Looks like it wasn't such a boring night as he is still squiring around the fair Minka.
Traitor Tracker: .261
Last year, this date: .291
Friday, March 18, 2011
Pic Of Alph's Boring Night In Tampa
Looks like it wasn't such a boring night as he is still squiring around the fair Minka.
Mostly Boring Night
I am in a user bar in Tampa and can't figure out how to get images on this post.
So my editors in Syracuse will have to dress this up for me.
Hughes was typical last night. Six innings, three Ks, one walk and a dinger.
Boone was also typical, he loaded the bases but got 3 of 4 lefty hitters out and escaped with the win and no runs allowed.
Can someone tell me who number 64 is on the Yanks? Some guy at the end of the bar just yelled, "Romulo Sanchez." I thought he was a wolf who founded Rome. He pitched horribly. Couldn't find the strike zone in the 8th. Looked like he has great "stuff"but no command whatsoever.
There are no papers in Tampa with the Yankee box score and I was too cheap to buy a roster sheet for $18.
Moving right along; number 82 ( a lefty ) pitched great. "Ayala," I hear from the guy falling off his barstool.
A-Rod went deep and made great defensive play at 3rd. Swish won the game with dinger right over our heads in RF stands. Grandy hit well and Jesus banged a 400 foot out to deepest centerfield. He also made a god-like catch of pop-up behind the plate near the screen and threw out a dude with perfect throw. I think he threw out a second guy later, but the ump missed the call.
One note of concern; Yanks got 3 hits last night off about 6 no names. Tampa used only potential relievers.
Leaving on road trip shortly for game vs. Toronto.
Lot's of overweight Americans at game last night, eating footlongs. Plenty of green hair on the ladies, especially the really old ones.
Phil Simms'school had biggest upset of the day yesterday in "March Madness."
One round of which, lucky for us, is right here in Tampa.
More rounds for us later.
Keeping hope alive: Yanks still sniffing Millwood
2011 American League Cy Young
Seriously. (In a symbolic, rather than literal interpretation. You know, it never ceases to amaze me how some bloggers and sportswriters can't wrap their Liliputian skullcaps around the symbolic fact that, throughout human history, symbolism plays a larger role than fact. So when I raise the Millwood flag, I don't feel it relevant to make a stink about the guy's 4-15 record last year. He threw 190 innings for a team going nowhere. Ponder that for a moment: 190 scrap yard innings for a team far south of the Marlins-Mariners line. Would Cliff Lee throw 190? Would CC? No, they would pull a gonad and go home. One hundred ninety also-ran innings. That's an achi evement.)
So sign the bum. He's smart. He's a survivor. You who say Millwood is burnt toast -- you're drinking the Rev. Jim Jones party punch if you think Bartolo Colon will hit June throwing 90. Freddy Garcia, bless his heart, is looking his age. Ivan Nova will be erratic, and Sergio Mitre -- come on, what's he done for us except impress Girardi with his rehab? Our prospects need the nightlife ofTrenton and Scranton until July 1... and if we're 10 games out -- they'll be traded by then for some horror show named Zambrono or Liriano. Millwood costs money. Nothing more. And we aren't even investing $200 million on this team.
Sign Kevin Millwood, and we will win the American League East. Symbolically, if not literally.
Thursday, March 17, 2011
Ape that Is Pitcher on a Jersey City Baseball Team
 |
| New York World, January 31, 1904. Reprinted in The World On Sunday: Graphic Art In Joseph Pulitzer's Newspaper (1898-1911) by Nicholson Baker and Margaret Brentan. |
Jete Beware!
Alphonso is still sending phone photos
Last time he checked in, Alphonso and Tigerblood had gotten into Jeet's gazillion dollar mansion. Hmm. Hope he didn't pay too much for the swimming pool.
Uh-oh. Looks like security just found them.
Wonder where they're headed?
Wow. I hope they're OK.
Holy Cow! Looks like they've met up with a new friend, former Buffalo Rep. Chris Lee.
Not sure, but it seems as though the three have disguised
themselves, and they plan to sneak back into Jeet's house.
Hope there's more to come.
Alphonso is in Tampa and sending back cell phone photos
First, he reconnected with long-time sidekick, Tigerblood.
They decided to check out Derek Jeter's incredible new mansion.
Alphonso gained entrance by sweet-talking the staff.
Somehow, they've gotten into Jeet's dining room. Nifty!
More later...
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
6 inning Ivan, no-no Nova
Forget that it's an exhibition. In terms of his future, it was most important game of Nova's career, and he aced it.
Barring a complete meltdown, he just took one of the two open rotation spots off the board. So much for both Bartolo Colon and Freddy Garcia every five days.
We are so much better off with a young pitcher emerging... than two old guys merging.
First Game From Tampa Tomorrow Night
I'm leaving tomorrow at 11:45am for Tampa.
I'll be covering that night's game. Likely the next morning, because there are post game parties to be enjoyed. If I don't "work those rooms," so to speak, I don't get certain Yankee privileges any longer.
My friends all told me to get out of New York before Saint Patrick's Day. I wonder what there concern might be?
So I leave on Saint Patrick's Day assuming that some sort of green beverage will be provided, once airborne.
I don't know who we are playing and I really don't care. I only watch the one team. Ours.
When the other team is up, so am I. At the bar.
So my insights and predictions for the season, which are born in Tampa, are off-times tainted with a nudge of fatigue mixed with an inability to focus early in the morning.
Due to alcohol or french fries induced hangovers.
On to Tampa it is, then.
Brian Cashman: Beyond Therapy?
My old teammate Lyn Lary went ballistic over it:
Amazing. I didn’t think it was possible to write a stupider, more ignorant article about Cashman in particular and baseball in general than what usually appears in the NY Times. But Will Leitch has done it.
My favorite line is this one:
“The Yankees have always been a dysfunctional franchise, even when they were winning championships.”
Right. That makes a lot of sense. “The Apollo 11 mission was a failure, even as its astronauts walked on the moon.”
The mission of the Yankees is to win championships. When they do that, they—by the very definition of the word—“function.”
For all his pretense at new insight, Leitch has simply fallen for the same old Brian Cashman con, which is the big “mystery” by which he survives. That is, he has become adept at both belatedly and pre-emptively blaming various Steinbrenners and their minions for anything that already has or may yet go wrong with the team.
You can look it up. In Brian Cashman’s eyes, every single great move the Yanks have made since 1998 was Brian Cashman’s doing; every bad move, somebody else’s.
People like Leitch love to write the following sort of cliched crap:
“Sad to say, though, the Yankees are the Yankees: Overpaying for expensive older free agents is their birthright. Cashman can construct a smart roster all he wants, but when the guys with the purse strings want to buy a player, who is the G.M. to say no? Why would he want to? It’s not his money.”
Yup, that’s why Cashman traded an inexpensive, useful, part-time outfielder, and a minor-league ace who’s now throwing 101 mph, to the Braves last year for Javier Vazquez. That’s why Cashman probably cost us the 2004 World Series by throwing Yhancey Brazoban into his Jeff Weaver-for-Kevin Brown deal with the Dodgers. That’s why Cashman was itching to deal Jesus for Cliff Lee last year. That’s why he took Nick Johnson over Vlad the Lad for the same money last off-season.
Brian Cashman is first, last, and always about making Brian Cashman look good. He has no concept of building a good ballclub, much less the sort of “Moneyball” club (and what a crock that turned out to be. Has Will Leitch noticed any of this little steroids scandal percolating around?) that Leitch is talking about. He is awful at assessing talent, has no concept of the value of a deep bench or bullpen—traditionally, the real key to the many championships of the “dysfunctional” Yankees—and comes up with bizarre ideas such as signing injured pitchers because they’re cheaper.
The one and only time that Brian Cashman ever won a championship on his own (as opposed to, typically, taking credit for a team built lock, stock, and barrel by Gene Michael) was when he went out and just signed the top three agents on the market...exactly the sort of approach that Will Leitch—and Cashman—want us to believe Cashman abhors.
Think George Steinbrenner knew Yhancey Brazoban from a hole in the ground? Think Hal and Hank know who Androys Vizcaino is? Or, for that matter, Aroldis Chapman?
No, but Brian Cashman does. And he doesn’t think they’re worth any attention over redeeming his own previous mistakes, by bringing back the likes of Vazquez and Johnson.
Leitch is right about one thing. Cashman will never willingly leave the Yankees. On any other team, he would be quickly exposed.
The GQ Cover That Was Never Used
Charles Bukowski on the current situation in Japan
sometimes you've got to kill 4 or 5
thousand men before you somehow
get to believe that the sparrow
is immortal, money is piss and
that you have been wasting
your time.
From Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame
Selected poems 1955 - 1973
Black Sparrow Press, 1986.
If there is a GQ cover jinx, we're in trouble.
1. If there is one athlete in America capable of handling GQ mush-brain crapola -- or all fawning, pretzel-spined media crapola, for that matter -- it is our own Captain Coverboy. (Tom Brady in 2nd place.)
2. We're heard no signs that he's photographed oogling his Arod in the mirror.
3. It's early. The juju taint from appearing on an elitist, materialistic, one-dimensional, morally offensive, tree-killing glossy celebrity-tab sheet should wear off by June. (GQ wanted Alphonso last fall; he refused.)
4. This explains why Jeter's $100 million mansion/theme park has a firepit.
5. Thus far, we haven't traded Eduardo Nunez.
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