Photo of the Day: The Sport We Follow—and That Follows Us

“A baseball is a skin full of different yarns, wound so intricately that strangers with nothing in common save the game—economists and novelists, say—need never want for something to chaw over. Baseball diamonds have preserved more marriages than any other kind…. The game was codified by a man, Alexander Cartwright, whose middle name was Joy. I follow baseball, through the boredom, through the greed, and when I try to stop, it follows me.”—American author, critic, broadcaster, arts administrator, academic and nonprofit bilingual lending librarian David Kipen, “The Reluctant Fan,” The Atlantic Monthly, June 2003

And so it will follow me, too, even now that the din of the World Series fades to silence. The game begins in spring, has been called “The Summer Game,” and refers to its climactic event as “The Fall Classic.” I will think of the coming months as its Season of Hibernation.

(The photo accompanying this post shows, of course, Yankee Stadium, which I visited on a company outing six years ago. The Bronx Bombers’ disappearance from the postseason has, to borrow the wonderful phrase from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, “temporarily closed out my interest in the abortive sorrows and short-winded elations of men.”)

Quote of the Day (Roger Kahn, on Baseball’s Opening Day)

“Every baseball season begins with hope. Winter has passed. We have all survived, and even in the Northeast the ice is gone. Willows show a hint of color. The spirit quickens with the promise of June roses. Besides, on opening day, even the worst team has not yet lost a game.” —Sportswriter Roger Kahn, Good Enough to Dream (2014)

This post is for those of us who feel that one of the most beautiful sights in the world is a baseball diamond. Play ball!

(I took the photo accompanying this post in August 2016, at my company's summer outing to Yankee Stadium. The season was pretty well over then, but, looking back now, it seemed like we were seeing the dawn of a new hope, as the then-"Baby Bombers" Aaron Judge and Gary Sanchez hit home runs.)

Photo of the Day: Catching the "New" New York Yankees

What could be more beautiful than a blue sky and a green field at the House That Ruth Built (or, to put it more accurately: The New House That the Steinbrenners Built)? This was the scene on Wednesday afternoon, when I snapped this picture as part of my company’s summer outing.

I was thrilled to spend the afternoon in a non-office environment where I could get to know my colleagues/friends a bit better. I just wish my New York Yankees had given me more opportunities to cheer—although I suspect that, for the next couple of years, that will be an off-and-on thing.

It was only my second time visiting Yankee Stadium since the new structure opened in 2009. This game was quite different from my last one nearly two years ago.

At that time, I went to an evening game in September; this time it was an afternoon game in August. Then, temperatures were comfortable, with the worst heat of summer safely past; this time, though not the remorseless, dangerous heat and humidity of this past Saturday, it was warm enough, with temperatures climbing into the high 80s. By the end of the second inning, feeling like a baked Irish potato, I moved closer to the refreshment stand, out of the sun. (Perhaps the most popular at the stand was bottled water, despite the fact that it was selling for a dollar outside the stadium--four dollars less, the outside vendors claimed, than its price inside.) Then, the team was playing the Chicago White Sox, a team on its way to a 73-89 record that the Yankees handled pretty easily; this time it was the Toronto Blue Jays, who,  only the night before, had come from a 6-0 deficit after a 40-minute rain delay to score 12 unanswered runs and win the game.

The biggest difference was on the field. September 2014 marked the last month before Derek Jeter retired, and every at-bat, every jog he made out to shortstop felt like a love feast between the fans and the legend. But, even though the rest of the “Core Four”—Jorge Posada, Andy Pettitte and Mariano Rivera—had already retired, there were plenty of other veterans in the Yankee clubhouse that night, including Mark Teixeira, Ichiro Suzuki, Carlos Beltran, and C.C. Sabathia. 

One veteran not on the field that day—or anywhere near the clubhouse—was Alex Rodriguez, MIA because of his season-long suspension for using performance-enhancing drugs. A-Rod was nowhere on the premises earlier this week, either, as his abysmal batting average and inability to play defense had rendered him a high-priced drag on the club—and, despite his astronomical salary, suddenly expendable.

A-Rod’s long-term decline paralleled the club’s over the last few years. In retrospect, it’s easy to see now that last year’s wild-card appearance was an aberration, with two veterans—A-Rod and Teixeira —enjoying comeback seasons. As their fortunes went south in the second half of the year (Tex’s, following a season-ending injury; A-Rod, through seeming exhaustion as soon as he hit 40), so did the team’s.

Then, this season, came the deluge, a reckoning—and the youth movement. And so, on Wednesday, A-Rod, Beltran, Ivan Nova, Andrew Miller, and Aroldis Chapman had departed; the oft-injured Tex, batting only .196 after Tuesday night’s game, was not at first with his superb glovework; and Brian McCann, with an anemic .231 batting average (more than 30 points below his career average), was not catching. Instead, longtime fans like me saw the likes of Tyler Austin at first, Aaron Judge in right field—and batting in A-Rod’s longtime cleanup spot, McCann’s heir apparent behind the plate, Gary Sanchez.

Right now, the New New York Yankees are in larval form. Sabathia, the principal remaining holdover of the old crew—including the 2009 World Series team—remained the same erratic, aggravating performer he’s been all year, as well as the last few.

He only gave up one walk, and his 12 strikeouts were the most he’s notched this whole season. But he also yielded the most runs he’s given up all year—seven—all that the Blue Jays needed for a 7-4 victory. No longer a power pitcher, he also hasn’t transitioned into quite the finesse pitcher that the Yankees had hoped.

He is also no longer good enough to overcome his defense’s mistakes—including the damage that Chase Headley inflicted at third base, first with an unsuccessful attempt to catch a lead runner at second, then with an errant throw to first base. That paved the way for Melvin Upton’s crushing three-run homer off Sabathia in the fifth.

Veterans such as Sabathia and Headley are no longer at a point when they can exceed or even meet already meager expectations. So now fans get to watch Enter the Youth Brigade. There’s a lot of upside to this latter game: young bodies less prone to injury, hungry spirits less liable to jadedness, more payroll flexibility due to low-cost contracts, the satisfaction that comes with not having to hear so much about buying a pennant.

But a world of uncertainty is involved in these youth movements, too. Bronx Bomber fans only have to look out to Queens, where the Mets—preseason division favorites because of the Young Guns on their pitching staff—have suffered from devastating injuries that have left them in a dogfight just for the second wild card spot.

Yankee fans with even average memories can recall their 2009 versions of today’s Mets: Phil Hughes, who was going to become the next Roger Clemens; Ian Kennedy, who would assume the mantle of Mike Mussina; and Joba Chamberlain, who, if he didn’t enter the starting rotation, would take over seamlessly from Mariano Rivera as the team’s closer. Subsequently, all three had their moments, but—now in their early 30s—they are journeymen rather than Bronx mainstays.

But hope is always born again, even in the middle of a season seemingly going nowhere, and rookies Judge and Sanchez provided it with two hits apiece. In particular, the torrid pace of Sanchez—five homers in 15 games—got sportswriters looking through archives to find another young Yankee who’d made a similar impact. The answer: Shelley Duncan in 2007 and Steve Whitaker in 1966. Neither went on to make a lasting imprint in pinstripes (or, for that matter, much elsewhere).

In other words: Stay hopeful, but just remember--sometimes, can’t-miss prospects really do miss.

Photo of the Day: All Over But the Shouting at Yankee Stadium

I took this photo late last month, on the end of my first visit to Yankee Stadium in 30 years (a game—and win—against the Chicago White Sox that I discussed in this post). This particular shot, taken just before I left the House That Ruth Built—on a night that Martin Prado won on a walk-off hit—left fans like myself giddy. It came when there was still a thin reed of hope for the season.

Tonight’s emotional victory, in Derek Jeter’s dramatic finale to his career at the stadium, gilded over what was, in many ways, a deeply unnerving glimpse this season into the future of the New York Yankees. It is not unlike 1967 and 1968, when best friends (and future Hall of Famers) Whitey Ford and Mickey Mantle played their last seasons—only this time, it was Mariano Rivera and Jeter bidding farewell.

Next year, the Steinbrenners will not have a pair of Cooperstown first-ballot inductees from the most recent dynasty to give temporary jolts of adrenalin to the box office—and the clubhouse. Say what you want about Jeter’s declining skills, but at 40 years old, he still managed to make it onto the field, more often than not, to play the second most-difficult infield position (after catcher) and to provide much-needed grit and fire.

An hour after I was whooping it up at The Captain’s walk-off hit against the Orioles, I am feeling gloomy, peering into the Bombers' future.

Start with that hole at shortstop. The Yankees admit there is nobody within their minor league system who can play the position in The Show, never mind make fans forget a legend. The possibility that has bubbled to the surface has become all too sadly typical of the approach of the Steinbrenners and Brian Cashman:  J.J. Hardy, shortstop of the currently ascendant Baltimore Orioles, a player who, at 32 years old, will probably begin the downward arc of his career shortly--just when he would be rewarded with an onerous long-term contract.

Tonight is when the cheering stopped for this season. The feel-good departures of Mo and The Captain the past two seasons only partially obscured the disturbing fact that the Yankees missed the playoffs for two years in a row for the first time in two decades. Next year won’t mark the long goodbyes of two homegrown products, but the very awkward return of Alex Rodriguez, a hired gun who epitomizes the worst tendency of the Steinbrenner Era. There won’t even be a trace of a nostalgic era of good feelings then.

Photo of the Day: Little-Town Blues, Melting Away

This was the scene I recorded last night with my camera, as second baseman Martin Prado’s walk-off single up the middle sent the New York Yankees and their fans home with a 4-3 win.

With Ol’ Blue Eyes booming out the “Theme From New York, New York,” more than just the Bombers’ squad of 25 (shown here storming the field) felt that that “these little-town blues are melting away.” So did I. After all, it was not only my first game at the new Yankee Stadium, but the first time I had attended a game in the Bronx since 1984.

Oh—and it also seems that I appeared on YES, courtesy of a camera that panned across my part of the stadium, the field seats between third base and the left-field corner, to catch fan reaction to Jacoby Ellsbury’s game-tying hit in the fifth inning.  (I still haven’t seen this footage, but I’m told that I’m looking around, up and down and into a box of food bought at one of the ballpark’s multitudinous concession stands. You can probably guess that I’m not in a hurry to send the footage off to some Hollywood casting agent.)

So, how was the stadium? Well, glad as I was to see so many more food choices than the old ballpark, part of me still longs for simplicity. It is obvious from the “Legends” restaurant, all the space set aside for private parties, and high ticket prices that the Steinbrenners are not worrying about keeping the ballpark experience within the affordability range of most families. And I’m old enough to remember when a competitive team, not a gonzo scoreboard with an animated character imploring the assembled to be “LOUDER!!!,” generated all the noise an owner could ever want.

But enough kvetching. The seats were comfortable and the view was great. Moreover, the Hall of Heroes, with ceilings towering and projecting like those in Notre Dame and Chartres, reminded me that I was still in the Cathedral of Sports. And, like just about every single one of the other 43,000 plus assembled, I stood and cheered, glad to see and thank, for one of the last times, a player guaranteed to be in the Hall of Heroes himself shortly: Derek Jeter.

(Many, many thanks to someone even more of a diehard fan than myself: my older brother, who once again, as when we were young, took me out to the ballgame.)

Quote of the Day (Reggie Jackson, on the Bronx Bombers’ New/Old Digs)

“It’s the House that George Built.”—Hall of Famer Reggie Jackson, on the new Yankee Stadium, the product of two decades of wheeling and dealing by principal owner George Steinbrenner, quoted in Pete Caldera, “Upbeat Yankees Ready to Open Stadium,” The Record (Bergen County, NJ), April 15, 2009

Considering the off-field people who have made the greatest impact on the history of baseball, it’s dismaying how many have been severely deficient as human beings:

* Charles Comiskey of the Chicago White Sox was such a skinflint that he made the “Black Sox” World Series gambling scandal virtually inevitable by underpaying players.
* As I observed in a post last year, Walter O’Malley not only devastated a whole area of Brooklyn with his decision to relocate the Dodgers out west, but also destroyed a Hispanic community in his attempt to obtain Chavez Ravine for Dodger Stadium.
* Even Branch Rickey, rightly celebrated for signing Jackie Robinson to break the color line, was regarded as arrogant and abrasive by other baseball execs—and, as a consultant to the St. Louis Cardinals, undercut GM Bing Devine while the latter was building one of the great teams of the Sixties.

Which brings me to George Steinbrenner. The growing frailty of the Yankees’ principal owner has led many of the team’s fans to an outpouring of affection for him.

I have mixed feelings about the whole thing. The fans’ generosity of spirit is to be applauded, but I well remember his bullying of players and managers for the first two decades he ran the team. And, as long as we’re railing against government bailouts of banks, let’s not forget that he essentially blackmailed the city of New York into tampering with a magnificent cathedral of sports—not once, but twice—and all for a pretty penny.

And yet, at the same time, the fans are onto something about The Boss. Steinbrenner’s desire to win was insane, but it was also an outgrowth of a man who couldn’t control himself. He could be powerfully sentimental, too, blubbering like a baby when the Yankees won again in the 1990s—and ensuring that the grave injustice done to Roger Maris by the previous ownership was rectified by honoring him with his plaque and retiring his number.

Like FDR, I side with Dante, who “tells us that Divine justice weighs the sins of the cold-blooded and the sins of the warm-hearted on different scales.” I hate $72 average ticket prices as much as the next man, but for sheer cold-bloodedness, The Boss doesn’t even hold a candle to these other Yankee executives:

* George Weiss, who built the great Yankee teams of the Forties and Fifties by paying his players so little money that their whole mindset from spring training was on winning the World Series.

* Jacob Ruppert, the owner who built the original Yankee Stadium, was connected to the Tammany Hall political machine, and would hire manager Miller Huggins while his partner Col. Tillinghast Huston was away in Europe serving in WWI.
* Ed Barrow, the Bronx Bombers’ general manager from the Twenties well into the Forties, might have been the worst of the lot. He embittered Joe DiMaggio in a salary dispute by leaking to the papers the slugger’s request for a raise at a time when American servicemen were going off to war. Worse, when Lou Gehrig was diagnosed with ALS, Barrow told the slugger’s wife that Lou “should look for another line of work” because he was no longer of any use to the team.

Yet, if you go by the inscription for architect Christopher Wren in London’s St. Paul’s—“if you seek his monument, look around you”—then Barrow was the man who made the Yankees what they are today.

Yes, the stadium was the “House That Ruth Built,” but he also built a supporting cast for the larger-than-life slugger: not only signing Gehrig, but making trades for the comparatively unsung pitchers who truly made the Bronx Bombers more than merely an offensive threat: Waite Hoyt, Herb Pennock, and Red Ruffing. He also ensured a constant influx of new players to replace stars by organizing the Yankees’ farm system.

Think of this another way: Before Ed Barrow, the Yankees had never won a pennant. In the quarter-century he was associated with them, the team won 14 pennants and 10 World Series, even sweeping five of them. He built them into such a power that other teams were reluctant even to trade with them