Living in Light of Two Ages
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Monday, April 5, 2010 at 08:20AM 
If you are a baseball fan, you know what this day means. Baseball is back!
Box scores, MLB channel, Gameday . . .
OK, so the Yanks blew a big lead in their season opener at Fenway. I don't care. Baseball is back!
Lets go Yankees! The quest for number 28 begins.
BTW--C.C. Sabbathia is huge. Dustin Pedroia is not!
Thursday, March 11, 2010 at 11:49AM Arguably the greatest sports venue since the days of the Colosseum in Rome, the demolition of the old Yankee Stadium is almost complete.
One of these days, I'll it make to the new stadium. People tell me it is absolutely remarkable, and that the only downside is that the fans can't cheer loud enough to make the place shake. People who were in the old Yankee Stadium in 2003 when Aaron Boone hit his walk-off against the Bosox said the place was literally shaking.
The only time that ever happened in Anaheim Stadium was during a Chicago/Beach Boys concert in 1973. I know. I was there.
The Rally Monkey just doesn't rock the house.
Wednesday, March 3, 2010 at 07:38AM 
The New York Yankees play the Pittsburgh Pirates today @ Steinbrenner Field in Tampa.
Not only is this the opening game of spring training--a sign that winter is almost over--but it also marks the beginning of the quest for World Series victory # 28!
Let's go Yankees!!!!
Thursday, November 5, 2009 at 07:29AM 
If you read this blog, you know that I am a die-hard Yankees fan. I've been one ever since my parents took me to see the Angels play the Yankees back in July of 1964. I remember that game like it was yesterday.
The game was at Dodger Stadium because Anaheim Stadium had not yet been built. My sister got Albie Pearson's autograph on my baseball glove (he was an Angels outfielder and a leader in the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, and I still have that glove). Jim Bouton pitched for the Yankees--I remember that his hat kept falling off because of his odd follow-through. The Yankees won 5-0.
My folks were hoping I'd become a fan of the new local baseball team (the Angels). We are Orange Countians after all, not New Yorkers. But when the Yankees took the field, it was love at first sight.
And now here we are, forty-five years later and I am as thrilled today, as I was on July 29, 1964.
Don't give me the same old line about A-Rod and Pettitte being cheaters, or that the Yankees bought the pennant. They've spent big bucks every year from 2001-2008 and didn't win the World Series. A-Rod and Pettitte came clean and the PED issue is a much bigger story than these two guys.
The Yankees won this year because they played very good fundamental baseball, which made them a blast to watch, and in the end ensured their twenty-seventh World Series victory! And I am thrilled!
Monday, October 26, 2009 at 09:02AM 
The Yankees have been to the playoffs every year (with the exception of last year) since 1995. But this victory--the 40th pennant--was especially sweet.
This is one of my favorite Yankees teams. This is the best baseball the team's played since 2001. The power is there but this team also bunts well, hits the cut-off man, takes the extra base, etc. Proof that the best team money can buy doesn't win unless it plays fundamentally sound baseball. They did and they won the pennant.
It was especially nice to finally beat the pesky Angels who have owned the Yankees the past decade.
My favorite line . . . quoted in the context of the Dos Equis commercial ("the most interesting man in the world"). "Mariano Rivera gave up a run in the eighth just to see how it feels." Rivera hadn't given up a run in the playoffs at Yankee Stadium since 2001.
Tuesday, August 4, 2009 at 10:53AM 
Saw this photo of the old Yankee Stadium awaiting the wrecking ball. It is simply amazing how quickly plant life (weeds and moss) has filled the remains of the old stadium, including that area where the upper deck seats were located.
One cynical Yankee fan dubbed it the "chia stadium." Apropos!
Friday, April 24, 2009 at 01:45PM Bernie Williams was one of my all-time favorite Yankees. If you didn't know, he's now embarked on a new musical career and is quite the guitar player. This video is from Bernie's new album and was released in conjunction with the opening of the new Yankee Stadium (while filmed after the closing of the old). Very cool. If you love baseball, you gotta watch this!
Monday, April 20, 2009 at 08:05PM 
The New Yankee Stadium opened this past week to mostly positive reviews. The complaints have to do with the loud public address system, and the cave below the restaurant in center where Monument Park now resides. But this kind of stuff is to be expected for the grand-opening of any massive facility like this. They'll get it sorted out. They have to, they have a Joel Osteen event coming up!
If you listen to the media hype (especially from the ESPN clowns--thankfully, we now have the MLB network and don't have to listen to Kruk et al), the real shocker is that the new stadium is some sort of launching pad. The home run count has made countless sports headlines of late, even among the saner types like Buster Olney. Here's the supposed evidence.
* In the recent four game Yankee-Indians series, there were a combined 20 home runs.
* The Elias Sports Bureau reports that the 17 homers (during the first three games) are the most ever hit over the first three games for any stadium, passing the previous mark of 13 hit at Cashman Field in Las Vegas in 1996 (the A’s played their first six games there because of construction delays at the Oakland Coliseum).
Lets put this in perspective. There were 20 home runs hit at the old Stadium from July 31-Aug. 3, 2007 during a Yankees-White Sox series. There were also four-game, 20-HR binges during the 2000, 2003 and 2004 seasons. Also according to the Elias Sports Bureau, there were eight four-games spans of 20 or more homers at the old Yankee Stadium.
This says more about the quality of pitching in baseball than it does about the new stadium, or even PEDs. I read somewhere that home run numbers are way up so far this year, all over baseball. This time its not the rhoids . . .
Meanwhile, there's poor Chien-Ming Wang, a very solid pitcher who has twice won nineteen games in a season. Suddenly, he cannot get anyone out. He's given up 23 earned runs in six innings over three starts. He's not hurt--the coaches say it is in his head. How a seasoned, veteran athlete can just lose it is a very strange thing.
I know a minister, who after years of preaching, suddenly developed "stage fright" and could hardly bring himself to preach. He was just terrified to get in the pulpit. The human psyche is a mysterious and fragile thing.
Saturday, April 4, 2009 at 07:46AM 
The Yankees played the Cubs, Friday night (April 3), in the New Yankee Stadium--first exhibition game in the new stadium. Final score, 7-4 Yanks.
By all accounts, this place is awesome. Here's a link to a short video tour. Click here: Let us take you out to the ballparks | lohud.com | The Journal News
Tuesday, March 17, 2009 at 01:42PM 
Baseball is not the same game it was when I was a kid. That's no surprise. A sport should evolve over a generation or two.
Ty Cobb and Babe Ruth prove that baseball players of earlier generations were certainly not saints. When I read Jim Bouton's Ball Four as an impressionable teenager, I quickly realized that my Yankee heroes were very flawed men--an important life lesson that has served me well. Baseball has always had its scandals and woes. That's nothing new and not the point. Something else is wrong.
And while people may not like the bloated Yankee payroll, the fact is that Yankees luxury tax payments help keep small market teams afloat. Those criticisms are partisan and ring hollow in my ears. The Yankees' business model is very sound and they make tons of money. As I see it, most complaints like this are rivalry based, or just old fashioned envy. It is to be expected.
While free agency changed the game in profound ways, some good, some not so good, the marriage of sports and entertainment has been disastrous, especially for a non-TV sport like baseball. Since ESPN, Disney, and ABC now serve the same corporate master, the result is the gross thing pictured here--the athlete-celebrity kissing himself in the mirror for a tell-all piece in a men's magazine. Since when did male sports fans start reading tell-all articles like those in People? That is what happens when sports marries entertainment. The star baseball player is known for his celebrity power as much as for his athleticism.
Steroids are bad enough--using them is cheating, plain and simple. But the self-idolatry pictured above (yes, its a campy photo for an article and wasn't intended to be taken too seriously--Click here: A-Rod gives a few details to Details | The LoHud Yankees Blog), is one of the clearest indications yet of what is wrong with professional sports in general, and baseball in particular.
What happened to those little boys (like in the Sandlot), who never really grew up, playing an absolutely great game for the sheer fun of it?
Thanks to ABC, Disney, and ESPN, we get A-Rod kissing himself in a mirror. But that is the spirit of the age, isn't it?
