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SOLAR PANEL
The New York Sun asked me for midseason grades for the Yankees, and I was only too glad to oblige. What would an All-Star break be without midseason grades? Like hot dogs without mushroom sauce, that's what.

THE BRONX IS EXCESSIVELY COMBUSTIBLE
I stood in the throng around Reggie Jackson last Saturday as he spoke of his deep resentment at not being consulted during the making of the ESPN adaptation of "The Bronx is Burning." Asked if he ever made peace with Billy Martin, or Martin's memory, Jackson said, "I don't know. I don't know. I go in and out. I don't really know. I forgive, but I can't forget it. They got this [miniseries] coming out next week. They didn't ask me. I feel betrayed. I could have told them about anti-Semitism, racism, and all that kind of stuff, but why do that? Why talk about people who are dead? Why trample on a man's grave and brag that kind of stuff up? I worked for ESPN one time. I worked for ABC. They didn't have the decency to ask me a question. You want to portray me when you don't know the story? ...I can't tell you how I feel. I don't know the word."

The makers of the miniseries did consult Marty Appel, Jimmy Breslin, Fran Healy, Steve Jacobson, and Graig Nettles. Four of those five are baseball sources. Yet it does seem strange that one would make a film in which the interplay between Martin, Jackson, and George Steinbrenner is the center of the story and one would not enlist the one member of the trio likely to be accessible to you. Jackson was a source for Jonathan Mahler's book, and perhaps the producers and writers felt they could let it go at that, but judging from Mahler's notes ("In the spring of 2001 I interviewed Reggie several times over the course of two days at the Yankees' spring training complex in Tampa.") it doesn't seem as if he was a major one.

I've only seen the first episode (you may have missed it, as ESPN scheduled it behind the unending, spectacularly tedious, home run derby and it started somewhere between an hour and a day late -- I was too numb to be sure), so it would be unfair to judge the whole film by its first few minutes, but the first episode was not entirely successful. A book and a film are different entities, and what the former can do with the flip of a page, the latter struggles to accomplish. There was a great deal happening in New York in the summer of 1977, but there wasn't really a nexus to those events, no real overlap between the Son of Sam and the Yankees, the mayoral race and the Yankees, or the blackout and the Yankees, except a commonality of location. Now, all of those other things can be grouped together under the rough heading of "New York City in a seeming death spiral," but that's another book, one which doesn't include the Yankees.

The book sorta, kinda, almost pulls all these things together, because in a book the act of changing the subject requires no more violence than turning a page. A film, even disjointed, time-hopping Quentin Tarintino films, requires more of a through-line. To borrow a locution from a fellow Goldman, the screenwriter William Goldman, a film has to have a spine. The spine of the film of "The Bronx is Burning" is the Yankees. The Son of Sam is off the spine.

Imagine if you were doing a film about New York and World War II. In the Bronx, manager Joe McCarthy struggles to win without Joe DiMaggio, who is in the military. In Brooklyn, the Navy Yard is building the battleships that will shell the Normandy coast. Meanwhile, Mayor LaGuardia keeps a nervous city calm by reading comic strips over the radio during air-raid blackouts. One of these things is not like the others, unless as storytellers you forge tangential connections -- the worker at the Navy Yard used to play for the Yankees before the war started and, um, he likes comic strips. Periodically he goes to the ballpark and wistfully thinks of what might have been... But that would be cheating -- now you're in the realm of pure fiction, and "The Bronx is Burning" is supposed to be dramatization, not invention.

It's not as if an ESPN production was ever going to do justice to urban politics. The emphasis is going to be on the sports, and that's what the filmmakers should have stuck with. The Yankees had drama enough on their own without dragging the real world into things.

Last note: I buy John Turturro as Martin and Oliver Platt as Steinbrenner, but Daniel Sunjata as Reggie is badly miscast. He neither looks like Jackson nor has an ounce of the real McCoy's presence and charisma.

AND SPEAKING OF '77... BEING YELLED AT MAKES YOU BETTER!
More from Old Timer's Day. This time, Chris Chambliss.

The Pinstriped Bible Guy: Can you talk a bit about Billy Martin, the manager of the 1976-1977 team?

Chambliss: Billy was a real tactician. He knew the game really well. He knew how to get the best out of his players. As far as his off the field stuff, you kind of knew that, but shoot, we had all kinds of other stuff going on with our club anyway. But when it came between the lines, I thought he was an excellent manager.

PB: Was it fun for you, given all the pressures you were under?

Chambliss: It was fun for me. I enjoyed being here. I think most of the guys would say that. First of all, our club, different from teams I've seen recently, we just had more fun for some reason. I don't know what it was. We seemed to joke around a little more. So really, getting on the field was more like relieving the pressure of all the problems, whatever else was going on. When we got on the field, we knew we could simply play the game. We had that kind of club. We had so much versatility. We could win the game in any way, with speed, power, pitching. That '77 club had everything it took to win ballgames. If we didn't hit we had great pitching. If we didn't pitch so well we had a lot of power. If we didn't do either one of those, we had a lot of speed. Any part of the game that any team would want, we had that.

PB: One of the things that fans tend to say about this year's team is that if Joe Torre was the kind of guy who would yell at them they would do better. It seems kind of naïve to me, but you played for Billy Martin and you played for Joe Torre in Atlanta. Martin was the kind of guy who would yell. There's a contrast --

Chambliss: There's a contrast in people, of personality. A manager can only be himself. If he's not a screamer and a yeller, that's what he's not. Joe is what he has to be, and Billy had to be what he had to be. Joe told me that a long time ago, because he knew I wanted to manage. That's one of the first things he told me, was to be myself. Like you're telling me, you're the press, and you're trying to tell me I should be yelling at my players and yet I'm the manager and I've got to be myself. Joe told me that a long time ago.

PB: Is that simplistic, though? As a baseball player, does being yelled at make you better?

Chambliss: It depends on the situation. It depends on the personality. It depends on a whole bunch of things that there is no simplistic answer to. Being yelled at, sometimes guys need that. It depends who he is, but it also depends on who the guy yelling, who he is, too. And it doesn't work when you're phony. And that's what happens: You're telling me I should yell at people, and I'm gonna do it, it's gonna be phony to the players. It's not gonna be real. So you can't draw those conclusions. Everybody's different.

NO ONE LIKES BEING PLATOONED
Chambliss talked for awhile longer. There were other writers around asking questions after I got done, and I assume that his quotes on being traded to the Yankees wound up in their articles. I did jump in again, though, when he talked about the 1974 season. "At the time I wasn't that happy," he said, "but it turned out to be a good trade."

"That was a tough half-season for you," I said. "Is that why?" Chambliss hit a devastating .243/.282/.343 after coming to the Yankees, helping them lose a close race to the Baltimore Orioles.

"It was a tough half-season because I didn't play everyday," Chambliss replied. "I was platooned real quick when I got here. That hurt my performance. I had played against all pitching. That kind of led to mine not having that kind of a year. It turned out okay!"

This is one of those fun assertions that is now subject to fact-checking thanks to Retrosheet and Baseball-Reference. In 1974, Chambliss started 24 of his first 25 games with the club and played the entire game. The problem from manager Bill Virdon's point of view was that Chambliss batted .221/.257/.316 in those games. He also had a hot first base prospect, Otto Velez, who happened to be right-handed. (Self-serving promotional note: I wrote extensively about the Chambliss-Velez situation in Baseball Prospectus's new book, It Ain't Over making its way to a bookstore near you on August 13). Virdon didn't really believe in Velez, but Chambliss was scuffling, so he gave platooning a try -- for about five minutes in July. He also sometimes sat Chambliss for switch-hitter Bill Sudakis. Mostly, though, Chambliss played.

The funny thing is, platooning wouldn't have been a bad idea. Chambliss was a good hitter for the Yankees from 1975 through 1977, during which time he hit .295/.332/.440, but the rest of the time he was just a little better than average because he was a first baseman who was a doubles hitter rather than a home run hitter, and he didn't walk much. A left-handed batter, he hit a miserable .252/.289/.359 against southpaws (vs. .293/.357/.444 against righties). In 1974, it was .225/.253/.315. The year before he came to the Yankees it was .220/.285/.299. Even in 1975-1977, Chambliss had a hard time keeping his OBP against lefties over .300. The Bicentennial year was his one exception, as Chambliss batted .290/.312/.469 versus southpaws.

It's possible Chambliss could argue that he had to make outs against lefties to keep his swing sharp against righties, or that platooning affected his confidence. It's very rare that a player will say, "I just wasn't any good!" when you ask them why they struggled.