...Not Even A Centaur

A few weeks ago, a few of my friends had people over to their apartment to help make and hang decorations for their tree. I think it came out pretty well:

...Say, what's that at the top of the tree? A star, an angel?

I can almost make it out...

Ah yes. (You can thank/curse @jasoncfry for the image). Happy Holidays from our centaur to yours!

Crosstown Traffic

Okay... I leave town for a few days and all hell breaks loose. A-Rod and Madonna?

(Actually, that OK! story sounds like total bullshit, and I hate myself a little for even linking to it. But a couple of years ago, when the A-Rod hysteria was at its height, I swore I wouldn't write about him again unless he met some extremely unlikely criteria, one of which was having an affair with someone totally insane and unexpected... and while Madonna isn't my Grandpa Murray or anything, I do think this qualifies. Or, you know, would, if it were true).

Anyway. I'm in upstate New York for a few weeks, visiting my dad, who has recently purchased a hi-def TV that pretty much left me drooling with envy. I only got here in time for the last couple innings of tonight's Yanks game (because the traffic leaving the city today was un-fucking-real -- I mean I literally could have driven from New Haven to Providence and stopped for dinner in the time it took me to get from Flatbush Avenue to the Thruway), but man, baseball looks gorgeous on that screen. It's not so much the sharpness, but the depth perception; you can really see movement on the individual pitches in a way that I generally can't on my own elderly TV. I suppose it helped me be a bit more understanding of the fact that, for the third day in a row, the Yankees couldn't actually hit any of those pitches.

From what I could make out through the deafening static -- my dad's place is really too far for me to get the games on the radio, but this never stops me from leaving the station on so that once in a while when the car crests a hill I can make out something like "...six straight balls thrown by John Maine!" -- the Mets lost, too. If the Phillies and Red Sox (... fine, and Rays) had gone on major runs earlier in the year, this could've been one hell of a depressing baseball season in New York. And of course it still might be, but so far? Mostly it's just bewildering.

Anyway, it's late and I'm still recovering from road rage, so I better call it a night and stop A) wondering why the Yankees can't do any damage against one of the worst pitching staffs in the league, and B) remembering how much I dislike the Cardinals.

Oh -- and I had a couple of posts on the Banter last week which I forgot to link to here.

We Are All Interested In The Future, For That Is Where You And I Are Going To Spend The Rest Of Our Lives

The Amazing A-Rod predicts!:... that Derek Jeter will win an MVP this season. I don't know how, exactly, but people will find a way to get mad at him for this.

Speaking of predictions, Jimmy Rollins replied to Carlos Beltran's, and then the Mets responded to that, and then Ryan told Jose that he heard from Brett that... yeah, there's not much real baseball news just yet. Select anonymous Phillies have apparently mentioned brawls, which reminds me that neither the Mets or the Yanks had even one actual fight last year -- just a scuffle each, with some shouting and your basic "hold me back!" posturing.

While few things in sports are sillier than a baseball fight, I have to admit part of me wants the Yankees to have one this season; it's the last year of Kyle Farnsworth's contract, and that's pretty much the only thing he excells at. (Seriously, if you haven't watched this clip of Farnsworth vs. Jeremy Affeldt during a Tigers-Royals brawl, you are depriving yourself of hours of enjoyment). Seems like a waste if the Yankees don't get even one jaw-dropping tackle for their money.

However, as for the Mets, I say let the Phillies run their mouths: I don't want to see an opposing player come within 10 feet of Johan Santana's left arm at any time, for any reason.

One more prediction for the road (via RAB): Kevin Millar says the Orioles are gonna win it all, baby! He's kidding, of course - and aiming some jokey trash talk at the Cubs' Ryan Dempster, another prediction-happy player. Still: it's probably not a good sign when a team's veteran players are openly joking about how ludicrous it would be for them to win a championship, you know?

For Auld Lang-Rod

11:57 PM, December 31st, 2007. I'm at my friends' party on Degraw St, in the apartment I lived in for several years when I first moved to New York. As everyone hurries to get a glass of champagne poured and ready before the ball drops, someone turns on the TV, flipping around til he finds a broadcast from Times Square. It was Carson Daly, and all of a sudden there, standing next to him, in a Yankees cap:


Me: Oh hey! Is that A-Rod? It's A-Rod! Turn up the volume!
Everyone else: (laughing, talking, pouring champagne)
Me: This must be part of his whole No-really-I-love-New-York image rehab thing! What's he saying?
Everyone else: Ten!... Nine!... Eight!...

So I have no idea what was said (shot in the dark: "it's great to be here in New York!"), because my friends are normal healthy people who do not care about baseball player soundbites when they're celebrating the New Year; but A-Rod's mug was just about the last thing I saw in 2007. Seems fitting somehow.

Anyway, here's to 2008 and just the littlest bit of a fresh start. If one 2007 moment really encapsulated my entire year, it would have to be the sudden swarm of gnats that descended on Joba Chamberlain during Game 2 of the Division Series, resulting in two wild pitches and a blown lead. (Only because the Mets' implosion wasn't really a "moment" so much as lifestyle). At the aforementioned party I tried to describe that eighth inning to a non-baseball-fan friend, but he refused to believe that I was talking about non-metaphoric gnats.

So Happy New Year, everybody. Thanks for reading, and I plan to be optimistic about this upcoming year for at least five or six days yet.

Let's See Him Break The HR Record From INSIDE 2,000 GALLONS OF WATER!

Only A-Rod would hire, to "help him have more control of his image and brand”, the guy who represents Madonna and David Blaine.

Sigh.

A Nation Shrugs

Say it ain't so, Glenallen!

Mitchell Mania is upon us, and Roger Clemens is the big name, but I don't think many baseball fans were shocked by that one. This is what I wrote when he rejoined the Yankees back in May:

"Or maybe, though I hate to bring it up today, it'll come out that he took steroids. There's no hard evidence, but the rumors have swirled for a while, and anyone with that kind of late-career surge has to make you wonder. Clemens also has that "my actual skull has expanded over the years" sort of look to him, plus roid rage (and little else) could explain the Mike Piazza-thrown bat debacle. But you know what? I'm going to ignore that for the moment, and hope there's no fire underneath all the smoke. Or that he never gets caught. Whichever."

Oh well. Clemens is denying it -- vehemently! -- but I don't think there's much doubt at this point. And if you argued that Barry Bonds should get an asterisk and be barred from the Hall of Fame, you'd damn well better argue the same about Clemens, or else all Bonds' ranting about a racist double standard will look a lot less like ranting.

The rest of the report, though, is largely useless, just because it's so clearly (and admittedly) incomplete. This can only be a fraction of the players who used PEDs, since Mitchell leaned so incredibly heavily on one source, Radomski, for so much of his information. We still don't know the whole truth, and we never will; time to work on better drug tests and move the hell on.

But, before we do that: While there are, by my quick and probably incomplete count, 15 players in the report who were on the Yankees at one time or another (I've got 10 Mets, but I might be missing some -- I don't recognize a few of these names), there's not one single mention in here of Brian Cashman or Steinbrenner (or Minaya or Phillips or Wilpon).

How could the front office have been unaware of what was going on, when at LEAST five players** on the 2000 Yankees --the World Champion Yankees -- may well have been juicing? And if they were aware, what, if anything, did they do about it? McNamee, the trainer who says he injected Clemens, was hired by the Yankees at Roger’s request, but dismissed after 2001. Why? Because they realized he was distributing PEDs? That’s just speculation of course, but it’s a natural question, and Mitchell doesn’t seem to have asked it.

The one front office guy who comes out looking truly awful is Giants GM Brian Sabean, and if the Giants have a modicum of integrity left -- unlikely, at this point -- they'll fire him immediately. It's one thing to look the other way while Bonds took steroids. But Sabean apparently heard as far back as 2002 that Bonds' personal trainer, who was allowed in restricted clubhouse areas against the advice of the Giants' own training staff, was getting other players on the team interested in steroids and probably distributing them. And Sabean did absolutely nothing about it (pgs 121-125). Staggeringly spineless and uninspiring leadership there, from the man who once signed Armando Benitez to a three-year, $21 million contract.

Anyway, it will be sort of morbidly interesting to watch the fallout from this, but outside of the Clemens confirmation, I don't think it changes much in the long run.

The day's other interesting story was Alex Rodriguez's conference call officially announcing his new $275 million contract: he said Scott Boras convinced him to opt out by telling him that the Yankees had no interest in keeping him. Can that really be true? Is Boras even creepier and more manipulative than we all assumed? Or is Rodriguez just trying to look like the good guy in all this? Does anybody still care? Tune in next time...




**Note: I'm not counting Pettitte because there's no indication here that he took anything before or after 2002; and David Justice, Mike Stanton, and Chuck Knoblauch are all described in the report as starting their (Radomski-related) PED use after the 2000 World Series. But if you're not inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt -- and I would certainly understand if Mets fans felt that way -- you could make it nine. I've still got: Hill, Canseco, Neagle, Clemens, Grimsley.

How Long Have I Been Asleep?

Well, I'm back. And I've decided not to explain my absence at all, in a blatant and no doubt futile attempt to seem mysterious. Though I will just say that the persistent rumors of my role in the Johan Santana negotiations, while flattering, are completely unfounded... really, how on earth do these things get started?

Anyway, many things have happened in the last few weeks, and while all of this news is now not only old but in fact decrepit and being gnawed on by its own cats, I thought I'd do a very, very quick rundown of recent (ahem!) events, just to catch up.

Torre to the Dodgers: When the season ended, I felt a major pang over losing Joe Torre -- genuine pathos. I'd watched him grimace at middle relievers for 12 years, and I assumed that no matter how the Yankees fared without him, I'd miss him for seasons to come.

But you know what? I'm pretty much over it already. Go figure.

Slightly off-topic: I can't believe they voted Walter O'Malley into the Hall of Fame without a fight. That man is the embodiment of valuing greed and business and calculation over loyalty and individuality and emotion -- which I realize is a major part of any corporate entity, certainly including baseball, and I've generally made my peace with that, but do we really have to go and honor it?

Rivera, Posada, and Pettitte re-up: I like this now, but I know I won't like it in three years, and yet I am apparently unable to truly think that far ahead, so: yay!

A-Rod: Totally torn between feeling privileged that I'll get to watch Rodriguez make history firsthand, and being so fucking tired of talking about this guy already.

Johan Santana: Man, I was so psyched about the idea of Santana in New York -- I don't care which team, I've always said, as long as I can watch the man pitch every fifth day -- but then it was all talk, talk, talk, and no action, and unfulfilled excitement, like the Winter Meetings had been replaced by a 1960s Antonioni movie. I freely admit that I'm not really rational about Santana; if I were a man, you'd call it a man-crush, a blind, fierce, platonic devotion. I can see that trading Jose Reyes or Phil Hughes as part of a package for Santana is maybe not a rational move, and in fact I love both those players, but I just don't care -- my god, that changeup...

Snapping out of it and moving on, some highlights from the last few weeks:

Best Name Picked Up In The Rule V Draft: Callix S. Crabbe, 2B, and it wasn't close. Congratulations to the San Diego Padres.


Healthiest Way to Look at the Mets Offseason: While most of the Amazins fans I’ve talked to are disappointed with the Mets’ tepid moves so far, it’s become clear that it all feels much better if you just apply the Guillermo Mota Standard (GMS) to all incoming players. This began, of course, with Johnny Estrada, a mediocre catcher who nevertheless has the clear and much-lauded advantage of not being Guillermo Mota, for whom he was traded. But it works with other players, too. Lastings Milledge for Ryan Church and Brian Schneider!?!? Well, think of it this way: neither of those guys is Guillermo Mota, am I right? Doesn’t seem like such a bad trade now, does it?

Most Depressing Management Quote of the Fall: From the Orioles, of course. Just beating out Hammerin' Hank Steinbrenner's declaration that Jennifer Love Hewitt is his favorite actress, it's Baltimore President Andy MacPhail, as quoted in the Boston Globe (via Baseball Prospectus): "When the Egyptians were building the pyramids, they didn't think about what they had to build, they just carried the rocks up. I think that's what we have to do."

This explains so much. Never mind that I'm pretty sure the ancient Egyptians actually did put a fair amount of thought into creating structures that constitute, in context, some of the greatest engineering feats of all time; more to the point, I believe the Baltimore fans of my acquaintance -- those who are not yet institutionalized and heavily medicated -- would be very intrigued by Mr. MacPhail's view that the problem with Orioles management is that they've been thinking too much. Turns out we've been looking at this thing backwards all along!

Sorry, Balmer. At least The Wire will be back soon.

Smart money's on Bratwurst to place

Well, it's been a crazy month, and it's about to get even crazier, as I'm about to leave for the airport and the quick little 36-hour jaunt over to Taiwan. I'll be there for a week. But I couldn't go without first sharing the Miller Park Sausage Race love. The game I saw went 13 innings and, to the crowd's unfettered joy, included a second race after the 12th.

There is much to be said in praise of Brewers fans, but this in particular impressed me: at almost every sporting event I've been to in the last few years, fans react with more passion, cheering and general enthusiasm to the free t-shirts shot into the crowd than they do to almost anything that happens during the actual game. It was true at Madison Square Garden, it was true at Shea, and I don't kid myself that it wouldn't also be the case at Yankee Stadium, if they started the tradition. It was not true, however, at Miller Park: there, the crowd engaged more fully with the racing sausages -- hot dog, bratwurst, Polish sausage, chorizo, and Italian sausage -- than with anything else. Which is, I feel, exactly how it should be.


I should point out that these things, according to Wikipedia, have names, though they quite wisely don't advertise these at the ballpark: Frankie Furter, Brett Wurst, Stosh (I have a friend named Stosh and now will always associate him with a man in a large plush sausage outfit wearing sunglasses... I have mixed feelings about that), Cinqo, and... wait for it... Guido. Yes, they did.

Much has been happening:

-Alex Rodriguez nailed his much-anticipated 500th home run. Nice moment, though really, if he doesn't get to at least 600 it'll have to be because he lost a limb. However, I do find it slightly disturbing that he and Barry Bonds have such a supportive friendship. First they schmooze it up at the All-Star Game, now both of them go out of their way to praise the other in their post-milestone pressers today... I could have sworn I heard ominous strings in the background. I mean, I'm just not well-equipped to handle a world in which Jose Conseco is not full of shit.

-The Kansas City Royals continue to suck. Chien-Ming Wang continues to be awesome. Phil Hughes should be too, shortly, but wasn't quite today.

-The Pittsburgh Pirates are still run by a madman. As Jayson Stark writes,

For the next two hours, after people around baseball learned of this deal, they couldn't stop calling, e-mailing and texting reactions that could probably be summed up with three succinct words: WHAT THE BX!GRZFDQ!!!!!

-The Yankees are just 2 games out of the Wild Card lead.

-The Mets seem to have stabilized, and they'll try to take 2 of 3 from the Cubs today; over/under on the number of times the ESPN cameras cut to Lou Piniella looking grumpy after a cubs pitcher allows a hit or a walk: 23. Also, good luck to Tom Glavine as he goes for #300 a second time -- he got robbed by the bullpen in Milwaukee. One can only hope that Frankie Furter's 12th inning triumph was some consolation to him.

-Barry Bonds finally hit another home run tonight to blah blah blah. Does anybody still care? I took this photo just outside Miller Park:



Will there ever be a Barry Bonds statue in San Fran? It's hard to imagine, isn't it? For one thing, it would be an engineering challenge to get the head large enough, yet still keep the thing structurally sound... lawsuit just waiting to happen.

Okay, off to Taiwan. I believe I'll have internet access, in which case I'll be sure to post -- though I can't be sure, as all I really know about my hotel is that, per its official web page, it boasts "luxuriously decorated corridor poles." What more could anybody ask?

In any case: any Taiwanese fans reading this, who have any tips, advice, or the desire to watch a Yankees game this coming week in Taipei, please do drop me an email -- ekspan @ gmail.com.

Last Year At Marienbad

Just as I was getting ready to unload on another dull and dreary All-Star Game... it actually went and got interesting on us! While noting that, as always, the FOX coverage was still intensely terrible, the game itself had a number of highlights:

-Ichiro's inside-the-park home run. Who doesn't love inside the inside-the-park home runs? While less surprising than Prince Fielder's earlier this year, and less dramatic that Jose Reyes' last season (with the totally unnecessary headfirst slide/flop), it was still a kick. As a bonus, Ichiro's hit drove in "Ol' Butterfly-Head, Brian Roberts".

Question: who was the last Yankee to hit an inside-the-park home run? I can't remember, and it's proving tougher to research online than I thought; this is driving me nuts. Oh Google, why have you forsaken me? I did, however, discover that Wahoo Sam Crawford holds the all-time record for inside-the-park home runs, with... wait for it... 51. It was a different game back then, but that's still basically inconceivable.

-The New York teams represented fairly well: Reyes was 3-for-4, but Billy Wagner canceled him out by giving up the decisive two-run homer to Victor Martinez. Everyone else (Beltran, Wright, A-Rod and Jeter) went 1-for-3.

-It was very weird seeing Jorge Posada catch Sox closer Jonathan Papelbon. What, Jorge couldn't have maybe drawn that inning out a bit, gotten him to throw a few more high-stress pitches? I swear, it's like he's not even trying sometimes. Meanwhile, what's the over/under on one or both of Posada's knees blowing out from overuse? I say August 15.

-I have never cared much for Tony La Russa as a manager, and he didn't grow on me during the playoffs last fall. So I was torn: since the Yankees seem unlikely to benefit from homefield advantage in the World Series this year, why not let the NL win one, right? It might yet come in handy for the Mets. On the other hand, I couldn't root for La Russa over Jim Leyland, who is light years awesomer -- and on that front, the game went better than I could have hoped. As you probably know by now, La Russa left Aaron Rowand in to bat with two outs and the bases loaded in the bottom of the ninth, down by one run... with Albert Pujols on the bench.

Now, Rowand's a good hitter and all, but Pujols, off year or not, is one of the two or three best in the game. La Russa insisted that he needed him on the bench in case of extra innings, which is the same sort of logic Joe Torre has used too many times this season to explain leaving Mariano Rivera in the bullpen while poor overworked Scott Proctor blew the lead. Torre, however, has interpersonal skills coming out of his ears, and would no doubt have handled this a whole lot better:

"It's the All-Star Game. He can do what he wants," Pujols said Tuesday night. "He does whatever he wants. If I wasn't expecting to play, I wouldn't have come up here."

Pujols, the NL MVP in 2005 and key to the Cardinals' win in the World Series last year, said La Russa didn't talk to him the entire game. ...

..."If he wants to get upset, he can get upset," La Russa said. "Whatever he wants to do, he can do. It's America. That wasn't the most important thing tonight."

It is, indeed, America. Everyone can do what he wants. No doubt when the founding fathers drafted the first amendment, they had a scenario much like this one in mind.

Other items of note on this slow sports news day:

-The Yankees are, per ESPN, talking to A-Rod about a contract extension. All well and good... except they'll negotiate with him during the season, but not lifelong Yankees Mariano Rivera and Jorge Posada? I can't imagine that's going to go over very well.

-Bruuuuuuce!

-And hey -- I almost forgot my own anniversary. Eephus Pitch turned 1 year old today; my first-ever post was on the 2006 All-Star Game (don't ask me what happened with the font there. I have no idea). At the time, I was summarizing Z-grade DVDs for a living; since then I've covered the Mets and Yankees in the playoffs for the Village Voice, as well as the Knicks, the Rangers, the Jets and Giants (definitely not doing that again), Cooperstown, and Spring Training, to say nothing of indoor lacrosse. I've been fired. And I got a book deal. And a dog.


So, in short: thanks for reading, everybody.

And to the hundreds and hundreds of people over the last twelve months who, quite understandably, came here looking for information on how to throw an eephus, and left confused and disappointed... sorry about that.

B.Y.O. Deca-Durabolin

Well, that's just fantastic. The lesson, as always: never, ever say that things can't get any worse.

The Yankees actually got a nice win yesterday, Roger Clemens' 350th. He's the first pitcher to get that many Ws since Joe Torre caught Warren Spahn in 1963, and only the second since the Great Depression. Now, I'm generally the first to argue that wins are a totally meaningless statistic: you can allow 1 run and lose, or 11 runs and win; it's utterly team-dependent, and tells you very little about a pitcher's actual performance, etc, etc, and so forth. But, that said: if you've got 350 of them, you've done something right. It was old-school Clemens last night -- he went 8 innings and allowed just 2 hits.

But that's all overshadowed by A-Rod's hamstring. Jesus: enough with the fucking hamstrings already! Don't these people ever stretch?! The truth is, the Yankees probably weren't going anywhere anyway. But that's all the more reason to have A-Rod around, because watching him put up his incomprehensible numbers has been one of the few enjoyable things about this season.

In other news: like the Yankees, the Mets rolled into Coors field ready for some offensive fireworks and instead barely scraped out two runs, while Tom Glavine gave up six runs in the third inning. Luckily, the Braves and the Phillies still suck.

Finally, Peter Gammons' ESPN blog post yesterday was, essentially, one long ad for the iPhone: almost the entire entry is about how cool the technology is and how many MLB players wanted to get one as soon as possible. Now, while I would absolutely not for a second put it past ESPN to take money for an endorsement disguised as a column... Peter Gammons wouldn't do that, would he? He's not one of my favorite columnists, but he's still an enormously respected sports writer, and he was one of the greats back in the day. So it must have been just a somewhat misguided story idea born on a slow news day... right? Man, I hope so. Haven't we all been disillusioned enough already?

One interesting thing in there amidst all the masses of product placement:

Verlander also knew he didn't have to go to the AT&T/Cingular store to activate his toy. No, simple. "All you have to do is download iTunes into the phone," said Verlander. Before he went to warm up Friday, he could listen to Timbaland (actually, he might want to to listen to a little Jay-Z to get ready for the All-Star Game party he and Barry Bonds are throwing), call friends, check the weather and go online...

Screw the iPhone. Justin Verlander and Barry Bonds are throwing a party? What a random duo, and who wants Barry Bonds at their party, anyway? "I know... let's invite the old humorless guy with 'roid rage!"

Emergency Moratorium On "-Rod" Puns, Effective Immediately

Ah, the New York Post! You almost have to grudgingly admire their total lack of scruples. Unless, I suppose, you're Alex Rodriguez. I really don't believe his private life is any of our business... but, that said, you're a world-famous multimillionaire and you decide it's a good idea to take your mistress out for a night at a strip club? I don't know where to start.

His shenanigans worked out well for the Yankees last night, though, as he shouted something -- "ha" or "mine," depending on who you believe -- that caused the Blue Jays to miss a routine pop up. I posted about it at Yanksfan vs Soxfan.

Here's a slightly more coldblooded instance of playing fast and loose with the rules, via the Cheater's Guide to Baseball blog: while his teammate Ryan Freel was unconscious in the outfield after their nasty collision, replays show Norris Hopper ran to his side and, while the ump and trainers were running out to check on this possible head injury, slipped the ball back into Freel's limp glove, so that the Pirates' runner would be called out. Wow. Now that's chutzpah... but also, kind of borderline depraved indifference. Quick thinking, though, you gotta give him that.

The video of all this, available here, is tough to watch because it's a legitimately scary collision... but, now that we know Freel is fine, I think it's okay to be amused by the Reds' announcers:

Announcer 1: "What an effort by the little guy."
Announcer 2: "Oh my."
Announcer 1: "They're bringing out the truck."
Announcer 2: "Oh my."
Announcer 1: "The last thing you want to lose is that little guy."

I kind of want to move to Cincinnati now.

Who Are You, And What Have You Done With Mariano Rivera?

Oof. It was not a good night for New York baseball teams.

Tim Hudson pitched a fantastic game for the Braves; the Mets lineup, hardly slumping with 27 runs in its last three games, couldn't do a thing with him. With Hudson gone in the ninth, they revived a bit and made it 7-3 on Shawn Green's home run (somewhere in New Orleans, Lastings Milledge is cursing under his breath), but it was never that close. Mike Pelfrey got knocked around and the bullpen, uncharacteristically, let it get out of hand: you hate to see a run walked in. You REALLY hate to see two runs walked it. And after that, the last thing you need is a run scoring on a wild pitch. A Mets fan sitting near me at the bar, in agonies watching Ambiorix Burgos's coy avoidance of the strike zone, kept yelling "Just groove one down the middle! For fuck's sake! A grand slam is much better than this! Please! Just let him get the gland slam!!!" Yeah, that seventh inning didn't go so well.

Adding insult to injury, bases loaded walks against the Braves are an automatic Kenny Rogers '99 flashback. It's starting to look like Philly was just a decoy -- the Braves are still the issue, and if Hudson continues pitching like that, they're going to be much stronger than they were last season. I'm going to the game at Shea tomorrow, so let's hope the Mets come out swinging, and the Dr. Jekyll version of Oliver Perez shows up.

I see no reason the Mets can't take the next two games from the Braves, though; the Yankees are in a tougher situation.With rookies going over the weekend and a potentially worn-out bullpen, tonight was their best bet for a win against the Sox.

Andy Pettitte held up his end of the deal, only allowing two runs on a Jason Varitek homer. (You know, I think Varitek is a terrific catcher and I respect him for it, but I'll never understand why he didn't take more crap for leaving his face mask on when he went after A-Rod a few years ago.) Schilling wasn't bad tonight either, and it would have been a pitcher's duel if not for the fact that Alex Rodriguez is fucking scalding hot right now. Yep: he hit two more homers, providing 5 of the Yanks' 6 runs, and generally continuing to be incomprehensibly awesome at the plate. Normally, that's all the Yanks would need, but Vizcaino was a bit shaky, Mariano Rivera came into the 8th inning with runners on, and... well... he blew the lead. His first time out after Sunday's Marco Scutaro debacle. There are no words for how much I hate watching Mariano Rivera lose -- or rather, there are words, but I already used them Sunday. Small, cold, helpless sort of feeling.

Two other things made this loss especially galling: the Sox's green uniforms -- I honestly have no rational explanation for why this bothered me, it just did -- and the fact that nearly half the bar was composed of Red Sox fans. In Brooklyn! Why? I mean, I don't begrudge anyone the right to watch a baseball game wherever they please; but there should not have been this many. I may need to find a new local sports bar.

Anyway, a lot of people are blaming Torre on this one, and I do question some of his moves -- pinch running for Giambi, not bunting with Nieves, etc. -- but the bottom line, for me, is that if you hand Mariano Rivera a three-run lead, that's a win 95% of the time. You'd take that every day. So I suppose it's possible that better managing might have won the game despite Rivera's ineffectiveness, but I don't think you can really say that Torre's mistakes lost it.

Also, I've decided that I will not freak out after only two bad outings from Rivera. If he gets lit up his next time out, I'll become somewhat concerned. If it happens a fourth time, please call and talk me off the edge of my fire escape.

Me Too, Phil, Me Too

The Yankees and Mets both knocked out 9-2 wins last night, over the Indians and Marlins respectively. I watched both at a sports bar, where they also showed the Rangers' playoff win (sweep!) and the Nets game(sixth seed!). I thought my head was going to explode. It didn't, so here's a few notes:

• John Maine apparently does not mind a little extra rest. He took a no-hitter into the seventh inning, and the Marlins aren't lightweights; if you ever wanted to know exactly what's meant by "movement on his pitches," check the tape on Maine tonight. They were going up, down, left, right, diagonally, all at the last tenth of a second. I didn't think he was really going to get the no-hitter, just because he threw too many pitches (four walks), but he had the stuff. The Mets backed him up with 17 hits(!), including four for Jose Reyes and a Carlos Beltran home run, and still more nifty double plays. It's being overshadowed by the Yanks-Red Sox series, but Mets-Braves this weekend ought to be good.

• I love Miguel Cabrera, but as Gary Cohen put it, he’s got a tendency “to nonchalant the ball.” Also, I could be wrong, but it looks like he’s put on a bunch of weight this season. Oh well; any player who does this is in my good graces forever.

• For reasons that I cannot, at this time, explain, the Mets' pictures on the Marlins' scoreboard all included a small image of Borat, giving two thumbs up, in the lower right-hand corner. I like it, but I'm confused.

Meanwhile...

• The Yankees got another good start out of Kei Igawa -- and totally creamed Jeremy Sowers, who's generally a very good pitcher (which is why I put him on my fantasy team... whoops). Alex Rodriguez homered again. I just keep cut and pasting that phrase. How long can he keep it up? That's 9 in 13 games, and I'm running out of superlatives... Amazing? Sick? Awesome? Insane? Really helpful when 3/5 of the rotation is on the DL?
  

• This may be premature, but Jeter had three hits and, better yet, seems to be coming out of his odd fielding funk. I know the guy doesn't have very good range, but for him to make so many clumsy errors was not in character, and I really thought he must be either hurting or distracted. But maybe it was just one of those fluky things.
  

• Phil Hughes, down in Scranton, pitched a game that screams “Hey! Hello? I’m sick of all these Wright puns!”

M-V-P! M-V-... What? Too early?

Now that’s what I call a statement.

It was a perfectly scripted ending to a game that was otherwise, well... look, it’s only the fourth game of the season, and yet already I’m running out of synonyms for “ugly.” That can’t be a good sign. Kei Igawa, in an apparent effort to fit in with his new teammates, joined the Yankees’ other starters in pitching ineffectively, with another healthy assist from inexplicably awkward defensive plays. (No one expected the Yanks’ fielding to be sparkling this year, but I don’t think “more or less adequate” is out of reach. What’s going on?). Never thought I’d say this, but the Yankees best starter thus far has probably been Carl Pavano. Eeep.

Of course, not that you need me to say this, it has only been four games. And the end justified the means in this case, because no matter what you think of A-Rod, Sox fans exempted, you had to smile at his relieved, elated grin as he skipped towards home (and nearly catapulted Larry Bowa into the stands with an enthusiastic, drive-by double high five).

“It felt awesome,” Rodriguez said of his trip around the bases, which he earned after belting a game-winning grand slam that capped an improbable 10-7 victory against the Baltimore Orioles at Yankee Stadium. “I was so excited. I felt foolish running around the bases like it was Little League. I just remember I almost knocked Bowa over at third. I saw the fans kind of rocking behind him. It was kind of cool.”

It was.

Before A-Rod’s redemption – for this week, anyway - Hideki Matsui left the game with an (apparently) slight hamstring strain. Yankee outfielder are having a rough few years, aren’t they? If Damon's still a bit tentative, they may need to get Kevin Thompson up from AAA, because a few innings of Miguel Cairo roaming the outfield go a long way. More on Thompson another time...

The Mets are mortal too, it turns out, and lost to the Braves 5-3: Tom Glavine didn't pitch all that badly, but was hurt by a couple of poorly-timed errors (say… that sounds familiar), and outdueled by his buddy John Smoltz. The Mets had their chances – they left 13 runners on base – but never quite got the rally going.

Personally I’m looking forward to watching El Duque toy with the Braves hitters tomorrow, but the more telling games will be John Maine and Oliver Perez’s next few turns through the rotation.

Also, Mets fans, Orioles starter Steve Trachsel started against the Yanks and actually looked sort of... well... I don't know, kind of good-ish. But I'm not buying it. The YES announcers were all over his 15 wins last year, but as Mets fans should recall, he had piles and piles of run support. He swam and frolicked in run support like Scrooge McDuck in his gold. He did make 30 starts, but averaged 5.46 innings per, while striking out 79 and walking 78, with an ERA just shy of 5 -- in addition to moving at the speed of a club-footed tortoise between pitches. I suppose aging a year and switching from the NL to the Al East could improve him... and if that sounds probable to you, I'd be happy to enter into a friendly little wager on it.

La Plus Ca Change, etc

I came across the John Updike piece "Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu," about Ted Williams' last game at Fenway, a few years ago (in "Baseball: A Literary Anthology," I think), and recently stumbled onto it again online. Aside from what an amazing piece of writing it is, I was struck by his depiction of the relationship between Williams and the media. Updike quotes "a fair sample of appreciative sports-page prose" from the Boston American's Huck Finnegan:

"Williams' career, in contrast [to Babe Ruth's], has been a series of failures except for his averages. He flopped in the only World Series he ever played in (1946) when he batted only .200. He flopped in the playoff game with Cleveland in 1948. He flopped in the final game of the 1949 season with the pennant hinging on the outcome (Yanks 5, Sox 3). He flopped in 1950 when he returned to the lineup after a two-month absence and ruined the morale of a club that seemed pennant-bound under Steve O'Neill. It has always been Williams' records first, the team second, and the Sox non-winning record is proof enough of that."

I should add that Finnegan, clearly the Dan Shaughnessy of his day, published that on the day of Williams' last game. Anyway, I'm sure I don't have to spell it out for you: sounds familiar, doesn't it? Mainstream sports writing doesn't seem to have changed all that much since 1960. Although God only knows what Huck Finnegan would have made of WARP.

Best line in the whole terrific Updike piece, though, is on Williams' refusal to so much as tip his cap to the pleading fans, after hitting a home run in his last-ever at-bat: "The papers said that the other players, and even the umpires on the field, begged him to come out and acknowledge us in some way, but he refused. Gods do not answer letters."