Yanks Lose: More Grist for the Mill

Touch pearls, the Yankees lost. Although I would have preferred to see them win on Opening Day, I can't get too excited about yesterday's beat down. There are still 161 games to be played, and I like the Yankees' chances of winning more than their fair share. You wouldn't think that, though, judging from this morning's papers, which have all but eliminated the Yankees from playoff contention. Here are some of the more hysterical reactions from the press, both local and national. 

John Heyman, SI: 

Between Sabathia and Teixeira, the Yankees got zero return on their $341 million investment. 

Bill Madden, New York's Daily News: 

Game One of 2009 seemed all too familiar to 2008, beginning with the starting pitching. This wasn't what anyone envisioned.

Madden's colleague, Anthony McCarron: 

A few more games like this and the Joba Chamberlain-to-the-bullpen clamor will begin anew because the two relievers the Yankees are hoping take over the eighth-inning duties did not perform well.

Joel Sherman, New York Post: 

In a down economic climate, the Yanks invested $341 million on just [Sabathia and Teixeira]. They are not going to feel bad about those decisions at 0-1. However, no one wants to make a bad first impression as a Yankee because the hole is always a little deeper, so deep that many never truly escape.

Mike Celizic, nbcsports.com: 

It’s a good thing for the Yankees that you don’t draw broad conclusions from one game, because if you did, the conclusion would be expressed in two words: they stink [...] the first person whose backside is going to be on the line is the manager, Joe Girardi. This team, built at the Yankees’ customary obscene expense, is build to win now. And in the Yankee worldview, 'now' doesn’t apply just to full seasons. It applies to every game.

The Yankees will try to salvage their season tomorrow night. Until then, take a look here and here for a more reasonable take on yesterday's loss. 

MLB 2009 Predictions: An Exercise in Futility

Trying to get out in front of possible story lines or anticipate a particular team's performance over 162 games is next to impossible, perhaps even downright stupid. So many things can happen to a ball club between now and the end of the month, let alone between Opening Day and October. I'm going to take my chances, though, and predict the six division champs, the two wild card winners and the eventual World Series champion. Here, as they say, goes nothing:

American League:
Yankees
Twins
Angels
Red Sox (Wild Card)

National League:

Braves
Cubs
Dodgers
Mets (Wild Card)

World Series:

Yankees over Braves.   

The Snap, Go, Fling of the American Atmosphere, C**ksucker

Sure the weather this morning sucks, and there's a less than 50 percent chance today's games will be played, but even the idea of meaningful baseball games has me positively giddy. In recognition of Opening Day, then, here's a clip from Bull Durham, the greatest movie ever made about the national pastime, Walt Whitman's favorite game. You could look it up.  

Mookie Blaylock

Because it's Friday, I thought I'd bring your attention to a pretty cool feature the guys from Pearl Jam (or at least their people) put together in anticipation of the band's March reissue of their debut album, Ten.


It's a 3-dimensional puzzle, which, once assembled, lets you enjoy a few remastered tracks,a couple of live tracks and a few from the band's 1992 Unplugged performance. Once all the tracks are unlocked, a bonus "Master/Slave" video plays. It's worth the look, and the time. Be careful, though: the game is incredibly addictive and, at first, a little frustrating and completely disorienting. 

Also, because it's Friday, here's my own bonus clip of Pearl Jam's first official gig. It's at the Off Ramp, in 1990, when they were still known as Mookie Blaylock. First song, first show, the Holy Grail of Pearl Jam bootlegs. 

What Mighty Contests

I don't just get my sports jollies from men in baggy shorts and baseball caps. Every now and again, I like to check in on the tweedier contests of the more erudite-- and  galactically less coordinated. From the Book Bench, the New Yorker books blog, comes this interesting round up of a recent table quiz that pitted three teams-- of authors, editors and agents-- against one another in a winner-take-all, 5 v 5 literary trivia battle royale. Although the authors ultimately took home the fake, plastic trophy, the best line of the night came from the mouth of a disgruntled literary agent.  I'll let the Book Bench's Victoria Loustalot set the scene, and deliver the well-timed kicker:

In the first round, when Lethem correctly answered the question “The clocks strike thirteen in the opening line of what classic novel?” (answer: “1984” by George Orwell), a feisty young agent in knee-high black leather boots yelled, “Get a job!”

The contest was sponsored by Splice magazine, a Brooklyn-based literary journal I never knew existed.

Channing Frye and His Pet Dragon

This is kind of random, but Channing Frye, formerly of the University of Arizona and the New York Knicks, wrote a post on his blog about the weird and out-of-control popularity of the Twilight series. He doesn't get it:

I asked [my girlfriend] what was so intriguing about the book and here was her analysis: “The reason why I and many women love this story is because the main vampire, Edward, is deeply in love with Bella (main women character.) He loves her but cannot do anything physical with her and that type of “naughty” tension (wink, wink) is what I think keeps people reading. The fact that he loves her and doesn’t want to hurt her, yet he says, “her blood is the sweetest he had smelled in a 100 years.” So he can’t do anything with her because he might lose control and EAT her. Therein lies the conflict and the draw for reading these stories.

Now, when I heard this, the first thing I thought of was how lonely is this girl that outta all of the people in all the world she falls in love with a dang vampire? I mean, come on. That’s like me having a pet lion or a pet dragon and loving it all day and never coming to the conclusion that hey, when my pet dragon or lion is hungry all this lovey-dovey stuff is going out the window. It’s gonna bite my face off.

God bless Channing, and his almost pathological literal-mindedness.

(Via TrueHoop)

A Catholic Lapse

There was a time, not too long ago, when Catholic colleges and universities dominated college basketball. However, as the Quad, the New York Times college sports blog, points out, Catholic basketball programs haven't found much success in recent tournaments. Since 1985, the year Villanova won it all, Seton Hall is the only Catholic school to play in a national championship game. That was in 1989, when I was 10, two years removed from my First Communion, and four years after Georgetown, St. John's and Villanova all reached the Final Four.

That was not considered especially noteworthy at the time, as Catholic colleges regularly made it to the season’s last weekend through the 1980s. Of the 40 teams in the Final Four that decade, seven were from Catholic colleges — Georgetown three times, St. John’s, Villanova, Providence and Seton Hall.

But in the 20 years since then, only three achieved the feat — Marquette in 2003, Georgetown in 2007 and now Villanova in 2009.

My faith calls for me to pull for Villanova, but my bracket demands Michigan State. Tom Izzo's father is Catholic: does that count?