YES Network.com

On the eve of what would prove to be the last game of the 1977 World Series, Time Magazine published a story quoting Reggie Jackson as saying that manager Billy Martin had to go, that owner George Steinbrenner would have to choose between his star slugger and his manager. Thurman Munson and Lou Piniella had supposedly concurred. The implication was that win or lose the Series, Martin was on his way out. All three players denied the story, but the constant friction between the players, the manager, and the owner was taking its toll.

"The repercussions?" Piniella asked. "I think the club will break up before next year. Several guys will be leaving."

Martin said, "I've said it a lot of times this year, but I hope this is the last controversial thing. It has to stop sometime."

"It just never ends," said Piniella.

In the other clubhouse, Dodgers shortstop Bill Russell was asked if he could play for the Yankees. "No," he said. "I'm the kind of guy who has to have people like him, who has to like his teammates in return."

Russell wasn't asked if he cared about how the fans felt about him, but it figures that a guy who wanted to be appreciated wouldn't opt to play in a town where they boo you the day after you hit a walk-off home run. The same would no doubt apply to today's top-tier free agents and other desirables with no-trade clauses. They might think twice about coming to a town where some of the fans will go out of their way to eviscerate one of the top players in the game just because he hasn't lived up to their perception of a highly paid player. There have been times in the free-agent era that Yankeebucks alone weren't enough to lure the best players to New York. Those were the days when prospective Yankees looked towards the Stadium and heard the echo of Lou Piniella's words: "It just never ends."

Is Alex Rodríguez overpaid? Sure. All professional athletes are overpaid. Let's tax ballplayers at 90 percent and redistribute their money to the policemen and firemen and the soldiers in Iraq whose dependents get so little support. Failing that, it's time to let it go. Rodríguez's performance this year has been moderately disappointing. It's been fine by mortal standards but it falls short of the high bar set by Rodríguez himself. He does not deserve to be pilloried for it. He's not a bust. He's not Steve Trout, Steve Kemp, or Steve Whitaker. Stars do have off years. Babe Ruth had that year more than once. Don Mattingly had it for half his career, and with a contract as big in its day as Rodríguez's is now.

We don't know what's going on with Alex Rodríguez. Not to overreact to what might have been an error on a play with a higher than normal degree of difficulty, but the man seems to be nervous. We don't know if he's just in a fielding slump, he's masking an injury to his arm or shoulder that would make an otherwise strong-armed fellow in the prime of his career throw like Dan Quisenberry, or he's gone Daffy Duck or Chuck Knoblauch on us.

If it's the latter, then Rodríguez's persecutors better take a long look in the mirror, because they will have helped to foster something very much like a self-fulfilling prophecy. There is a segment of fans — a large segment, possibly the majority — that likes to pretend that it's rooting for a pennant or a championship every year, but is really about the players. Mattingly is 45 now and he couldn't help the Yankees long before that, but many carry the unanswered wish that he had kept playing all along. The same goes for Bernie Williams now, as he stands in the twilight of his playing years, and some diehards are probably still pining for Scott Brosius and wondering why he hung it up so early. For them, it's not about winning, it's about holding tight to that thing that they love — or in this case, rejecting someone they don't, because of some animus that has little basis in fact or fairness.

There's no law saying that can't be the way you follow baseball, but it has nothing to do with winning. A parade of managers through the ages have said that in order to win you have to be prepared to cut your best friend and brother, bean your grandma, wipe out your childhood sweetheart at second if she tries to turn two. Bart Giamatti wrote that the game will break your heart. He meant that teams like the Cubs and the Red Sox (and the Yankees, when they have Jeff Weaver) will suffer devastating turnarounds, will snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. That's only half of it. The truth of the matter is that the game breaks your heart by making you choose between the team you root for and the players you root for. Those fans that abdicate when it comes time to make that decision are well within their rights, but they shouldn't pretend that winning is paramount for them.

This is true for those in the "Hating on A-Rod" camp as well. Take an objective look. Again, he's having a good year by anyone's standards, or was until he manifested the yips. Given his talent there's no way to trade him and get anything like fair return. In fact, you can never get fair return on any player of A-Rod's ability unless you trade him for another A-Rod. Add in a contract so large that only the Yankees and a couple of other teams can afford it and the odds of an A-Rod trade look like a million-to-one against. A fan who cared about winning would be looking for ways to support him, not cause further agitation.

Alex Rodríguez is a good player for the Yankees to have. Chances are he's going to rebound both on offense — in the clutch and not — and in the field. Whether he does or not, his detractors will have to ask themselves just what it was they were trying to express, what they were trying to accomplish for the team by making him feel so unwelcome, and perhaps instigating his fall.

ALL THE CATS JOIN IN…
To my mind there's nothing better than a JSP Records jazz box set. This United Kingdom outfit does the best remastering job of anyone out there, better than the major labels, and then cheaply packages everything up at half the price the American record companies would charge you. You give up the glossy souvenir booklet, but you get better music. Lately I've been grooving to their Benny Goodman box set. We often talk about rock and roll here, but trust me, there are cuts here that rock just as hard as any heavy metal band.

WEEKEND TOMFOOLERY
George Harrison sings a Pirate Song. Cribbed from Atrios who cribbed it from someone else — but then, that's his mission, to disseminate thoughtful stuff. And mine, though mostly I deal in jockstraps.

TEN SONG 1960s MIX FOR A DEPRESSING FRIDAY IN WHICH THE WORLD SITUATION LOOKS BLEAK
1. Something in the Air — Thunderclap Newman. "We've got to get together sooner or later, because the revolution's here. And you know it's right." A one-hit wonder, and too optimistic by far.

2. It's Good News Week — Hedgehopper's Anonymous. "It's good news week. Someone dropped a bomb somewhere." Cynical media satire, but we need that.

3. Cocoanut Grove — The Lovin' Spoonful. "It's really true how nothing matters … No one's pitching 'cause there ain't no batters … Don't bar the door 'cause no one's coming." John Sebastian searches for Fred Neil but finds nihilism instead.

4. Save the Country — Laura Nyro. "In my mind I can't study war no more." A hit for the 5th Dimension, but it's hard to take protest music seriously when sung by the same voices that put "Up, Up and Away" on the charts.

5. We Can Be Together — Jefferson Airplane. No we can't. Still too optimistic. On "Volunteers," Jefferson Airplane sang, "One generation got old, one generation got soul." True, but then the latter generation recorded "We Built This City" and the circle went 'round again. The naivety of drug-addled youth let them sing "We should be together" and "Up against the wall, mothers" as if those sentiments weren't in conflict. What the heck — so many people live in a world of Manichean dualism nowadays that there's no harm in signing like you mean it — as long as you keep the knives in the kitchen drawer until after the last note fades.

6. We're Not Gonna Take It (See Me, Feel Me) — The Who. Even Pete Townshend questioned whether he should have been inculcating political ambivalence in "Won't Get Fooled Again." Two years earlier he had a more positive take on the same idea. Some kind of spiritual uplift replaces the false idols, not that it's clear what it was supposed to be. "Don't want no religion, and as far as we can tell we ain't gonna take you … Let's forget you better still."

7. Motorpsycho Nightmare — Bob Dylan. One of his better jokes. Odd that 40 years later, "I like Fidel Castro and his beard" still sounds like some kind of taboo being violated.

8. All I Really Want to Do — Cher. Another Dylan song, but unlike Mr. Zimmerman, Cher could sing it. And sure, I'll pretend it's political: "I ain't lookin' … drag you down or drain you down, chain you down or bring you down." Got chains?

9. Eve of Destruction — Barry McGuire. Because it wasn't meant to be a parody, but it is one, and the most elevated mood can use some deflation. McGuire almost carried it off, too, but he sings "Handful of senators won't pass legislation" with the same gravity he might have brought to "Jungle rot just caused my foot to fall off, and the Khmer Rouge are in the backseat of the Volkswagen."

10. Sounds of Silence — Simon & Garfunkel. Alienation, nihilism, we run the whole gamut here. Plus, "The people bowed and prayed to the neon god they made." Fox? "The sign said the words of the prophets are written on the subway walls…" And still too optimistic. The intersection of poetry, defiance, and vandalism isn't to be found on any map.

Until Monday then.

CLICK HERE TO COMMENT

THURSDAY, July 20, 2006: Posted at 3:20 p.m.
FLEEING THE TRENTON THUNDER & LIGHTNING
Apologies for the blog going dark for a couple of days this week (we did get the Pinstriped Bible up yesterday). I was sidelined by Octavio Dotel and domestic difficulties. The nanny who minds my children while I scratch out these depraved mutterings suffered a death in her family and was unavailable to us for a few days. My wife and I were thrown into an awkward timesharing arrangement where we each worked our job for half-days and minded the kinder for the other half. I found this was a very pleasing arrangement for the children but it was hell on productivity.

When the YES men suggested that I go down to Trenton and train my working eye on Dotel's rehab work, I regretfully informed them that given that I was strapped for childcare we were confronted by an either/or proposition. It would be Dotel or the Blog. There wouldn't be time for both as the rest of the day would be taken up by reading Rudyard Kipling to the older child and preventing the younger one from drinking paint. We weighed the pros and cons and decided that I had to go to Trenton, consequences be damned, because just how often are you going to get a chance to see a bona fide reliever like Octavio Dotel pitch in New Jersey? It would be wrong not to attend a Garden State cultural happening of that magnitude. Life is normally so quiet here.

I shot down the highway to the state capital. The ballpark is easy to get to, straight down US Highway 1, make a couple of turns, drive past the New Jersey State Prison, where Lindbergh baby kidnapper Bruno Richard Hauptmann was executed back in 1936 and is still a maximum security outfit (the locals have thoughtfully painted it with bucolic baseball scenes) and you're there. The Stadium is on the Delaware River (or Delaware Riviera as we're now billing it for the tourist trade). It's called Waterfront Park, although the high outfield walls mostly keep the river out of view. The ballpark isn't far from the Lower Free Bridge, the one with the lit-up letters saying, "Trenton Makes, the World Takes," a sentiment that must be at least 50 years out of date. The bridge is a short one, so there isn't room to amend the sign to the more appropriate, "Trenton No Longer Makes but the World Keeps Taking. Where Does It All Come From If Not From Here?"

The ballpark itself is quite nice. A single-deck affair with some luxury boxes, there isn't a bad seat in the house, though with Tuesday's heat the only good seat was at home in front of an air conditioner, as the large number of empty seats attested. The ballpark food could use a little work, even if it is Double-A. The one unusual menu item is crab fries, which are regular French fries seasoned with crab boil. I tried them on a previous trip and found them insufficient inspiration to wreck my cholesterol levels. Press box fare was chicken fingers and fries. It's nice of the Thunder to put out a free spread for the writers (the Yankees don't-and you thought the beat writer's life was glamorous), but I found myself wondering how far away the famous De Lorenzo's Pizza was, if they would deliver to the ballpark, and how badly my hosts would be insulted. Also, I was by myself, so I couldn't eat a whole pie (well, I could, but I wouldn't). I could offer to share with my fellow press box denizens, but what would they think of such extravagance? No doubt they'd think me a snob, even if every restaurant survey in New Jersey calls it the the best pizza in the state.

Trenton's starter against the Binghamton Mets was righty Matt Childers, a veteran of about a million minor league seasons though he's only 27. He had a cup of coffee with the Brewers four years ago, another with the Braves last year, after which the Yankees picked him up as a minor league free agent. He was recently busted down to Trenton after posting a 5.68 ERA in a swingman role at Columbus. My only interest in him was how fast he would give way to Dotel. If Tyler Clippard, Matt DeSalvo, or Phil Hughes had started I would have hung on every pitch, but they had pitched the previous three days. I'm going to make an effort to attend Hughes' next home start.

As it turned out, I wouldn't have long to wait. A squall line was bearing down on Trenton. The guys in the press box were anxiously following the weather radar on their laptops. It was an intense storm and would put the completion of the game in jeapordy. The Thunder coaches must have noticed it as well, because though Childers was pitching well (allowing two hits and a run through four innings) he was replaced by Dotel in the top of the fifth lest the reliever's chance to pitch be washed away.

Dotel threw his one inning (between Carl Pavano and Dotel I have witnessed a grand total of 24 rehabilitation pitches at Trenton) and then it was a question of which would come first, our opportunity to talk to Dotel or the rain. Whereas in almost all situations you're not allowed to talk with players until the game is over, in the case of visiting major leaguers Trenton makes them available as soon as they've left the game. The question is if the player will want to talk right away or if he'll want to take a shower, have a drink, phone his loved ones, or order a pie from De Lorenzo's first. I looked out at center field. As twilight descended it was tough to judge the quality of the sky, but the big American flag in center field, which had been streaming out to center field all game, was now randomly whipping in all directions.

Dotel apparently wanted to get out of Dodge before the storm hit, so we were almost immediately ushered downstairs. In Trenton you have to go outside to get from the press box to the clubhouse. As we went a strong wind arose and grabbed the press pass that hung on a chain around my neck and yanked it backwards. One of the writers shouted "It's a twister! It's a twister!" in a high-pitched voice. Then we were inside.

We spoke with Dotel for about 10 minutes (for that conversation, see yesterday's article). He was a very happy guy. All too soon we were ushered out of the clubhouse and we were back outside. The wind took hold of my press pass again and didn't let go. I looked up. The sky had turned black. I looked back down just in time to step aside as the night's attendance stampeded past me on the way to the ballpark. I looked back again, over the ballpark. A finger of lightning reached down to the river. There was no delay before the thunder, no time to count to determine how far away the storm was. It was a look-and-listen play, happening all at once. "Shhh-BOOM!" Clearly the storm wasn't approaching, it was here.

The concourse that surrounds the stands at Trenton is open to the field, so going inside wouldn't offer the fans protection the way it would at Yankee Stadium. That's why everyone was running. It didn't take me long to make up my mind to join them. The electricity had arrived before the rain. Despite my diminished vision I drive just fine in the daytime. Rainy conditions are a different matter. I had been sent to cover Dotel and my job was done. Another bolt of lightning cut the sky. I hurried to the parking lot. As I was carried along by the crowd, the sky brightened again and again.

NOTES
The Rudyard Kipling story was "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi." Paired with Donovan's song of the same name, it makes for a good, thoughtful conversation. Donovan sings:

Everybody who read the Jungle Book knows that Rikki-Tikki-Tavi's a mongoose who kills snakes. Well, when I was a young man I was led to believe there were organizations for killing my snakes for me. IE the church, IE the government, IE the school. But when I got a little older I learned I had to kill them myself… Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, mongoose is gone…

It's not as good as "Season of the Witch," but it serves. We raise our young ones through dialectic around here. Being authoritarian would be easier, but if the children didn't think and question and agitate I wouldn't be able to relate to them.

HILLENBRANDED
(STARRING CHUCK CONNERS)
The ironic thing about his being unceremoniously booted from the Jays is that he might have been about to break down anyway. In his career, Hillenbrand is a .299/.339/.468 career hitter before the All-Star break, .276/.313/.427 after. Those patterns generally pop like soap bubbles as soon as you put too much weight on them (like Jason Giambi's inability to hit when not playing the field), but in Hillenbrand's case he's such a marginal hitter as a first baseman/DH that the Jays are better safe than sorry. It would be a little different if he was a plus defender at third base, but he's not.

All of that is said without reference to who is at fault in the Toronto situation, which isn't yet clear as of this writing.

From a pennant race perspective, as unspectacular as Hillenbrand's final numbers were likely to be, with him gone and Alex Rios still getting over his leg infection, the Jays are going to be strapped for offense in the short term. They don't have any hitters ready at Triple-A, so unless there is a big deal in the offing this could be the moment that they fall out of the race.

DEBUTS
YESNetwork.com senior editor Will Weiss had a good piece yesterday on recent midseason pitching acquisitions. It was too long ago for Will's piece and not quite in the same category, but for my money the best midseason pitching debut in Yankees history was by Ernie "Tiny" Bonham in August, 1940. A great control pitcher, rookie Bonham went 9-3 with a 1.91 ERA down the stretch, which was just as good as it sounds. He walked just 13 batters in 99 innings and pitched three shutouts. He nearly pushed the Yankees to a fifth straight pennant, but there were other problems with that team that were too difficult to overcome and the Yankees finished third, two games out.

A QUESTION OF BALANCE
Given that the Yankees benefited from a botched call on Jorge Posada's infield "hit" on Tuesday, one supposes that umpire Andy Fletcher's indefensible decision to call time while Andy Phillips was still running the bases was just the universe's way of evening out the breaks. Still, it was an egregiously bad call. If René Rivera chooses to argue in the middle of a play, that's his call, one that hotheaded players have been burned by before. If Mike Hargrove comes out on the field during a play, he should be ejected, not given a game-altering time out.

FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, A-ROD, BE QUIET
As reported on ESPN, after yesterday's game a frustrated Alex Rodríguez seemed to suggest that it didn't matter to him whether the Yankees won or lost. Way to make friends and influence people, A-Rod. You're a great player and you're having a good year, even if it's not up to your high standards. You have every right to be aggrieved because a segment of fandom is judging you by your contract rather than by your performance. But no one is going to accept that attitude in New York. It's going to make you even more of a target for your critics. It would be better, and probably a relief to everyone, if you simply refused to answer questions about the booing rather than saying things that are going to give the cretins legitimacy.

THE MAILBAG…
… Has been a little quiet since the move to our new server. I very much want this blog to continue to be a dialogue, so keep those cards, letters, poems, and songs coming!

CLICK HERE TO COMMENT

MONDAY, July 17, 2006: Posted at 5:08p.m.
TWO THUMBS UP!
What a splendid series for the Yankees. In one weekend they revised the American League playoff outlook. In sweeping the defending champion White Sox, who entered this weekend's series on a pace to win 105 games (a level only 25 teams in the history of baseball have met or exceeded), the Yankees not only halved their deficit in the wild card race, but cut Boston's lead to a half-game.

Saturday's game was a blowout, but it was bracketed by two tough wins. On Friday night the Yankees chipped away at Jose Contreras, who seemingly hadn't lost since he'd been a Yankee. The White Sox in turn chipped away at Mariano Rivera, who had a rare off day, understandable against one of the best teams in baseball. In struggling, Rivera demonstrated why the odds are on the closer's side when he enters the game with a three-run lead — he can yield all sorts of ground, but most of the time a team will make three outs before it can score three runs.

Mark Buehrle had been pounded in his first two July starts and the Yankees made sure to kick him when he was down. On July 2, Buehrle was destroyed (five innings, 11 runs) by a Cubs team that isn't exactly fielding their 1929 lineup of Rogers Hornsby, Hack Wilson, and Kiki Cuyler. The Red Sox scored five runs off of Buehrle in 6.1 innings on July 7. The Yankees escorted hit out of the game in the fourth inning, his shortest stint of the month. In addition to the ringing win, a positive note for the Yankees was receiving a scoreless inning and a third from Scott Proctor. Sure, the pressure was off with a big lead, but Proctor had allowed five runs in five innings this month, including two home runs, and since his stellar April his ERA had been 5.77. Any successful outing is a good thing at this point if it gives the Yankees something to build on; right now April looks like a Sturtzian fluke.

Sunday's game, which featured Rivera's 400th career save (more on this in tomorrow's Pinstriped Bible), was an all-around gutty performance by the Yankees, whose starting lineup included Melky Cabrera, Aaron Guiel, Andy Phillips, Miguel Cairo, and Bubba Crosby. That's five lineup spots out of nine where any resemblance to Mantle, Maris, and Berra is strictly limited to the common uniform. Worse, Starting pitcher Jaret Wright lacked his best stuff and had to be relieved early. Fortunately, Derek Jeter came through with his first big fly since May 16 and most-unpopular-Yankee-since-Ed-Whitson Alex Rodr—guez (could it be his breath?) followed with a two-run shot to put the Yankees up 3-1 in the bottom of the first. The White Sox narrowed that lead, in part because of Wright's vulnerability, and also because it wouldn't be a Kyle Farnsworth appearance without a home run (by which rule Farnsworth's scoreless inning on Friday was not actually a Farnsworth appearance). Cabrera advanced on consecutive fly outs to score a run in the third, and the Phillips/Cairo/Crosby third of the order put up a two-run spot in the bottom of the fourth to bolster the shaky pitching. Rivera did the rest, entering with two Farnsworth runners on in the eighth and inducing a rare Scott Podsednik double play to escape the jam. The first two batters in the ninth reached, but Rivera got another double play, this time off the bat of Paul Konerko, and struck out Jermaine Dye to end the threat and the game. Rivera has induced a grand total of 60 double plays in a career that goes back to 1995 and encompasses just over 600 double play opportunities. This translates to about five a year and one every 10 chances or so, so Sunday's performance was unusual and perhaps a bit lucky. Nevertheless, it got the job done. It was that kind of weekend for the Yankees, the best of the season so far.

NEXT!
The Yankees now get to take on a Mariners team that's bringing up the rear in a wide-open AL West. The Mariners don't score too many runs and don't pitch all that well either, so this is another good opportunity for the Yankees. That's at first glance. The weakness of the M's offense is distorted by their difficult home ballpark. In Seattle, the Mariners are hitting a very quiet .256/.318/.397 and scoring 4.4 runs a game. On the road, they have more robust .277/.327/.446 rates and homer more often per at-bat in neutral parks than the Yankees do. The score nearly a run more per game on the road — 5.3 — than they do at home.

That being said, the Mariners are having a particularly rough month. They are 3-8 in July, largely because the offense has gone completely cold. While the pitching staff has put up a 4.79 ERA — not good, but not utterly disastrous in this era — the offense has sputtered to a halt. With eight of 11 games at home this month, the M's are batting .236/.295/.384 and averaging three runs a game. The only bright spots have been Ichiro, who has .283/.377/.500 rates on the month (it looks more like a Jason Giambi line than an Ichiro one, but it's still good), and Raul Ibañez, who has slugged four homers in 48 at-bats. When watching, take special note of the Mariners' new center fielder, 20-year-old Adam Jones, who was hitting .277/.332/.470 at Triple-A Tacoma.

The pitching matchups for the series generally favor the Yankees, though the wild card is Tuesday's starter Sid Ponson. Fortunately for the Yankees, he faces Joel Pineiro, who has been hammered all season long. Even if Ponson can't pitch at all, the Yankees should have a chance to get back in the game.

Concurrently, the Red Sox get to grapple with a curiously improved Royals team. Since June 1, the Royals have gone 18-22. This might not seem much, but to that point in the season they had won just 14 games and lost 37. The winning percentage for the former portion of the season is .450; for the latter, it's .275. The Royals haven't pitched all that well during the last 40 games — Mark Redman, the team's obligatory All-Star has been the best of the staff, going 6-0 with a 4.35 ERA in his last eight starts, albeit with an anachronistic line of 51 2/3 innings, 50 hits, 19 walks, and 15 strikeouts — that strikeout/walk ratio wouldn't have stuck out too badly in the 1950s, when pitchers would rather issue ball four than give in. The Royals' 1.28 strikeout/walk ratio over the last 40 games ranks among the lowest of the last 25 years, and their 4.95 strikeouts per inning pitched over the same period is lower than that of any team of the last ten years barring the risible 2003 Tigers.

It's in the hitting department where several Royals have picked up their games, and their 5.23 runs per game over this stretch has been just close enough behind their pitching to keep their games interesting. While Mark Grudzielanek has gone cold and Angel Berroa and Reggie Sanders have stayed cold (no doubt some contender will still gamble and pick him up, though perhaps for less than ever before), David DeJesus batted .318/.409/.468 since June 1 and probably should have been the team's All-Star, despite playing time limited by a long stay on the disabled list; Mark Teahen, demoted early for waving a flaccid bat, has hit .315/.383/.581 and leads the team with seven homers over that span; former Red Sox ballnapper Doug Mientkiewicz has batted .325/.397/.487; and John Buck has hit .245/.325/.461, which is plenty good for a catcher.

BLEAK HOUSE
A dinner party conversation with my editor's well-read wife got me thinking about Dostoevsky ("Crime and Punishment"), Jack London ("The Sea Wolf"), Nietzsche, the Leopold and Loeb murder case, and two films (both based on Leopold and Loeb): Alfred Hitchcock's "Rope," and "Compulsion," with Orson Welles as someone much like Clarence Darrow. None of these are cheerful works. Negation of morality is a topic with much relevance to the modern world, but only in a way that's very depressing. My editor's wife seems like a nice person. Next time we shall talk about the weather.

CLICK HERE TO COMMENT