grin on my mug, talking bout, “Come on in, the water, she’s fine.”

The poster-boy for spring.

I made the mental switch this past week, in spite of everything.

No matter how much snow is dumped on us, no matter how brickadocious the temperature becomes, I’m stubbornly sticking to my guns: it’s springtime.

It all started about 10 days ago, when we had our last snowfall, before the monster that’s currently blanketing a good part of the country. It was the Friday before last, and I was going to meet an old friend for dinner on the Upper West Side. I had some time to kill, so I strolled through the lower part of Central Park.

It was the magic hour, when the sky is still blue, but darkness was descending over the city. There were a good number of people out, but not enough to feel crowded. I love the stillness, the hush that comes over New York when a big snow hits. Everything is slowed down just so.

As I walked past the softball fields at the base of the park, I couldn’t help but walk closer. The fields—four in all—were surrounded by a fence for the winter. I stood right next to the fence and looked out at the virgin snow covering the diamonds. To my right, the skyscrapers of Manhattan were lit up against the fading blue skies. When I was a kid, skyscrapers reminded me of the Imperial Star Destroyers from the “Star Wars” movies—majestic, impregnable.

Here they were, standing guard over this patch of ballfields, lending an almost surreal grandeur to the scene.

I closed my eyes and imagined the same scene in July. The heat and humidity of summer, the sounds of games being played at all four diamonds, the smells of hot dogs and dog shit and roasting nuts, and of course, the cast of characters that make up the scene—umpires, vendors, players, goldbrickers, tourists.

There was something comforting about looking at the snow-covered fields, so still, so far removed from all that activity. The snow was keeping the fields safe for yet another lively summer of baseball.

With the professional players reporting to spring training to get loose, it’s just a matter of time before the seasons unfold and all the sights and sounds of our game return.

I started clapping and chanting, “Lets-Go-Yan-Kees,” just to make sure the ol’ pipes worked. A couple of passing tourists eyed me curiously, but I didn’t care. I stuck around for a couple of more minutes, taking it all in, and then happily made my way to dinner, thinking: fug the snow, spring is here.

MY FAVORITE THINGS OF 2002: PART V

Baseball Brethren: Jesse Glasberg and Bob Backus

I.

One of the most fascinating aspects of Baseball is the dichotomy between the game’s inherent loneliness, its solitude, and the sense of fraternization, and togetherness that it promotes. For every David Cone, there is a Dave Kingman.

This doesn’t just apply to the players. Think about how much time the average fan spends absorbing the game alone, whether reading the box scores in the morning paper, or day dreaming about their favorite team as they drift off to sleep at night. For some this is enough, but for most of us, the sense of participating, and sharing our feelings about the game is simply irresistible.

I’m a loquacious bastard by nature, so I use baseball as a way to meet people. It’s a safe topic, especially for men. I’m not into cars or carpentry, so if it’s not books, painting, or records, I find that sports is the ideal social lubricant.

Like most things I enjoy, baseball has a rich oral tradition. Tom Boswell addressed this phenomenon in his article, “This Ain’t a Football Game. We Do This Every Day,” from his collection “How Life Imitates the World Series:”

Conversation is the blood of baseball. It flows through the game, an invigorating system of anecdotes

Ride the bush-league buses with the Reading Phillies or the Spokane Brewers or the Chattanooga Lookouts, and suddenly it is easy to understand why a major league dugout is a place of such addictive conversational pleasures. In the world of the minor leaguer, which is split between short hours of athletic adventure and long hours of idleness, talk becomes a staple of sanity

This rich verbal tradition-the way the game has taken on the ambiance of the frontier campfire or the farmer’s cracker-barrel stove and moved it into the dugout-is what marks baseball so distinctively, not only among our games, but among all our endeavors

This passion for language and the telling detail is what makes baseball the writer’s game.

In his book, “Take Time For Paradise: Americans and Their Games,” A. Bartlett Giamatti, describes the insatiable gregariousness baseball fans posses. The scene is the lobby of the Marriott Pavilion Hotel in St. Louis, during the 1987 NL Playoffs between the San Francisco Giants and the Cards:

The sound is a high, constant hum, a vast buzz of a million bees, the sound almost palpable and, for hours, never varying in pitch or intensity as anecdote vies with anecdote or joke or gossip or monologue or rude ribbing, so reminiscent of the clubhouse. It is the sound of tip and critique and prediction and second-guessing, of nasty crack and generous assessment, of memory cutting across memory, supplementing and correcting and coloring the tale, all the crosscutting, overlapping, salty, blunt, nostalgic, sweet conversation about only one subject-Baseball.

Here is the oft-told tale that is the game is told again. It is told always in the present tense, in a paratactic style that reflects the game’s seamless, cumulative character, each event linked to the last and creating the context for the next-a style almost Biblical in its continuity and instinct for typology. It is told in a tone at once elegiac, sharply etched, inclusive of all nuance. Baseball people have the keenest eyes for the telling detail I have ever known.

II.

One evening, early last May, I was in the Lincoln Center area on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and had some time to kill. I gravitated to everybody’s favorite loitering spot: Barnes and Noble. When I got to the baseball display on the third floor, I noticed an old-timer dressed in a navy blue suit, wearing a navy blue Kangol, leafing through “The Bill James Historical Abstract.” He looked a like cross between the great sports writer, Shirley Povich and Uncle Junior from “The Sopranos.”

Must be picking up the book for his grandson, I thought. But after a few moments, I figured he was reading it for himself, so I started up a conversation. Much to my surprise, not only was he a bonafide fan, but he liked Bill James to boot.

I licked my chops and peppered him with questions for the better part of half an hour.

He introduced himself as “Jesse” but didn’t offer a last name. He must have been in his early 70s. Jesse had been a season ticket holder with the Yankees from 1976 through the early 1990s, “When George jacked up the prices too much for me to bear.” He has also been a season ticket holder for the Mets since 1973.

These are some of the observations he shared with me:

Tom Seaver was the toughest pitcher he ever watched, but Koufax, at his height, was the best he ever saw.

Watching Jackie Robinson running the bases was the most memorable part of his baseball upbringing. “It wasn’t that he was the fastest, but having been a track star and a football star, he was able to change directions better than anyone I ever saw. He would get out of virtually 50% of the run-downs he got in, he was that strong and quick.”

Willie Mays had a powerful arm, but it wasn’t as accurate as Clemente’s or Furillo’s. But overall, Mays was the most complete player he’d ever seen.

Larry Doby was overrated. Minnie Minoso was better.

The DH was a curious, even appealing idea, but it failed, and he prefered the National League game.

Whitey Herzog and Tommy Lasorda were two of the best managers he’d seen, but nobody was better than Jimmy Leyland.

Bobby Valentine is bright, but rash.

“What about Zimmer?” I asked.

“Zimmer is just plain nuts I’ll always give a guy like Torre credit, though. He was a Giants fan who was from Brooklyn. When I was growing up, Giants fans were the older guys. The Giants were the first great New York team, the McGraw teams, Me Ott, you know. So if a kid in the 1940s or 50s was a Giants fan, it was most likely because his father or his uncle had been a Giants fan. To be a Giants fan in Brooklyn? That was saying something. I’ve always appreciated Torre for that. Just like how I don’t appreciate Giuliani for being a Yankee fan. He grew up in Staten Island. Everybody was a Yankee fan. The Yankees were always winning. How hard is that?”

I asked Jesse how the game has changed for him over the years.

“It used to be more fun. There was less player movement. You got to know the guys. Get attached to them, even though there were still plenty of trades. I guess I feel like I know the 1941 Dodgers roster better than the current Mets team, and I go to the games.”

Jess chuckled in disbelief. “Can you imagine? A utility man is a millionaire these days.”

When I exhausted my queries, the conversation died down a little. As it turned out, Jesse was going the opera, across the street at the Met. We strolled outside together, and swapped Phil Rizzuto-Announcing stories. We were standing in front of the fountains at Lincoln Center when I said goodbye. But something seemed off. It looked as if he wanted to say something.

Finally, he goes, “Well, maybe we should exchange numbers and maybe we’ll go to a game sometime.”

III.

Three weeks later I got a call from Jesse, and we eventually went to a Mets game.

It was a reasonably cool day, for the middle of the summer. The Twins were in town to play the Mets. Tori Hunter hit a line-drive home run to left center. I remember the crisp sound of the crack; the ball zipped over the fence in a hurry.

Jesse brought his 1955 Brooklyn Dodgers Yearbook to show me. We picked up where we had left off at Barnes and Noble. As fate would have it, the fellow who sat next to us was a season-ticket holder as well, and joined in our meandering conversations. He had just one seat at Shea, but season tickets at Yankee Stadium and Tampa Bay as well.

Here we were, three virtual strangers, brought together by a mutual appreciation for the game. Jesse grew up in the 40s, Bob in the 60s, and I came of age in the 1980s. This is as close to Sandy Koufax and Leo Durocher as I’m ever going to get, so I asked tons of questions, and did a lot of listening.

We had a great time and didn’t mind that the Mets got spanked.

By the time the game was over, our new friend, Bob, had offered to send me any tickets he would not be using for the remainder of the season. Would you believe, he ended up sending me tickets for a good half a dozen games?

Bob and I exchanged e-mails during the course of the remainder of the season, which were enlightening and funny.

Let me share just two:

7/11/02

I can’t recall if I already told you, but I was a Red Sox fan from 1961-1969, which for me was 5th grade through first year of college. The Yankee team of Mantle and Maris I greatly admired, but I grew up on the CT-MA border and rooted for the Red Sox. From 61 though 66, they were a second division team and they finished wither last or next to last in 66 under the forgettable Billy Herman. The Sox pennant drive in 67 was to me a greater surprise than the Mets of 69 because you knew the Mets were developing an incredible pitching staff. The Sox had one star, Jim Lonborg, and a bunch of journeymen who had the best years of their lives that season. Plus the Mets had to contend with one great team in the Cubs, while the Sox were facing four (Twins-65 pennant winner, Orioles-66 World Champion, Tigers-68 World Champions, and the White Sox, who had the best pitching in the league) that year.

The key to the Red Sox success was the way Dick Williams destroyed the country club atmosphere the Sox had through his tough guy stance. Dick Williams was kind of a cross between Bobby Valentine and Bobby Knight. He had Valentine’s way of being sarcastic and also brilliant in terms of lineups and strategy. But he could explode with anger and passion, like Knight. The coaches and managers I most admire have been that type; I respect the people who push to be their best. I guess my all time favorite manager was Gil Hodges and Dick Williams would be second.

Most players [on the Sox] hated Williams, but they played hard and won the pennant. My father lost a three year battle with melanoma in October, 1967 and the Sox pennant drive certainly helped me deal with the last four months, which were pretty awful. Also the Red Sox attendance had fallen to under a million in 66, so this 67 team created a tremendous resurgence of baseball interest in New England that has never gone away since.

Lonborg ruined his career in a skiing accident that winter and the Sox were no longer pennant threats. Crybaby Yaz could not deal with Williams’ ways when they were not winning pennants and [owner, Tom] Yawkey could not deal with Yaz being mad at him, so two years after the greatest managing job I had ever seen, Dick was fired. And I swore I would never root for the Red Sox again until Tom Yawkey died. And when he finally died, I still hated him so I kept rooting against them. Dick went on to win pennants with Oakland and San Diego; both teams were bad before he got thee and he taught them how to win. The players on the A’s actually liked him because they were pretty tough themselves and totally focused on winning. After they won the 73 World Series, Williams tried to leave the A’s to manage the Yankees but Charlie Finley wouldn’t let him, so Dick quit and sat out a while. And the Yankees hired Bill Virdon, one of the worst managers in baseball history, but that’s another story.

Williams was like Bobby Knight in that people either loved him or hated him. I loved them both. Truthfully my nature is to be somewhat like them. I guess that is why I admired Hodges the most because he could command respect and fear without yelling at or being sarcastic with people.

Thanks for listening. I probably have not though about Dick in 10 years or so. By the way there is a great book called “Red Sox Century” that I skimmed in a bookstore a couple years ago. It really covered that period of Red Sox history well, especially how Yaz was able to manipulate Yawkey into firing Williams. To be replaced by the dullest manager I ever heard of, Eddie Kasko.

Later, I wrote Bob, and told him of my bigotry toward Red Sox fans and New Englanders in general. The tension of the Yankees-Sox summer had me boiling over, but Bob set me straight:

8/31/02

New Englanders are provincial, but many New Yorkers act as though nothing that happens outside of NYC has any importance. That pessimism you spoke of is kind of a game. It is like me to have any hope of avoiding a strike because of some silly Calvinistic idea that it would hurt less if I were expecting the strike. And lets fact it, with 84 years since a world title and the memory of ’86 still alive, who can blame them for not being too hopeful. Many sociologists have written papers about different theories on how it will affect NE when the Sox finally win a title. There will be initial euphoria, but then there may be depression. The fans will miss having something to hate as passionately as they do the Yanks. Not too many sports fans get to think of the other team as its fans as the Devil Incarnate.

A couple of other things. You should draw no thoughts about New England from southern Connecticut residents. There is a reason why they call it the Tri-state area. CT from Hartford west and South has no connection to New England mores and values. It sees itself as a suburb of NY and see Mainers as boobs (as do I).

I have spent considerable time in New York, Ohio, Florida and Texas. I would agree we are more racist than New York, but much less so than Florida, Ohio and Texas. But my friend, whether you like it or not, most people in this country agree with John Rocker, they just don’t want to admit it.

From one inquiring mind to another,

Bob Backus,

Lifetime President (and only known member) of the 1918 Club.

All of this, just because I opened my mouth and started talking. I hope to run into both Jesse and Bob this coming season. When I do, I’ll let them know you said “hi.”

I’ll be damned if Baseball isn’t the game that keeps giving.

MILLAR’S CROSSING

The long and convoluted case of Kevin Millar has finally been settled, and the Red Sox have yet another first baseman. It should be interesting to see if Mr. Millar makes all the effort the Red Sox have gone through to aquire him worth while.

THE MOUTH THAT ROARED

Just how long did you think we were going to have to wait for fat-ass Boomer Wells to open his big, fat, mouth? Wells, one of the few current Yankees who would have been right at home on the Bronx Zoo teams of the late 1970s and early 80s, sounded off yesterday, and was in good form, defending Derek Jeter, and pushing for a contract extension. According to the New York Post:

“Derek is not a party guy, he is not out there every night, trust me,” said a chuckling Wells. “He has gone out a couple of times, big deal. [Jeter] has every right to be mad. I try to get him to go out but he goes to dinner, goes to a movie and calls it a night. He didn’t have a .300-plus season [last year], but we all have a bad year.

“He has done a lot for this team and carried this team at times, especially in the postseason. For George to jump on him like that was unfair. George tries to light a fire under your [butt]. I think it’s the wrong way to do it, in the press instead of going up to the individual. I think that would be a lot better.”

OLD MAN RIVER

David Cone was his usual self-depricating, charming self yesterday as he described his comeback as “a long shot.” Seeing pictures of Cone next to Leiter and Glavine in the locker room looked more like a college reunion, or a casting call for “That Championship Season” than a legitimate comeback.

The Mets have issued Cone Doc Gooden’s old number 16 for good luck. But he’ll need more than mojo to make the team.

“I think people understand what’s going on here, that this is just an old warhorse who’s having a hard time retiring and wants to give it one last shot,” Cone said.

You said it mister.

A REAL MENSCH

I was talking to my cousin Gabe yesterday, and he just can’t get excited for his Mets yet. Of course it’s still early, but it’s hard to begrudge any Met fan for being cautiously optimistic at best.

“Maybe it would be different if Fonzie was coming back,” he told me.

True indeed. But as Whitestone’s finest, Edgardo Alfonzo packs his bags for San Francisco, he’s not leaving New York without saying goodbye. Alfonzo has rented ad space on the top of taxi cabs for the next month, where he has an banner that reads: Fonzie Loves New York.

The gesture is a reminder of what Met fans will be missing in Alfonzo: a real mensch.

I don’t know if it will make Gabe feel better or worse.

IF YOU WIN, YOU WIN, IF YOU LOSE, YOU STILL WIN…

Bob Klapisch adds his two cents to the Jeter/George story, and notes that Jeter is playing into Steinbrenner’s hand by stating his case to the media:

Make no mistake, Steinbrenner wants Jeter to succeed, because the Yankees need him. But George wants to look good, too, “Abso-[fuggin]-lutely” is what Reggie Jackson said when asked if The Boss is seeking to gain control over Jeter. He’s even begun his campaign on Jason Giambi too, denying clubhouse and field-access this summer to Giambi’s personal trainer, Bob Alejo.

Steinbrenner and Giambi will meet face to face Tuesday, and we’ll learn in just a few days what it took us seven years to discover about Jeter. And that is, even the coolest and hippest sometimes can’t resist Steinbrenner’s bait.

If Giambi turns out to be as sensitive as Jeter, don’t expect Steinbrenner to relent. And if that’s the case, the entire Bronx summer has a chance to end up in the toilet.

My, how times have changed.

In his 1984 autobiography, aptly titled “Balls,” former Yankee third baseman Craig Nettles had this bit of advice for young players:

Today [1983], my recommendation to a young ballplayer is, “Be controversial. Be as controversial as you can—if you can handle it.” A lot of players can’t. Reggie wsa one of the guys who could, and the more controversial he was, the better he played. Our kids, [Don] Mattingly and [Steve “Bye Bye”] Balboni, they will never be controversial. All the young kids coming up are quiet. But I tell them, “Being a good soilder is only going to cost you money in the long run.”

Ah, the good ol’ days…

Nettles was a sardonic, clubhouse wit, who incidentally had a lousy business acumen. He was traded to the Yankees from Cleveland just a month before Steinbrenner bought the team.

During his first season with New York, he played for “The Major,” Ralph Houk:

Ralph said to me, “This owner is giving me a lot of trouble so far with all these phones calls, but one thing about him, he isn’t afraid to spend some money and buy some players when we need them.”…I like that aspect of George, that he wants to win so badly that he’ll go out and do whatever he can to make us a winner. And that’s all a player can ask for.

But Ralph kept complaining that George was calling him on the phone all the time. He’d call during the game, in the middle of the night. Things he’s done to all his managers since…

Despite what Ralph told me about George, I didn’t realize the problems were as bad as they were until the final day of the [1973] season. The final game didn’t mean anything, and after the game, the guys were getting ready to go home. But the word was, “Stay around until the end of the game. Ralph is going to make an announcement.” I didn’t know what it was going to be. And at the end of the game, you could hear the fans outside in the stadium, tearing the stadium apart, because it was the last game in Yankee Stadium for two years while they renovated, and with all that noise going on outside, in the clubhouse underneath the stands, here was Ralph Houk telling us that he was leaving.

As we sat around on the stools by our lockers, Ralph cam out and said, “I got to tell you guys something. I’ve had enough. I’m quitting.” And he broke down into tears.

I spoke to him afterward and Ralph said, “I have to quit before I hit the guy.” Ralph said, “I don’t want to leave the game of baseball by punching an owner. But if he keeps on bothering me like he does, I’ll end up hitting him.”

Maybe that’s the answer. Jeter should just go up to George’s office and punch him in the eye ball.

AROUND THE HORN

1. Nate Silver has a good article about the Yankees’ 7-man rotation at Baseball
Prospectus.

2. Tom Verducci previews the 2003 season, with a couple of questions for each team.

3. Baseball Weekly has a feature on Bill James and the influence he may have on the Red Sox.

4. Last but not least, Jack Curry has a piece on the “cool and coy” new manager of the Texas Rangers, Buck Showalter.

Enjoy.

MUCH ADO ABOUT NUTHIN

There is a lot of hot air coming out of Yankee Land for a change, and not all of it from Tampa, Fla. With another weekend of snow on the horizon for New York, the local papers are keeping us warm with all the “Bronx Zoo” bluster they can conjure up. Joel Sherman and Harvey Araton, two of the more shrill columnists on the beat, pen gloom-and-doom columns today.

As expected, the fall out from Derek Jeter’s AP interview, made for a feeding frenzy this morning. While the Jeter v. George story makes for juicy headlines, it isn’t really a big deal. What? Jeter got ‘Georged?’ This is the start of his 8th season as the starting short stop of the New York Yankees, isn’t it about time the unflappable superstar finally got decked by Steinbrenner? After all, what makes Jeter so special? That he’s a class act, and a wonderful player? When has that stopped George before? Considering what his boyhood favorite Dave Winfield went through in the Bronx, this ‘controversy’ is a mosquito bite, no matter how hurt Jeter’s feelings are.

As usual, Bronx Zoo veteran, Bill Madden hits the nail on the head, sighting the final scene in Roman Polanski’s “Chinatown”:

Unlike Steinbrenner, Jeter has gone out of his way to shun controversy. And given the sensitivity of his “Turn 2” charity for underprivileged kids, it is understandable why he would feel his image has been unfairly tarnished.

In lieu of a formal apology, all I can say to him is: Forget about it, Derek. It’s Chinatown.

DIVINE INTERVENTION

Okay, don’t laugh now, but a voice of reason emerged in Yankee camp yesterday, and it belonged to none other than the “straw that stirs the drink” himself, Reginald Martinez Jackson. Mr. October, who recieved more abuse from The Boss in one season (1981) than Jeter will in a lifetime, arrived in Tampa and immediately went into counselor-mode:

“Derek is hot and the reason he is hot makes sense,” Jackson said. “His character was attacked. This is a very conscientious guy and basically the un-named captain. He is the voice of the club and it’s his team.

“If you want to target someone for the team not having a good season last year, he is the guy. He is not an off-the-field party guy. If he were, the media would have been on to it long ago rather than waiting eight or nine years. The Boss is paying big iron and he wants big-time input into the ballclub.”

…”Jeter’s a tough kid. He went through what he went through with his sister a couple of years ago (when she was sick) and he never let anyone know about it, and that’s far more important than this.

“It’s hard for me to imagine he could be more motivated than he is.”

I’M ALRIGHT, JACK

Although Jason Giambi isn’t due in Tampa until later today, any strudel involving his personal trainer Bobby Alejo has seemingly been squashed:

“He will be allowed in the weight room, allowed on the planes and allowed to throw batting practice indoors at home,” GM [Brian] Cashman said. “He is not allowed on the field or in the clubhouse.”

How that translates into how effective Alejo, who is paid by Giambi and not the Yankees, can be with Giambi remains to be seen.

“We are trying to limit [clubhouse access] as much as possible,” Cashman said when asked why Alejo’s access was sliced. “We will have a lot more personnel in the clubhouse this year.”

…Added Joe Torre: “We’ve made changes every year. (Roger) Clemens had his guy, (Brian) McNamee, a couple of years ago. Then last year, he didn’t have him but was still able to work with him (away from the ballpark). (Jorge) Posada has his own guy, and (Derek) Jeter and Bernie (Williams), and when you let one guy have it, then the other guys resent it and you have a problem.

“It’s nothing against the individual. It’s just that when you let one guy have it, it opens it up.”

Giambi’s agent Arn Tellem said, “Everything’s fine. We worked it out. There are no issues. We got what we needed and the Yankees did too.”

OH, BROTHER

Meanwhile, the biggest news around Red Sox camp is what Prince Pedro may say when he arrives. That, and the already tired topic of the Theo Epstein’s age.

Jeremy Giambi, who is expected to have a strong showing for the Sox, addressed rivalries with the Yankees and his brother:

”The Yankees got the names, the Yankees got the big contracts, but you look at our team, throughout the lineup, the guys pitching and our pen, and we match up with them very well,” said Giambi, who spent eight weeks working out in Arizona this winter in the same demanding program followed by Nomar Garciaparra, Lou Merloni, and another new Sox pickup, Todd Walker . ”I think we’re actually a team that can play more consistent because the Yankees are going to have some injuries. I think they know that, too, I think that’s why they’re holding on to so many pitchers.

”Hopefully, we can play more consistent and if they get a few guys hurt, that’s our chance to take advantage of it.”

…”Before things settled down, he was more excited than anything,” Jeremy Giambi said of his brother’s reaction to the trade that brought Jeremy to Boston, ”especially when he heard Theo indicate that I would get everyday at-bats. Jason’s my biggest fan, not just my brother. We’re part of the biggest rivalry in baseball, maybe the biggest rivalry in sports. There’s going to be quite a serious lockup every time. He’s thinking things are going to be out of control when they come into Boston or we go into New York. Just adding more fuel to the fire.”

WELCOME BACK

At the very least, the Jeter story succeeded in keeping the return of David Cone off the backpages. Score one for the Boss. John Harper has a thoughtful column on Cone’s return in the News:

…You have to wonder about him at age 40. He’s not a big, strong guy, and he was never a workout fiend, put it that way.

Nevertheless, most anyone who has known Cone over the years will be rooting hard for him, especially New York sports writers, since he is the all-time stand-up guy in a locker room, always there to answer for himself after the bad days as well as the good days.

I just hope he’s not doing this because he’s chasing those seven wins he needs to reach 200 victories, or because he’s bored. I hope his fastball is telling him he can do this, and not just the fearless competitor in him that won’t let him back down from a challenge without a fight, whether it’s on the mound or in a pick-up basketball game.

Mike C wrote a terrific analysis of Cone’s chances over at Baseball Rants. (Don’t miss the 7th installment in Mike’s history of relief pitching.)

David Pinto also has a funny take on the signing at Baseball Musings.

Cone has always been a good quote, so I hope he does well, but he was reduced to a virtual mute in 2000 when his game went south. I doubt whether the Mets will stick with him too long if in fact, he is all warshed up.

PLUG TUNIN’

Travis Nelson, the Boy of Summer, has a thorough and detailed preview of the 2003 Phillies that is well worth perusing, and Aaron Gleeman wrote an interesting series of articles comparing Sandy Koufax with the Big Unit. The results may suprise you.

WHY WAIT ‘TIL MONDAY? JETER SPEAKS OUT

Derek Jeter didn’t wait until Monday to address Boss George’s critique of his priorities. Jeter spoke with AP columnist, Steve Wilstein this morning. Here is some of what he had to say:

“He’s the boss and he’s entitled to his opinion, right or wrong, but what he said has been turned into me being this big party animal…He even made a reference to one birthday party. That’s been turned into that I’m like Dennis Rodman now.

“I don’t think that’s fair. I have no problems with people criticizing how I play. But it bothers me when people question my work ethic. That’s when you’re talking about my integrity. I take a lot of pride in how hard I work. I work extremely hard in the offseason. I work extremely hard during the season to win. My priorities are straight.”

…”No way am I trying to get into a verbal match with the boss,” Jeter said. “I’m just trying to make it known that I care about one thing and that’s winning.”

…Jeter’s image as a playboy on the town surely has been promoted by New York’s gossip columns, where he’s been romantically linked to models, singers and actresses.

“I’m not a hermit,” Jeter said. “It’s not like I’m locked up in my house. But it’s amazing the things that are in the gossip pages that aren’t true. They’ve got me dating everyone imaginable. A lot of it I wish I would have.”

The real downside of that, he said, is that some fans will say, “there he is again, out partying. He doesn’t care.”

That’s the kind of false image that Jeter worries Steinbrenner is fostering with his complaints and that tabloids are spreading. Last week Jeter was asked if he was going to change his approach to this season after losing in the playoffs.

“My response was, no, not at all,” Jeter said. “Next thing you know, the back page of the Daily News had a picture of me saying, ‘Party On.’ Like I was saying, that I refused to change my ways for the boss or to be the captain of the Yankees.

“If you’re a fan looking at that, you’d think I don’t care whether they win or lose. That couldn’t be farther from the truth.”

You go, DJ: don’t take no shit off nobody.

Ya hoid?

JOE, JETER HAVE COMPANY: GIAMBO GETS “GEORGED”

You didn’t think we’d heard the last from Boss George now, did you? Just to show he doesn’t play favorites, Jason Giambi’s cherry has been busted before the second-year Yank has even arrived to camp. The NY Post reports this morning that Giambi’s personal trainer, Bobby Alejo, has been canned by Steinbrenner, which may come as a suprise to the beefy first baseman:

“I haven’t heard a word about anything,” Alejo said. “All I know is that [Giambi] is picking me up Friday and we are flying from California to Tampa. Other than that, this is new to me. I don’t know anything about it.”

Oh, boy.

Supposedly, Steinbrenner saw the access Alejo had and was concerned other players who have personal trainers were feeling slighted by not having their guys around. Bernie Williams, Jorge Posada, Roger Clemens, David Wells and Jeter work with personal trainers.

The move is not without precedent. Following the 2001 World Series, former St. John’s catcher Glenn McNamee, Clemens’ personal trainer and the man Rocket gives credit to for keeping him throwing hard late in his Hall of Fame career, wasn’t asked back. McNamee continues to work with Clemens, but isn’t at Yankee Stadium or at ballparks on the road.

For what it’s worth, at least the move isn’t being disguised as a cost-cutting measure. Alejo’s salary was paid by Giambi; only his traveling expenses were picked up by the team.

Steinbrenner has made more disruptive noise this winter than he has in several years. Not since he was busting his buddy Popeye Zimmer’s chops in the spring of 1999 (re: the “Fat pus-sy toad” incident) have we seen George in such form. All which should make Friday an interesting Valentine’s Day in Yankee Land when Giambi arrives. Not for nothing, but Derek Jeter said that he’ll address Steinbrenner’s off-season comments about him come Monday.

Strap yourself in, this should be a lively training camp.

ROCKET FUEL

Roger Clemens appears to be one of the few Yankees who will avoid the wrath of George this spring. The future Hall of Famer, who is just 7 wins shy of 300 for his career, spoke openly with reporters about just about everything that popped into the big Texan’s mind.

Enter at your own risk.

FORMER SOX OWNER, YAWKEY PAL, HAYWOOD SULLIVAN DIES

Haywood Sullivan, who holds a dubious place in Red Sox history, passed away yesterday at the age of 72. Peter Gammons contributed a short article on Jean Yawkey’s boy in the Globe this morning:

Sullivan wasn’t going to play the big money game that Yawkey had tried. After letting Luis Tiant go after the 1978 season, he decided to dump Fred Lynn, Rick Burleson, and Carlton Fisk in 1980 because of their contracts and their agents’ relationship with the team. It was a very unpopular decision, and after being advised by MLB lawyers that he didn’t have to send the three players contracts Dec. 20, MLB changed its mind, contracts were sent to Lynn and Fisk Dec. 22, and they went to arbitration to become free agents. The arbitrator ruled that Fisk was a free agent right before a noon hot stove luncheon at Fenway. Sullivan read the announcement, turned and said, ”open the damn bar.” Bob Lobel caught it, and turned ”open the damn bar” into an unforgettable gag line.

Sullivan took over the Sox after Jean Yawkey fired Dick O’Connell, widely regarded as the best general manager in Red Sox history.

According to Howard Bryant in his book, “Shut Out”:

Under Haywood Sullivan, a southerner who played football for Bear Bryant at Alabama, youth aged without replacement. A succession of drafts no longer brought harvest, but humor; between 1976 and 1980 the Red Sox farm system would produce weak prospects, while Lynn, Fisk, Burleson, and Tiant would all be gone by 1980 and Yaztrzemski would enter his forties. The result was first seen in the standings. The Red Sox of the early 1980s, thought Peter Gammons, were not only the least interesting Red Sox team in more than a decade, but mediocrity following such high expectations threatened to squander the successes that revived the franchise.

The second was Sullivan’s natural conservatism. The club became unimaginative in both the construction of the team and men hired to lead it. The success of the home run-hitting clubs of the late 1970s led the Red Sox to romance lead-footed, right-handed sluggers. The [Dick] O’Connell temas were the most balanced in Red Sox history, a challenge to a Red Sox culture that would traditionally sacrifice speed, defense, and pitching for power. Sullivan’s would lack chemistry, too, evidenced by the famous “twenty-five players, twenty-five cabs” description of the Red Sox.

NEYER: DON’T BELIEVE THE HYPE

Rob Neyer addresses all the fuss that’s been made over the Yankees starting pitching and the Red Sox bullpen this off season in his latest column.

As far as the Yankees’ largess of starting pitchers is concerned:

Given the Yankees’ unlimited “budget” (for lack of a better word), they’d be foolish if they didn’t stockpile quality starting pitchers. Because there’s going to be plenty of work for all six of them.

Neyer also thinks the Red Sox controversial closer-by-committee plan makes a lot of sense. However, he warns:

…There are some risks here.

The Post-Modern Bullpen requires a manager who is both committed and creative. If he’s not committed, he’ll revert to convention at the first hint of adversity. If he’s not creative, he won’t be able to keep his relievers healthy and he won’t pick the right pitchers for the right spots often enough.

But as Theo Epstein has observed more than once, it’s all about finding the edges where you can. There’s no edge in doing things exactly as every other team does them. When you do something different, sometimes you’ll get burned. But can anybody reasonably argue that it’s not worth a shot?

CONE-BACK?

Are the Mets really serious about signing David Cone? Could he be the second-coming of Satchial Paige? Coney’s boys, Al Leiter and Johnny Franco have made their pitch to bring the former-Met back to Shea, but it can only tear the ass out of any self-respecting Met fan that Cone’s return may ultimately depend on whether he recieves a “YES” from Pope George III.

The New York Times reports today that the 40-year old Cone was close to signing a minor-league deal with the Mets last night.

What does George make of all of this?

Steinbrenner said in an interview that Cone had not contacted him to discuss his future and seemed miffed that Cone would consider pitching for the Mets. Steinbrenner said Cone should continue broadcasting for the Yankees on the YES network and added, “I don’t know why he wouldn’t want to be an instructor for us” in spring training.

… Steinbrenner intimated that Cone had an agreement with the YES network to be an analyst this season, making him Steinbrenner’s employee. But a spokesman for YES said there had not been a formal deal between Cone and the network.

“My understanding is that he was finished,” Steinbrenner said. “He didn’t want to pitch anymore. I don’t know why he’d want to pitch. He should continue on TV. They all thought he was doing a wonderful job last year.”

Before speaking with Cone, Steinbrenner told a reporter he would be troubled with seeing Cone pitching for the Mets, then hedged.

“Sure, I consider him a Yankee,” Steinbrenner said. “He pitched a perfect game for us. Not too many guys have done that. I think he’d come back and stay with us.”

VALENTINE FEELIN’ FINE

Steve Serby has a piece on Bobby V in the Post today.

Giggles are on the house.

Valentine broached a move to first base last year with Mike Piazza. “When he desires, when he feels he would like to, is when it’s time. I thought that last year he was getting close to wanting to do that. It’s a very difficult thing to deal with, because Mike’s desire is what makes him the special player that he is.

“One of the things I was most criticized for by many of the idiot critics – not that all critics are idiots, because I will be a critic – was this idea of lineup changes, and what people didn’t understand is that Mike Piazza not being in the lineup 35 times meant that there were gonna be 35 other lineups. And I think that’s a real burden on a team, not having your best player in the lineup all that time.”

So do you wish Piazza would have played 35 games at first base? “No. ‘Cause he wasn’t ready to.”

But it led to more Valentine-bashing. “We’d sell ’em a Sunday ticket plan and they’d come to the game on Sunday with their kids and Mike wouldn’t be in the lineup, ’cause it would be the day game after the night game with Monday being off.”

Bobby V will be working as an analyst and commentator for ESPN this season.

Valentine will be the perfect fit for television. “I don’t think I’m gonna manage again. I never dated two girls when I dated; I dated one girl. And then either dropped her or married her.”

Famous last words…

NEW YORK KID MAKES GOOD

Exactly one year ago, Major League Baseball hired Omar Minaya as the general manager of the Expos. Murray Chass has a wonderful article on Minaya—the first Latin American GM–in today’s New York Times.

If I could write a behind-the-scenes book of any team in the big leagues it would definitely be on the Expos. Who could resist MLB’s version of “Slap Shot?” Minaya, an ambitious yet unpretentious native New Yorker, would make for a fine protagonist.

Don’t miss Chass’ story.

METS RING BELL

The Metsies signed 17-year vet, Jay Bell to a minor league contract yesterday.

Bell will presumably spell Ty Wiggie at third, and perhaps spot start for Robbie at second.

Cousin Gabe summed it up well this morning:

Jay Bell: another studious-looking, boring white guy. I’m so excited I can hardly stand it. Now we can sacrifice bunt the Braves to death.

TORRE TALKS

Yankee fans, rest assured: the cool, calm and collected Joe Torre is still in charge of his team. Though reporters from the Daily News and the New York Post sensed tension in the subtleties, Torre addressed a host of issues with his usual poise and patience:

Torre disputed the idea that the pitchers – the biggest reason for the defeat – weren’t ready. “To put that in the category of not wanting it enough, you can’t,” he said. “It was just a bad week. I hate to simplify it.

“Am I going to say they were hungrier? I hope not; let’s put it that way. It was never a question of focus. I would’ve been the first one to address that. I would’ve taken the hit. If we had been lackadaisical, I would’ve told you (reporters).”

Torre seemed disappointed when the subject of Steinbrenner’s shots at Jeter came up.

“He’s a young man,” Torre said. “Baseball nowadays, by the time you leave the park, it’s midnight. Everywhere he goes, someone recognizes him and calls someone or tells a writer.

“His performance is very consistent. We wouldn’t be sitting here with the four rings without him.

“He never will match up with the other shortstops (Alex Rodriquez, Nomar Garciaparra, Miguel Tejada) offensively. But what he brings to the team other than that are more important for us.”

…”Who hit a ball harder in the postseason than he did?” Torre asked of Jeter, who hit .500 (8-for-16) with three RBIs in the four-game ALDS loss to the Angels. “The play of the whole division series was Garret Anderson catching that ball down the left-field line, and to this day I don’t know how that happened.”

With the score tied, 1-1, in the fifth inning of Game 4, the Yankees had runners on second and third with no outs against tiring Jarrod Washburn. Jeter pulled a fly ball down the left-field line that Anderson caught on the run a step away from the fence. It scored Juan Rivera from third for a 2-1 lead, but it kept the Yankees from a big inning as Washburn retired Jason Giambi and Bernie Williams to strand Alfonso Soriano at second. The Angels scored eight runs off David Wells in the home fifth on their way to a 9-5 victory that ended the Yankees’ season.

“As many balls as [Jeter] hits to right field, Garret Anderson got a great jump, but that game is out of hand if that ball goes by him,” Torre said. “To me that was the play of [the series]. But [Jeter] hit bullets every time up.

“Derek doesn’t have to prove anything to me. As long as I make the lineup card out, that’s all I care about.”

…Torre has occasionally kidded his players in team meetings, mock-urging them to play well to “keep The Boss off my back.”

Now, Steinbrenner may have climbed aboard – one of the few times he’s challenged Torre like this publicly. But Torre is trying to remain focused.

“I don’t feel any different,” he said. “Within myself, I’m sure that I know what I’m doing. I’m satisfied with what I’ve accomplished, but it’s not enough. I still like this, I still want to do it.”

My cousin Gabe, the Met fan, sent me an e-mail yesterday, and told me that he enjoyed the Ken Burns interview, with one exception:

The last part, the part about it being impossible not to like Jeter or Bernie Williams or to not respect for Joe Torre…well, that’s just hooey, of course.

I like Torre for his demeanor quite a bit, and think he does a great job as a clubhouse manager–a kind of publicist and managing director for the team. As a
field manager…well, managing in the AL is sort of a silly business, in my opinion. It’s like being good at backgammon or checkers. There are only so many
permutations. If you negatively impact the outcome of the game, it’s due to sloppiness; if you positively affect it, you’re just doing what you should.

Would you say that a manager’s most important in-game decisions almost always concern when to take pitchers out and when to leave them in?

I would say Torre’s most important in-game decisions is which side of Zimmer to sit on. But for a more sophisticated response, let me turn to Earl Weaver, who was profiled by Thomas Boswell in an article titled, “The Best Manager There Is.” (From “How Life Imitates the World Series.”)

“I can sum up managing in one sentence. Everybody knows all the strategies. Nothing’s changed in a hundred years. A manager’s job,” Eaver defined, “is to select the best players for what he wants done.”

Weaver beams, knowing the complexity hidden in that thought.

“A manager wins games in December. He tries not to lose them in July. You win pennants in the off-season when you build your team with trades and free agents.

“Smart managing is dumb,” says Weaver. “The three-run homers your trade for in the winter will always beat brains.

“The guys who says, ‘I love the challenge of managing,’ is one step from being out of job. I don’t welcome any challenge. I’d rather have nine guys named Robinson.” [Is that Frank or Brooks?]

…”People say I’ver never had to manage a bad team…Well, that’s the point. If you dig hard enough year-round, you should always be able to find players who can do what you want done. They’re not all great players; but they can all do something.

…”The man’s a genius at finding situations where an average player–like me–can look like a star because a lot of subtle factors are working in your favor,” says John Lowenstein. “He has a passion for finding the perfect player for the perfect spot.”

…”Earl gets coaches who are teachers, then he doesn’t get in their way,” says pitching coach Ray Miller. “He doesn’t tell me, ‘Why don’t you teach Sammy Stewart the window-shade-release slip pitche?’ He says, ‘Jesus Christ, I’m sick of looking at that horseshit changeup. Get him a new one.'” With his absolute faith in his own baseball eye, and his coaches ability to polish skills, Weaver manages as though victory were an inevitability.

“Patience…patience,” he often says. “You must remember that anyone under thirty—especially a ballplayer—is an adolescent. I never got close to being an adult until I was thirty-two. Even though I was married and had a son at twenty, I was a kid at thirty-two, living at home with my parents. Sure, I was a manager then. That doesn’t mean you’re drown up.

ZIM CHUCKLES

Popeye Zimmer, who is old friends with George Steinbrenner, took the Boss’s off-season lashing in stride:

“He is The Boss and he can say what he wants. I am a 72-year-old guy and I can say what I want,” Zimmer said yesterday on the way out of Legends Field. “He said it and I laughed at it. Joe called me from Hawaii to feel me out, and I said to Joe, ‘I am going to spring training feeling good.’ “

WEAVER IN GOOD SPIRITS

String-bean pitcher Jeff Weaver reported to camp yesterday and said all the right things:

“I don’t feel like I am fighting for anything. This is a great spot to be in,” Weaver said yesterday when he reported to Legends Field. “Whatever I am told to do I will do, but there is no doubt in my mind I am best suited to being a starter for this team.”

“No doubt, starting is where I feel I’m best. Starting is what I’m gearing up for. I think it’s understood and everybody realizes where I should be in the future, whenever the future is.

“I can’t go crazy or I’ll lose juice at the end of the year. I’m not going to change anything because of the competition.”

AFTERMAN PROMOTED

Jean Afterman, the Yankees assistant general manager, who was credited by her boss as being a major player in the Godzilla Matsui deal, was promoted to vice president yesterday.

“We have and continue to rely upon Jean’s experience and guidance as we move forward with our international initiative,” Yankees chief operating officer Lonn Trost said. “The globalization of the New York Yankees is, in part, evidenced by her expertise and work ethic which has proven to be an invaluable resource to our baseball operations department.”

Looks like Yankee announcer Suzan Waldman Georgie’s only girl after all.

JETER ON THE HOT SEAT

Mike Lupica has a column today on Derek Jeter. To some, he’s the most-overrated player in baseball, and to others, he’s the heart and soul of the Yankees. Lupica doesn’t shed any new light on DJ’s situation, but reiterates the popular notion that #2 needs to play better than he did last year:

The Yankees have benefited tremendously from his presence at shortstop and at the top of the order, his ability to seize the moment, to raise his game in the postseason especially. But at the same time, he has benefited tremendously from being a Yankee, the glow that can give you, as much as any Yankee of modern times, and that includes Don Mattingly. Benefited with that contract, for sure. So he is both lucky and good.

…But Jeter’s batting average has dropped three straight years. His lifetime average is still .317, and that is a beauty for a shortstop, but last year his average was .297. Jeter still scored his runs, scored 124 of them, but he hit just 18 home runs and produced just 75 RBI.

Give him all the props for those intangibles, the way you have to see him every day to appreciate what he brings to his team, and the way he moves runners and hits in the clutch. Those were not the numbers of a superstar last season or even close. It is now ridiculous to compare him to A-Rod.

I don’t believe the slip has anything to do with any of the things Steinbrenner talked about. Jeter still has to do better, and that includes in the field.

… Pitchers and catchers report to Legends Field in Tampa this week. Jeter is already down there, working out, working harder than anybody around. No one thought he would be this kind of star, even when he was moving up through the system. Plays hard, plays hurt, plays big in the biggest games. Gets the big money, too. He needs to pick it up this season. If he does, Steinbrenner won’t care if he stays out later than Mantle did

I would like to see Jeter put up stupid numbers this year too, but if he merely duplicates his 2002 stats, I won’t complain either. One thing that is lost in all of the Jeter talk is that he may simply be closer to a .290 hitter than a .320 hitter. There is no crime in that. It just may take some of his most ardent fans a minute to check themselves accordingly. He had a career year in 1999, and his numbers have declined since. He still scores 100+ runs per year, and is still the emotional leader of the team. Is he a great fielder? Recent studies suggest he isn’t even a good one.

Considering the size of Jeter’s contract, it’s likely that he will continue to recieve more criticism over the next couple of years. So long as he keeps playing winning baseball, I don’t care how much flack he gets. He may be the Yankees most important player, he’s just not their best player.

MARKETING MATSUI

Jeter isn’t the only Yankee who has been working hard. Hideki Matsui arrived in Florida yesterday, and hadn’t been in the state for more than two hours before he was working out at Yankee camp.

“He’s definitely a Clemens type who likes to work out,” [Yankee general manager, Brian] Cashman said. “It’s obviously important to him, and that’s great to see. His work ethic is strong. He has a deep desire to play the game of baseball and play it right.”

Tyler Kepner profiles the Japanese superstar today in the Times, while Roger Rubin examines the marketing impact Godzilla is likely to have for the Yanks.

YES, NO, YES, NO…

Richard Sandomir has an update on the Yes/Cablevision stand-off. Shoot me now.

CLEMENTE’S SPORTS COMPLEX IN TROUBLE

There was a heartbreaking article on Roberto Clemente’s decaying sports complex in P.R. last weekend in the Boston Globe. A lack of funding has led to hard times for 304-acre Roberto Clemente Sports City. Local government has failed to offer any financial support. Not suprisingly:

There has been little help from the Latin American players that now make up 20 percent of the major leagues and nothing from team owners who profit by showcasing Latin American players. [Roberto’s son] Luis Clemente shrugs. ”We haven’t asked,” he said.

There was a speech that Roberto Clemente made in Pittsburgh in January 1972 after the Pirates won the World Series the previous fall that would have answered those vandals armed with rocks [local kids trashed a school bus that was owned by the Clemente sports center]: ”We hear a great deal about kids today, how bad some are and that our American youth is rapidly deteriorating . . . There is nothing wrong with our homes, our country, that a little more care, a little more concern, a little more love won’t cure. We need to show love and to love not only our kids and our families as a whole but our neighbors. We are all brothers and sisters. We must give each other a helping hand when needed.”

Amen.

Oh, I wanted to send a belated Happy Birthday shout to Jose “Don” Tuma, aka Fat-Ass Al. Let’s hope he can stick with his Mets for a full season this time around.

Peace.

SPRING TRAINING SPECIAL: TAKE ME OUT TO THE BALLGAME

An Interview with Ken Burns

The first job I had when I left college in the winter of 1993-94 was working as a post-production assistant on Ken Burns’ “Baseball” documentary. I was with the film for the final six months of production, while they mixed the sound in New York. Needless to say, it was a stroke of good luck to break into the film business working on an 18 1/2 hour movie on the history of baseball. Good God. I should have been paying me them to sit around in a state-of-the-art sound studio watching them put the finishing touches on the series.

Nine years later, I’m through with the movies but still head-over-heels for baseball.

I’ve kept in touch with Ken over the years, and had him on the brain this winter. Maybe it’s the historical biographies I’ve been reading, or maybe it’s all of the changes the Red Sox have made, but I thought it would be a good time to check in with Mr. B and have a chat.

I caught up with him last week, as he graciously took a couple of minutes out of his busy schedule to talk a little baseball.

Burns sounded exhausted, and preoccupied. He told me he’s traveling 300 days out of the year. Everybody wants a piece of him. Sensing that time is of the essence, we got right down to business.

Part One

BB: Did you read the Jane Leavy book on Koufax?

KB: I plan to when I retire…sometime when I’m 93.

BB: Leavy sets the drama of his career around the political and cultural events of the period in a succinct and direct way that reminds me of the style you use in your movies.

KB: Well we certainly didn’t invent it, but I think it’s knowing in the Blakian sense, that you can find a world in a grain of sand. And in this baseball world, I think we have an American universe.

BB: It’s been almost 10 years since “Baseball” was released…

KB: Yeah, I can’t believe that.

BB: When was the last time you saw any of it?

KB: I see bits and pieces of it, but I’m sorry to say it’s the familiar bits and pieces that are used in promotion. Like the thing on Satchial Paige from episode 5; “The Child of God,” about early Curt Flood from episode 7; the opening of the film…you know, things like that. My girlfriend right now is actually not a baseball fan, but in some labor of love is sitting there, and on the nights that I’m not there [sic], is looking through the whole series. And so she’ll call me up and say, “What’s with Three-Finger Brown?” and “What was Shoeless Joe Jackson thinking?” Really great stuff like that, which reminds me that I got to dive back into it again.

BB: I remember you once said something like the ideal audience for the series was an Eastern European woman who doesn’t know anything about baseball.

KB: Yes. That’s exactly right. Because I think that what we were making was a film that wasn’t just about baseball. That is to say, not just about games won and lost, careers rising and falling. But we saw it as this startlingly revealing mirror of our country. So that it was not just about the arc of baseball, it was the story of immigration and assimilation and about how different waves of immigrant groups felt the pride of citizenship–much more than a piece of paper from the State Department. It’s about the exclusion of women, it’s about the tensions between labor and management, that is to say, who owns the ball, and the ball field, and who plays the game. It’s the story about the growth and decay of cities; it’s the story about the World Wars and the devastating Depression. It’s the story of heroes and villains and fools, and popular culture, and advertising. Most of all it’s the story of race, and the exclusion of a group of people who turned out to be among the best, if not the best, who ever played the game.

BB: Why baseball? How did you come up with it in the first place?

KB: I remember sitting in a bar in Georgetown, Washington D.C. as we were embarking on the “Civil War”…So, that would have been 1985. I was with Mike Hill [coordinating producer]. He had been working on the “Huey Long” film with me and we were sort of looking ahead, beyond the “Civil War”, which I think was incredibly brave, cause if any of us had really thought about it, we thought we’d DIE trying to make the “Civil War”. We had this nice, pleasant, short thing that would be after the “Civil War” on baseball. A celebration of the history of baseball. And it wasn’t until we got into it that we suddenly realized, we aren’t doing a short history of baseball, we’re doing the sequel to the “Civil War”. Because in many ways we got distracted by the idea that our history is merely wars and presidents. And for many people that’s all that is: the Signposts of American History. When in fact, all of the themes that I just mentioned that baseball gathers up, are much closer to our day-to-day life than wars and generals and presidents. I began to see, how particularly when you realize that Jackie Robinson was the first real progress in Civil Rights since the Civil War, that “Baseball” was the sequel to that series. During the production of “Baseball,” we interviewed Gerald Early who said that when they study our American civilization 2000 years from now the only thing that we’ll be known for is The Constitution, Baseball and Jazz. Those are the three most beautiful things that Americans have ever produced. We then realized half way through “Baseball” that we were actually involved in a trilogy that would require us to spend the six and a half years after “Baseball” to complete it by making the history of Jazz.

BB: How long did “Baseball” take to make?

KB: “Baseball” was essentially begun in 1990 in terms of early thinking in design, and it was broadcast in the fall of 1994.

BB: When did you realize it was going to be significantly longer than “Civil War”?

KB: When we talked about it originally we assumed it would be a ‘couple of hours’ thing. I think by the time we finished “Civil War” we knew it was going to be 9, 1-hour segments. You know, keeping to the idea that each episode would be an inning. Then as we developed the information of those innings, we found that we were telling a much fuller story, and that it was possible to expand it. And then, as in the case with all the films, we let the material itself truly dictate what we were about, and that’s where we ended up with the 18 1/2 hours.

BB: How daunted were you at the prospect of making something that expansive? Were you worried about how to keep a pace, a rhythm throughout the movie that would tie it all together?

KB: Well, I think that’s always the case. In fact I think a legitimate criticism could be made of the series, and has been of the series, that it is takes itself too seriously at times, that there is a kind of ponderousness that was appropriate to the “Civil War” but not appropriate to the game of baseball. And I think that’s a valid criticism, but at the same time I think that because we were dealing with all of these themes outside of the game, it did take on a kind of seriousness. But offsetting that seriousness are plenty of moments of great humor and joy, and sort of speed , and whatever.

BB: How did the making of this series affect the way you appreciate baseball as a baseball fan?

KB: Well, I think it deepened it in many ways. Because here you connected, in more than a superficial way, to these names. I mean Walter Johnson is a name that I had known since childhood. Now I know more about him. And with Grover Cleveland Alexander, Christy Mathewson, John McGraw, Honus Wagner: these people now mean something to me. They’re almost members of my family; they’re distant cousins. And I think having those ancestors in my family has helped me appreciate the game more than anything else. In fact, I find myself even more positive about the game, particularly to the naysayers, now. I know that the game being played now is better than it ever has been. And we know that from experiencing all the decades of baseball, through our study of it. It’s not to take away from any of those previous things, or to be some kind of anti-nostalgia [sic], but it’s really important for people who get sucked into the nostalgia of the old game to realize that, you know Barry Bonds might have hit 80 home runs back in 1927.

BB: What do you attribute that to? The fact the game has just gotten better.

KB: I think it has to do with the way people have trained. I think it’s the focus. I think that money has provided incentive for performance, in a funny sort of way. I mean I know that’s counter-productive to the Myth of Baseball, but it’s always been a business. One of the reasons why it’s better is that throughout history the quality of pitching has gotten better. If the quality of pitching is better then you have to evaluate the quality of the hitting. And the hitting is so much better.

BB: What kind of fan are you? Are you a casual fan? Do you read the box scores in the paper?

KB: Well, I’m not sure that’s a casual fan. If that’s a casual fan, then I’m a casual fan. Yeah, I read the box scores every day. If I can I will watch every single Red Sox game. If I have the opportunity. That means if I’m not traveling, I’m home, I’m on the treadmill, whatever it is: I will watch every single game. Or listen to it on the radio if I’m in range. I keep a little thing in the car that tells me the Red Sox stations across New England, and other places. I’m sure in the course of a season, I listen to, or watch 120 games, at least.

BB: Was this true before you made the movie?

KB: Yeah. I mean I love the game; I love it…probably a little bit more now. Getting to watch games just tends to depend on cycles of work. If I’m doing a lot of travel, I don’t see as many games. But if I’m home editing, I’ll get home from a tough day and the game is starting at 7:30. And you turn it on, and you eat your dinner and you talk to friends and miss a few innings…or you go out to dinner and come home for the last two. I’d say I touch base with a good number of games.

BB: How long have you been a Red Sox fan?

KB: Well, you know I grew up in Delaware, and my father’s family was from Baltimore, so I was sort of an Orioles fan. But since I had been born in Brooklyn—never spent any time there—I had this identification with the Brooklyn Dodgers. Then they had the great success [as the Los Angeles Dodgers] in the early 60s, which corresponded with my explosion of love of the game. So I was really a National League guy, and knew more about the National League than anything else. Loved Roberto Clemente and Willie Mays and Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale, of course. Then we moved to Michigan in 1963 and I sort of became a Tigers fan. In 68 I really became a Tigers fan because they gave me the only local World Series victory I’ve ever experienced in my life. By that time the war in Vietnam and all the counter-cultural upheaval of the 60s began to take it’s toll on my love of baseball. Baseball seemed a representation of the establishment and I moved away. So the Mets victory, which I participated in and celebrated tremendously in 69, was more of a news event, not a sport event. It was the Under Dog Winning. Definitely. And it was a season I hadn’t paid any attention to. I really lost 70, 71, 72, 73 while I was in college, and very much rebelling against the establishment. I went to college in Amherst, Massachusetts, and I befriended a professor whose husband was a big baseball fan. He would stay at home and watch the Red Sox games, and he seemed unapologetic about it. To me, baseball was a guilty pleasure. And you didn’t let anyone know, cause it wasn’t cool to be a baseball fan. And eventually I remember sitting and enjoying a game and it was like rediscovering an old friend. And falling in love, and it turned out to be a great time to do that because it was the magical period of Carlton Fisk coming up, and Jim Rice and Fred Lynn…

BB: The ’75 Series against the Big Red Machine.

KB: The 75 Series. I mean, 1974 was when I really got back into the game; 75 brought me right in there, and had the greatest moment of all the World Series, with Fisk’s home run in the 6th game of the series. And then you had the epic, titanic struggles with the Yankees, particularly in 78 with the loss of the thing, and Bucky Dent’s home run. The loss of the lead. The one-game playoff and Bucky Dent’s home run. I firmly believe that you should root for your local team. You can have other favorites, but if you live in a place as I have now, what, I’ve been in New England sine 1971, you should pull for the home team. And since 1974, the Red Sox have been my team.

BB: You cover the Red Sox a lot in the last two episodes. I remember you once saying something about the distinction between history and journalism. Essentially meaning that the book is still out on the material from 1960 to the present.

KB: I wouldn’t say 1960. It’s really more around the mid-70s where I get nervous. I think history involves some distance and perspective from the present. I think you need about 25 years. So it wasn’t until somewhere like 1970 that we were getting nervous. In many ways we didn’t really un-tether our narrative, that is to say, get more abstract, until the 79 Series. We covered things pretty tightly; as well as we had in the other episodes. But we still lacked a certain amount of perspective and since memory is so fresh, you seem to be making more drastic judgments. You know, you can go, “Where is George Brett, for crying out loud?” A favorite of mine, and somebody for whom we had a scene. But in the scheme of things, towards the end, you just have to wait until the 10th inning, when we get a chance to update the series.

BB: Well, would you venture to guess what’s happened since “Baseball” first aired in 1994 that might make the cut for extra innings?

KB: We had a scene that I was deliciously in love with. A line in the narration, with regard to Steinbrenner and his attempt throughout the 80s to manipulate everyone, and his firings of Billy Martin, concluded with, “…And he’s never won another.” Well, that’s no longer true. The Yankees have been the dominant team in baseball since the mid-1990’s.

BB: In spite of George.

KB: No, I have to give him credit. He’s doggedly pursued his vision of a winning team, and in the great Yankee tradition, he’s done it. You know even a die-hard Red Sox fan who hates the Yankees as a concept, has to take their hat off to what the Yankees have done, all the way through. So I think the principal focus of the film, if we had to do another episode–and we’re always talking about that—would be to focus on the great dominance of the Yankees, just as we focused on it in the 60s, and of course the 50s, the 40s, the 30s and the 20s.

BB: Joe Torre and Bernie Williams are hard not to like, or at least respect. These Yankees are a far cry from the som’bitches of the Bronx Zoo days.

KB: Well, the kind of sneering and arrogance you got from a Goose Gossage or Reggie Jackson or even Mickey Rivers, made it easier to dislike them, despite the presence of the Willie Randolphs and the Craig Nettles. What you have today is a Yankee team that is more professional. So yeah, it’s impossible not to like Jeter or Bernie Williams or to not have the utmost respect for Joe Torre.

BB: True.

(Part 2 will be posted early next week…)

EVIL EMPIRE STRIKES AGAIN

The Yankees won the right to negotiate with a young Dominican pitcher, Ramon Ramirez, who played for the Hiroshima Carp in Japan last year. The Yanks bid of $350,000 beat out 13 other teams; they now have 30 days to sign Ramirez to a contract.

I don’t know much about the kid other than the fact that he’s young and throws gas. The fact that the Yankees beat out the competition for the rights to negotiate with the kid should only serve to add fuel to the already raging, anti-Yankees fire.

MEANWHILE, IN RED SOX NATION…

Gordon Edes, who I think is one of the best beat writers in the country, has an excellent article on Theo Epstein in today’s Boston Globe.

In his Sunday column , Edes talked with starting pitcher Derek Lowe, who, like Pedro Martinez before him, expressed skepticism about the Red Sox closer-by-committee plan. Lowe was, however, happy to have our old friend Ramiro “El Bruho” Mendoza on his side.

”I think Mendoza is the biggest pickup of all we made this winter. I can’t tell you how many times, facing him over the years, we’d have guys at first and second, one out, he’d come in and get someone to hit into a double play.

”He’s a guy who can come into the game in the third inning and throw six shutout innings. I think he could be a fantastic starter; he has the pitches. Mendoza is basically the same as me. When I see him pitch, I see me.

”He throws a lot of strikes, he’s 87 to 90 [m.p.h.], he has a good changeup, he throws a breaking ball for strikes, he lives and dies with his sinker. You can’t put the guy in a situation that he hasn’t already been in. He’s pitched in Yankee Stadium, he’s pitched in the World Series. Any situation you put him in, he’s confident.”

Edes also added some choice information regarding the Kevin Millar situation in his “Notes” section:

This observation on the Kevin Millar situation from reader Kae Lee of Newton: ”I am an avid baseball fan who comes from Japan, and have followed your articles on Kevin Millar with a great interest. One thing I want to point out is the feudalistic way players are treated by Japanese owners, which is best illustrated in the Japanese word, kai-goroshi [keep to kill]. Kai-goroshi is just to retain the player’s contract for the purpose of not letting him play for any teams, including his own. The kai-goroshi tactics are very commonly employed by Japanese owners to ruin the baseball careers of players who are not loyal to them, or who may damage their teams if they are allowed to play for other teams. The president of the Chunichi Dragons has expressed repeatedly to the Japanese media his intention to do kai-goroshi on Millar if he does not play for Chunichi. Chunichi does not gain anything by doing kai-goroshi, but the goal is to punish Millar for insulting them by not honoring the contract. The way they treat players in Japan is worse than the way American players were treated before Curt Flood.”

… Another e-mailer, Phil Sinrich, writes: ”I have been puzzled by the enormity of space spent on Kevin Millar. I’ve never heard of him, and by July he’ll either be gone from the Sox or deep on the bench. It’s not exactly like we’re talking about Barry Bonds coming to the Red Sox.” He is by no means the only reader – or reporter – who has tired of the Millar saga. But it matters on a number of levels: 1) the Sox believe he will be a vital, complementary piece; 2) it is a case apparently without precedent in the annals of US-Japanese baseball relations; 3) it could have a lasting impact on those relations; 4) it could impact on any future business the Red Sox wish to conduct. But you can trust no one’s head is spinning more over this than Millar. He’s a villain in Japan without ever having set foot there, and he’s created a much bigger fuss in Boston than he ever would have wanted …

NO JOY IN YANKEEVILLE

Mike Lupica joined the chorus of columnists (Peter Gammons and most recently Joel Sherman) who are convinced that there will be no joy in Yankeeville this season. In one of his better columns, Lupica chides Boss Steinbrenner for taking all the fun out of covering the Bronx Bombers:

Nobody wants to talk too much about this, the Yankees being the company in a company town, too many media people too often acting like a part of the company. But as the Yankees keep getting bigger, the way their payroll does, the whole culture of the Yankees becomes this: They are losers if they don’t win the World Series. Which means their fans sometimes sound exactly like the owner of the team.

When they win, it is Steinbrenner and his wallet and his love for the fans and his passion to produce a winner that did it.

When they lose, it’s somebody else’s fault.

This is for all those who actually believe Steinbrenner has changed because the Yankees won four World Series in five years.

…There is even more pressure than the usual suffocating pressure on the Yankees to win it all this year, since the Yankees are the only team in all of sports who are supposed to win every single year, or else. You can see what an atmosphere of great joy this brings to the whole long season that begins any minute with pitchers and catchers.

It is imposible to believe Torre will manage the Yankees in 2004 if he doesn’t win in ’03; that he can survive going three straight years without a title even with four in the books already.

… All this money spent. All these starting pitchers. More pressure to win than ever. Torre and the rest of them always say they know what the deal is when they come here. Then they go a couple of years without winning it all. Not allowed. What a joy to be rich and a Yankee.

While I sympathize with Lupica’s perspective, reading his column made me thankful that I’m a fan. Sure, the Yankees have created a culture where winning is the only thing that matters. That’s Steinbrenner’s M.O. And of course, there are many so-called Yankee fans that will look at anything less than a World Championship as an unmitigated failure. If that’s the way they want to live life, it’s a free country.

They’re missing out, but I won’t let them spoil my fun.

I know that I will find a lot of joy in watching the Yankees this year, because while I hope they put themselves in a position to win another title, my experience won’t be ruined if they fail to win it all. Baseball is too screwy to guarantee, no matter how insistent Steinbrenner is. After all, part of being a Yankee fan is being able to block out Steinbrenner and concentrate on Joe Torre and his team between the lines. In fact, part of the Yankees annual struggle is not only against the rest of the league, but against the monster upstairs in the front office too.

I understand why George’s bulldozer approach would sap all the fun out of the team for some reporters and even the fans too. In Ken Burns’ “Baseball” documentary, the veteran baseball writer Roger Angell commented that when he used to visit Yankee Stadium [in the 1980s] he was troubled because he wanted to see the Yankees, and he felt like all he could see was George Steinbrenner. The Boss had somehow, irrevocably, come between the fan and the players.

In that sense, things haven’t changed all that much for some observers. But I think Joe Torre’s team has handled the Boss better than any of it’s predecessors. But as Lupica suggests, that may all change if they don’t capture another World Serious Ring before 2003 is all said and done.

John Harper added a Yankee Preview for the News yesterday as well. Here is an example of how far the Bronx Zoo has come:

There were several clubhouse issues last season, from Posada’s fight with Orlando Hernandez to Derek Jeter’s purloined glove. Then, while packing up his locker last October, Posada complained that some of his teammates weren’t taking the loss to the Angels hard enough, which had some team executives bristling behind the scenes, saying Posada was showing off for Jeter.

You really have to reach to come up with some good dirt these days. Posada’s fight with Duque? Please. Anyone who has followed the Yanks know that those two red-asses were in each other’s business every time Hernandez pitched. This “incident” falls in the Boys-will-be-Boys category and was utter harmless. Rube Rivera, who vicked Jeter’s glove, was sent packing before the tabliods hit the newsstand. And Posada popping off at the end of the playoffs? A lot of sound and fury signifying nothing.

Haper asked Yankee general manager Brian Cashman about the percieved loss of leadership in the Yankee clubhouse:

“I don’t want to belittle leadership, but it goes hand-in-hand with performance. When performance deteriorates, it’s like leadership gets the same haircut that Samson did.

“David Cone was a great leader in our clubhouse, but when his performance dropped (in 2000), he didn’t carry as big a stick in our clubhouse, mainly because he had to worry about getting himself straightened out.”

… “Leadership comes from a lot of places – the manager, the coaches, the players. We still have a lot of leaders. It’s hard to replace guys like O’Neill; the leadership he can provide is rare. But we’ve had leaders come and go – (John) Wetteland, Chili Davis, Tim Raines, Luis Sojo, O’Neill.

“We won championships because we outperformed teams that year. Prior to ’98, we had some of the same players. Were they less leaders in 1997 because we lost? Or 2001? No, we just lost to better teams.

“All the stuff on the topic of new guys [not being able to lead] is a bunch of bull.”

Cashman was also asked about how the team would handle the massive press coverage Godzilla Matsui will recieve:

“That’s life,” Cashman said. “Do I think it’ll distract? It shouldn’t. Our guys are used to being the Beatles when they’re on the road, any city we go to. Opposing team’s media directors cringe when we come in. Our players are used to it.

“This is a big-stage town and if you’re not prepared for the fish bowl, this is the wrong environment. What about when Jeter was dating Mariah Carey? You think there’s going to be more requests for Matsui?

“Hey, we made the World Series when there was a media swarm on Hideki Irabu. And we made it with David Wells, where his off-the-field commitment was less than the other players. “It’s all a bunch of hooey.”

SORI GETS NAILED

If there is one Yankee that manages to convey a sense of joy while playing it’s Alfonzo Soriano. But not everyone loves lil Sori after all. In the funniest story that I’ve read in a minute, former Met Lenny ‘Nails’ Dykstra had some pretty harsh words for the Yankee second-baseman in a recent Esquire magazine article:

“Everybody’s blinded by this guy’s offense. But watch him play. He’s a hacksaw!”

Dykstra was watching on television when Soriano swung at the first pitch with the Yankees trailing late in Game 4 of the American League Division Series against the Angels. That was an intolerable sin to Dykstra, who was at Edison Field for Game 3. “When you’re down, you don’t swing on the first [bleeping] pitch, bro!” Dykstra continued. “You don’t take that 30-percent chance of getting a hit or whatever it is and go with it. I can’t take watching these guys [bleep] it up. I can’t take it.”

Contacted by The Post, Dykstra didn’t back down from those comments. “Guy taking swings when the count’s 2-0 and they’re down by two runs with nobody on, that kills me,” he said. “I can’t believe people don’t say anything about it.”

As for Soriano, “He’s a hacker,” Dykstra said. “The thing about it is a lot of his hacks have good results. But he’s a hacker.”

Never mind that Soriano’s wild hacks were more productive than Dykstra’s hard-earned, base-on-balls, Lenny plays the bitter, ex-jock well, thank you very much. Is Soriano a hacker? Of course he is. Does he have a lot to learn about the game? He sure does. But he’s also got the kind of innate talent that would make a scrapper like Nails blind with envy.

Anyhow, knowing that anything Soriano does right will burn a small hole in Dykstra’s gut, will help me enjoy Sori’s season all the more.

Nails also had a parting shot for Mike Mussina of all people:

“I know all about guys like him. College boys. Think they’re better than everyone else.” But he told The Post he really doesn’t know much about Mussina other than, “I know he can pitch.”

Dykstra is starting to sound like Dennis Quaid’s “Mean ol’ man Mike,” from “Breaking Away.”

Good shit.

5 QUESTIONS…

The Sunday Post ran brief previews for both the Mets and Yanks. Check em out.

ONE LAST THING…

My boy Joey La Pep, a die-hard Met fan, sent me the following e-mail this afternoon:

From yesterday’s New York City desktop calender:

1921, Feb. 6
“The New York Yankees announce the purchase of 10 acres of land in the west Bronx to build a new stadium. The land, across the Harlem River from the Yankees’ current playing field, the Polo Grounds, is purchased from the estate of William Waldorf Astor for $675,000. The Yankees have been sharing the Polo Grounds with the National League’s Giants, who own the stadium, but after 8 years this is no longer an option because Yankees attendance in 1920 surpasses that of the Giants, who ask the Yankees to find a new field. Contruction of the new stadium commences May 5, 1922, and is completed by opening day the following year, April 18, 1923.”

That’s the fact, Jack.

YANKEE HOT STOVE HEATER

The 2003 Yankee Scouting Report is featured on ESPN today. If you’ve been following the Yankees this off-season, it won’t tell you much you don’t already know. I was somewhat suprised by John Sickel’s Minor League Report though. Apparently, the Yankees depleted farm system isn’t as bad off as I thought it was. Considering how old the Yankees pitching staff is, it’s nice to see that there are some decent pitching prospects in the minors.

WILL HELP SOON:

Danny Borrell, LHP: Posted 9-4 record, 2.31 ERA at Double-A Norwich. Fastball is average, but has very good changeup and curveball. Likely to start the year in Triple-A, but should see the Show at some point.

Julio DePaula, RHP: Like Borrell, ticketed to Columbus, but will get promoted if the Yanks need a pitcher. 90-94 mph fastball, with decent slider and very good changeup. Went 14-6 with 3.45 ERA at Norwich.

KEY SLEEPER:

Brandon Claussen, LHP: Listed here because people have forgotten about him. Made 15 starts for Columbus before blowing out his elbow and having Tommy John surgery. His recovery is going well, and he should be pitching again by July. Power lefty with a great curve

Bob Klapisch contributes an article on Jose Contreras as well.

Have a great weekend, and see you for pitchers and catchers next week.

SPRING TRAINING: HOW SWEET IT IS

The Boston Globe offers an excerpt from columnist Dan Shaughnessy’s new coffee table book, “Spring Training: Baseball’s Early Season.”

No other professional sport has anything like it. Football, basketball, and hockey have exhibition seasons, tuneups that they insist on calling “preseasons.” In truth, these are merely conditioning/attrition boot camps, usually held very near the city where the team plays during the regular season.

…Contrast that with baseball spring training. Hardball’s early season is a six-week, laid-back warm-up followed by legions of retirees and vacationers, many of whom wait to inspect Grapefruit and Cactus schedules before they plan their February-March trips. My favorite moment comes after the first full-team meeting, which is usually followed by one lap around the warning track before the ballplayers commence with stretching and drills. That’s right – one grueling lap, an appropriate juxtaposition when measured against the preseason drills that go with football, basketball, and hockey.

Legitimate year-round conditioning by most modern baseball players has rendered much of spring training obsolete, of course, but few people are calling for the early season to be shortened. In fact, the baseball boom of the last 20 years (too often interrupted by those nasty work stoppages) has transformed spring training into a cottage industry for franchise owners. In 2002 The Wall Street Journal reported that spring training generated an economic impact of $600 million. Preseason ticket sales were running 20 percent higher than in 2001.

But the surge in spring training popularity is not an entirely positive development. The average spring crowd is only 6,000 fans and the entire spring season draws a little more than 2.5 million fans, but it’s become difficult to score tickets in too many spring sites. In places like Tampa (Yankees), Fort Myers (Red Sox), Kissimmee (Braves), and Peoria, Arizona (Mariners and Padres), this loss of the spontaneous ticket purchase has sucked some of the charm from the early season.

Still, spring provides relief from a winter of hardball news focused on labor, arbitration, ballplayer relocation, trade speculation and other forms of player transaction. The hot stove season keeps the fires burning, but too much of it is muddied by money and litigation.

STUCK: THE 9 LIVES OF STICK MICHAEL

There is a humorous account of Gene “Stick” Michael’s history with George Steinbrenner and the Yankees in Bill Madden and Moss Klein’s book, “Damned Yankees.” (1991) Michael first came to Steinbrenner’s attention in a dubious manner. In 1973, shortly after Steinbrenner had purchased the Yanks, the new owner attended a game in Texas. As he watched infield practice before the game, Steinbrenner was horrified to see one of the players playfully throw his mitt in the air. A hot dog flew out of his mitt into the air as well.

Steinbrenner had no idea who the player was, but he made a note of the uniform number and told manager Ralph Houk he wanted the player severly discilponed, benched, or evern traded for this blatant act of frivolity. Once he realized the Boss was serious, Houk called Michael, the guilty player, into his office and told him, between laughs, that he was deep onto Steinbrenner’s shit list.

Michael was often the victim of pranks such as the hot dog caper because he had a phobia about small crawly, creepy creatures…The hot dog had been placed in Michael’s glove by Hal Lanier, who, years later, wound up managing the Houston Astros.

…From that day on, the owner closely monitored the tall, slim shortstop. As times passed, though, Steinbrenner no longer viewed Michael as a hot dog man. Instead, he saw a shrewd, intelligent baseball man with a sharp personality. “A bright, young executive type,” is the way Steinbrenner described him.

Thus, when Michael’s career ended, Steinbrenner brought him back to the Yankees, first as a “walkie-talkie” scout in the press box in 1976, then as a coach, a minor league manager, and in 1980, as general manager. As general manager, Michael played a vital role. He was the middleman between Steinbrenner and manager Dick Howser. Michael and Howser were close friends, and Michael succeeded in bearing the brunt of Steinbrenner’s verbal assaults on his manager before relaying the owner’s often illogical suggestions to Howser. But when Steinbrenner decided to fire Howser after the Yankees were swept in in the 1980 playoffs at the hands of the Royals, he turned to Michael, his all-purpose man.

As soon as he became manager, Michael learned the painful lesson: in Steinbrenner’s mind, the least-knowledgeable person in the entire organization is the manager. And who’s to say say he’s not right since so many of them have taken the job, knowing they would have no support from the owner and inevitably be fired.

As Michael once said to Moss Klein, sitting in a bar during one of those stormy periods in 1981, “In every other jjobs I’ve had with him, he seemed to respect my opinion to some degree. But when you become his manager, it’s like your IQ drops by 50 percent. All of a sudden, you don’t know anything.”

Stick Michael didn’t last long as manager during the strike-shortened 1981 season. After winning the first half of the year, he was replaced by Bob Lemon in early September. A few days before he was axed, Michael had some reporters up to his hotel room.

“You know what my ultimate fantasy is?” he said. “Someday I’d like to buy a ball club and hire him as my manager. I think that would be fun.”

A week after Michael was fired, he was invited back to the Stadium to meet with Stienbrenner.

The owner, feeling remorse as he always does when he fires a manager, told Michael he still regarded him, “like a son.” Accordingly, he asked Michael to take a front office job. But Michael, still smarting over being fired as manager after guiding the Yankees to a strong enough early showing to earn a spot in the postseason playoffs, said he still felt he had been a good manager.

“Sure you are,” said Steinbrenner. “But why would you want to stay manager and be second-guessed by me when you can come up into the front office and be one of the second-guessers?”

That is as prescient a comment as Steinbrenner is ever likely to make.

Michael was back the next season however, after Bob Lemon was canned 14 games into the season.

Stick was the manager that late April night when Reggie Jackson first returned to the Stadium as a member of the California Angels. I distinctly remember watching that game on our old 13′ sony TV. Reggie hit a bomb in his 3rd at-bat against Ron Guidry (he had previously singled and popped out) and Yankee Stadium erupted in a spontanious chant: “Steinbrenner sucks, Steinbrenner sucks.” I gleefully jumped around my apartment, shook my fist, and joined in the chant.

Again, Michael didn’t last the season, going 44-42 before he was fired on August 4th (he was replaced by Clyde King).

Ironically, after Steinbrenner had fired Michael the first time, in September of ’81, he announced the following December at the winter baseball meetings in Hollywood, Florida, that Michael would return as manager for the ’83, ’84, and ’85 seasons, with Lemon staying on for 1982. That afternoon, Michael, Dick Howser, and Billy Martin were all sitting around the bar at the Diplomat Hotel joking about the Yankee revolving manager’s chair.

“You’re coming back for ’83, ’84, and ’85?” Howser said to Michael. “Well, then I’ve got ’86, ’87, and ’88.”

“Okay,” chimed in Martin, “and I’ve got ’89, ’90, and ’91!”

“The crazy thing about it all,” said Michael, “is that I never got to 1983 because I got hired and fired again in ’82!”

EL TITAN DE BRONZE

The Yankees held a press conference at Yankee Stadium yesterday introducing Jose Contreras to the press.

George King reports that Contreras won’t riff if he’s not initially in the starting rotation:

“I am ready to do whatever is necessary,” said the 6-foot-4, 230-pound right-hander with enormous hands, introduced at a Stadium press conference yesterday when he filled out a No. 56 jersey. [The Daily News said that Contreras wore #52…let’s split the difference and assume he’s #54.] “I have always been a starter and I prefer to be a starter but I am ready to do anything the Yankees ask me. I am the last one to arrive so I understand that.”

TORRE SHOULDERS BLAME

Manager Joe Torre was in town for the big day, and he addressed several issues, which included defending his coaches.

“My coaching staff works very hard,” Torre said after the press conference to introduce pitcher Jose Contreras. “You want to drop blame on someone, here I am. I get paid a lot of money to do what I do. We don’t win, start here.

“It’s tough to say they don’t work when we win 103 games. If we were taking something for granted, we would’ve slacked off after winning the division and we didn’t.”

…Torre was asked if he felt any more pressure this season, as he prepares to leave New York for Tampa.

Torre smiled. “I’ve been doing this a long time,” he said. “I expect a lot out of myself and the players. I judge players and teams a little different. I don’t look at the bottom line, I look at the effort.

“To see how close we’ve come, in a couple of the years we won the World Series, to being knocked out, you realize how lucky you are to do it.”

Has Torre’s relationship with Steinbrenner changed, either because of the early loss or the Boss’ cracks?

“No, I don’t think so,” Torre said. “He’s pretty vocal. He knows what he wants. He needs to be on top, which is good for me because I get what I need to win.

“Moods change, like all of us, but nothing’s different between us.”

Torre also reiterated his plans to give Jeff Weaver a spot in the starting rotation:

“It’s going to be difficult,” he added. “We’ll wait and see. It’s going to be tough, but the quality is there.”

Torre said “I meant it and I still mean it” when asked about his comments regarding Weaver. “I still feel like Jeff Weaver is going to be an elite starter in this league,” Torre added. “At the time I told him (he’d be a starter), I felt it. I still feel going into spring training that he’s one of our starters.

“My obligation is to the team first. Second, it’s my job to try to make the people who are not in the rotation understand it. Not like it, understand it.”

BIG BAD BOMBERS

Not everything came up roses and daffodils in the Bronx yesterday however. Joel Sherman ripped the Yankees, and their bulldozer approach to success in the Post this morning:

When the talent is overt (Jason Giambi, Mike Mussina, Contreras, Matsui), they buy it. When the talent is not so obvious and they cannot restrain themselves anyway (Sterling Hitchcock, Steve Karsay, Raul Mondesi, Rondell White), they buy it at prices others would not consider paying.

Yankees GM Brian Cashman was offended by this assertion. I can understand his annoyance, since he still oversees an extremely hard-working, bright staff he insists is merely doing what this organization always has done.

“If you are asking me if the Yankees have an advantage because of money, yes,” he said. “But I don’t think that is any different than in the past, and I’ve been here since 1986.”

However, I see a difference. It is the difference between using money to augment rather than overwhelm.

… Yes, the Yanks are playing by the rules, they will pay heavily in luxury tax/revenue sharing, and they are plying dollars seen from turnstiles/cable TV back into the product.

It used to be much easier to defend this organization against simply trying to buy titles when they were making more artful moves than simply applying the scouting skill of any Tom, Dick or Rotisserie player with $120 million to sign Giambi, or investing $32 million in a Cuban defector who may not even make their rotation.

Peter Gammons blasted the Yankees along similiar lines earlier this winter. Both writers have a point. It’s inherently difficult to root for the rich bully. But sincerely, who cares if it was easier for Sherman to defend the Yankees several years ago? Looks like it will be harder for him to appreciate any success the Yankees enjoy this year—what did you expect, they bought it—but you can bet he’ll be first in line to knock them if they sputter. Hey, everyone needs an angle. The Post has got to sell papers after all.

YES ON THE ATTACK

It’s snowing in New York this morning. I usually read the Post and the News on the subway on the way to work, then I look at the Times during lunch. Kobe Bryant deservedly made the backpages after torching the Knicks for 46 at the Garden last night (including a frightening reverse dunk at the end of the first half that is on tip of every basketball fan’s tongue this morning), but I couldn’t help but be impressed with the full page ad the YES network took in the local papers. According to a report in the Daily News:

The Yankees Entertainment & Sports Network said it will submit to a ruling by an “independent arbitrator, mediator, judge or panel” to settle its dispute with Cablevision.

“And we challenge Cablevision to join us at that table,” said YES boss Leo Hindery.

Hindery made the challenge in a letter to fans, which appeared today in advertisements running in a variety of local newspapers.

In the past, Cablevision brass has said it will not even address the subject of an independent arbitrator until YES drops its anti-trust lawsuit against their company.

NICK HAPPY TO BE HERE: SORI NOT SERIOUS

The News has a puff piece on Nick Johnson, who is happy to still be in pinstripes. (For what it’s worth, I’m happy he’s still around too.) Alfonso Soriano has pulled out of a Home Run Contest in Las Vegas due to a sore shouler. Apparently, it is not anything serious.

MILLAR CASE: JUST A MATTER OF TIME

I’m running out of headlines for this storyline. When is Steinbrenner going to jump out of the weeds and attempt to cockblock the Sox again? (Gosh, I hope he can manage to contain himself.) Here is the latest on Kevin Millar, from today’s Boston Globe:

”Clearly, Major League Baseball has an interest in how this works out,” [executive vice president of baseball opertations for MLB, Sandy] Alderson said. ”I’m not sure Major League Baseball ever looked into the issue [of whether the contract was valid]. But it appears the operating assumption for the Florida Marlins, Chunichi Dragons and Millar himself, as evidenced by his rejection [of Boston’s unconditional roster claim], is that there was a binding agreement, at least for a good part of the time.” The Sox claim on a player despite being notified of Florida’s intention of selling that player to Chunichi was unprecedented in Alderson’s memory. Asked if Chunichi officials had complained of the Red Sox’ involvement in the matter, Alderson said, ”Their focus at the time I had conversations with them was their desire to convince Kevin Millar he should play in Japan.”

MILLAR: HELL NO, I WON’T GO

The Boston Globe reports that chances of Kevin Millar playing in Japan this season are becoming less and less likely. Tony Massarotti (Boston Herald) adds:

Major League Baseball vice president of baseball operations Sandy Alderson categorized the Millar matter as “still unresolved” early yesterday, though he might not have known about the reports from Japan. In any case, Alderson hoped for a resolution that would appease all parties.

“We’d like to see a situation that results in the best interests of the player, the best interests of the Chunichi Dragons and the best interests of the rules,” he said.

The former general manager of the Oakland A’s, Alderson acknowledged that he rarely has seen a case as peculiar as the one involving Millar, who was claimed off waivers by the Red Sox last month.

Alderson said “the uniqueness of the situation really stems from the claim made by the Red Sox,” but was careful not to direct blame at Sox officials by stressing that it was within the club’s rights to claim Millar.

Major league teams typically have refrained from claiming players bound for Japan as a matter of etiquette, but there is nothing in league rules that prohibits teams from complicating the process.

“Had (the Red Sox) not made the claim, the circumstances would be different,” Alderson said. “(But) it’s their right to do under the rules. I’m not being critical.”

LONELY AVENUE

The Times ran a terrific profile on Jose Contreras yesterday. Like Godzilla Matsui, Contreras has a sense of humility that should make him right at home with the likes of Derek Jeter and Bernie Williams.

“This guy can pitch,” said the Cleveland Indians’ international scouting director, Rene Gayo, who signed the last prominent Cuban free agent, pitcher Danys Baez, in 1999. “In my opinion, he’s a lot like John Smoltz or Curt Schilling. He’s got a forkball that’s just nasty.”

Pat Gillick, the Seattle general manager, thought enough of Contreras to override the Mariners’ philosophy against giving contracts of longer than three years. In Nicaragua, Gillick offered $24 million for four years. “This guy’s special,” Gillick said.

…”I think he’s a really good person, excellent, in fact,” Gillick said. “It’s just the way he handles himself. He’s a very humble guy, very sincere, and there’s a level of genuineness there. What you see is what you get. I don’t think there’s any hidden agenda.”

…”He had already put a lot of time into learning specific big league hitters, how he would attack them,” [Boston GM, Theo] Epstein said. “He had a game plan for how to pitch Barry Bonds, how to pitch Ichiro Suzuki. He knew more about some big league hitters than some major league pitchers I’ve come across. He was clearly a thoughtful guy.”

Like El Duque before him, one of the most interesting aspects of Contreras’ initial season in the United States will be how he handles the loneliness of being a stranger in a strange land (his family is still in Cuba). Of course, he’ll be paid handsomely. In fact, his staggering salary may only complicate his sense of isolation. After all, this is a man who previously made $50 a month in Cuba.

I ran across a passage from John Updike’s famous tribute to Ted Williams (“Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu”) that addressed the concept of baseball’s inherent lonliness:

…For me, Williams is the classic ballplayer of the game on a hot August weekday, before a small crowd, when the only thing at stake is the tissue-thin difference between a thing done well and a thing done ill. Baseball is a game of the long season, of relentless and gradual averaging-out. Irrelevance—since the reference point of most individual games is remote and statistical—always threatens its interest, which can be maintained not by the occasional heroics that sportswriters feed upond but by players who always care; who care, that is to say, about themselves and their art. Insofar as the clutch hitter is not a sportswriter’s myth, he is a vulgarity, like a writer who writes only for money. [Consider that Updike wrote this before the days of the designated hitter.] It may be that, compared to managers’ dreams, such as Joe DiMaggio and the always helpful Stan Musial, Williams is an icy star. But of all team sports, baseball, with its graceful intermittences of action, its immense and tranquil field sparsely settled with poised men in white, its dispassionate mathematics, seems to me best suited to accommodate, and be ornamented by, a loner. It is essentially a lonely game. No other player visible to my generation has concentrated within himself so much of the sport’s poignance, has so assiduously refined his natural skills, has so constantly brought to the plate that intensity of competence that crowds the throat with joy.

PETE’S PICKS

Check out Peter Gammons’ American League preview over at ESPN.

What does he make of the Yankees’ chances?

The fact is that only age, injuries and owner hysteria can keep the Yankees from being really good.

All three of those factors could easily rear their ugly heads this year, but if they don’t, it’s hard not to agree with Gammons’ take.

SHOOT ME NOW

Regardless of how the Yankees do, it looks as if us dopes who are stuck with Cablevision will be screwed once again. I haven’t spent much time writing about the depressing state of affairs, because what else is there to say? I try not to think about it, or the fury that is building in the pit of my stomach. And while I’m not holding my breath for a deal to get done before opening day, I must hold out hope, foolish as it may seem.

Another season of Sterling and Steiner is too much to bear.

According to Newsday:

Cablevision subscribers who were shut out of watching 130 Yankees games last year should brace for another dark season. Six days before the Yankees’ spring-training camp opens, the 16-month dispute between the YES Network and Cablevision shows no sign of being resolved. In recent weeks, prospects for a settlement have dimmed, and yesterday, the rhetoric between the principals increased.

EATIN’ RAUL

Yankee right-fielder Raul Mondesi commented on the possibility of being traded by the Yankees yesterday.

“If they trade me to another big league team, there’s no problem,” Mondesi said Wednesday. “It would be difficult if they traded me to a football or basketball team because I don’t know how to play that.”

What about Roller Derby, Fat Guy?

BOBBY BITES BACK

It didn’t take long for Bobby V to get his licks in. I thought he might wait until the 14th, which would make for splashy headlines, but according to Ira Berkow in the New York Times, and Joel Sherman in the Post, Valentine was reserved and clipped in his comments two nights ago at the the Thurman Munson Awards Dinner. Valentine isn’t the sort to ignore the kind of attacks directed at him by members of the New York Mets, but he also didn’t seem particularly interested in starting a tabliod war.

There is an unflattering photograph of Valentine that accompanies the Berkow piece in the Times. Though Bobby V looks fit and dapper, the photo also suggests he’s wound tight enough to be the proud owner of a cleft asshole.

“We had a lousy year last year and I did a bad job. That is the easy statement and a truism.”

…”I find it almost rather criminal that after putting almost 10 years of my life, 24 hours a day, into an organization and a community that a couple of people who have never worn Met uniforms and one who wore it for one year and did not do much [Vaughn] can say things,” Valentine said.

…”I don’t know if it was orchestrated or not, but it’s all nonsense.”

…In regard to Glavine in particular, Valentine said: “His remarks are unfounded. I think I met him once in my life, and we shook hands. Glavine is a union leader and appears to be a very intelligent fellow. You would think he would base his opinions on experience and personal knowledge.”

As for the theory that his departure fostered the ability to recruit more alluring players, Valentine said, “I’m not going to comment on that. I don’t think it is worthy of comment. I’d like to find a person who really didn’t come here because of me. There are 29 other teams out there. Go find that person who was a free agent whom the club wanted that didn’t come because I was there, or else I say it is nonsensical to comment on that.”

Bob Raissman reports in today’s Daily News that Valentine will get his chance to speak his mind this season for ESPN after all. Perhaps Bobby will lie in the weeds and exact measures of revenge against his former team as the season unfolds.

The outspoken former manager will replace Buck Showalter in ESPN’s “Baseball Tonight” studio and work a limited number of games for the all-sports cable network.

Two weeks ago, it appeared that talks between Valentine and ESPN had reached an impasse. As part of its three-year contract offer, ESPN had insisted that if Valentine bolted the TV gig for a manager’s job, he would have to pay a penalty to the network.

Sources said Valentine initially rejected that stipulation. He obviously changed his mind.

“It’s like any negotiation,” a source familiar with the situation said. “You go through different phases. That was just one of them.”

MOVIE MINUTE: DON’T SLEEP ON GARFIELD FESTIVAL

Bernard Weinraub wrote an interesting article in the New York Times last week on one of Hollywood’s most-neglected stars, New Yorker, John Garfield, whose career is being celebrated throughout the month of February on Turner Movie Classics.

Before James Dean and Marlon Brando, before Al Pacino and Robert De Niro, there was John Garfield.

A tough kid who grew up in the 1920’s on the streets of the Lower East Side, Brownsville and the Bronx, Garfield (whose original name was Julius Garfinkle) was one of the first dark-haired, working-class ethnic outsiders to turn into a Hollywood star, following the path of actors like James Cagney.

…Garfield’s chip-on-the-shoulder style and his rugged looks often cast him as a social outsider on the screen: a boxer, a gangster, a soldier. The persona affected actors from the 1950’s onward.

His relatively brief but dazzling career was cut short by a heart condition and the Hollywood blacklist. He was never a Communist, but he refused to name those, including his wife, Roberta, who had been. He died of a heart attack in 1952 at 39, and 10,000 fans gathered outside Riverside Memorial Chapel in Manhattan. At the time it was the largest turnout for a celebrity funeral in New York since Rudolph Valentino’s.

My grandfather, who for years worked for the Anti-Defamation League, helped Garfield during the Blacklist Era, though to what extent I’m not sure. I do know that Garfield was one of my father’s idols. Pop’s adoration was intensified I’m sure, by the fact that he actually met Garfield, who visited my grandfather’s apartment on several occasions.

“He’s a forgotten star,” said David Heeley, one of the producers of “The John Garfield Story,” a documentary that will have its premiere on Turner Classic Movies, the cable channel, on Monday, followed by a festival of 25 Garfield films, to be shown on Mondays through February. “He never lived long enough to become an icon like Humphrey Bogart.”

His daughter, Julie Garfield, an acting teacher in New York, put it another way. “He was horribly neglected, forgotten, pushed aside,” she said. “It was almost as if Hollywood was so ashamed of what was done to him that they almost made him disappear.”

…Garfield is most remembered for his role opposite Lana Turner, in Tay Garnett’s sexy drama “The Postman Always Rings Twice” (1946), based on James M. Cain’s novel. His other films included “Humoresque” (1947), with Joan Crawford; Robert Rossen’s classic “Body and Soul” (1947), in which he works his way up from poverty to become a champion boxer at great personal cost; and Abraham Polonsky’s “Force of Evil” (1948), in which Garfield was acclaimed for his role as a greedy lawyer for racketeers. He also played the Jewish friend of Gregory Peck’s character in Elia Kazan’s “Gentlemen’s Agreement” (1947), about anti-Semitism. Garfield was nominated twice for Oscars, as a supporting actor for his first film, “Four Daughters” (1938), and as best actor for “Body and Soul.”

“He didn’t know what happened to him in the end,” Mr. Heeley said. “He didn’t understand why they were hounding him. In the end he was scared.”

Ms. Garfield, 57, was 6 when her father died. In an interview she spoke about him in a cracked voice: “It killed him, it really killed him. He was under unbelievable stress. Phones were being tapped. He was being followed by the F.B.I. He hadn’t worked in 18 months. He was finally supposed to do `Golden Boy’ on CBS with Kim Stanley. They did one scene. And then CBS canceled it. He died a day or two later.”

Peep Garfield’s complete credits, and while you’re killing time waiting for the Grapefruit League to get started, check out some of Garfield’s impressive film work over at Turner Movie Classics. “Body and Soul,” one of my favorites, will give you a knew appreciation of the work Scorsese did years later, in “Raging Bull.”