Major-League Smokers And Other Missed Opportunities

Sports Illustrated just published online 25 Things We Miss in Baseball. The list, which includes prosaic things like stirrups, no pepper signs, and high leg kicks, is largely hit-or-miss. I would, though, gladly welcome back into the game Youppi, the Expos mascot of indeterminate origins, and bullpen carts. Ditto balanced schedules and, if I'm being honest, organ music.

More interesting, I think, is the magazine’s companion 1o Things We Don’t Miss in Baseball, particularly numbers 5 and 7—Terrible Uniforms and Players Smoking in the Dugout—which, as a fan, I desperately want to see put back into practice right away, like before the first pitch of tonight’s game. Seriously, who wouldn’t want to see, say, Roy Oswalt taking the mound in this? Or Jamie Moyer lighting up in between innings, like Harvey Haddix did throughout his 13-inning, near-perfect game on May 26, 1959? 

I'm serious. Who wouldn't get a kick out of seeing this every night?

 

Or this?

Hell yeah. In fact, the more I think about these two lists, the more I realize that if I were to put together a Venn Diagram, the Cardinals-era Keith Hernandez, with his stirrups, quality stache, reported philandering, cookie-cutter, faux-grass home park, old-school manager, and, most importantly, his pack of smokes, would be its union. Just one more reason to love Mex. Thanks, SI, for a job well done. 

Juan Roman Riquelme

People who know much more about soccer that I do swear Argentine Juan Roman Riquelme, a midfielder for the Boca Juniors, is one of the best players in the world. Wikipedia tells me he is a playmaker know for his passing and setting the tempo of the play. I never heard of him before, so I’m just going to have to play along, in both instances.

Whether he is all of these things is beside the point. All I know is that he's good with the ball. Here he is showing off his touch, while two men, in the distance, shoot paint pellets at his feet.



And here he is weaving his silky magic against the competition, an equally impressive display of skill. 

The Beatdown in the Bronx

It really doesn’t get any better than this. After dropping their first eight games against the Red Sox this season, the Yankees have put a stranglehold on the American League East. Behind stellar contributions from A.J. Burnett, CC Sabathia, Andy Pettitte, Alfredo Aceves, Mark Teixeira, Johnny Damon, Alex Rodriguez, Nick Swisher and just about every other member of the 25-man roster, the Yankees now sit comfortably in front of the Sox by a whopping 6.5 games, with about 50 games to play. The Yankees, who have won 31 of their last 41 and now enjoy the best record in the Majors, are finally firing on all cylinders. They look excited. They look locked in. They look impressive. They look, in a word, unbeatable.

More impressive than the four-game sweep, though, was the way in which the Bombers thoroughly dismantled the Red Sox. In the first game, on Thursday night, when Joba was far from dominant, the Yanks knocked John Smoltz out of the game, off the Red Sox roster, and possibly clear out of baseball. On Friday night, Burnett matched Boston ace Josh Beckett pitch for pitch, while the Yankee bullpen held the Sox scoreless for six more innings, until Rodriguez deposited Junichi Tazawa’s pitch into the right field seats in the 15 th inning, for a dramatic, walk-off win, five-and-a-half hours after Burnett’s first pitch. The next day, about 16 hours later, CC Sabathia made do on his promise of greatness, and dominated the suddenly anemic Red Sox offense, taking a no-hitter into the 6 th and giving the Yankee bullpen a much-needed rest.

As telling as the first three wins were, however, last night’s victory was by far the most satisfying, and most complete. The Yankees simply demoralized the Red Sox. They countered Victor Martinez's much-needed and much-celebrated two-run homer. They knocked around the highly touted and fan-favorite Daniel Bard, who, despite his ungodly talents, looks a lot more like Kyle Farnsworth or Craig Hansen than Goose Gossage or Joba Chamberlain. In coming back to win last night, the Yankees knocked the Sox out of contention for the American League East, sending them spinning and defeated back to Boston. It really doesn’t get any better than this.

I’m not the only one turned on by this Yankees team. Every beat writer in the country, it seems, also likes what they see. Except for those writers who live north of Hartford.

Ted Keith, SI:

But the Yankees did more in the last four days than they did in their first four months of the season combined to establish their preeminence as the best team in the game. While the hitting was impressive (a .299 average and nine home runs) and the defense solid (only one error) it was the starting pitching, that most significant of October variables, that is most responsible for the sweep, and for their status as front-runners. For the first time in 36 years, the Yankees got three consecutive starts of at least seven scoreless innings, and they came from three men -- A.J. Burnett, CC Sabathia and Andy Pettitte -- who will figure prominently in the Yankees' postseason plans. 

This series, then, and perhaps the entire division, may have been won as much in December and January as it was in August. That was when the Yankees signed all three of those pitchers, at the cost of $36 million, to beef up a starting rotation that had sprung a series of question marks in a disappointing third place finish the year before. And while all three have had various moments of success to date, this was the first time all delivered the kinds of sterling efforts on consecutive days that would make the Yankees heavy favorites in any postseason series.

Tom Verducci, SI:

Make no mistake, the Yankees are the best team in the AL right now. Yes, the Angels match up well against them and the Red Sox still have time to fix their flaws, but at the moment, New York is a ferocious offensive team that simply wears down opponents -- not so much with its ability to draw out at-bats, but with the constant threat of power.

Amy Nelson, ESPN:

In the end it was a 5-2 win for the Yankees, a four-game sweep of the Red Sox, and a 6 ½ game division lead -- their biggest in three years. Even more ominous, New York has never lost a division lead of six or more games.

Now, the Red Sox head home having designated a future Hall of Famer in John Smoltz for assignment, carrying an injury list that continues to expand, and the task of trying to dent the Yankees' new lead. This, after Boston had suffered the indignity of not scoring for 31 innings, until Martinez's shot.

Pete Abe, Journal News:

Meanwhile, the Yankees now lead the AL East by 6.5 games. In the long history of this franchise, they have never lost a lead of more than six games at any point of the season.

John Harper, Daily News:

Whatever [the Red Sox] do, this is more about the Yankees now. How long has it been since we've seen them play this kind of baseball for such a sustained period, getting dominant starting pitching, mostly excellent defense and the timely hitting that reminds you of the late '90s championship clubs.

Joel Sherman, New York Post:

Maybe life could be better for the Yankees than it is right now. But please send in postcards to explain how.

Humiliating the Red Sox is usually enough to turn the Bronx into nirvana. But the latest version of a Boston Massacre is just one slice of the Yankees' current heaven.
Let us count the ways: The Mets stink. The Joe Torre Dodgers are faltering, and so are the Yankee-tormenting Angels. A few weeks ago it was inconceivable that the AL playoffs could be held without both the Angels and Red Sox. But now the Rangers are within 3½ games of the Angels and are tied with Boston for the wild card lead.

Bob Ryan, Boston Globe:

The Red Sox can’t worry about the Yankees now. They can only worry about themselves and the fact that they are now officially embroiled in a three-team wild-card race. There’s a lot of time left, anything can happen, yada yada yada, but what it comes down to is the Red Sox must start playing better baseball.

Steve Buckley, Boston Herald:

Now, the Yankees are practically unbeatable. By the time they had completed their four-game humiliation of the Red Sox last night, croaking the visiting team’s bullpen en route to a 5-2 victory that had a packed Yankee Stadium roaring with delight, the Bombers’ record since June 24 had improved to 31-10.

Bill Simmons, the Sports Guy:

OK, this is devastating. Bard was my favorite subplot of the season. I can't even type.

Seriously, it doesn't get any better than this. 

Attack of the 267-Pound Matzo Ball

To promote their biennial exhibition against Maccabi “Electra” Tel Aviv, Israel’s premier basketball team, the Knicks commissioned the world’s biggest matzo ball. The 3-foot-high matzo ball, which consists of 1,000 eggs, 80 pounds of margarine, 200 pounds of matzo meal, and 20 pounds of chicken base, was slow boiled for about a day in New Jersey, reportedly in a 100-gallon kettle, by 12 chefs. The record-breaking matzo ball received a 24-police escort through the streets of Lower Manhattan until it was unveiled at its final destination, Noah's Ark Deli, on Grand Street. It was driven in a 24-foot freight liner. Representatives from the Guinness Book of World Records were on hand to certify the matzo ball's record-breaking size. The thing weighed in at an astounding--and unappetizing-- 267 pounds, approximately twice the size of Nate Robinson. 

Not to be picayune, and, please do correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't believe matzo balls are particularly big in Israel. Hummus or Ptitim would have been more appropriate, no? 

(Via Marc Berman)

Obama's Next Beer Summit?

With the hated Red Sox coming into town for a highly charged four-game series against the streaking Yankees, President Obama has an idea for putting this bitter, century-old rivalry to bed, once and for all. It is High, It is Far, It is... Caught has all the details.

Now that I think about it, Obama does drink a lot. Which is probably why I like him so much. And this picture page is why I like the mad geniuses at It is High, It is Far, It is... Caught so much. Just brilliant. Please click through. 

Knicks 2009-2010 Schedule

The National Basketball Association released this morning each team's schedule for the upcoming season, the league's 64th. While most people jumped up to find out when LeBron was heading to Los Angeles, or when Kobe's slated to play in Beantown, I was more interested in taking a look at the Knicks' upcoming road to perdition. (Spoiler alert: the Knicks don't have a draft pick in next year's draft, and the projected, much-ballyhooed salary cap seems to be getting smaller and smaller with each passing week). Seriously, things don't look good. The Knickerbockers start and finish the season on the road, opening against the Heat in Miami, and topping things off north of the border against the Raptors, a game that may or may not have playoff implications--for about two or three teams not from New York. 

It gets worse. In March and April, just around the time I usually lose complete interest in them, the Knicks face a series of absolutely brutal road trips, including a visit to Texas, followed by a five-game trip to the West Coast. In between, they host the 76ers, the Rockets and the Nuggets. That just seems unfair. See for yourself.

Yikes. That stretch should pretty much put an end to the team's playoff chances, if they even have any after the All-Star Break, which, per usual, arrives in mid-February, right around my birthday.

Surprisingly, though, the powers that be have deemed the Knicks worthy of five nationally televised games, including a Christmas Day contest against the Heat, one of five games scheduled for a national broadcast on Baby Jesus' birthday. Meanwhile, LeBron makes an early appearance at the Garden, on November 6, the Knicks' sixth game of the season. Kobe drops in on January 22. Both games are, of course, nationally televised, because of what happened the last time these two stopped by. I guess the world needs to see the league's two most marketabl stars abuse my Knickerbockers. While we're on the subject, I'm not too crazy about the team's chances of winning any of their games in front of a national audience, which also include home games against the Clippers and the Raptors, in December and January, respectively. It's only August. Is it too early to write off the entire season? 

Assault in the Ring

I don't have HBO, so I can't comment on the quality of the recently premiered "Assault in the Ring," a documentary about the controversial, and ultimately criminal, 1983 boxing match between Billy Collins Jr., an up-and-coming, undefeated prospect, and journeyman Luis Resto.

The documentary, which was broadcast over the weekend, has received pretty good reviews, and rightfully so, I'd imagine. It really is a terrifying story. Resto basically beat the hell out of Collins, battering his face so badly Collins couldn't open his eyes the following day. But, as is usually the case in boxing, there's more to the story than just the 15 rounds. Immediately after the match, Collins' father, who was also his trainer, noticed that Resto's gloves were missing several inches of padding, which meant Resto just spent roughly 30 minutes beating the younger Collins with, essentially, his bare fists. Even worse, as the documentary points out, Resto, before the fight, in collaboration with his trainer, Panama Lewis, had wrapped his hands in plaster of Paris, which, turned his fists into rocks.  

After the fight, about three years later, Resto were charged with assault, criminal possession of a weapon and conspiracy. Resto served a little more than two years in prison. He lost his boxing license and, at least as of last year, currently lives in the basement of the Bronx's Morris Park Boxing Gym, the same gym he trained at as a fighter. Lewis's boxing license was revoked, barring him from ever officially participating in match within the United States. Collins, meanwhile, spiraled out of control. Because of a torn iris, he wasn't allowed back in the ring. He started drinking and abusing drugs. Just one year removed from the Resto fight, he drove his car off the road, in a suburb of Tennessee, his home state. 

It's a terribly sad and shocking story. Here's the trailer, which is one of the best I've seen in a very long time.  If the documentary is as good as this teaser cut, we've got a good ones on our hands.