You Know He Ain’t Gonna Die

I recently made a not-so-friendly wager with my buddy and co-blogger about Danilo Gallinari’s scoring average. Somewhere along the way, (Ed. a bar, probably), I confidently predicted that the man known as “The Rooster,” or “The Cock,” depending on where your seats are located, would finish the season averaging no less than 16 points per game. Last night, he scored a healthy 22 in the Knicks’ horrible loss to the Miami Heat.

Yes, it’s come to this as a Knicks fan. My interests in the team exists almost exclusively in the offensive progress of a 21-year-old, semi-walled-eyed kid from Sant’Angelo Lodigiano.

Incidentally, Sant’Angelo Lodigiano is also the native home of Mother Cabrini, the Vatican’s favorite American saint.

Isn’t that interesting?

Anyway, in honor of my new favorite Knickerbocker, here’s the studio clip of Alice in Chains’ “The Rooster,” which was recorded in 1992, when Gallinari was four.

“I Sure Ended Up With My Name in Yankee Stadium.”

Marshall Fogel is one of the top sports memorabilia collectors in the country. His collection includes a mirror from the home of Joe DiMaggio, Ty Cobb’s passport, Lou Gehrig’s watch, and a mint 1952 Mickey Mantle baseball card, worth an estimated $2 million, among countless other historical gems.

Fogel, a Denver attorney, started collecting in 1989, right around the same time a nascent sports memorabilia industry caught fire, and in this four-minute clip from CNBC.com, he explains how buying high-end, one-of-kind pieces helped make him one of the most successful—and wealthy—collectors in the industry.

And helped earn him a place in the new Yankee Stadium.

No, New York, No, New York, No

I'm not going to lie. This year's Knicks team doesn't really excite me. I watched a number of their preseason games, including the bizarre exhibition against Maccabi Tel Aviv, and to borrow a phrase, this team don't look too f*cking good. 

Although they do work hard on both ends of the court, the team lacks a go-to offensive weapon, a reliable defensive presence, a consistent shooter and a vocal, veteran leader. In theory, Al Harrington is supposed to fill these various roles, but if anyone expects Harrington to do this, they haven't exactly been paying close attention to Al throughout his career.   

Headed into the season, the Knicks have a ton more questions than they do answers: Is David Lee worth the long-term investment? Is Wilson Chandler a foundational piece, or is he just a role player? Can Danilo Gallinari play in the NBA? Is Nate Robinson anything more than a sideshow? Has Darko Milicic finally figured it out? Was Jordan Hill worth drafting? Is Toney Douglas any good? Is there any team desperate enough to want Jared Jeffries and/or Eddy Curry?

If the Knicks can answer half of these questions in the affirmative, I'll consider the season a resounding success. Going forward, though, the future fortunes of the Knicks, no matter how much progress they show on the court, will rise and fall based on one question and one question only: Will they land LeBron? 

Billiards and Bombers

Last night, during the locker room celebration, YES reporter Kimberly Jones asked Mariano Rivera when he knew this Yankees team could win the American League pennant. Without missing a beat, Rivers pointed to Spring Training, specifically the team’s daylong outing to a local pool hall.

I laughed because, back in February, a few days after the team’s trip to Peabody’s, I wrote this about the field trip:

While I'm all for team-building exercises, I wouldn't put too much stock in yesterday's pool outing. The baseball season is long and grueling. No matter how many field trips the Yankees schedule between now and October, it won't make a lick of difference if the starting rotation fails to deliver, or A-Rod once again withers under the intense media spotlight.

Well, nearly 10 months later, the Yankees reached the World Series behind a stellar starting rotation and an amazing performance from A-Rod. But I also don't want to discount the role chemistry played in the team's successes in the regular season and the first two rounds of the postseason. That the 2009 Yankees seemed—and played—more relaxed than they have in recent years was a running theme in their season-long narrative, cited by many, from Michael Kay to John Heyman: the pies in the face; the championship belt; kangaroo court; fantasy football leagues; fishing trips. This year's Yankees team actually got along and came together much more cohesively than in the past. And, at least according to Mo, the Hammer of God, the team's chemistry all started back in February, when Joe Girardi gave his team a day off and took his players to a pool hall in Florida. 

Chicks Dig the Long Goals

On Wednesday night, Southern Methodist University defender Ryan Rosenbaum scored a 70-yard goal against the nationally ranked Tulsa Golden Hurricane en route to a 3-1 victory. Rosenbaum took an errant Tulsa pass and cleared the ball out of his defensive end. The ball travelled the length of the fielf and bounced off the artificial turf, rocketing over keeper Andy Aguilar’s head into the back of the net.



As if that weren’t cool enough, last night, Washington Capitals defenseman Jeff Schultz scored a 175-foot bouncing goal against Atlanta Thrashers goalie Ondrej Pavelec, who then quickly let in two more goals in the next 88 seconds before finally, mercifully being pulled.



(Both Via)

Big Bats, Bigger Stage

Since the sixth inning of the Yankees’ regular season game against the Tampa Rays, when Alex Rodriguez hit two home runs and drove in 7 RBI to bring his season total to 30 home runs and 100 RBI, respectively, I’ve been texting my friends every time A-Rod hits one out or drives in another run. It’s starting to get expensive. 

So far in the postseason, A-Rod has five homers and 11 RBI. With three more hits last night, including a monster home run into the left field bleachers, Rodriguez is now batting .407 in the first two rounds of the playoffs.

The man is on fire.

Believe it or not, though, A-Rod is, arguably, only the second best player of the 2009 postseason. That honor might just go to Ryan Howard, who’s driven in an amazing 14 in eight games, more RBI than he had in 17 playoff games over the past two years. Although he’s only homered twice, compared to A-Rod’s five, Howard does have four doubles and triple, while batting a cool .379, with seven runs scored.

This after a regular season in which he launched 45 home runs, drove in 141, while batting .279, his highest average since 2006, when he hit .313 on way to picking up the National League Most Valuable Player award.

Both Rodriguez and Howard are putting on a display, matching Lou Gehrig’s postseason record of driving in at least one RBI in eight straight playoff games. Not too shabby, that. 

If the Yankees meet the Phillies in the World Series, a match up that suddenly seems inevitable, Major League Baseball will get to showcase, on its biggest stage, two of the sports biggest-- and most prolific-- sluggers.

Play ball. 

Crisco. Bardal. Vagisil

It seems even the great Mariano Rivera feels the need for some trickeration from time to time. 



As far as I'm concerned, this is just another reason to love Mo. 

(Via Halos Heaven)

UPDATE: I can't believe people are actually taking this video seriously. It's gone so far that Major League Baseball had to open and quickly close an investigation into the matter. Via Joel Sherman's Hardball:

The Major League Baseball Commissioners Office reviewed available video and still photography from Mariano Rivera spitting toward a baseball in ALCS Game 3 and “found no evidence that Rivera spit on the ball,” a spokesman for the commissioner told the Post.

The initial reaction by the league had been that the video plus still pictures they have of the incident were inconclusive if Rivera actually spit on or near the ball. But after further review of what it had, the Commissioners Office determined that Rivera was not spitting directly on the ball.

On still pictures in MLB's possession, it apparently looks as if Rivera is spitting near, but not on, the ball. Also, as even the league office is aware, Rivera is a player who spits constantly while in action.

Come on. This is Mariano Rivera we're talking about here. The guy's been dominating the league for years. If he had been throwing a spitter for the past 15 years, I'm pretty sure someone would have spotted him spitting on the ball at least once in his 900 + career appearances.

Los Angeles Dodgers coach and former Yankees coach Larry Bowa sums it up best:

I have never ever, ever heard anyone say anything about Mo doing something like that. That is totally bogus. If that was true I would have heard about it from somebody and I have never heard anything like that.

Leggo My Logo

Cool story from the Times’ City Room blog. The famous Yankees logo, which has long been credited to Henry Alonzo Keller, a sports illustrator from Bronxville, might actually be the product of a portraitist, Sam Friedman, who used to sketch patrons of the 21 Club. According to Friedman’s family, Friedman drew the logo in 1947 for Dan Topping, a co-owner of the Yankees who had just sidled up to the bar at the 21 Club.

One day, Mr. Topping — who was a regular patron, along with his second wife, Sonja Henie, the Norwegian figure skater and actress — told Sam Friedman he wanted a logo that included the Yankees name, a bat, a ball and patriotic-themed top hat, but that the ad agencies he had already asked had produced nothing satisfactory. So goes the Friedman family story.

Sam Friedman took out a pen and swiftly sketched a design on a cocktail napkin. He elongated a leg of the K in the word Yankees and made it a bat with a top hat on top. He drew the circumference of a baseball around it, said Jack Friedman, who provided a copy of a scrap upon which his great-uncle wrote the word “Yanks,” which he says strongly resembles the cursive of the logo.

When reached for comment, Tony Morante, the Yankees’ director of stadium tours, said Henry Keller has always been recognized as the logo’s creator.

Interestingly, Keller’s family claims the Mets later stole Henry’s logo, which he designed for the team and is still used today. And, since they are the Mets, a team spokesperson said they had no idea who designed the logo, even though, as one Times’ commenter pointed out, the Mets own website gives credit to cartoonist Ray Gatto.

Only in New York. 

Hockey Can Be Awesome, Part II

Not only are the Rangers on a six-game winning streak, but nine-year-old Oliver Wahlstrom, a winger for the Portland Junior Pirate Pee-Wee Major 97s-- and the greatest kid hockey player since Gordon Bombay-- demonstrates how to light the lamp, during the first intermission of the Bruins' recent game against the New Jersey Devils. 



Again, if the sport showcased more stuff like this, hockey would be much more popular than it is now: somewhere between reruns of American Gladiator and women's tennis.

Your Lying Eyes

"Slate" takes a closer look at baseball's warped camera angle.



This is somewhat elementary for regular baseball fans, but "Slate," like TBS, is seemingly going out of its way to introduce baseball this month to civilians. (Actually, in the case of TBS, I'm not even sure the network has explained the basics of the game to their lead announcer). As for "Slate," I know it's fairly typical of the magazine to take a contrarian stance-- puppies, are not, in fact, cute-- but claiming that Mets pitcher Pedro Feliciano has a good slider is a ridiculous claim even for them. 

Cheap Seats

On Saturday night, I went to the Rangers home opener against the Ottawa Senators. A friend has season tickets, which, in previous years, were located 8 rows behind the net, on the 7th Avenue side of the Garden. This year, however, he downgraded his two seats to the 400s, all the way up on the ninth floor of the Garden, where smoking is not necessarily discouraged, the roof leaks, and the nearest bathroom is one flight down, two sections over. 

This is the only place to watch a hockey game. 

The fans, most of whom sported a Rangers jersey and/or a mullet, were completely into every aspect of the game, from before the team introductions to well beyond the final buzzer. You haven’t experienced a hockey game until a zaftig woman in a Jeff Beukeboom road jersey a few rows over starts yelling about the waning efficiency of a team’s line change from period to period. She was right, too, and if the NHL had enough sense to broadcast every hockey game from the cheap seats, sports fans would flock to hockey faster than an Alex Ovechkin slap shot.

Eddy Curry is Vestigial

Yesterday, Eddy Curry, the man once considered the cornerstone of the New York Knicks, was diagnosed with a torn right plantaris muscle, a vestigial sheath of tissue located between the calf and the ankle. Only 40 percent of the world's population even has this muscle. Curry, who missed the better part of the past two seasons due to various ailments and poor conditioning, is now injuring parts of his body that are, medically speaking, no more useful than an appendix or a human tail. Which begs the awful, yet inevitable question: how much longer can Eddy Curry last in the National Basketball Association?

Curry's professional career has been a complete disaster. It's sad, but true. Diagnosed with an irregular heartbeat at the end of the 2004-2005 season, Curry was traded to the Knicks for an expensive package of expiring contracts and future draft picks. The trade, compounded by a number of horrendous organizational decisions (See Thomas, Isiah), continues to cripple the franchise. Curry, believe it or not, is still under contract next year, which could very well prevent the Knicks from signing a second free agent in the much-heralded class of 2010. 

I'm not about to put this on Curry, though. I honestly feel bad for the guy. His most recent setback caps off a horrible 2009. In January, Curry's former driver filed a bizarre sexual harassment suit against Curry alleging Curry exposed himself and tried to solicit sex from his former employee. That same month, Curry's former girlfriend was killed in her home, along with the couple's daughter. Their three-year-old son witnessed the murder. In June, Curry's home went into foreclosure, which prompted Curry to ask the Knicks for an advance on his $8 million-salary. The Knicks denied his request. There's nothing funny about his current personal or professional situation. The man obviously needs a lot of help, financially, professionally and emotionally.  

Still, at this point in his career, Curry is quickly running out of time and chances, and is in serious jeopardy of losing everything.