I may be a Yankees fan, but I can appreciate the intensity and devotion of fans of other teams. That’s why I’m so fascinated by Red Sox fans, even though they make my life hell from time to time, and why I can’t understand Giants fans, who I’ll tell you all about in a future entry. Last month, however, I got my first look at Oakland A’s fans in their natural habitat, the largely maligned Network Associates Coliseum.

Having heard many a radio broadcast and watched many a postseason telecast from the coliseum, you’d think that the place was some kind of a pit. Well, it’s not. In many ways, the Coliseum is to Yankee Stadium what the Bay Area is to the New York Area–there are some striking similarities, and yet some sharp distinctions. Two of the most cosmopolitan and colorful cities in the world, both famed for their diversity, culture, their place in American history, with lots of Old World blood mixed with an always future-minded fashion sense. There are moments when I’m there when I, as an urban-born New Yorker, feel right at home. But there are times when a familiar situation suddenly seems odd. California is undeniably different.

You can’t go anywhere in San Francisco, Berkeley, or Oakland, it seems, without being panhandled. There are bums in the streets holding cardboard signs at every major intersection: "Homeless. Hungry. Please Help." "War Veteran-Disabled." "No lies, no stories, just need help." The weather is mild enough that the winter doesn’t drive people south, and squatters set up cardboard houses under highway overpasses. While we were there, nine homeless people were arrested for taking over a city building to protest the lack of cheap housing–a building with an earthquake crack so large in it, even an East Coaster like me could see it. I suppose when you’re used to sleeping in a shopping cart, even a deathrap seems like a good thing.

Earthquakes were on my mind a lot at the coliseum, as I tried hard to remember what park the teams were in when the Loma Prieta earthquake hit in 1989, as we felt tremors pass through from time to time, and as the A’s played earthshakingly great baseball. They swept the Red Sox and then turned their sights to the Yankees.

corwin and I arrived at the park the day after the A’s drove Ted Lilly from the mound and walloped the bombers 8-1. We took the subway, just as we have to games in Boston. In our pinstripes, hats, and other Yankees fan gear, we were heckled a bit by Oakland fans, but always in a nice way. They say what distinguishes the A’s from other teams (especially the angst-ridden Red Sox) is that they know how to have fun. Their fans seem to carry that spirit as well. "You like the Yankees?" one guy said to us as the train approached his stop. "Gee, what was your first clue?" I answered back. "Oh man, just go easy on my boys tonight, a’ight?" he said, as he stepped of the train. "Y’all had enough fun last year, hear?"

On the walking bridge from the train station over to the coliseum, a man approached us. "Got any tickets?" he asked, as we expected. "Nope," we answered. "Got any loose change?" he then asked. Geez, come on man, one schtick at a time! Did I mention the incessant panhandling? At least in the Bronx it’s one OR the other, not both!

A few moments later, we were at the ass end of the coliseum, entering behind the outfield stands.

I tend to judge the dedication level of fans by the cleverness and quality of their handmade signs. At Fenway, signs are prohibited, but not so in the free-spirited Bay Area (though I did read in the rules that broom handles are not allowed… too dangerous). As we made our way down the wide ramps toward the dugout level, I saw a kid carrying a well-drawn sign sporting the A’s elephant mascot ("Stomper") that read "Trample The Yanks." Looking good!

After a quick look at the food options (garlic fries, barbecue, ballpark fare), I made my way down to the Yankees dugout. The A’s were still taking batting practice and it was early yet. I had fun showing my photos from spring training and Camden Yards to the other fans there while we waited and hoped for some autographs and photo ops. Randy Choate came out and signed for quite a while, going back and forth along the dugout. He’s such a cutie, and such a nice guy. Then the Yankees took the field, and he went out to stretch with the team.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve watched the Yankees team stretch. I could probably lead the routine myself. After doing their leg work–jogging backward, side to side, etc.–each player got a giant rubber band and stretched his legs and torso. Then, as always, as they’d probably done since their Little League days, they warmed up their arms by playing catch.

I guess when you play catch every single day, and you’re a jokester at heart like Luis Sojo is, you just can’t pass up any opportunity to liven things up. At Camden Yards, Luis played catch sitting in a chair. In Oakland, he was throwing with Clay Bellinger, who was a sometime catcher in the minors. Somehow their normal throwing turned into Luis pitching and Clay squatting to catch. Enrique Wilson got into the act as a batter–first with an actual bat and then just miming swinging and missing. Clay called balls and strikes. You know something? Sojo’s got pretty good control.

It’s tough to know where to stand when you’re waiting for autographs. Just a few feet to one side or the other can make a difference. I felt I was in a pretty good spot, but baseball is a game of inches. Everyone, and I do mean everyone, wanted Derek Jeter’s autograph. I had some photos of him I hoped to get him to sign, but I wasn’t too anxious. Ever since I got him that once in spring training, I’ve felt like I didn’t want to take away chances from others who haven’t had the chance yet. But if he happened to come right to me, well, I wouldn’t walk away!

All eyes were on Jeter as he took BP. You can usually tell what kind of a game Jeter will have at the plate by watching his BP. This time, he didn’t really light up the audience by spraying hits all over, but he did jack a few into one section of left centerfield seats. When he was done, the Yankees were just about finished with their allotted forty minutes of BP time. Jeter then came to the dugout roof, and began to sign. He started about three feet over to my left, and unfortunately for me, then worked his way further left. He had time for about two dozen signatures before he ducked into the clubhouse with the rest of the guys.

Just for the record, when we were seated in the stands and Jeter came in to lead off the game, I told some friends of ours, baseball neophytes, that I wasn’t sure what Jeter was going to do in the game, but that he had hit a bunch of BP balls into that… section… of… well, before I could finish my sentence, Jeter took the first pitch over the wall into that very section of seats in left center. Thanks for making me look like a genius once again, Derek!

Before I forget to mention it, Paul O’Neill signed a bunch, too, down at the other end of the dugout. That kind of shut up some guys behind me who had been going on and on about how O’Neill had gotten too "stuck up" to sign for people since going to the Yankees from Cincinnati…

Up in the stands, we settled ourselves in my favorite place, upper deck behind home plate, and discovered one of the drawbacks to the football-favoring coliseum. The scoreboards are too damn small–instead of one big scoreboard in centerfield, there were two smaller ones in each end zone (off first and off third). I couldn’t read the Runs Hits Errors totals they were so dinky! I had not brought my binoculaurs from the East Coast, but heck, you shouldn’t need binoculaurs to read a major league scoreboard!

As long as I’m on the subject of the Oakland Coliseum’s shortcomings, here’s a big one, but one that is common to many stadia, and that is not enough food vendors wandering the aisles. I don’t like to get up during the game, and in fact, sometimes I get downright superstitious about it (e.g. if I get up now, the other team will score). In Yankee Stadium, you see a hot dog vendor about once an inning. I also don’t like to stand in line and miss any of the game when I DO get up. So I am big on people bringing me food. In Oakland, there are NO roaming hot dog vendors. In fact, the only vendors I saw were one selling Red Ropes (giant, yard-long Twizzlers), and one selling frozen chocolate malt in a cup.

I can understand why this is, if what I’ve heard is true–the A’s don’t make any money from concessions, it all goes to the Oakland Raiders. Feh, there’s that damn football thing again. So what incentive do they have to sell more food faster? They don’t.

This doesn’t explain why you don’t see hot dog vendors in many other parks, but that is an essay for another day. But Oakland is not unique in this deficiency.

Otherwise, really, the Oakland Coliseum is nowhere near as bad as people have been making it out to be for years. In fact, there’s nothing wrong with the place that couldn’t be fixed by the removal of the football influence. That includes getting rid of the sky-high seats behind centerfield, the dinky scoreboards, and the strangely zealous fans with the air horns.

Yeah, air horns. Oh, and you probably know about the drums. Some guys get seats in left field, and they form a kind of marching band drum section. I actually didn’t mind the drums–I think they’re kind of nice, but you know I love it when fans take initiative. And they beat the pants off that monotonous tom-tom in Cleveland. But the drums are another football influence. Take it from a marching band veteran such as myself–I know.

Up at our seats that night, we initiated two friends to Yankee baseball, and baseball in general. Behind us was a large group of Bay Area Yankees fans, who started the Let’s Go Yankees cheer the moment the National Anthem finished. Below us were some die-hard A’s fans with an air horn, next to them a pair with one of those giant plastic trumpets. I finally figured out what is so great about those giant foam fingers. THEY’RE SILENT. Anyway, these two groups of boisterous fans took each other’s presence with good humor and we all got along pretty well. Like I said, A’s fans know how to have fun.

For example, Jeter was leading off, with Justice batting second, and Bernie third. At one point in the game, Jeter came up to bat and the A’s fans in front of us began chanting "Ma-RI-ah Ca-rey!" because, well, Jeter used to date her in the olden days. Well, Jeter got a hit. Then came Justice. They started chanting "Ha-lle Ber-ry!" (who David was formerly married to) and lo, Justice got a hit. Bernie then came to the plate, the A’s fans shut up, and all the Yankees fans in our section started chanting "Miss-us Wil-liams!" That cracked the A’s fans up but good. But what do you know? Bernie got a hit, too!

Here’s another something you wouldn’t see in New York. It was Law Enforcement Night, which meant that before the anthem, a few dozen police officers from local precincts were introduced. The notable thing is that they each came onto the field riding a motorcycle with full lights and sirens blaring. What is it with Oakland and loud noises? Each pair of cops came riding in through a gate in center, then split up and went down the warning track to either side. It was only a few under a zillion motorcycles and the whole thing took forever–well, several minutes anyway as they lined up about thirty motocycles on a side. I suppose motorcycles couldn’ tbe worse for the field than pre-season football. And this is the land of CHiPs… When they were done, they rode off into the sunset. I will note that we witnessed no brawls during the game. Hmmm.

The A’s. What can you say about their muscular, energetic lineup? They stumbled out of the gate in 2001, but began a mid-season surge so exciting, so tantalizing, that GM Billy Beane reversed plans to dismantle the team and send soon-to-be free agents Jason Isringhausen and franchise player Jason Giambi elsewhere, instead acquiring Jermaine Dye.

When the A’s are running wild, they look unbeatable. They swept the then-favorites for the AL Wild Card, the Boston Red Sox, in the days before the Yankees came to town. And, as we Yankees fans discovered, everything has to go right if you’re going to top the A’s when they are surging.

My prediction for Saturday night’s game was that the Yankee offense would be buzzing like a bunch of frustrated hornets after the 8-1 loss the night before (the only run was a Paul O’Neill homer), and as Jeter’s leadoff homer showed, it certainly was. But even though they tallied thirteen hits, the Yankees were always fighting the tide, scratching out one run at a time but unable to get a big rally going. Meanwhile Sterling Hitchcock, the Yankees other recent stretch-run acquisition, was looking shakey on the mound. We all know Hitchcock can pitch, but as he’s still not fully recovered from Tommy John surgery, he’s only at 75-80% much of the time. The result is enough chinks in the armor that a team of hot, young sluggers like the A’s can jump all over him. And they did, scoring eight runs on eleven hits and driving him from the game after only 3 1/3 innings. It was like a boxing match with the two lineups landing blows, and with both teams within reach of the win until the very last out.

Unfortunately for the Yankees, the A’s held them off. The turning point of the game came early–in the second. After Jeter’s leadoff homer, the A’s got two back in the bottom of the inning. Going into the bottom of the second it was still 2-1 A’s, and it would have stayed that way if after recording a quick two outs, Hitchcock had been able to retire the number eight batter, Ramon hernandez (catcher) and avoid facing Jeremy Giambi, who was DHing in the nine hole. Unfortunately, Hitchcock walked the only light hitter on the team, and with Hernandez on you just knew what was going to happen… and it did. Jeremy hit a two run home run, and the A’s followed with a rally for two more runs with three singles and a walk before Terence Long, the ninth batter in the inning, grounded out. At the time, I explained to my friends that I thought the walk was the turning point, and it was all a question of whether the Yankees would be able to turn the tide back again.

Soriano tried to do it. He hit the first pitch of the third inning into the seats, but rookie pitcher Erik Hiljus (no, I don’t know who he is either…) was able to keep the damage to just the one run, despite giving up hits to Jeter and Bernie. When he left the game in the fifth it was 6-2 A’s. The Yankees scratched out single runs in the fifth, sixth, seventh, and ninth, but the A’s tacked on two more–final score 8-6 A’s. If Hitchcock had not had that four run inning in the second, if he’d only gotten Hernandez instead of walking him, we would have likely won it. But as I said, everything had to go right. It’s pretty rare for the Yankees to have eleven hits and lose. Jeter went four for five and Soriano went three for four.

The rowdy New Yorkers behind us were placing bets on who would hit a home run. One fellow had Clay Bellinger as his player. Clay Bellinger, for those of you not familiar with him, is one of Torre’s favorite players, because he can play any position, even catch. But he never plays enough to be a consistent hitter and his average coming into the game was something like .170. He had hit a home run a few days before, though, which gave the poor fan some hope. "Come on Clay, hit one out!" he yelled when Bellinger came to the plate. "I’ll split the fifteen bucks with ya!" Later, when Torre lifted Bellinger for a pinch hitter, he called out, "Joe! You owe me fifteen bucks!"

Anyway, we lost. Yankees fans were thinking: Oh yeah? So you beat up on our two suspect lefties. Just wait ’til you face one of our GOOD pitchers. That’s what we were saying as we sat for about an hour in the car trying to get out of the parking lot (our friends had come by car). So, okay, put one more thing on the list of improvements the coliseum needs–better traffic control. Maybe they’re just not used to getting a sell-out crowd out of there? Our friends then took us on an excursion south to the only Krispy Kreme donuts in the Bay Area. Mmm, nothing like a good load of poping hot sugar, fat, and starch to assuage the sting of a tough loss. Very exciting game though, lots to cheer about. We just didn’t get a W out of it.

The next day we boarded BART again, and again made the walk over the concrete bridge to the coliseum. This time I actually had a ticket to sell, so I had my eye out for scalpers. My experience the day before led me to think I wouldn’t have much trouble finding someone. In the Bronx, no one ever wants to take just one ticket, though, and you can expect to haggle a bit to get a decent dollar value out of someone. But here in Oakland, as I have probably said, things are different. At least this time I didn’t get panhandled. Instead, a guy approached asked if I had any extra. I said yeah, just one. He offered me five bucks. I said how about ten? He said "Okay" and handed me ten bucks. Now, I’m sure he was able to sell it for more than that, but still, the New Yorker in me couldn’t help thinking "what a pushover…"

That Sunday Mike Mussina took the hill with Yankee pride resting on his shoulders. Let me say this about Mussina. He has been absolutely everything the Yankees wanted when they blew their wad picking him up as a free agent in the off season. Casual fans or those who don’t watch all the games, who just look at the stats, are going to see his won-loss record this year and think, jeez, this for $88 mil? But you have to see him pitch game after game (in which the Yankees usually score three or fewer runs) to realize what a master he is. Once in a while he just doesn’t have his stuff, and it’s obvious. But when he’s on, you can see him going to school on hitters, setting them up the way Coney used to (and still does, up on Boston). (NOTE: I wrote this entry BEFORE the near-perfecto in Boston…)

Mussina was masterful that Sunday in Oakland, finishing each pitch with a pounce to the foot of the mound, ready to grab an up the middle smash, looking almost like he’s ready for the batter himself to rush him like a linebacker. He looked good, struck out nine, walked none and gave up only two hits in eight full innings of work. THe gem was only marred by the twohits–back to back home runs in the fifth to Miguel Tejada and Eric Chavez. You know the cliche: he pitched good enough to win.

But the A’s young pitchers are something special, and Mark Mulder was matching Mussina pitch for pitch, almost like he was learning from him every time they traded places on the mound.

And there were sparkling defensive plays all around. We had brought a friend with us to the game this time, a Giants fan, who remarked at one point what a remarkably well-played game it was. Our answer was, well, actually, this is what we’re used to seeing regularly! The Yankees are not an overpowering team–they don’t homer you into submission, their pitching depends on rock solid defense, they have to manufacture runs. They take advantage of errors and don’t let their own hurt them. And every team, even the lowly Devil Rays, raises their game when they play the World Champions. So yeah, we’re used to seeing a high level of play all the time, we’re used to a lot of one run and two run games. We’re spoiled rotten, in fact, and we love it.

By the fourth it was clear that this game would not be an offensive romp for either team. Mussina hadn’t allowed any hits yet, and Mulder had allowed only a Bernie Williams double. "Betcha fifteen bucks Clay hits a home run," I said to corwin, who laughed. Well, I should have made that bet, because the big moment for Yankees fans came in the eighth, when Bellinger came up to the plate. Soriano was on first, having singled. You figure Clay’s one advantage is that he plays so rarely, opposing managers don’t have much of a book on him. But, well, the one thing they ought to know is that bench guys can hit the fastball. That’s the only pitch they see (in BP), and that’s the only pitch they’ll sit on. Bellinger sat fastball, got one, and hammered it into the seats. Everyone in blue in the stadium went bonkers. corwin was up getting food at the time and when he got back I said "You owe me fifteen bucks!" Tie game, 2-2.

The excitement came back for the A’s fans though, in probably the most dramatic way. Ninth inning, tie score, Mike Stanton on the mound. Stanton traditionally goes through a slump in August, but we thought he had a shot to be great here. He struck out Menechino looking, then walked Johnny Damon on four pitches, oops. Again I felt the walk was the downfall, because if he had gotten Damon out, then we wouldn’t have reached Jason Giambi that inning. Instead, with a man on he struck out pinch hitter Saenz, and then there was Giambi. One on, two out, tie game, bottom of the ninth.

Stanton worked the count full and then threw ball four.

Unfortunately for us, Giambi–who was the real winner of the All-Star home run derby this year, as far as I’m concerned–golfed that ball into the right field seats for a walk-off game winning two-run homer. I just knew that was going to happen when Damon walked. And sure enough, it did. The A’s had swept the Yankees and had won eight straight. The crowd stayed in their seats, not a single one moved for several minutes until Giambi came out for a curtain call. I’m glad I like Jason Giambi because otherwise it would have been a hard moment to take. As a Yankees fan, it was a tough loss, but as a baseball fan, what a scene, what a moment. Giambi is a great player, and on that day, his greatness was greater than Stanton’s.

The idea that keeps Yankees fans from worrying about the postseason, though, is that this is the absolute best the A’s can be. They are at their peak, whereas the Yankees will take it to another level when October comes. At least, we hope so. Last year, there were moments of doubt, as the team sputtered in September and squeaked into the postseason with only 87 wins, and then ran hot and cold in the ALDS and the ALCS, pouring it on only when things began to look desperate. But they did reach that higher level of play, and by the time they faced the Mets, they were clicking on all cylinders.

This year Yankees fans look forward to the same thing. At the time I write this, the Red Sox are deep into their patented annual slide–they fired their manager and immediately slid further in the standings, and were just swept by the Yanks at Fenway 3-1, 2-1, and 1-0–they are now nine games out of the AL East and eight behind the A’s in the wild card race. With Seattle running away with the West, it looks likely that the Yankees will face the same opponents they did last year: the A’s in the best of five series, and the Mariners in the best of seven, or possibly the other way around, depending on how hot Cleveland is.

The A’s and their fans are great. But we’ll see you in October.

In the ninth inning, when it got dark and started to rain around the time the Yankees brought the tying run to the plate for the first time, I started writing metaphorical ledes for this story. Like “It was sunny all day for the Detroit Tigers… until it wasn’t.”

But, unfortunately, the rest of the ninth inning did not pan out the way I might have wanted. I feel sorry for the people who left early, because they missed the best part of the game, a thrilling ninth, even if the Yankees did fall short.

The day began, as I mentioned, not raining. It was partly sunny and quite windy in the Bronx today. When we took our seats for the first pitch the temperature was 61 degrees, but a stiff wind was blowing straight in from center field.

The wind was evident in the top of the first, when Brett Gardner moved to catch a high fly ball and ended up running almost all the way to the infield to get it. Not home run weather, despite the predictions, which were based on the facts that Max Scherzer was in the top three in home runs allowed this year and the Yankees were the top home-run hitting team. The only kind of homer that would go out with the wind like that would be a low line drive.

Unfortunately, that’s what Miguel Cabrera hit in the top of the first. And unfortunately, there was a man on. Another “Yankee Stadium” homer that just cleared the short porch wall inside the foul pole. I’m not even sure the pitch was a strike.

That was pretty much all the action for a while. Scherzer no-hit the Yankees through five complete innings. After giving up the two-run Cabrera shot in the first, Freddy Garcia largely matched him.

Then in the sixth, the Tigers opened the inning with a bounding ball up the middle that Freddy Garcia slowed down, then Jeter got it and rushed his throw, low in the dirt, which Teixeira was unable to dig out. Thus, Austin Jackson reached, and Magglio Ordonez followed with a hit-and-run single while Jackson went to third. Freddy struck out Delmon Young, but then gave up two singles, and two runs, and left the game on the losing end. Boone Logan came in, and despite a balk, struck out the next two batters to quash any further rally. But two more runsa, unearned, had been scored. 4-0 Yankees.

In the Yankees’ half of the sixth, they had some offense, too… Cano broke up the no hitter with a single. That’s it. The crowd roared like he’d hit a home run. But he didn’t.

Corey Wade pitched two scoreless innings but the Yankees were only able to cut the Tigers’ 4-0 lead by one run. They put the first two men on in the seventh (Swisher walked, Jorge singled), but that ended Scherzer’s day, and Joaquin Benoit came in. All they got off Benoit was a Granderson solo homer in the eighth.

Luis Ayala gave that run back in the ninth to make it 5-1 going into the bottom of the inning. Jose Valverde, the Tigers closer, took the mound in the non-save situation, but somehow it felt as tight as any save.

Well, especially when the first man he faced, Nick Swisher, hit a solo shot to make it 5-2. Next up was Jorge Posada, who tripled.

Yes, Jorge tripled. Remember that big triple that Joe Girardi hit in the World Series back when he was a Yankee? Joe ran faster, though. In his postgame press conference, Girardi was asked for his thoughts about Posada getting a triple there. “Well, it’s certainly unusual,” Girardi said.

This was one of the loudest, most intense ninth innings I’ve been through at the new Stadium. Swisher’s shot really brought people to life, and then Posada’s triple had the place jumping. It really was too bad that thanks to two previous rain showers during the game, neither of which stopped play for more than a few minutes while some extra drying agent was sprinkled on the field, 40% of the fans had left. (And at least 10% never made it there, thanks to the rescheduled game.)

Every pitch that wasn’t a strike was cheered raucously. Martin worked a walk. With the score 5-2, that meant the man coming to the plate represented the tying run. It was Andruw Jones. The inning before, Girardi had pinch hit for Gardner with Eric Chavez. As he said in his postgame comments about the move: “I was hoping he would pop one.” Then Jones went in to play left and keep that spot in the batting order.

I was hoping he would “pop one” here. But he ended up hitting a long fly ball that brought Posada in easily. 5-3 Tigers, with a man on and the tying run coming to the plate again, this time Jeter.

We all well know that Jeter can’t be the hero every time, every day. And he wasn’t. Although he had a fairly long at bat, with much chanting and cheering, he struck out. That brought up Granderson, whose appearance prompted many chants of “MVP!”

Granderson worked the count to 2-2, and then popped up. Except Alex Avila slipped on the wet on deck circle–did I mention it had started to rain AGAIN?–and couldn’t get to it. With renewed life, Granderson worked a walk. Phil Coke was warming up in the Tigers bullpen. And that brought Robinson Cano to the plate. Cano, who broke up the no hitter, and who yesterday had the big blow with the grand slam. On XM Radio this morning the commentators were opining that Cano wouldn’t see another good pitch to hit all month.

A home run would have meant a walk-off win, and pie. But Robbie grounded into a force play and the game was over. To win in the postseason you have to be lucky as well as good. If the Yankees end up losing the series, we’ll think back on this game and how Scherzer shut down one of the toughest lineups in baseball, and how the breaks just didn’t go our way.

Yesterday started usually enough. corwin and I packed up rain ponchos and scorecards and headed for the stadium at 5pm from Riverdale (the hoity toity part of the northern Bronx where a good friend and fellow fan has a welcoming fold-out couch). It takes about a half hour to travel down the Grand Concourse from here to the environs of the Stadium. On weekdays, the parking spaces around the courthouse become legal to all comers at 6pm. If you get there by 5:30, you too can sit in your car in one of those spaces until 6pm and then leave. There are even a few local characters who act like “parking attendants” directing people to park in the spaces. I presume once in a while some tourist gives them some money, but they seem to do it just for the fun of it.

On a normal day, we’d lock the doors and walk to the Stadium one hour before the first pitch. However, because this is the postseason, first pitch wouldn’t be until 8:37 pm. That meant we had plenty of time for dinner at El Molino Rojo (The Red Mill), a Dominican joint just two blocks from the Stadium. Look into that dining room on any night before game-time and all you will see is a sea of pinstripes and NY logos. And cops. A lot of the local cops eat there.

After stuffing ourselves well for very little money, we moseyed the rest of the way to the Stadium. Compared to many postseason visits to the Stadium, this was a warm night. We took a lap around the lower deck concourses, just soaking in the atmosphere. corwin remarked at one point on our walk, “Isn’t it remarkable that this never gets boring?”

It never does.

We were in our seats in plenty of time to take in the ceremonies, which included the usual introductions of all the rosters of both teams. Miguel Cabrera was the only Tiger who seemed to be booed much (and later in the game was serenaded with chants of “DUI, DUI” from the bleachers).

Then came the ceremonial first pitch. For those who don’t think the first pitch is a Big Deal, all I can tell you is that I overheard at least two different conversations at the Red Mill speculating on who it would be, and earlier that day I’d remarked to corwin myself that I thought they wouldn’t bring out the “big guns” like Yogi until the World Series. “Tino, maybe?” corwin thought maybe we’d get lucky and it would be Bernie and he’d play the National Anthem, too. I thought that would be more likely in the ALCS, should we get that far. “I bet we might get Pettitte,” I guessed.

I thought for a moment I might be right when they started introducing the person throwing out the first pitch… but it quickly became obvious it wasn’t Andy the announcer was talking about. As it turned out, the ceremonial first pitch was thrown by a hero of similar vintage to Pettitte, but one who is still in uniform. Mariano Rivera took the ball.

And then they introduced his catcher, and Jorge Posada came out in full catching gear, and I admit I got a little choked up. So did a lot of folks. It’s difficult to encapsulate what people feel about Posada. His bad baserunning and slumps drive a lot of folks crazy. But we can’t help it. We love the guy. He’s been here so long, and been a part of this team’s success for so long, it’s staggering to realize how many team leaderboards he’s on. He was never a Superstar like Jeter, but people forget how punishing the catching position is, and just how difficult it is to produce as a catcher year after year. Look at Joe Mauer for an an example of a guy who looked headed for the Hall of Fame when he won the batting title, and now looks human, all too human, when troubled by injuries and of late pneumonia. (Yeah.)

Posada waved his glove at Mo, as if to say “Go from the rubber!” So Mo did, and threw a ball that was just a bit outside. It seemed weird to have current players doing it, and yet it created an emotional moment. And the Yankees are not above doing what they can to enhance the drama of October. Heck. That’s the whole point.

So, we had the pitch, and the anthem with the giant West Point flag, and the introductions, all like usual. The Stadium always looks even more like a giant birthday cake than usual when all done up with bunting.

And then the actual game, the much touted match-up between aces Justin Verlander, the shoe-in for this year’s Cy Young award, and CC Sabathia, one of the two who probably would get runner-up for the award if such a thing were given. Scouting reports on Verlander were to watch his velocity. If he was getting into the upper 90s, it would mean he was too hyped up and was vulnerable. CC, meanwhile, has had some rocky starts of late, but would be going on extra rest.

CC took the mound first, and looked sharp, hitting the corners in two strikeouts, and then giving up a solo homer to Delmon Young that just cleared the wall into the short porch in right. It looked for a second like maybe Swisher had a chance to rob the homer, but no, it went out. CC and the crowd shrugged it off. CC still looked good and that would have been an out in any other park.

Verlander, meanwhile, started the inning throwing 93-94 and got faster as the inning went on. But he also threw ball one a lot, showing his control wasn’ quite there. He also walked two men. But although he didn’t allow a hit, he still let in the tying run. Derek Jeter, leading off the game, did something that happens fairly rarely: he reached on a dropped third strike. (Official scoring: strikeout wild pitch.) And he ended up scoring the Yankees’ first run, moving over on a walk to Granderson, then a Cano groundout, and then A-Rod grounded out to bring him in.

The next batter was Mark Teixeira. (I did not see an explanation as to why Cano was batting third and Teixeira fifth instead of the other way around.) Just as Tex worked the count to 3-2, it began to rain. He walked. But then Nick Swisher grounded out.

CC had a one-two-three second inning, but the rain had not let up. What had been a 20% chance of showers turned into a steady, heavy rain. The tarp came out, and I checked the weather radar on my phone. The forecast was not good. A line of showers appeared to be passing not across the Bronx but ALONG it, keeping us in steady rain while some other areas very close by were getting no rain at all.

After more than an hour delay, MLB announced that the game would be postponed until Saturday, and Saturday’s game would be moved to Sunday at 3:07pm.

This was a disappointing turn of events, to say the least. After all that build-up and to have barely gotten anything of the game in!

But what else could we do? We made our way back to the car in the pouring rain, and drove home. We got a good night’s sleep. (corwin slept 11 hours.) Then we got up and went into Manhattan for a late lunch. We went to the Momofuku Noodle Bar, David Chang’s hipster ramen restaurant, and we were not disappointed with that foodie adventure. And then we discovered Veniero’s Bakery, continuously operated as an Italian pastry shop since 1894. There were a bunch of bakeries in that neighborhood but this was the only one with a line out the door. Seemed a good recommendation. So we loaded up with pastry to eat later during the game. Then we trundled up to the Stadium, arriving at the courthouse at almost exactly the same time as the day before. Unfortunately, it now being Saturday, the prime parking was not available, but we found a space on the street just two more blocks down.

It wasn’t quite six o’clock when we approached the Stadium this time, and so the gates were not open yet. People were lined up outside. We went to buy some bottled water (Tip: buy it for $1 outside and keep it sealed and they will let you bring it in. The same water is $5 inside.) and ended up watching some of the Phillies/Cardinals game on the big screen TVs at the McDonald’s. We had been listening to the game on the drive, and things had looked good for the Cards then, leading off the game with a three-run homer from Lance Berkman. The Cards’ Kyle Lohse escaped a jam and worked around an error in what we watched, but we’d later see that for naught as the out of town scoreboard would reveal Howard and Victorino going back to back. But that was later.

Water acquired, on to the Stadium we went. The place felt deserted. There were more FanFoto photographers in the Great Hall than fans. We were stopped by several and let them take our pictures.

Then corwin had a brilliant idea. “Let’s go to Monument Park!” We discovered no line at all to get in, and the place only sparsely filled.

I saw something there I’d never seen at the Stadium: a goldfinch. The FanFoto guy assigned to the MP logo pointed it out. It was a tiny, cute yellow bird, hanging on the netting and looking at us all suspiciously. Then it flew off and tried to get through the windows of the batter’s eye bar, but failed.

“I hope his cousin the Bluebird of Happiness is around, too,” I said as the bird flew off.

We had a leisurely stroll through the Monuments. I’ve never had such a relaxing time in Monument Park since the new Stadium was built. It’s always been crammed with people when I’ve gone. But while we were talking to Babe Ruth (I know I’m not the only one who talks to the Babe, am I?) it started to rain again. The wind was biting, and I began to wonder if we were even going to get this game in. But it was only 6:30. More than two hours to go.

Up at our seats it was deserted. And cold. Very cold. Yesterday’s balmy temperatures were gone. And it was raining again. We tried drinking hot chocolate, but we were still cold.

“Do you think I should buy a blanket?” I asked corwin.

“Just think how cute the photos will be of our kittens sleeping on it,” he said. That decided it. I went in search of a souvenir blanket prepared to pay whatever exorbitant price they offered.

The first two souvenir stands I visited, though, did not have blankets. Both advised me to try the big store. I took the elevator back to the Great Hall and went into the really large team store there, asking a uniformed employee where the blankets were. “There might be some downstairs,” he said. “Someone’s trying to bring some up, but I don’t know how long it’ll take.”

“Wait, you mean you don’t have them in stock, but you might have them in storage?” I asked.

“Basically.” He shrugged. Two more people came up and asked him the same question.

Just then a guy pushing a cart full of inventory boxes came into the store and several other store employees pounced on him. “Is that the blankets?” “Are the blankets in that box?”

He shook his head. “This is hoodies. Just hoodies. Lots and lots of hoodies.”

“What about blankets?” several people asked him.

“I don’t know about blankets,” he said. “We sent someone around to all the stores to see if they have any.”

Well, that didn’t sound too promising, but I tried the large store at the top of the escalator, too. No dice. No blankets. And for once there were none of those “get a free gift for signing up for a credit card” offer stands, either! Many times in the past they’ve offered a blanket, but I’ve never been that tempted. Tonight I would have happily gotten a credit card with a ridiculous APR if it would have gotten me a blanket.

Instead, we just had to huddle for warmth. By the time of the first pitch, the seats had filled in a little. I’d say it ended up about 85% -90% full which was certainly far better than I had feared a few hours before. If anything, the crowd was more raucous than the night before, perhaps because of the cold and perhaps because it was all die-hards there.

Because the “first pitch” of the game at 8:37 pm was actually the 53rd pitch of the game, there was no national anthem. The umpires met at the plate and then the game jumped right into the bottom of the second inning. The lineups were the same, but the starting pitcher’s were not.

Doug Fister was on the mound for the Tigers. They got him from Seattle at the trade deadline, and he had gone 8-1 with an ERA under 2.00. In fact, the Tigers had gone on a tear at the end of the season. Another way to look at it, though, is that in their final 50 games of the season, the Tigers faced a team with a better than .500 record only four times. How much of Fister’s success was facing weak opposition?

Well, the Yankees looked poised to jump on him right away. Jorge Posada led off the night’s festivities with a single that brought roar out of the crowd. That was followed by a Russell Martin double, and with men on 2nd and 3rd and no outs, it really seemed the Yankees had spent all night grinding their teeth waiting to get up to mash the ball.

But. Then Gardner hit a soft grounder to third and for some reason Jorge Posada was caught halfway to home plate with a deer in the headlights look. He was tagged out, and then there were men on first and second and one out. Not nearly as much fun. Fister then balked! So, it was men on second and third again, but Fister wiggled out of it, striking out Jeter and Granderson to escape.

In the top of the third, the Yankees took the field for the first time that day, and the Bleacher Creature roll call seemed even louder than usual. What ensued was a pitchers duel in which Ivan Nova and Fister traded 1-2-3 innings for a while. In the top of the fifth, Nova got into and out of trouble, helped by a some fabulous defense. After striking out Victor Martinez, he walked Alex Avila. Ryan Raburn then had a soft hit, and Avila went to second. Up came Jhonny Peralta, who lined a shot into center field, but Granderson came up throwing, pegged Jeter, who pegged Martin, who pegged the baserunner Avila in a play that wasn’t even that close! The runners moved up to second and third, but then there were two out, and Granderson hauled in a fly ball in left center to end the inning.

Fister also had a modicum of trouble in the fifth, but this time the Yankees looked on the verge of getting to him. First Gardner led off with a shot to right that went to the warning track and on a warmer night or one where the wind wasn’t blowing briskly in (brrrrr, it really was in our faces the whole night) it would have been a home run. Jeter grounded out, but then Granderson singled and it felt like a breakthrough, first baserunner since that first inning of the night (which was actually the second). Cano followed Granderson’s hit with a long drive of his own, which bounced off the top of the wall. This ended up going to video review to prove it was a double and a good call. Cano stayed at second, but Granderson scored to make it 2-1 Yankees, at least. A-Rod followed that with ANOTHER long drive to the warning track, this one to center, this one caught.

It could have come apart for Nova in the top of the sixth, but it didn’t. After a leadoff walk to Austin Jackson, Magglio Ordonez swung the bat in a hit and run… but Cano ran to cover second and the ball was a hopper up the middle. It meant Ordonez hit into an easy double play instead of avoiding it by starting the runner. Cano snagged the ball right at second base and threw easily to first to complete the double play. And then Delmon Young sent a flare into right that Nick Swisher caught in a full body dive to end the inning.

It could have come apart for Doug Fister in the bottom of the sixth or he might have escaped it. But he did not escape this time. Teixeira doubled to lead off the inning, but Swisher stranded him there staring at a called strike three. Then Jorge walked, but Martin grounded out. One more out and Fister would wiggle free. But Gardner hit a seeing eye single through the infield, scoring two, and then Jeter followed that with a hit-and-run single that send Gardner to third. Granderson then walked to load the bases, and with the score still 2-1, manager Jim Leyland went to his bullpen. On came Al Albuquerque, whose last name is so long, the poor clubhouse guys had to sew his name onto the back of his jersey almost in a full circle around his number.

On Albuquerque’s second pitch, Cano hit one almost all the way to Albuquerque. It was a no doubter, grand slam, into the second deck. If a stiff wind hadn’t been blowing in, I think it would have been the third deck. The score was suddenly 8-1 Yankees, and that was pretty much the ballgame.

There was a smattering of action toward the end. The Yankees scratched one more off a reliever names Daniel Schlereth in the eighth, and Nova finally reached 100 pitches in the 9th (but it was like the 7th since it had been the third when he started pitching) and the Tigers finally reached Nova. He’d given up only two hits prior to the inning, but with one out he gave up two hits and a walk, and left the mound to a thunderous ovation. Luis Ayala came in to mop up, but only made more of a mess, giving up two more hits and allowing two men to score, at which point Girardi had had enough and just went straight to Mariano Rivera to get the final out of the game.

Three pitches later Rivera had mowed down Wilson Betemit, good morning, good afternoon, and good night. And now it is time to say good night. I’ll be back at the Stadium tomorrow for the 3:07 pm first pitch.

Herm Krabbenhoft
& Trent McCotter
“Most Runs Batted In: By an Individual Player — During a Single Season — In the American League”

Don’t let this dry title fool you; this presentation is a bombshell. And first thing in the morning on the first day of the convention, too!

I don’t think Trent was here, and Herm gave the presentation. Herm is an old pro at these SABR presentations, and beyond that he is a maniacal researcher. Which is excellent, because his near-obsessive attention to detail may have uncovered one of the most significant errors in the official MLB record books. Herm laid out the details of the RBI records kept for the 1931 Yankees and the 1937 Tigers. He found several games lacking accurate records. In the Tigers alone, 7 players had their records affected, including Charlie Gehringer, Hank Greenberg, Rudy York, Marv Owen, some that year by as many as +3 or -2. The records were transmitted to the leagues each night by hand-writing the results in a ledger and errors could be introduced. Herm then took us play by play through a specific game in 1937 for which multiple newspaper stories existed (along with newspaper box scores) that attributed one RBI to Greenberg, one to York. However the official day-to-day record of the league records zero for Greenberg, three for York, and seven total for the game when other box scores have only six. There were nine such “RBI-error games” recorded in that year. If this is correct, then Greenberg would have a total of 184 RBI for the year.

Meanwhile in 1931, there are 9 such games for the 1931 Yankees, which if taken into account, would give Lou Gehrig 184 RBI for that season. Thus Greenberg and Gehrig should be considered tied for the record for the most RBI in a single season.

One audience member exclaimed during questions, “This undermines everything in the official record!” Yes, yes it does. Another audience member asked, “Has any of this been accepted?” By the powers that be, MLB, Elias, etc?

Herm’s answer: “Elias has not accepted any of this. I spoke to Seymour [Siwoff] this morning [of the Elias Sports Bureau, specifically asking him about correcting the RBI record for York, but also for Greenberg.] And here’s a close to verbatim version of what he said to me: ‘We can’t do this. It’s an embarrassment for us. We didn’t do it, Howe [News Bureau] did it. Do what you want, it’s a free country, good luck.’ He made a business decision. I can’t blame him.”

Quite a bombshell, eh? Herm is writing up some more extensive research on correcting RBI records for the upcoming Baseball Research Journal, which I am editing for SABR. His research travels trying to track down play by play data for all the questionable games have taken him from the Detroit Public Library, to the New York Public Library, to Widener Library at Harvard University, and beyond.

STEVE STEINBERG, “Organized Baseball Circles the Wagons & Silences The Whistleblower”

Steve presented on the largely forgotten figure of Horace Fogel, who was a significant figure in early 1900s baseball who was drummed out and blacklisted after speaking out against corruption in the game. Among other things, he was a sportswriter, team owner of the Phillies, scout for the Indiana Hoosiers (1887), manager of the Giants (1902, pre McGraw), and even president of the Atlantic League. As Steve put it, “If there was a guy who knew there the bodies were buried, this was the guy.”

Nowadays it’s fashionable to question whether other World Series’ besides the 1919 one were fixed. But in Fogel’s day, leveling the accusations he did got him banned from baseball. The owners and even the other baseball writers and newspapers went on a campaign to silence him. Even though Steve provided numerous examples of other people claiming corruption in the press, none did it for as long and as loudly as Fogel. F. C. Lane, the editor of MLB’s Baseball Magazine, described Fogel as “anarchistic” and a “fanatic.” His accusations were considered dangerous and destabilizing the game, tearing it down, etc… Once he was drummed out, Fogel teamed up with Billy Voltz of the Voltz news bureau to sell a syndicated “inside baseball” column to newspapers around the country. The BBWAA went on a campaign to ensure that no newspaper would pick up his column. Steve could only find a single small paper in Pennsylvania whose editor also included an editorial excoriating Fogel’s critics.

It wasn’t until after the Black Sox scandal broke that anyone began to listen to Fogel again. In October 1920 he complained loudly and bitterly of how the Giants were always given the advantage (by umpires etc) over the Phillies and how the corruption ruined the game. After he popped off, an actual article appeared in the New York Herald, the headline of which read: “$150,000 Offered Phillies, Dooin Charges in 1908.”

ROSS DAVIES
Toolson’s Secrets: A Close Call for the Baseball Antitrust Exemption

I missed the very beginning of this presentation, but Ross Davies won the award for best presentation at the convention last year, and so I definitely wanted to try to make it to his slot. This was on the 1953 Supreme Court case that challenged baseball’s antitrust exemption. Toolson had brought the charge based not on the Sherman Antitrust Act, but on the 1914 Clayton Act which allowed private citizens to challenge a monopoly and not just the government.

Back in 1922, the ruling was that baseball was not interstate commerce, but local commerce, and congress and the supreme court did not regulate local commerce, therefore it wasn’t that baseball wasn’t a monopoly but that it was outside their purview. However after the New Deal in the 1930s the perception of what was and wasn’t interstate commerce began to change. By 1953 when the Toolson case comes up, plenty of people were seeing MLB as interstate commerce. Not only was there much more travel, but also farm teams and farm systems reaching across multiple states, etc.

Ross then went through justice by justice to examine each man’s thoughts about labor issues, antitrust, and baseball to show that Toolson actually had a decent shot to win the case, even though in the end he didn’t. Ross’s research is impressive, including personal letters, diary entries, and other information including later decisions handed down by the same justices, one of whom was still on the court when the Curt Flood case came around.

Ross also gave a “Curt Flood versus Rehnquist” Bobblehead Doll to an audience member who correctly identified Rehnquist in a photo from his days as a clerk for one of the Toolson justices. All in all, an illuminating and informative presentation.

ADRIAN BURGOS
Scouting the Americas for Latino Giants: Alex Pompez and a “Latino” Approach to Talent Acquisition

This presentation was based on Burgos’s recent book on Alex Pompez, who was the owner of the New York Cuban Giants. After the color line came down in major league baseball, the Negro League faded, and the Giants hired Pompez to help develop their talent, both from the Negro Leagues and from Latin America. “You can argue that Alex Pompez was the most influential man in opening the pipeline from the Dominican Republic TWICE,” Burgos said, “first into the negro leagues and then in to the major leagues. He may not have invented the ‘latino; approach, he certainly perfected it.”

The latino approach included not only using his network of contacts in Latin American to locate talent, but mentoring the young players when they arrived in the US. He could tell families of young prospects that the Giants were the place to sign because any team can give you money, but only the Giants had someone who spoke Spanish (Pompez) who would act as caretaker for their boy. In spring training Pompez would give not only language lessons but culture lessons. In the days of segregation they needed to be taught how to act, and how to get alone in the racially charged USA the way they had not had to in other countries.

The 1954 Giants are a great example of the diversity that Pompez led to the Giants, including Willie Mays, Monte Irvin, Hank Thompson, Ruben Gomez, Ramon Monzant.

FRANCISCO BALDERRAMA
and Ricardo Santillan
“Mexican American Baseball in Los Angeles: A Pictorial History of Baseball from East LA to Dodger Stadium”

Balderrama told the story of the Latino Baseball History Project, which is also detailed in the convention publication ENDLESS SUMMER. One of his classes did a historical project to document baseball in Mexican American communities in southern California. It then caught on with the Baseball Reliquary, and now it’s a permanent exhibition at a local university. The project documents how for generations baseball has been central to the communities of Mexican Americans. The importance of the Nine Pena Brothers (whose father and grandfather played baseball and the family was on Ripley’s Believe it Or Not), the winningest team in Mexican American baseball: Los Chorizeros, and the ways that Sunday baseball after church provided an opportunity for community building and for politicians to meet the community. He showed a DVD of photos and video of several still-living players and their relatives doing interviews.

Tonight is the Fangraphs.com event, which I probably won’t blog, since I would assume those folks will have plenty of coverage at their own site!

One of those hits was to Derek Jeter, though, one more on Jeter’s recently resumed march to 3,000 hits. (It was #2,997.) Philip Hughes also returned to the mound for the Yankees. He had to knock off some rust in the first inning, when he gave up two runs, but otherwise was pretty good until the fifth, when he started to get wild again. Sergio Mitre just gave up two more runs, though, so it’s not looking very good for the Yankees, who are down to three outs left and down 5-0 at this point.

Still, even if they lose, there’s little better way I can imagine to start a four day weekend of intense baseball geekery. Assuming there’s wireless Internet at the hotel, I’ll be reporting from the SABR convention all weekend. I’ll recap various presentations and events as I’ve done for the past few years here at Why I Like Baseball.

SABR, in case you don’t know, is the Society for American Baseball Research. I joined SABR in 2001, my first convention was in 2002, which means this will be my tenth one. I haven’t missed one yet since joining. I was actually considering skipping this year, given how far it is and that I’ve already been to both ballparks that we’ll be visiting (see previous entries from Dodger Stadium and Anaheim Stadium, which was called Edison Field back when I was there. However, one of the golden rules of baseball is don’t mess with a streak, so I decided I oughtta go. Plus, in January I took on the role of Publications Director for SABR. (Stu Shea and I share the position and responsibilities and I acted as managing editor on the convention’s research publication.) So I really have to be there.

Oh hey, the Yankees just scored a run, have two in scoring position and no one out, and now the Indians’ closer has to come in the game. Chris Perez–this is the first time I’m getting a look at him. Wild motion, no? He really hucks it. I consider this scouting for a potential postseason matchup. The Indians got off to a hot start and despite some injuries are still in first place in the AL Central. (In case you didn’t know, the Yankees are in first place in the East.)

Two more runs are in, but two outs now. 5-3 Indians, Brett Gardner at the plate. He needs to get on to bring the tying run to the plate, in the person of Derek Jeter. Can it happen? Baseball seems to have this way of creating the possibilities for important moments in every game.

Not this time. Brett Gardner stares at a tricky breaking ball for called strike three. Jeter will try to get #3000 at home in the Bronx before the All-Star break hits next week.

Stay tuned.

Freddy Garcia made a bid to be just as good as hamstrung Bartolo Colon. after a dismal outing against the Red Sox, he was at his crafty best, throwing 6.2 innings, scattering 7 hits, and giving up only one run. Boone Logan, Luis Ayala, and Kevin Whelan did the rest. Logan was poised under pressure as he came in with two outs and a man on, then promptly walked Grady Sizemore. The next play let a runner on with an error (A-Rod fielded the ball but threw wide to Cano.) With the bases loaded, and what was then only a 6-1 lead, the wheels could have come off. But Logan got Shin Soo Choo to line softly to Jeter to end the threat. Whelan controlled his jitters much better than he did Friday, walking only one in an otherwise uneventful ninth.

The pitching wasn’t the story today though, really. The offense was. The lumber that has slumbered through the cold months of April and May is finally waking up. The lineup banged out 18 hits today, and nine runs. Jeter had two hits, and they were both RBI hits, plus he sent two balls deep to the warning track that on a favorable-wind-day would have likely been out of the park. In five plate appearances, Granderson was 4-for-4 with an RBI sac fly. A-Rod had three hits, including a key double in the 5th inning’s 5-run rally. Cano, Swisher, and Jorge each had two hits, and Brett Gardner had three hits: two doubles and triple. Curiously, there were no home runs in today’s barrage. Just the good old “keep the line moving” approach.

There were no bench-clearing incidents, no moments of high drama or reversal, no nail-biting, and no one leaving the game injured. Which made it the odd game out when one considers all that has happened this past week between getting swept by the Red Sox, all the beanball warring, injuries to Colon and Joba and so on.

Just a nice Sunday afternoon of baseball.

Other notes from today’s stadium excursion:

Jeter’s hits today were #2,992 and #2,993. One of the beat writers tweeted that it’s been one year and a day since Jeter hit a home run out of the park at Yankee Stadium. (He did have an inside-the-park homer between now and then.) He really did come close today. That first one he hit off Josh Tomlin went straight to dead center, and Michael Brantley caught it with his back to the plate, on the warning track in front of the 408 ft. sign, the deepest spot in the park.

corwin and I spent some time walking around the ballpark before the game today. The line for the museum was too long, so we walked around a bit instead. Today in particular I noticed a lot of women wearing Victoria’s Secret brand Yankees stuff. Yes, in case you haven’t heard of this, Victoria’s Secret has a whole line of “casual wear” (the “PINK” line, which isn’t actually colored pink, sweats and pajamas mostly, as opposed to lingerie/bras) that is themed to MLB teams. Some years ago Bud Selig undertook a study of women’s economic impact in baseball and discovered 1) most ticket-buying decisions are made by the female in a couple or family, and 2) a huge untapped market for merchandising aimed at women. The first thing you saw was the pink jerseys and hats appearing in major league team souvenir stores. This is the next logical step. (Amusingly but not surprisingly, the Yankees are the most popular team by a factor more than two over the next most popular team among Victoria’s Secret shoppers. click to see for yourself). I myself don’t wear pink nor do I shop at Victoria’s Secret, but kudos to Selig for recognizing that both sides of the bread are being buttered.

Beware the hot wings from the NYY Steak Express stand. corwin got 8 wings. They’re large, breaded to soak up maximum hot sauce, and were so hot that even a pepperhead like him had to pace himself eating them. Afterward he even had to go buy a soda to try to cool down. And he missed the entire seventh inning later while, um, paying his dues. This made the new scoreboard promo (along the lines of the French’s Mustard Smile Cam and the 24 Hour Fitness Fan Cam), the Frank’s Hot Sauce Cam, extra funny.

Speaking of both concessions and women’s stuff being pink, they now have the ice cream helmet cups in both blue and pink. I might have to get some ice cream just to say I have a complete collection.

We did not get the Mark Teixeira bat today, as we did not bring a youngster with us. In the moment when the “bat day tradition” of everyone holding up their bats was going on, I really missed Bob Sheppard. His voice was so authoritative when he would instruct the children throughout the stadium to SLOWWWLY and CAREFULLLY raise their bats in the air… that you’d see kids looking around and doing it with great deliberation. After all, GOD just told them to do it that way. Today’s announcement lacked that oomph. It was still fun to see all the kids, though.

One more thing I miss about the old Stadium. There doesn’t seem to be anywhere good for fans to stick up “K” signs. The facing of the upper deck is completely covered with electronic ribbon-board, and many of the “guard rail” areas are mesh or Plexiglas. Sticking them to the wall inside the Jim Beam Club just isn’t the same, you know?

I’m not just saying that. I’m a SABR member after all, and part of what we do is analyze history based on the statistical record. Well, looking at that record, the chance for warm on March 31st in New York City was pretty slim. The normal low on March 31st is 39 degrees, the normal high 51. 51 would have been GREAT. However note that the record low for March 31st is 22 degrees. If you love graphs, check this one out that shows the steady march upward of averages from March 1st through 31st:

(Courtesy of NYCWeather.us)

Now check out April and you’ll see the average temperatures much more firmly in the humane 50s and 60s, with even the lowest temps a bit more survivable.

The upshot of all this is that my overwhelming memory of the Opening Day 2011 season is that it was COLD. Verlander of Detroit’s Tigers pitched a three-hit gem, and yet the Yankees got three runs in the process thanks to one of them being a three-run homer by Mark Teixeira, who finally seems to have the formula to beat a “slow start” like he traditionally has. Sabathia wasn’t his best, but he kept them in the game, and Granderson added a homer against his old team as well (hit off Phil Coke, who was traded for him, haha). The final three innings were a preview of a pattern that would emerge over the following week–”Jo-So-Mo”–referring to Joba in the seventh, Soriano in the eighth, and Mariano in the ninth.

Not a lot was new at the Stadium this year that we noticed. The white championship flags that flew all last year had reverted to the usual divisional team flags (rearranged daily to show the standings). I hear there is new stuff in the museum but I wasn’t going to fight my way in there on opening day when I’ll surely have a more leisurely chance later in the season. There is a new design for collectible hot chocolate & coffee cups. That’s the kind of thing I was noticing, because it was so cold the vendors were resorting to walking around selling hot chocolate. One of my companions brought a beer back to the seats and we were too cold to drink it.

Another cold note, it was the first opening day I’ve been to without Freddy the Fan. We miss you Freddy.

I ended up spending the entire sixth inning in the women’s room, where it was like a sauna, thank goodness. Another of our group spent a whole inning in the men’s room, which he said was like a party going on there were so many people huddled in there.

The actual game-time temperature, if you must know, was 40 degrees. However, it was also drizzling with a steady wind. Acuweather’s “feels like” indicator said “Feels like 23 degrees.”

It was colder than that Opening Day where Chuck Knoblauch played left field for the first time and got a standing ovation for catching a ball. Heck, it was so cold that day that when the SUN came out, even that got a standing o. (Maybe we just felt warmer standing up…) It was also colder than the opening day where Hideki Matsui hit a grand slam, his first game at Yankee Stadium, a game which had been delayed by a day because of snow. Yes, I was there, too.

I seriously think it’s time to go back to a 154 game schedule, so that there is room for actual baseball during actual baseball weather as well as the three-tiered playoff system. The April games are the worst attended of the entire season (right, Bud?) so the revenue lost wouldn’t be that significant, and guess what? That might even make a bit of time for the World Baseball Classic to be played without making everyone scream, as well. Please Mr. Commissioner, give it a thought, or start building a dome in the Bronx.

I’m not. I’m in FLORIDA. And it is HOT and SUNNY here. This is GLORIOUS.

Yesterday I went with my parents (who are big baseball nuts, too) to George M. Steinbrenner Field in Tampa to take in a tilt between the Yankees and Phillies. Both of these teams have chips on their shoulders, having both been expecting to meet at the Big Dance last October/November, and both jilted by the machinations of the upstart Giants and Rangers.

It was a split squad day for the Yankees, meaning that — alas — Jeter, A-Rod, Teixeira, and Cano were all on a road trip to face the Orioles. The starters who remained behind in Tampa were Gardner, Granderson, Swisher, Posada, and Russell Martin (the new full-time catcher, now that Posada is the full-time DH). Okay, so those latter five are not chopped liver, but it still felt a bit like we got the second string. Especially when the Phillies had brought pretty much their A lineup:

Shane Victorino
Placido Polanco
Jimmy Rollins
Ryan Howard
Ben Francisco
Ross Gload
John Mayberry
Carlos Ruiz aka Chooch
Wilson Valdez

Chase Utley is down with some kind of a knee issue and there are rumors it’s worse than the Phils are letting on.

Oh yeah, and they had Roy Oswalt on the mound, and we had AJ Burnett. So, it felt like the Philadelphia first string against the New York second string.

At least for the first inning. AJ was “good AJ” setting them down 1-2-3, 15 pitches, 9 for strikes. Oswalt did the same in the bottom of the frame. His changeup looked pretty devastating.

Then in the second, AJ did it again, striking out Ryan Howard (what a shock) and then getting two quick ground balls. Huh. Good AJ. Another 14 pitches, 11 for strikes. So, Oswalt’s turn. Granderson led off with a single, Posada flied out, but Eric Chavez (one of the many veterans in camp for cheap hoping to hook on with a winner) also singled, a worm-burner to the right side. Granderson poured on the jets and beat the throw to third.

Oswalt bore down facing Jorge Vazquez, the man they call the “Mexican Babe Ruth” i.e. a doughy slugger who hits moon shots. (In Spanish they call him “El Chato” which means “chunky one.”) Earlier in the spring he hit one OVER the big, black batters eye in center field (408 feet at the base of the wall). Cashman calls him a major league bat, but Vazquez’s way to the big leagues is blocked, though, by two fellas with long term contracts: Alex Rodriguez and Mark Teixeira.

So what we wanted to see what Vazquez go boom. Oswalt was too much for him though, and he struck out. So up came skinny Eduardo Nunez, who is battling for the backup infielder job.

Nunez went boom. Three run shot. Cheers all around. Well, not all around because at least 40% of the audience was in red. The Phillies longtime spring home is Clearwater, which is only a 20 minute drive away. 3-0 Yankees. Oswalt then struck out Ramiro Pena (another hopeful for the utility infielder job, but who isn’t known for his bat), to restore order and end the inning.

In the third… Good AJ! Another 1-2-3, finishing his outing with a 16 more pitches, for a total of 45 efficient pitches. Larry Rothschild, whatever you’re doing, keep it up. (When Rothschild was interviewed for the pitching coach job, apparently they sat him down in front of video of Burnett and asked what he’d do to fix him. I have a feeling the fix is more psychological than mechanical, though…)

Oswalt either got unsettled by the homer or something was starting to go out of whack for him when he gave it up. He started to throw more balls, especially on the first pitch, gave up a single to Russell Martin, then went to a full count on Nick Swisher. I really think they ought to just start Swisher at 3-2 every at bat, the game will go faster… okay, just kidding, but seriously he works the count so much I have more at bats of his recorded with “fc” than without.

Swisher, unfortunately, flied out. But then Granderson took Oswalt deep for a two run shot and knocked him from the game. 5-0 Yankees.

And they would have had more! Posada followed with a ringing double, and then Chavez singled. Posada appeared a bit surprised to see Rob Thompson waving him home. He was safe at the plate by a few feet.

However, you know that appeal play you see teams do all the time and they never ever ever get the call? The Phillies threw over to third base… and got the call. Posada was called out for not touching third. It’s too bad Jeter wasn’t there to see it because I’m sure Georgie wouldn’t hear the end of it. Okay, he probably still will never hear the end of it. I wonder what the fine in kangaroo court is for not touching third?

That ended the inning. In the top of the fourth, Joba Chamberlain kept the perfect string going, and then Pedro Feliciano, the lefty workhorse reliever the Yankees signed away from the Mets, also had a nice 1-2-3 including strikeouts of Howard and Francisco. The Yankees tacked on two more runs, off a Phillies pitcher whose name we never got (but he was #49, welcome to spring training). This was a single by Brett Gardner, who we love to see on first because he almost always steals, who then stole, yay, Granderson walked, Posada singled in a run (making up for his gaffe earlier), and then Chavez followed with an RBI single, to boot.

The Yankees were winning after 5 7-0. At that point I believe the technical term is they were murdilizing the Phils.

Phillies fans did get something to cheer about when Hector Noesi give up a solo homer to Wilson Valdez, but that was pretty much it.

Today I’m sore! Spring training is a time to get in shape for the season… for fans, too. My back is killing me. Apparently I need to work up to spending three straight hours in a stadium seat. Actually, it was only a 2.5 hour game! Fortunately I have the day off today. The Yankees are at the Braves and so we’re watching the game through streaming video on the Internet. Tomorrow, our first night game! I better go do some stretching and sharpen my pencils.

P.S. Had a look at the new statue of George outside the stadium. My mother thinks it’s “smaller than life size.” I find that unlikely, it’s just the George was such a larger-than-life personality that seeing an actual size statue seems small in comparison. RIP George. It was distinctly weird to look up at the owner’s box and not see you sitting there.

The reason I took the Duren assignment for the Bioproject, honestly, is because I was hoping to have another great chat with Ryne like the one we had back in 2003 when I was working on The 50 Greatest Yankees Games. He winters in Florida like many people, and so I met him one February when I went down for pitchers and catchers. On that trip I interviewed a lot of former Yankees, including Tom Tresh (who also sadly passed as well) and Phil Linz (still kickin’). Ryne wanted to know if I could meet him at a greasy spoon near Lakeland. This wasn’t that near either his home nor where I was, but I readily agreed.

When I got there I found out why he wanted to meet there–because of the proximity to several large pawn shops. In his dotage, Ryne had become something of a junk connoisseur, and apparently it’s more fun to hunt for junk with company that without. I happily went with him to pick through piles of used lawnmowers, lamps, stereo equipment, etc. We found no gems, but it was fun, and then we settled into the little diner nearby to have a bite to eat and talk baseball.

At the time I was working on The 50 Greatest Yankee Games, so I had a bunch of questions about Duren’s teammates to ask him (he played with the Yankees from 1958-1961) but sometimes you never know what you’re going to find if you just let a fellow talk. And Duren was a talker, that’s for sure.

In our conversation he told me stories about how Lefty O’Doul helped him with his pitching control, how alcoholism probably hurt his control, meeting Marilyn Monroe, getting batting tips from Joe DiMaggio, how having an infected heart as a child turned him into a baseball fan, Whitey Ford, Ralph Terry, and much more. What follows is pretty much a verbatim transcript of that afternoon:

Ryne Duren: Did you know I just wrote a book, too?

Cecilia Tan: No, I had no idea.

RD: I’ll get you a copy. [goes out and gets one from the car] I’m going to go down and autograph copies at the museum in St. Pete [where the "Baseball as America" Hall of Fame exhibit was showing at the time]. I don’t know how much research you did about me but I’m known for two things, I have real bad eyes and I had terrible alcohol problem. Anyway, this is kind of a play off of both. [The title of the book is "I Can See Clearly Now."]

CT: Did you really hit a guy in the on deck circle in the minors?

RD: Oh no. That’s a myth. But what I did do was Jim Piersall got out of the batter’s circle, and got close to home plate as the on deck hitter, so I threw a ball that almost hit him and he ducked out of the way and started hollering at me. Now when you played Boston, Ted Williams would come up and he’d stand there and he would look from just about the same place that Piersall was. He wouldn’t be in the batter’s box but he’d stand there and watch the pitches as you warmed up. So he was Ted Williams. But Jim Piersall was Jim Piersall. So I threw the ball near him, and he said “What’s the matter with you? What are you doing?” and I said “What are YOU doing? You got yourself confused with a hitter.” (laughs) But then everybody played off of that. You’ll hear guys at banquets or wherever you go telling Ryne Duren stories. And anything that’s blind or kind of crazy, they stick me in it. That’s okay. Keeps my profile up.

CT: Did you start out a starter and shift to the bullpen?

RD: Oh yeah. Pretty much everyone did back then. What happened was I never was a reliever all the way through. And I always had a control problem. So they suffered out with me in the minor leagues. It was fairly typical the first year I led the league in hit batsmen and wild pitches, and the second year I pitched decently and I was on a good ball club, a pennant-winning ball club, and I was 15 wins I think, but yet, 9 or 10 base on balls and maybe 12-13-14 strikeouts, the kind of thing that just drives people mad. They watched me for a couple of years and although I got a little bit stronger, the control never came around.

The next year after that I won 17 games in A ball but it wasn’t a strong A league. I’d go out there and I probably had 7 or 8 base on balls. But as soon as I got to a little higher elevation, what happened when I was in the Pacific Coast League in 1955, my arm was bad, I pinched a nerve in it, in ’53 and ’54 I was in the Texas League, and just hanging in there every year, 12-13 wins, and about as many losses with a bad ball club, and I just could not improve. There were a lot of things happening, now that I look back on it. One of them was I think how disgusted the managers were with me, with all that talent, I could throw it so hard, and I’d stand out there, and I’d throw 250 pitches, the last one as hard as the first, and they were all saying–and this is the cleaned up version–’you jerk, what’s the matter with you, if I could throw like that I’d be making thousands of dollars in the big leagues.’ So it was a frustrating time.

As I write about in my book, I had such a high priority for alcohol, not to use it to get high or to get drunk but as the mark of a man. So I initially didn’t drink for a fix, I drank to belong and to be somebody. Oh now if you understand alcohol addiction, for most people, like me, it can just grow. It wasn’t until I got into treatment in Milwaukee, the seventh one I was in, the tenth time I was hospitalized, that I understood the nature of my problem. They had a Catholic priest who had been through the same problem and he said gentlemen, we are drug addicts as sure as if we are hooked on heroin. And that was the first time that I heard the nature of my problem, that I was hooked on a drug. So before that I was an alcoholic and I would say that but I had no idea what that meant. I couldn’t get past the stigma thing. So the reason I’m telling you that, is that after I got on top of it and in subsequent studies, I realized that that was part of the problem of [pitching] control. In the central nervous system, when it’s being affected by alcohol, it kept me from developing that muscle memory sense that you need. [I] never had any coaching in pitching [and] wasn’t allowed to pitch until I was 19 years old. They wouldn’t let me pitch in high school because I threw so hard, nobody wanted to be responsible for it, until we played amateur ball in our small towns up there after I got out.

So then in 1956, two things happened that I think are noteworthy. The first one was that through that winter, I told you I had the pinched nerve in ’55 and it never did get better, and so over the winter something happened and that was that subconsciously there was so much pain connected with my throwing toward the end of ’55 that I think subconsciously I couldn’t turn the ball loose with reckless abandon with my arm like I had earlier. So I’m out in the PCL, and I run into a guy by the name of Lefty O’Doul. One day he got me aside and he said, Ryney old boy, the reason that you can’t throw strikes is because you don’t know how to “move the ball.” That was his term, like it was yesterday I can hear him say that. I said well what are you talking about Lefty, “move the ball?” He said go warm up and I’ll show you. So we’re standing there in front of the dugout, on the third base side up in Vancouver, BC. And he says are you loose Ryney? I said yeah. Now in those days you used to warm up right in front of the dugout. There was another home plate there where the fans could watch you warm up. They don’t do that anymore, now there’s the bullpen or down the sidelines. So I was warming up and loose and everything, and he said, okay, now. I had a catcher, Lennie O’Neill, and he said Ryney, throw the baseball high and tight. So I threw one up about there (holds hand about head high) for Lennie, and he caught it about there. And he said, no, high and tight. So I threw it up a little higher and he caught it a little higher, and he said, no, I mean throw one high and tight. So I threw it so high he jumped for it and couldn’t get it, and he said no Ryney, high and tight, and I looked at him and I said what’s wrong with you? So then I cranked one right out of the stadium, threw it right out of the ballpark. And he said, now you got it!

Now the regular home plate, the game home plate, is way over there, so he says now throw one low and away. So I just went over and threw it and he says, that’s it. Now high and away, so I threw another one out of the ballpark, we’re just kind of kidding and having fun, and he says now throw one low and in, and I hit the screen right over here. So all of a sudden it’s HERE and THERE and THERE and THERE, instead of here and there and there and there. And he said now look down here. And I had four distinct steps in the dirt on the mound. I had these four distinct marks. He said look, your body is doing something a little different every time, doesn’t it. And he said, and you have a pretty good idea what you have to do to throw the ball up here, or over here, right? And he says well, that’s what’s wrong. You’re trying to make an adjustment in here, where you can’t really distinguish between here and there. It’s logical, it makes sense. This guy was a gifted man, a genius, and I could tell you more about him or you could look him up as Casey used to say. But anyway, he said that’s all there is to it, Ryney, all you have to do is throw it here and here instead of trying to go out and throw down here every time, now you develop a sense. He said, I’ll bet you that you can win pretty soon.

But there was something else happening at that time, and I told you that subconsciously at that time I couldn’t throw so hard. So my next start coincided with that, we’re at San Francisco Seals stadium, and that was the name of the club before the Giants moved out there, and so we’re in the 8th inning, and we have a 7-1 lead, or 6-1, something like that, and I’ve got one or two out already, and finally there are two or three errors and maybe a base on balls or the umpire blew one or something, or whatever happened, when I was usually pitching a bloop hit, for whatever reason I couldn’t get that guy out, the third guy in the inning. So Lefty came out after a couple of errors and with two or three runs scored he said to me, you know, I think the fix is on. He was just trying to be light and laugh at it. And I said well if it is Left’, I don’t know about it. So he said it’s all right, I’m not taking you out, I thought I’d just come out here and break things up a little bit. And then I said, you know, I’ll take care of it, you go on back. And that was my kind of rapport with him. He went back to the dugout, and now, another error, another error, a bloop hit, and he came out and said I gotta take you out now Ryne, I’m sorry. I said why? I’m pitching great. I don’t want to come out. He said well, this is my second trip to the mound, so I have to take you out. I said no you don’t–you can take yourself out of the game. And I don’t know why I knew that, but I did, and I said just ask the umpire. So the umpire came out, and Lefty called him out there, and the umpire said that’s right, but you’ll have to leave the game, off the bench. And Lefty said that’s all right, I’ve had enough already, I’ll go have a beer. So he went up to the clubhouse, and Lefty liked his beer more than I did at the time which is sad to say. Now I’m not kidding at all, I’m mad as hell inside, and I’ll bet he didn’t even make it to the clubhouse before I struck that next guy out on three pitches. I didn’t give a damn if my arm fell off, It’s true, and there I was, I broke through that mental barrier I had about it. Now understand, I was throwing hard, but I don’t know if you know anything about my ability to throw, it wasn’t just hard, it was extra extra hard, compared to other pitchers, even fastball pitchers. I led the league in strikeouts or within one or so with less innings than the next guy. But anyway, that’s kind of the story, and then I went, I don’t know 50 some innings without giving up a run. At the time I had a real losing record, 1-6 or 2-7 or something, and I finished 11-11, from that point on. And the team I was on finished in 8th place. The funny part about that was that at the end of the year I got traded to Kansas City. Baltimore must never have sent a scout out or looked at me the last half of that year. So I was traded for practically nothing to Kansas City, and my first start on May 10th of 1957 was against the Yankees. They beat me 2-1, I drove in the only run that we got with a two out, two strike drag bunt, and if I’m not mistaken both their runs were unearned. So consequently I impressed them enough that I was to be traded.

CT: Back then wasn’t Kansas City considered almost like a farm club unofficially for the Yankees?

Yep, And in those days Billy Martin obliged us by having the Copacabana fight, so they wanted to get rid of him, so I got traded in essence for Billy Martin. There were some other guys involved in the trade too. Harry Suitcase Simpson went to the Yankees as did Bob Cerv… I don’t know. Anyway, that’s kind of the story.

So now I’m at Denver [the Yankees' Triple A affiliate], and I’m a starting pitcher, and I guess this is where we came in, now at Denver I was mad as hell for having to go to the minor leagues. Lou Boudreau was the manager there (KC) and he said I didn’t have anything to do with this. I had nothing to do with this–you are, as far as I’m concerned, the best one on my staff. You’ve done well and as well as you throw, you’re the last one I want to get rid of. And I really was trying to do the right thing there. So in the office where they told me to go to see about the deal, all the mucky mucks from the two teams were there, and Lee McPhail was there, and he said well, Ryne, we’re going to send you to Denver, and I said why Denver? Lou Boudreau told me I’m the last pitcher he wanted to get rid of. So in other words, you’re taking the best pitcher off the Kansas City club in his mind, and you’re sending him to the minor leagues! I said I don’t think so. “Now, Ryne, please understand, this is the New York Yankees and we do things differently here. Just go down and get your feet on the ground and we’ll have you right up.” So I relented and said okay, I’ll go, I went to Denver and my very first game was a no-hitter. And it’s the only one to this date in the history of baseball in Denver that was pitched by the home team. I think Nomo pitched one there for the Dodgers. So consequently, I went 13 and 2, got beat 1-0 twice on unearned runs, one of them was my own error, and at that point we were making a run for the championship and into the playoffs and the World Series. So down the line, I’m not sure where it started, I was 13-2 from June the 20th until then, when that season ended, September first let’s say, so I now had the opportunity a couple of times Ralph [Houk] came to me and he said you throw harder than anybody the Yankees had while I was there, and he caught a fellow by the name of Joe Page. Page was the guy who was kind of the closer at one point a left hand pitcher, and he said you throw harder than he did and your control is as good or better. He said you could be a hell of a reliever for the Yankees if you wanted to. Now I said I don’t know about that Ralph, but you know, I was open to it, I thought why waste the pitches that I throw in between starts? So after two days rest I’d go down to the bullpen and crank it up and if I felt good which I always did I’d just take off my hat and give Houk the sign that I was all right. So if you had me warmed up in the bullpen, and you had a lead to protect or you were really in a close ballgame, you’d be a damn fool if you didn’t use me. So he’d bring me in and I’d do the job. I don’t know right off hand, but let’s say I saved 8 or 10 games for him. Then we went to the playoffs and I think I won a game or two in each round, and one in the (Triple A) World Series, so at that point boy… He recommended to the Yankees that I go.

So here’s the payoff to the whole thing. What happened was that the Yankees scouts came down, a couple of them I think it was Lou McWallis (?) who said go home and pack, I’m telling the Yankees they have to bring you up, that’s all there is to it, you can help them. They were hurting a little bit in that department, they had Bob Grim, and Bob was all right but he was not a Ryne Duren or a Mariano Rivera. Nothing like that. So he says I’m calling the Yankees right after the game so go home and pack and get ready so you can get out of here tomorrow. Well, so I went home, but nothing happened. So then I did that a second time, and kind of the same thing. The next morning I grabbed the newspaper and I’ll be damned if they didn’t buy Sal Maglie. The guy who was Larsen’s opposition in the perfect game in ’56. Now we’re talking ’57. And then they got beat by Milwaukee in that World Series. I think I could have helped them in that. But irregardless, here’s the thing I want to get to, so without going there, I always kind of curious and upset about it, thinking well, these people cost me time in the big leagues, and why? why did this happen? was it Houk that wouldn’t let me go? or what was the deal? And while I was down there there was an incident where I got into not a bar fight. Somebody that was in the bar that I walked away from but in the coffee shop later started up again–there was a staged thing where he had a cop sitting next to him and he said something smart enough to me that I had to grab him, and then the cop hit me and I ended up in the hospital and in jail. And Houk was the manager there and so I thought maybe that was it. So let’s say maybe ten years ago now I was out at a charity function in Denver and Bob Howsum was there, Bob Howsum was our general manager at that time. So I said Bob, this has always bothered me, what happened, at that time, how come I didn’t go up, in spite of the fact that this scout said I was going to go and they told me to pack and all that. He said Ryne it’s very simple, and I said well, I’ve been confused all these years so would you straighten me out? He said you pitched too good. If we had taken you out of here we would have had a rebellion of the fans and we were doing so well and everything that we convinced the Yankees that if you were pitching there was an extra thousand people or whatever in the stands. And so I suppose that in a sense he was right about that. That’s the Denver story.

Anyway, Houk was right, I could relieve with the Yankees. I sat on the bench a long time before I ever got a chance to make my first appearance, and when they did this is the funniest thing ever, it’s amazing how that happens, but Ralph Houk and I were in the clubhouse early, we would go in those days and come in and sit around the clubhouse for a while, and I’m dressed and everything and I said to Ralph, “Would you do me a favor? Would you take the fungo stick and just hit some balls back at me on the mound? You know, I haven’t been in the game in a long time…” and you know, at least you’re doing something and looking good and I always tried to impress people. So he came out and hit a bunch of ground balls back and I stabbed this way and that way at them. So now they bring me in in the ninth inning with one out and the tying run on third. We were playing Baltimore, and the winning run is on first with one out. Jim Marshall is the hitter. And I threw Jim Marshall a fastball way from him, he drilled it back to the mound, boom, one hop, right there in my glove: to second, to first, we go into the clubhouse a winner. So I saved that first one with my glove! (laughs) Then Casey afterward he was you know, “Oh he’s an amazing man, isn’t he? He knew just what to do with it.” Well, you know, nine years in baseball, you better know what to do with it! So anyway, you know, that kind of gets you up to date. And from there on I’d come into the game and it was a little different than it is today. I didn’t pitch the ninth inning, I’d be in there the 8th and the ninth, many times in the seventh, and a lot of times maybe even the sixth. In the sixth game of the World Series, which is probably my crowning moment, I was in there in the fourth inning, and I was still in there in the tenth. Pretty good for a short man! (laughs) That was, of all the games I was in with the Yankees, that was the biggest game that I was in. And the biggest one I WASN’T in was the seventh game of the 1960 series. I should have been in that game for a couple of reasons. And I think I know the reasons I wasn’t in that game.

CT: What do you think those reasons are?

Well, in-house politics. The guy Jim Coates that was Eddie Lopat’s buddy, Lopat brought him along through the organization, and he threw the three-run homer to Hal Smith, and he brought into the game in a bunt situation and Bobby Shantz was taken out, and Shantz was the best fielder in baseball with a left hand hitter up, and Coates was not the greatest fielder–I shouldn’t get into all of that.

The other one was that maybe my drinking reputation by then had soured people on me, because it had progressed some, but at the same time they had already had me in the series earlier and I had pitched well, and I could still throw good then. I think more than anything else it was politics. And the other thing was that Casey was gone, he knew it, and he really didn’t care. He started Ditmar in the series and he should have started Whitey Ford, you know. Everybody, you know it was just a screwed up thing. Ralph Terry autographed a picture to me that was the moment where he’s pitching, Johnny Blanchard by the way is catching, and Maz hit the ball… so that’s kind of a classic picture. And Ralph Terry autographed it “To Ryne, where the hell were you?” (laughs)

CT: Ralph told me that Stengel had his warm up four, five times that game.

Well, that wouldn’t bother me in that they usually let the bullpen call you. Here’s the way it worked with me. They call the bullpen and they say, you’re in there. You’ve got time now to stretch your arm to the max with two or three pitches, because the guy leaves the dugout and he heads out to the mound, and you’ve got three or four pitches. The only thing you want to do before that inning is just get your blood flowing and so forth. So as a relief pitcher I know that, so that wouldn’t affect me. But it would affect somebody like Ralph, who was a starting pitcher. So so many things enter into it. But the whole thing about that and about life is you have to be good on acceptance or it just kills you.

CT: So tell me more about Ralph Terry.

He was a very conscientious guy. He was my roommate, a very fun guy to room with. Too analytical, maybe. You’ve heard that before, he was quite analytical. He was a single guy, for the most part when we were rooming. He was a good egg.

CT: What did he throw?

He had a good curve ball and a slider, and he was sneaky fast. I think he had fairly good control.

CT: You outgunned Pittsburgh and yet they managed to scratch a series of low-score wins — was that frustrating?

Well, I think the problem was that after that first couple of high scorers, maybe the confidence was… we became overconfident. I never really saw the Yankees as an overconfident team. They went out there and grinded it out pretty good. But the breaks were so bad in that game, the ball that hit Kubek in the throat, and there were a couple of other things. I forget all the details now, because it’s so centered around [the home run]. Here was the thing that kind of broke us, was that Hal Smith had been my roommate. my friend in Kansas City. I knew Hal Smith real well, and as much as I didn’t pay a lot of attention to hitters, I threw hard, I threw the hard sinker, a good slider, and a riding fastball, and later I got so I could cut the fastball, but not… well in 1960 I was already doing that. But the thing that kind of got me was that we all knew that Smith was a high fastball hitter, but Coates gave him three high pitches, right up there in his wheelhouse, and he had the first two timed! Whitey was standing right next to me in the bullpen and he just went, oh god, get out of there, there’s another one! And when he hit that ball out we had them beat, but when he hit that ball out it changed the whole thing. But I don’t know, Whitey should have started that game, do you know why?

CT: You mean other than because he was Whitey Ford?

Yeah. He was hurt, he didn’t have a great year in numbers, but he was the reason we were even in the series. He beat Baltimore twice in four days. And of course Stengel was gone, and he decided he was going to start Ditmar because Ditmar had won the most games for him, and being true and loyal to him I think he was disloyal to the rest of the guys. If you’re going to play to win and you’ve got both Whitey Ford and Art Ditmar both rested, boy, it isn’t even a contest. And then Ford would have been ready for another game later. Who knows how it would have come out? In fairness to Ditmar, hell, you take the ball when they give it to you, you go out there and he always did. I’m not belittling him in any way, I’m just saying that you know… and then Casey I heard him say this: he said I manage this club and I’m going to manage it until this season is over and nobody is going to tell me what to do, because other people were telling him to start Ford. I don’t know if that came from the [front] office or the coaches or what.

CT: Or the writers…

Yeah.

CT: So were you still there in ’61 for the Maris-Mantle race?

No, I was with the Angels. I got traded in May some time. I knew I was gone. I think by then my drinking… there were a number of things that had happened. And you know in ’59 coming off the field I broke my arm. It’s another story, but some kid threw a block into me and I fell, and I was trying to hurry across the field rather than going under the stands and some kid threw a block into me and down I went and I lit on this hand and broke a little bone in there and my season was over.

Oh, but I have to tell you this. My earned run average, just before that, we were eliminated from the pennant, Cleveland finished second and the White Sox won it, we were 9 or 10 games back, it was a bad year, anyway, going into the time when we were eliminated from the pennant, my ERA was 0.68. This was the Yankees of this era — and I don’t know what you’re going to write about but please don’t belittle the Yankees — but you know, we can say baseball was different then. Were they really taking a look at me as a starting pitcher then? That ERA was tremendous. So they came by and said we’d like to see if you can start, I was in the game for quite a few innings, and my earned run average got blown up, I gave three or four runs up, and it went all the way up to 1.83. I always figured they left me in the game just to have my ERA go up. I was making $16,000 at the time, and at four o’clock in the afternoon on Christmas Eve I got a contract with a four thousand dollar cut in it. And yet, with the Yankees I went 37 innings in a row without giving up a run. In the late innings. I went 45 innings without the Yankees getting me a run in the same time. The New York Thunder and Lightning Yankees. Can you believe that? So my record was 2-4. I think that was the cruelest thing that ever happened to me in baseball, they not only gave me a cut but they ruined Christmas.

CT: That was the way they treated everybody then.

You hear George Weiss stories.

CT: I’ve heard them from everybody.

Yeah.

CT: And not just him but other guys who learned from him.

His underlings, right. That was the structure at the time.

CT: They cut DiMaggio’s salary.

And Mantle’s after he won the triple crown!

CT: Unbelievable.

But here’s a good quote I think. Ralph Branca, he said, you know who these guys, modern day ballplayers, have got to thank? I said who Ralph? And he said George Weiss. Branch Rickey. Walter O’Malley. I said, what are you talking about? He said well, they made the union necessary! (laughs)

CT: Bouton says the same thing. He said if they had just paid decently, players would have been too complacent to do anything. Though I think eventually entertainment industry conglomeration would have led to agents moving in and demanding more.

Well they could have still kept that control. At our time, you’d better not have an agent, or you could get blackballed.

CT: So tell me about Mickey Mantle.

Unfortunately, he had the same mindset as I did about the drinking and stuff and he’d probably became even deeper addicted. But I’m not sure, subconsciously I think he was using alcohol to escape the pressure that was on him from all ends like it is on all celebrities. He was an honest, good true friend. He was very generous to his friends. He was a wit, he was full of humor. He was a fierce competitor, he was his own worst critic. We carpooled for a year so I got to know him very well. I speak to his widow weekly or every two weeks or so.

CT: Where did you carpool from?

New Jersey.

CT: I used to live in Englewood.

That’s where we played golf. The Englewood Golf Club. It’s not there anymore. But that was a fun thing because the celebrities of New York show business all played there. I met Ed Sullivan there, comedians, Buddy Hacket, Phil Foster, Pat Boone, three or four others. My favorite was Betsy Palmer, she was making the game shows at the time, variety shows. Highlight of my career was meeting Marilyn Monroe.

CT: Not on the golf course…?

No, she came to spring training with Joe. There she is, sitting outside the clubhouse on the bench, I walk up the first day and it’s Marilyn Monroe. And I don’t know why but I guess it’s just me, I sat down and made small talk with Marilyn Monroe. Joe and I always had a good relationship. We always talked, especially in later life when after she had died and everybody knew I had gotten on top of the problem and was running a hospital and I had been quoted in the papers a lot, a lot of people had done stories on me, Joe wanted to spend some time talking with me and we did about the mixtures of different drugs and alcohol and so forth. I don’t care what anybody else says, she died from Valium mixed with alcohol. I truly believe that.

CT: But people always want to make a conspiracy theory out of it when it’s an American icon who dies.

Oh yeah.

CT: So tell me some more about Joe DiMaggio. A lot of the guys don’t really say much about him.

Well, everybody sees him differently. I went down to the batting cage one day, and he had been down there helping guys hit. we were in St. Petersburg at the old Miller Huggins Field, way down in the corner we had a batting cage with a pitching machine. So I went down there and Joe was down there just kind of hanging around, and the last honest batter came out and got through, so now I say, hey Joe, can you help me some? And he kind of laughed and said why? You can’t hit. You’ve got to have good eyesight and coordination. So I said aw, c’mon Joe, at least help me with my stance or something. And he says Ryne, it’s a waste of time! Please, why would you want me to do that. So I said, you know, Joe, if I could at least look good striking out, that’d be a help, right? And it just cracked him up. But he did finally tell me how to stand and swing and so forth. So now, I’m down there hitting balls and he went back to the bench. So evidently he was proud of the fact that he had me with a pretty good looking swing, so they’re sitting up in the dugout and he’s playing a game with someone down there. He’d make a little bet with you and so on. So he says, who is that guy hitting down there? He looks pretty good. They can’t see my number from there. Joe then says, well, that looks like Ryne Duren to me. And they laughed at him. No, I think it really is. So then they made a little bet, and sure enough I finally turned around to pick up the balls and it’s me. So he did make me look good anyway, and he always got a kick out of that.

CT: One question I have, no one seems to agree on this. Was the old park in Baltimore hard to hit home runs out of?

Yes, it was. The old stadium, Memorial Stadium. It was a good-sized ballpark. But, I don’t know much about hitting home runs… I didn’t pitch much there.

The summer of 1945, I was 15 years old, and I had rheumatic fever, and the only treatment for rheumatic fever after they were able to figure out what it was was antibiotics. We didn’t have any antibiotics in ’45. Penicillin had just shown up, but who could afford it? And at that time, if it was around, the people who should be getting it were the war wounded and soldiers. So the only treatment for me was nine months in bed. No exercise on the heart while it was infected. Now I have a bad valve in my heart, I’ve always had it, and I don’t think it’s a problem. Some of the doctors fuss over it today, but it’s always been there. The insurance companies after many years took the rider off about it. So being a kid in Wisconsin, WGN from Chicago is a very powerful station carried the Cubs. So I listened to the Chicago Cubs every day and became a great baseball fan and hero worshipped everybody you know. I’d keep score, I had a tablet where I’d draw the lines, that would be something to look forward to every day. My mother was working in the post office and my father, who was the post master, they took care of things there, and I had a baby brother at the time who was born in ’44, and a lady by the name of Mrs. Stuck, she would come by and pick the baby up and take the baby to her house so my mother could work. And then the house would come back together in the evening. But for the most part I was one my own. They would come home at lunch time, but that [baseball] had me something to look forward to every day. That in a sense made me a tremendous baseball fan. I knew every player in both leagues. We could also get the White Sox but the Cubs were my team. Back in those days it was practically all day baseball, so I’d listen to everything, from spring training right through to the World series. Well the Cubs won the pennant and played Detroit in the World Series. But the absolute favorite of all the players was Phil Cavaretta. Stan Hack was third base, Cavaretta first, Mickelson in right… all the guys. One of them was Pinas Laurie who was the coach with Philly when I played with the Phillies. I knew everything about them. Even the announcer said hello to me because somebody had told him about me, how I listened every day, I was bedridden and all that. So Cavaretta was my hero, he probably had the best average on the club and so forth.

So in 1954 I had my first cup of coffee in the big leagues with Baltimore, that was their first year in Baltimore, and Phil Cavaretta was just ending up his career. He went over to the Chicago White Sox just to finish out his career, and I come into a game, they’re going to have me do the 8th inning in Baltimore, we’re playing the White Sox, so I come in and the very first hitter I faced was Phil Cavaretta. Isn’t that amazing?

CT: And did you get him out?

I walked him. (laughs) I wouldn’t dare get my hero out! I was just hoping he didn’t see my knees rattling. You know people say I wonder what’s going through their minds out there, well, I’ll tell you this and try to keep it in the right perspective. I’ve told this… this thing about being a starting pitcher versus a relief pitcher. Being a starting pitcher’s got some edges and the first one is … okay, all right, here’s the whole thing. Have you ever been out to the ball park and noticed that the whole team is out on the field except the pitcher when they play the national anthem? They play the national anthem, now the pitcher walks out. That’s the way it was in my day, anyway. So they say well, what would you like better? And I said relieving is a much tougher job, because it’s unpredictable. You never know. The starting pitcher gets a chance to, while everybody else is out there during the national anthem, you go in that little toilet right behind the dugout and you get rid of the nervous… uh, you know. (mimes stomach heaving) As a reliever you don’t have that luxury. You get up and warm up and all of a sudden you’re in there. Now you’re out on the mound, and well, what do they say when you come in? What does it feel like? Well, it’s like this, will you guys hurry up and get out of here so I can get this guy out, because I want to get to the bathroom! And it’s true! It got to be where you’d be on edge and ready to go with adrenaline flowing, and then later when it became kind of ho hum with the appearances, you almost wish you could psyche yourself up to get that rush, because you know you pitched well, and you performed well with it as an athlete.

CT: David Cone said almost the same thing in an interview I read about why the bigger the game, the better he pitched. Bouton too talked about how he had to convince himself sometimes that there was more at stake, like if he didn’t pitch well, millions were going to starve in Africa.

It’s hard to see it as important as other people. When I got home from the ’58 series this good friend of mine, who had pitched for the St. Louis Browns, had a cup of coffee, I went to spring training with him, and he said, did you realize what was going on in that sixth game of the world series in Milwaukee? We’re down three to one and came back to win, and I got the ball from the fourth inning on. Anyway, I go home and my friend Hal Hudson says Jesus, didn’t it make you nervous to be out there knowing it’s the World Series, and a hundred thousand dollars difference on every pitch? I said, oh, you don’t think about that. He said, oh, what do you think about? I said how to get the guy out. What’s the next pitch. Your mind is locked into the game situation. That’s what you think about. Well, I can’t believe that (he says). Well, that’s how come I’ve had 13 or 14 years of doing that. What you have to learn is that as a pitcher, if you’re not the most relaxed person in the Stadium at that point you’re in trouble. So you have to learn, one of the biggest things about pitching, at the big league level anyway, or anywhere for that matter, because every game is the same whether it be in the minors or whatever, you’re out there, the game’s on the line and so forth, and the number one thing that you have to be able to overcome is the human instinct to get uptight. So what do you have to do? You have to learn to relax. If you get tense, then your stuff ends, and your control ends, so you have to know how to relax on the mound. And stay within yourself. So I think that’s something where your concentration is at that time, because you’ve trained yourself to do that. I’d stand on the mound knowing that if I got any more relaxed, I’d drop the ball.

It’s absolutely the truth. A lot of people don’t see it like that. I’ve talked to other professional athletes, too. If you’re playing relaxed, your endurance is so much better.

CT: So tell me more about the book. (I CAN SEE CLEARLY NOW)

The book was written through kind of the desires of the author. What it’s really written for is to share the… well, are you familiar with Winning Beyond Winning?

CT: Not really.

It’s my charitable foundation in New York. I have a golf tournament up there in my name, and the foundation puts on an awards banquet in the fall. This past year honored Don Newcombe for his work in awareness and everything. We honor local people and Mrs. uh…. oh I hate it when I can’t remember names… Mrs. uh… Mrs. Gil Hodges, she’s the honorary chairman of our banquet. We raise funds and put on camps for kids and then we go into schools and on the weekends we have on Saturdays camps for kids, and we bring instructors in who are former pros, and some like myself have had a problem and teach kids about sports and sportsmanship and the necessity for social skills and then alcohol and drug awareness, which I do the most of. We do a pretty good job. I’m quite proud and quite happy with it. I didn’t start it. Tom, really, started it and then a guy who was having problems like I did by the name of Rusty Torres–he was in the big leagues for a while with the Yankees–so he was involved, and then Frankie Tepedino, a former Yankee who was on the New York fire department, he’s there, Felix Mantilla a New York Met… and I always have trouble thinking of this guy’s name… he’s the harmonica player.

CT: Phil Linz.

Yes, Phil Linz! He’s been there quite a bit. Don’t tell him I had trouble thinking of his name, but that’s the state of my mind these days. There are a number of other guys. Look on the web site and you’ll find more. About the second year they were involved I was at an organization for retarded kids…. I’ll think of it…. in New York… we have that tournament every spring. And while I was there I met Tom and Rusty, and when I heard what they were doing and they knew what I was doing, especially in Rusty’s case, I think it was paramount to Tom that Rusty and I get together. I was probably the most notorious of the recovering guys and I wrote about it in the other book. So we got together from then on. It’s their efforts as much as mine. I was someone who had some notoriety and the whole thing just snowballed to where our banquet today is $150 a plate and we get 500-600 people.

CT: So what about the book?

Anybody reading this that has kids that have got some false ideas about alcohol and drinking and so forth, it approaches it like some of the things I’ve told you. There are a lot of people out there hurting that don’t know they’re hurting. They are hurting other people by their lack of knowledge or by their attitude about it. From that standpoint, I think it’s a good book, and there are some good stories in it. There’s some… the thing that makes it better than anything else is that my son read the manuscript at age fifty, and now he’s reflecting how it was in his life at every age and stage, so… and then a lot of my teammates and former ball players are quoted in there. We sent out questionnaires and a lot of them wrote back some very decent stuff. So that’s good. It’s a pretty sentimental book, too, the parts dealing with my first wife and so forth. Alcohol was a heartbreaker for the family, and that’s in there.

My dad was a wonderful man, a World War I hero, real honest, good work ethic, wounded in the war, you’d like him as a neighbor and everything. All of those things. He was stern but that was the German heritage and there’s nothing wrong with that. But he was so mis-informed about alcohol and manliness, you know? I had the occasion to have him hear me speak after I was sober for a while you know, and ride back home in the dark in the car where people talk and say things without seeing each other’s eyes, and he was able to tell me that it was great what I had done for the family since I got sober and how wrong he was about alcohol. He admitted it. Both of my brothers have died this past year, they both got a chance to read the book and loved it. They were both alcoholics, and there are uncles and aunts on my mother’s side who have died of it, too. And I know there were deaths related to it on my father’s side, too. Within the family there is some pretty tragic stuff that is alcohol-related… I don’t want to get into that. The bigger picture here is that the number of people who have had problems among my kids and nieces and nephews and so on by their numbers is a hell of a lot less than in the generation before, so you have to be able to weigh progress in the right perspective. You can’t change everybody overnight, but in a sense I’m lucky to be here.

Are there many people who can say I’m glad I had this godawful problem? Because in essence it gave me the opportunity to do something a lot more positive in life than just strike out the side or something like that. It’s a much better gift to humanity. I mean, we have hero worship in this country for people who play professional sports, and that’s good because it has helped me to do something. So I’m just happy and tickled about the whole thing. The only problem is I’m seventy five.

CT: Anything else to add?

To me, the sixth game of the 1958 World Series, when we were 3-1 down, that belongs on your list.

–
And that was it. We had been sitting in that diner for a couple of hours at that point. As I discovered was de rigeur when interviewing men of Ryne Duren’s generation, he would not let me pick up the check. Rest in peace, Ryne.

The good news is that my seats are staying the same price, as they have for the past 5 years, going all the way back to the Old Stadium.

The bad news is that in 2010, with the economy still limping along, I didn’t come close to breaking even on the cost of my seats. I even ended up eating the cost of two postseason tickets I couldn’t dump except to a scalper outside the McDonald’s for less than half of face value.

I have been seriously considering either dropping my plan, or dropping from all 81 games to a partial season plan.

I’m sure I’m not alone, which is why the letter to me from the Yankees does things like praise my “unwavering loyalty.” Hoo-boy. Yes, they know better than any other sports franchise on earth that love = money.

At least they aren’t hypocrites, though. Here’s why: The Yankees gave both Jorge Posada and Mariano Rivera larger contracts than the front office would have preferred the *last* time they re-upped because they knew they had to demonstrate that they loved those guys as much as the fans do.

Of course, Mariano is coming around again, and the much bigger test of “heart” this offseason will be what will the Yankees do with Derek Jeter? If they come through and pay him handsomely, I won’t have any qualms about plunking down the eight grand they want for my four seats in the upper deck. But if they nickel and dime him or come off looking cheap? Maybe it’s time for me to do the same, and tighten the budget around here…