Best Christmas Present. Ever.

When you have kids, Christmas shifts. It's their holiday. You're in attendance, and get to have fun with the decorating and the music and the get-togethers, but Christmas morning belongs to them--even if, like my boys, they're too young to really understand what's going on. It's so much about them that the idea of exchanging gifts among adults starts to seem silly.

So everybody was under a tacit agreement to keep things low-key this year, which is why is was a huge surprise when La Chiquita sprung out a couple of tickets--good ones, no less--to Prince's Welcome 2 America concert as her Christmas present to me. I like a lot of different kinds of music, but Prince is the only performer where I have every one of his albums. For a while in the late 1990s, I made sure to catch him whenever he performed within an hour's drive of where I lived (even though I don't drive), still, I hadn't seen his live show in more than a decade--a combination of fan-alienating moves on his part and life getting in the way on my side had slackened my enthusiasm. Although I kept buying the Man's albums, only a few of them captured my imagination for more than a couple of spins (mainly, Musicology and 3121).

Regardless, I was overjoyed with the gift, and full of anticipation for the concert. We arrived a little late, having stopped by my brother's house to visit with my sister-in-law's family and with the newest addition to our clan. When we got there, the first opening number was already in progress. Sadly, neither of us had eaten, so securing food was a priority on arrival. I thought briefly that we were missing Maceo Parker, but it turned out the first opener was Mint Condition--a nice enough band, but not quite worth passing out at a concert over.

We took our seats in time for Janelle Monae's set. The introduction was strange because her albums apparently have a high-concept mythology to them--somehow masks, zombies, and androids are involved--which would've required a pamphlet or something for the uninitiated to understand, but her stage skills were old school in a good way: big voice, sharp dance moves, good presence. There's a lot of Prince in that young lady (perhaps the first time that phrase has been uttered without a truckload of innuendo being rightfully attached). Still, the audience's reaction was tepid--much of the crowd was getting $10 beers and/or watching the Islanders/Penguins game on the MSG TV monitors. It's a thankless job, opening for Prince.

After a looong break, during which the MSG monitors played clips from a late '60s/early '70s stadium concert (looked like the LA Coliseum), the Purple One finally took the stage. The stage was in the shape of the name symbol Prince used during his Artist Formerly Known As Prince period, with a purple baby grand piano set up on "mouthpiece" side of the horn that transects the symbol. Here's a really crappy iPhone photo, for instructional purposes:




Prince started on the piano, opening with the intro to The Beautiful Ones before leaving his seat to sing the ballad on top of the piano, and then leaving the piano to roam all over the stage. The Beautiful Ones is a really unusual song to lead off with--neither a chart-topper nor an uptempo number, but the song definitely showed that the Man's pipes are as powerful as ever. From there, it was on to the hits: Let's Go Crazy wrapped around a full version of Delirious, followed by certified crowd-pleasers 1999 and Little Red Corvette, and then a semi-medley of Uptown, Cream, and Raspberry Beret.

Every musician reacts differently to performing live. Most try to garner the crowd's favor, from seduction to outright sucking up. Prince is one of the guys who reverses the process--the audience has to earn his favor. Sure, he'll make sure you're happy--then again, in his mind, your satisfaction was never in doubt. The question is, will you, the audience, return the favor? Wednesday at Madison Square Garden, the crowd definitely seemed to have won the Purple One's approval, making a ton of noise, filling in verses unbidden, and being enthusiastic in call-and-response, as on Cool, one of The Time's signature cuts. After a segwey back to hitsville for U Got the Look, Prince went back off the beaten path, teasing the intro to Question of U (from Graffitti Bridge) but launching into a song I didn't recognize, that most people seem to be calling Gingerbread Man, and which I assume is new. [One reason it's taken me so long to post this review is because of how skeptical I am about this song's newness, but I can't find a reference to it anywhere and no one else seems to have ID'd it either. I'm sure some Internet Dickwad ($0.25, Gabe & Tycho) will step up with "That's not new, I heard him perform it in Tokyo in '96! I though you said you were a Prince fan!" or it'll turn out to be an obscure cover. So be it--it's new to me.] The song, a hip thrusting slow jam in the mode of Scandalous or Do Me Baby, found Prince in a carnal mode we haven't seen so much of since he got all Jehova's Witness-y on us.

After that, the songs all started to sound like finales. You had a full version of Purple Rain, then a break, then a slightly off-kilter version of Kiss, then a break, then She's Always In My Hair, which moved cleanly into If I Was Your Girlfriend. Monae joined him onstage for If I Was Your Girlfriend, putting on a bravura performance where the two singers tag-teamed a single mike, which they passed back and forth like a relay baton while dancing up a storm, and not tripping over an audience member who seemed to have been brought on stage purely for the purpose of upping the degree of difficulty.

After another break, Prince came back for his first official encore, taking to the piano with little or no band accompaniment for a medley of Do Me Baby, I Wanna Be Your Lover, and How Come You Don't Call Me Anymore, and a full version of Sometimes It Snows In April. The second encore was more perfunctory, an opportunity to invite a lot of people from the expensive seats up to dance onstage, and to get Cyndi Lauper vamping impressively while Prince played Jungle Love.

For two people who never leave the house, La Chiquita and I have had a good year in concerts: we saw one of my favorite jazz performances a couple of months back when Chucho Valdes was in town, and this concert made a great capper for 2010. The only criticisms I could see were that Prince's band, while competent, wasn't going to make anyone forget the Revolution or even the early versions of the NPG, and that (with the possible exception of that Gingerbread Man song) every song was at least 19 years old. Strange, given that one of my complaints when I last saw Prince in concert was that performing the hits left room for little else, but I didn't mind the greatest hits format of this concert, or the exclusion of his catalog after Diamonds & Pearls. More than a nostalgia-fest, the concert felt a bit like a time machine--Prince looked, sounded, and danced like someone 20 years younger, the only concessions to middle age I could see were several strategically-placed teleprompters, and a little less abandon in the way he threw his body around the stage. But with my hands still vibrating at the end of the concert from an evening of nearly non-stop applause, I couldn't have cared what year it was--it felt like I was a kid again.

Still Here, Rock the Vote Edition

Yeah, one post for the entirety of October was pretty lame. All I can say in my defense is that I'm working on a super-secret project that I keep on assuring my wife, La Chiquita, will be worth it. With the Phillies beating the Rays last week, the world's undivided attention turns to our national elections, tomorrow. For those of you who've been waiting until the end of the baseball season to pay attention, my BP colleague Nate Silver has set up a site, FiveThirtyEight.com, to catch you up. On the left side of this page you'll see the site's widget with its latest posts. It's politics done stathead style, so if you like the kind of baseball writing we (used to) sling around here, you'll love this.

Anyway, get informed and get to the polls. Regardless of who you vote for, get out there and vote.

Sweet and Sour

The Yankees ended the 2008 season with a doubleheader at Fenway after Saturday's rainout. In the early game, Mike Mussina finally bagged his 20th win in a season, capping a campaign that would have been worthy of the Comeback Player of the Year award, in any season where Cliff Lee's body wasn't possessed by aliens. The late game was a little more like the Yankees' season as a whole: a desperate struggle to beat a Boston team that hardly seemed to be trying to win, marked by a tough time scoring runs and some bad pitching by Darrell Rasner. A win, and a season-ending sweep of a Red Sox team that was clearly in tune-up mode for the final series, would have allowed the Pinstripers to finish their season with 90 wins and given us a small psychological boost going into a long, hard winter. But this wasn't really a season for feel-good endings, so the Red Sox nabbed with a walk-off tenth inning victory, the immortal Jonathan Van Every knocking in Alex Cora for the win.

For the first time since 1993, the Yankees season ended with the Yanks on the outside looking in at the postseason. In 1993 I'd just graduated college, a cell phone you could barely fit in a coat pocket was a cutting-edge luxury, and next to nobody had heard of the Internet. It's been a long wild ride for the Bronx faithful, and I'm grateful that it lasted this long. Looking, ahead, 2009 promises big changes. Mike Mussina, Andy Pettitte and Bobby Abreu are free agents, Jason Giambi and Carl Pavano will be free agents if their options aren't picked up. In different ways, the Italian connection of Mussina, Giambi and Pavano have each been emblematic of the 21st Century Yanks. Mussina (like the Yanks) has been good but not great over the past eight years. Giambi has been simultaneously frustrating and underrated; despite all the steroid drama, there were only two real bad years out of the Giambino's seven in the Bronx. Pavano--well, he's been the symbol of how far the Yankees have fallen from the late 90s peak, an overpriced player whose name itself became a punchline.

We'll have October to watch everyone else play for the World Series title (can I hear a "Lets go Rays"? OK, maybe not...) and some months after to see how this particular Humpty Dumpty tries to put itself back together again. Will the Yanks stick with their homegrown players, despite a season that presented significant setbacks for each and every one of them? Should veteran warhorses like Mussina and Pettitte and Abreu return next season? Will CC Sabathia get fitted for a set of XXL pinstripes, and if so, will it be a mistake of Pavanoriffic proportions? Time will reveal all things, and we'll have time to discuss it, starting with September in Review tomorrow, and season reviews to follow.

Some odds and ends:

Schadenfreude is such a lonely word: For all the Lupica talk about how New York is now the Mets' town again, they finished with the exact same record as the Yankees, and they're now just as likely to win the World Series. I wasn't exactly rooting against the Flushing warriors, but given the way that Mets fans stunk up the joint during this year's Subway Series, I'm not exactly sad that the Phillies overtook them for the division title, again, and that the Brewers snuck past them to grab that Wild Card.

Joe vs. Joe: First of all, congratulations to Joe Torre, as well as his pinstripe alumni coaches--Don Mattingly, Larry Bowa, and Mariano Duncan--for making it to the playoffs in his first year managing the Dodgers. This is the type of news that's bound to set off all sorts of recriminations about how the Yankees would have been so much better if Torre, not Joe Girardi, had been at the helm for Yankee Stadium's final season. There's no way to tell, but let's get some perspective here, in the current Yankee manager's defense. First of all, the Dodgers won the weakest division in baseball, with a record five wins worse than the Yankees. Second, both managers had to deal with injuries--each lost his staff ace about 100 innings into the season--but the Dodgers got a historic second-half push from an extremely motivated Manny Ramirez, who hit almost .400 over the last two months of the season. Xavier Nady was nice, but not that nice. Third, Torre gave Juan Pierre 400 plate appearances, which is kind of as bad as giving Melky Cabrera 450 PA, just without the excuses of youth and defense. I wish Torre the best, and missed him (and Donnie Baseball) during the Stadium's swan song, but it really doesn't pay to look backwards.

Brief Political Digression: Friday's presidential debate looked like a draw from here--each candidate seemed to do best in the areas they were expected to have trouble. McCain managed to dominate the conversation during the section of the debate that was on the economy, dragging the discussion to comfortable terrain where he could talk more about earmarks and spending than market regulation. Obama didn't back down during the foreign policy section of the debate, despite McCain's constant digs at his lack of experience and supposed naivete. The absolute worst line of the entire debate, from McCain: "I think the lessons of Iraq are very clear that you cannot have a failed strategy that will then cause you to nearly lose a conflict." So the key to victory is avoiding failure? Thanks for the tip...

Game 135: Painful

There are bad ways to lose; we've seen some of them this season. But I'm not sure that any loss so far has hurt as much as this one did. This was a game the Yanks needed, and had, and just let slip away.

The breakdown came with the Yankees up 6-2, and Joe Girardi trying to squeeze one last inning--the seventh--out of Darrell Rasner. With no outs and a man on first, Rasner got a double play ball to Robinson Cano, who tried an awkward lateral-flip move that skittered away from Derek Jeter. The runner wound up taking third, which was left empty when Alex Rodriguez came out to back up the play. The Blue Jays would score three times in the inning, then take the lead the following inning touching up three pitchers--Brian Bruney, who pitched well given bases loaded and no outs in the seventh; Damaso Marte, who may or may not still be hurt; and Edwar Ramirez, who's had a brutal August.

The Yanks had their chances to strike back, particularly when the Yanks got two men on in the ninth inning with no outs for Alex Rodriguez. Alex hit into a DP, keeping up the bizarre record that Brother Joe noted in his Friday column: A-Rod only has 3 RBI all season after the seventh inning. The box score would short Rodriguez some credit here--the ball was hit extremely hard down the third base line, and it took a great reaction play by Jose Bautista to turn a 5-unassisted-3 double killing. Still, an out's an out, and it's been a week of boo-birds for the highest paid man in the baseball business (well, the baseball-playing business, at least).

Anyway, I'll be in the crowd tomorrow to cheer the team in the rubber game of the series. It's my next-to-last ticket to the Stadium, and Brother Joe (that's Sheehan, for those of you who didn't check out the linked article) will be my guest in box 342. Hope to see some of you there.

****
NOTES

Hopefully, the "Catching Up" posts will continue tomorrow, along with the day's Game Story later on in the evening.

In other news, Jay Mariotti, of TV, radio, and, until recently, of the Chicago Sun-Times, has long been a mystery to me. I've never met anyone who would cop to being a fan of his, and every time I've read or heard his work, I've wondered how he could be so popular. Is it just that he doesn't write baseball well? Is he a crackerjack at other sports? Maybe people just like when a guy with a mullet condescends to them?

As a writer, his columns give off such powerful pretension, it's as if he can't believe he has to write about anything so trivial as sports. He tends to put himself at the center of the story, as when Ozzie Guillen hurled a sexual slur at him. Although Guillen's words were unacceptable, Mariotti's reaction was so over-the-top that it made you wonder if Guillen had outed him, rather than just insulting him (apparently, he hadn't).

Anyway, this comes up because of Roger Ebert's open letter to Mariotti, on the issue of his leaving the Sun-Times. It's great when a writer as good as Ebert takes the gloves off to take someone to the woodshed, and defend something he loves (in this case, the newspaper business).

Joba's Dad, Reprise

Sometimes life puts things in perspective, and it's not always a welcome thing. After all the artificial drama of this weekend's Yanks/Sox drama (buried t-shirts! injured Captain! struggling Papi! key rain delay!) news come out today that Harlan Chamberlain, Joba's dad, collapsed over the weekend and is in critical condition. His son has gone home to be with his dad, because--in a lesson we sometimes need to be reminded of--life is more important than baseball.

Our prayers are with Harlan Chamberlain for a swift and safe recovery.

The 21 Project/Non-Baseball Ramblings

I'll admit, I haven't been too optimistic about the prospect of LaTroy Hawkins in pinstripes, and his performance Friday's game has me desperately hoping I'm wrong about him. Mini-Moose (and sadly, I don't mean that nickname in a good way right now) nibbled and got shelled (4 BB and 6 runs in 2 1/3 IP); then, after a four-run third inning rally and 4 2/3 sterling innings of relief by Jonathan Alabadejo, Ross Ohlendorf, and Billy Traber, the Hawk came in and coughed up six runs of his own, and couldn't even get out of the inning.

The extra bit of salt in the wounds was that Hawkins made this craptastic appearance wearing Paul O'Neill's old number, 21. No Yankee had worn the number since O'Neill retired, but Hawkins wanted it because it was Roberto Clemente's number. Supposedly, Hawkins can't comprehend why Yankee fans would mind him wearing O'Neill's number.

Now, the natural reaction from fans will be to help him comprehend by booing him whenever he takes the mound. If he keeps performing like this, that'll be an easy choice. But here's an idea: what if, instead of making Hawkins's life miserable, we just asked him nicely to pick a new number? I'm thinking of something on the level of Steve Lombardi's Project P46, just rather than trying to convince a beloved Yankee to return to the fold, we'd be asking a new Yankee to respect the 0ur feelings about about a team favorite, and give up his uniform number.

It's pretty easy. Get a card, postcard, or regular letter stationery. Write LaTroy a pleasant note, explaining what Paul O'Neill meant to you, and why you think no one else should wear that uniform number for the Yankees, ever again. Ask him nicely to give it up, and maybe even suggest another uni number he'd enjoy. Affix a stamp and mail your letter/card to:

LaTroy Hawkins
Yankee Stadium
161st Street and River Avenue
Bronx, NY 10451

If you want to get some extra credit, you can also try to ensure that no one else ever wears O'Neill's #21 on Yankee pinstripes again. You can do this by buying a couple of extra postcards and letting higher-up members of the Yankee organization know that you think the Yankees should retire uniform number 21, in honor of O'Neill and/or Clemente. While I think that Paulie O is enough reason all by himself for the number to be retired, the fact that it's also Clemente's number makes it an absolute no-brainer: retiring the number would be special not just to all those fans of the late-90s Yankees, but also to loads of Hispanic fans throughout baseball. Many forget that the same segregation that kept African Americans out of MLB until 1947 also kept dark-skinned Latinos from playing. Clemente was the Latino Jackie Robinson; and honoring him is a way that the Yankees could be ahead of the curve. Anyway, you can write a note explaining why you feel the Yanks should retire #21 to Brian Cashman, at the same address as Hawkins, above, or you can just send your complaint straight to the top:

Hank Steinbrenner
George M. Steinbrenner Field
1 Steinbrenner Drive
Tampa, FL 33614

I suspect that you could also address a letter to Hank's brother/co-managing partner Harold Steinbrenner at the same Tampa address. If you want to learn more about the overall effort to have Clemente's #21 retired throughout Major League Baseball, you can visit Retire21.org.

***

Speaking of 21, I hadn't previously mentioned here my experience sitting in for Joe Sheehan at the AL Tout Wars draft. Tout Wars is an expert fantasy baseball league, in which all the participants are pretty much fantasy baseball professionals. The AL Tout league had been the subject of a bestselling book called Fantasyland, and this year, was the subject of a documentary by the same name. If you want to know what the draft was like, you can read my column on it over at Baseball Prospectus. Just don't needle me too much on the fact that the player I spent 10% of Sheehan's budget on, Mariners reliever J.J. Putz, just got injured and is likely to miss close to two months of the season. I hear that often enough from Joe.

Anyway, after the draft, the participants and a few others went out to a restaurant to socialize, which was tremendous fun. I always enjoy hanging with a crowd that knows more about baseball than I do, and it was great to hear behind-the-scenes stuff about how MLB.com's Gamecast system works, and anecdotes about the Atlanta Braves, and that kind of cool stuff.

At one point in the evening, one of my fellow-drafters sheepishly confessed that he's a big devotee of blackjack, and that he counts cards in Vegas. Which was funny, since the guy was sitting about five feet away from perhaps the most famous card-counter in the country, Protrade founder Jeff Ma, who was going to participate in one of the other Tout Wars drafts the following day. Ma was the main subject of a bestselling book about an MIT card-counting team, Bringing Down the House, which had just been turned into a movie, 21. As of last weekend, 21 was the top movie in the country. Small world.

***

Now, despite the box office success, the reviews haven't been kind to 21. Not having seen it yet, I can't comment on whether they have the film pegged right or wrong. The one thing I will say is that the movie seems to have bothered the New York Times's Manohla Dargis enough that she invented a new term for her review:

Ben ogles the chintzy glamour and the chesty blondes spilling out of their dresses, and the movie does exactly the same. He particularly likes it when his skinny school crush, Jill, clambers aboard and offers him a lap job, for which I hope the young actress Kate Bosworth was well compensated. Like everything else in “21,” Jill can be bought for the right price, as of course can Ben and, by extension, us.

Now, Dargis is a great reviewer; but if you're going to be judgmental and snarky, you need to get your terminology right. If you google the term "lap job" you get a bunch of references to people overclocking computer processors. Since Bosworth's supposed to be playing an MIT genius/nerd, this might not be out of character. But that wouldn't explain Dargis's comment that Bosworth's character "can be bought." Obviously, Dargis thinks that a "lap job" is more than just trying to give the boy she likes a more efficient heat sink.

I've, um, heard of lap dances. As someone who tries to keep up with the language of perversity, I'm also familiar with various fine, intimate terms ending in --job, which I won't enumerate since this is a family blog. However, among what Padma Lakshmi would call the "Job Family of Products" I've never heard of the lap job. Is it new? The whole thing sounds like the scene in 40 Year Old Virgin where Steve Carrell tries, and fails, to describe what a woman's breast feels like.

How to Hail a Cab in New York, Part I

I've been thinking about doing this for a while--cab etiquette is one of the great mysteries of New York, and I think the whole world could use a refresher--but the whole thing was catalyzed when I couldn't come up with a quick and easy mnemonic for my brother-in-law to explain how he was to know if a cab was available or not. Now, it was a joke--we'd just had a great meal at Prune in NoHo, and he was asking me to come up with something in meter that rhymed--but I figure that just 'cause I suck at poetry doesn't mean that I can't create a handy, dandy guide to hailing a cab in the Big Apple.

So I'll start with the first question: how do you know if a cab's available?

Let's start with the basics. As anyone who's seen an American movie in the last sixty or so years knows, New York taxis--at least the ones you can hail on the street--are yellow. Let's have a picture:

Modified from a photo by msspider66 on Flickr. Used under the Creative Commons License.

So here we have a good sample of the species. The red circle points out the part you'll want to pay attention to when you're hailing a cab on a rainy day in Manhattan. It's the rooflight, the thing that tells you whether or not the taxi's available. Taking a closer look:

Photo by mokolabs on Flickr. Used under the Creative Commons License.

You'll see the rooflight is split in three parts. In the middle, you'll have the cab's medallion number--four digits, mixing letters and numbers. On the sides, you have the off duty lights, helpfully marked "Off Duty." When the middle section is lit, the cab is empty; when it's dark--as it is on the rooflight above, the cab has a fare and is unavailable. Below, you'll see what a cab looks like when just that middle section is lit:

Photo by wallyg on Flickr. Used under the Creative Commons License.

From a distance, it looks like a short bar of light in the middle of the roof console. When you hail a cab like this, it should stop, pick you up, and take you wherever you want within the five boroughs. If it doesn't, it means that either the driver didn't see you, or you've been the victim of racial profiling. Man, I wish that was a joke.

However, don't rush to curse the cab driver as a racist just because a cab that had some lights on passed you by. If all the lights on the rooflight are on, you're not likely to get picked up, either. It looks like this:

Modified from a photo by magnus* on Flickr. Used under the Creative Commons License.

As you can see, the middle number is lit, but so are the "Off Duty" lights marked by the pointers. From a distance, this looks like a single, long bar of light, which can be hard to distinguish from the light of an on-duty unoccupied cab. When all the lights are on it means that even though there isn't a passenger in the cab, the driver isn't looking to pick up a fare, and they'll typically ignore anyone trying to hail them. This is usually because it's the end of the driver's shift, and they're headed home or back to the taxi company where another driver is waiting to start the next shift. When all the lights are on, the cab isn't supposed to be picking up passengers, but sometimes drivers will stop and roll down their window to ask you where you want to go--they're hoping to grab one last fare before ending their shift.

Depending on whether there are other available cabs around, this practice can be a great blessing or a big nuisance. Unlike when they're on duty, the cabbie isn't obligated to pick you up or take you anywhere, so if you're not going the cabbie's way (toward his home and/or base) or if he just doesn't like the look of you, the cab's doors will remain locked (to keep you out) and the cabbie will drive away. When that happens, all they've accomplished by stopping in front of you is to waste your time and block you off from on-duty taxis who would be obligated to take you where you want to go--it's very frustrating. But if you're making a short trip or headed in the right direction (Houston Street and Hell's Kitchen are popular destinations during shift changes, because there are taxi companies located there) an off-duty cab can be a godsend.

The final way you can find the rooflight signifies that a cab is occupied and off-duty. Then the two "Off-Duty" lights are on, but the middle section is dark. Looks like this:

Photo by faz the persian on Flickr. Used under the Creative Commons License.

This state is only relevant to you when you happen to be near a cab that's letting out its passengers. When an on-duty cab lets off its passengers near you, it's pretty much an invitation to take a ride--just remember that, no matter how ugly the weather is outside, you need to let the passengers get out before you enter the cab. (This sounds like common sense, but if you live in New York long enough, someone will eventually jump into the back seat while you're trying to calculate how much of a tip to leave, guaranteed.) But if a taxi's dropping off a fare and has its off-duty light on, it's almost impossible to change the driver's mind, no matter how persuasive you think you are.

So, as per my brother-in-law's challenge, I will try to reduce this to rhyming couplets:

Short light--you're good as gold;
No lights--you're stuck in the cold;
Long light--you'll have to beg and plead;
Two lights--you're screwed, indeed.

Hey! Stop that. I warned you I suck at poetry.

Good News, Links, and Tonight's Meetup

It's already been an eventful spring down in Tampa , with all eyes watching the Yanks' pitching young 'uns like hawks. Protective mother hawks. But the best news of the spring has been the negative biopsy Bobby Murcer received this week, showing that what some thought could have been a recurrence of his brain cancer was actually scar tissue. Surviving cancer is a day-by-day thing, but I'm glad to hear that we'll have the chance to enjoy some more days with Bobby. You can't ask for much better than that.

Anyway, I'll be at the Barnes and Noble on Fifth Avenue tonight at 6:00 (150 Fifth Avenue, & 18th Street). Being on a panel with Joe Sheehan, Steve Goldman and Jay Jaffe means being guaranteed that no one will ask you a question, but I'll fight to get my cuts in anyway. The tour will also take us (minus Goldman) to Long Island on Saturday, with an appearance at the Border's Book Store in Westbury, located at 1260 Old Country Road. That'll be at 2:00 PM. Next week (the 15th), I'll be in Rockaway, New Jersey with Steve, I'll update you on the time and place later on.

A few quick hits:

The rap on Representative Anthony Weiner, like his political mentor, Chuck Shumer, is that it's very dangerous to get between him and a TV camera, ever. He's also one of the more partisan politicos you'll find, which is one reason I hope his plea to the Attorney General, not to waste further federal resources on Roger Clemens finds a sympathetic audience. I'm on the record saying that Congress had no justification trying to sort Clemens's and Brian McNamee's dirty laundry in the first place; the investigation requested by the Oversight Committee is pouring more money after the initial bad investment of time and funds.

For BP subscribers, a couple of fresh Yankees links: Will Carroll's Team Health Report, and Kevin Goldstein's Organizational Rankings, which lists the Pinstripers as the #6 organization in the game.

I also had a quick take on Moneyball and the retirement of Jeremy Brown for Prospectus Toolbox earlier this week. Here's a taste:

The news that Jeremy Brown was hanging up his spikes due to "personal issues" made more of a stir last week than you'd expect from the retirement of a 28-year-old catcher who's spent the last two years in Triple-A. Our prospects expert, Kevin Goldstein, gave Brown an extremely evenhanded send-off over on Unfiltered; others have been less charitable, invoking imaginary choruses of scouts cheering the end of Brown's career. At least, I hope the cheering is imaginary: it'd take a Grinch-sized heart to rejoice in the end of someone's big-league dreams, unless their name is, say, Ben Christensen. The reason that Brown is the focus of such attention and schadenfreude is because the A's drafted him in the first round of the 2002 draft—an overdraft which, by itself, wouldn't be that noteworthy—and because Michael Lewis wrote a best-selling book which hailed Brown's selection as the bellwether of a new way of doing business, which the author dubbed "Moneyball" in the book of the same name. Apparently, those celebrating Brown's retirement are marking the occasion as the death of Moneyball acumen—a festive wake, with dancing and ironic toasts.

Now, Brown never asked to be the Luke Skywalker of a sabermetric revolution. He was a guy who was already going to face a fair amount of hazing in the minors because his body was not quite one that Calvin Klein would put on a billboard. After Moneyball was published, not only was he much more famous than the average 35^th overall pick, the negative aspects of his physique were cataloged in the book for ease of heckling. Saddling him with the additional burden of representing the A's organizational philosophy—as interpreted by Lewis—was never particularly fair. However, five years removed from the book's initial release, it is a reasonable time to look back at the 2002 draft, and at the A's organization in general, and ask: is Moneyball really dead?

Gone South

As you might have heard already, I'm in the Dominican Republic for the annual Caribbean Series. Right now we're in a rain delay at Estadio Cibao, but the forecast looks promising...
I've got updates up on the BP Web site, which I'll be linking below. Despite the occasional rain shower, the weather here is near-perfect for baseball. Warm (low 80s), a nice breeze, and a fully-stocked crowd of baseball-crazy fans.

The TV broadcasts may show empty seats, but it seems to be more the result of scalpers keeping the demand artificially high by holding tickets than a lack of enthusiasm by the fans.




Here are the links:

Caribbean Series: Round Robin Preview

Caribbean Series 2008: Day One

Movie Review: Cloverfield

If you can get over the issue of the way the story is told, you'll likely enjoy Cloverfield. Cloverfield belongs to a genre, along with Blair Witch Project, of movies told in the first person, as video footage of "real" events captured by someone who just happened to have a camera at the ready. Typically, movies of this genre present two particular obstacles to the suspension of disbelief. First, the shaky camera movements can take you out of the cinematic experience by making it too hard--and sometimes too nauseating--to follow the action. Second, you have to believe that a person would be so dedicated to documenting their experience that they would keep the camera rolling, even in situations where they're in grave personal danger and it would make more sense to turn the thing off and just concentrate on running away.

If you can get over those two things--and for the most part I did--then there's nothing to keep you from enjoying an exciting disaster/horror flick, that, after a very slow beginning, is relentless and well-paced. Sure, there are other problems, but I tend to look at them more as features than flaws: the characters are fairly unsympathetic, and they make poor decisions, but you pretty much don't have any horror flicks these days without those elements being in place. In this case, the unsympathetic characters are yuppies who live in Tribeca, who've gathered together for a going-away party for their friend Rob, who's taken a Vice-President job with a company in Japan. If you've ever heard of the term "viral marketing," it's likely you already know that Rob's party will be disrupted by the arrival of something terrible enough to send the Statue of Liberty's head rolling down the street like a bowling ball, and that the rest of the evening will track a handful of the partygoers' struggle to survive the catastrophe.

The result is a lot like Titanic, with all the extraneous junk scraped away--the unbelievable love story, the awkward "eighty years later" framing device, the various clinical dissections of what went wrong and how--and everything is just pared down to people reacting to the danger of near-certain death, just of a more fantastic nature. The camcorder's-eye-view of Cloverfield traps you in the perspective of these characters, who have extremely limited information about what peril they're facing or what they should do about it. The story never cuts away to a briefing at the White House (a typical scene in this kind of film) to get a dose of exposition about the situation...and distance from our imperiled main characters.

Because of the lack of exposition, there really isn't much of a message to Cloverfield. Although the film appropriates some of the imagery of the September 11 attacks, it's not about our fear of terrorism; nor is it about Iraq (like last year's horrible 28 Weeks Later), ecology (The Host, The Day After Tomorrow, and the original Godzilla films), hubris (Towering Inferno, and many other similar disaster movies), racism (the original Night of the Living Dead), class warfare (Titanic), or man's inhumanity to man (28 Days Later, among many others). In Cloverfield's case, a monster is just a monster--and that's one of the things about it that worked for me. Recommended.

****

As an additional review, I'll fess up that I've been watching the clunkily-named weekly series, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles on FOX. The idea of the show is that, after the events of Terminator 2: Judgment Day, the eponymous Ms. Connor and her savior-of-the-human-race teenage son, John, continue to have adventures while battling to keep the artificial intelligence known as Skynet from ever existing--even though at the end of T2 it was believed that Skynet had been retroactively destroyed, thereby creating a hopeless paradox (how can robots come from the future to kill you/save you if you've eliminated the system that created the robots?). The series pretends that the second Terminator sequel (2003's T3: Rise of the Machines)--(SPOILER ALERT)in which the paradox is essentially undone, and the robotic apocalypse occurs as scheduled (/spoiler)--never happened.

Maybe it's because I've spent the past few weeks acquainting myself on DVD with a show with similar man-against-robot issues, the SciFi version of Battlestar Galactica, but I'm unimpressed. Chronicles, for all the cachet of its heavy-duty license and expansive special effects budget, isn't terribly deep, so far. In its mythology, time travel is much more common than in the films--and while that discovery opens up possibilities, it also weakens the premise to the point of flimsiness. The cool thing about the earlier Terminator films was that the protagonists were left on their own, without hope of backup or relief. This development throws those elements out the window, and opens up the way for all sorts of Deus Ex Machina b.s.

For the second time in a TV season, a network has turned over its most-hyped property to a relatively obscure British actress. When NBC did it for the Bionic Woman, it was a fiasco--Michelle Ryan, an actress who sounds smart and confident using her own accent, was whiny and unfocused as a Californian twentysomething-turned superhero. Chronicles' leading Brit is Lena Headey, and although her accent is better than Ryan's, she's still not entirely right for the role she's playing. Linda Hamilton reimagined the role of Sarah Connor in Terminator 2, turning the disco-era waitress she played in the first film into a grim-faced warrior woman. She was buff, ruthless, and more than a little crazy. You were scared of this woman--she had no compunction about harming people if they endangered her son or simply got in her way.

Headey, on the other hand, isn't scaring anyone. Her Sarah Connor is a fairly generic action heroine. She looks athletic and is credible in the show's action scenes, but she isn't the physically imposing presence that Hamilton was in T2. Headey's take on the character talks like someone ruthless, but she's also emotionally fragile and conflicted--qualities that might make her character more sympathetic than Hamilton's Connor was, but they also make her less interesting. Summer Glau is more intriguing as the latest friendly Terminator model: the girl's become a science fiction fan favorite by being pretty and having a strange affect, and both of those qualities are still in evidence here. There's some promise in the relationship between Glau's Terminatrix and Thomas Dekker's savior-cum-teenage-whiner, John Connor; but the first three episodes haven't really placed the focus there.

If it weren't for the writer's strike, it's likely that I'd dismiss Chronicles off-hand as something that isn't, for the moment, worth the space it would occupy on my DVR. Right now, however, it doesn't have much competition in the scripted drama category, so I'll keep watching it until I lose interest or it gets superseded by better shows. Mildest possible recommendation, for now.

Small World

My parents aren't really baseball fans, except for by relation to me and my brothers. Still, having one casual fan and two stark-raving insane Yankee fans for offspring, they absorbed a lot of baseball by osmosis. The ballgames were always on the tube, or the radio. So when it comes to the national pastime, my parents know more than they think they know.

So it wasn't that weird when my dad brought up Bernie Williams last night, out of the blue. We were at dinner, and we'd been talking about my writing, and the whole Roger Clemens mess, and just at random Dad asks me about Bernie, as if he was one of my high school friends I still keep in touch with. So I filled my parents in as well as I could about the last year-plus: the un-vite (as Seinfeld would say) to Tampa for Spring Training, his kinda-sorta retirement, the speculation that he might be invited to camp with the Dodgers, his Jazz guitar work.

So that wasn't weird, but what happened today was. My parents were flying to Puerto Rico, and since they practically live on planes these days, they get upgraded to first class. Since these are the seats left over when first class isn't booked full, they often don't get to sit together, but you don't complain when you get bumped up. Anyway, my dad goes to take his seat, and who's he sitting next to? You guessed it, Bernie Williams.

Sometimes small doesn't even begin to describe the world.

****

Saw Michael Clayton last weekend, and it was phenomenal. It's a legal thriller that meanders a little bit on the way to where it's going, but the performances are so compelling you're unlikely to mind a few digressions. George Clooney plays the title character, a big-firm lawyer who doesn't fit the profile: he's a Fordham Law grad in a sea of Ivy League suits, a guy who's been with this giant legal machine for 15 years without making partner. He's the kind of guy who can't ever be a partner--you could say he's the lawyer in charge of non-legal solutions. When the law firm's top litigator goes crazy in a deposition, Clayton's the guy you send to smooth things over with the cops and the client. The litigator, Arthur (Tom Wilkinson) is off his meds and out of his mind, and his timing is lousy because the firm's representing a big corporate client in a billion-dollar class action suit.

How things play out with the suit is a bit predictable (what, you thought the big corporate client was going to be innocent?) but that's kind of beside the point. The point is how Wilkinson, clearly out of his mind, suddenly snaps back into clarity to explain why no one's going to successfully have him committed. It's how Tilda Swinton, as the big corporation's head lawyer, seems constantly on the edge of jumping out of her skin, even when she's in control of the situation. It's the honesty and seriousness with which Michael tells his son that he won't grow up to be a screwup like him.

Clooney's performance straddles the line between the deglamorized character he played in Syriana, and the typical, smooth, Clooney persona--streetsmart and cynical, but without the smug smile when he pulls one over on the powers-that-be. Wilkinson, a Brit whose American accent usually annoys and distracts me, is dead perfect in this role. The nasal drone of his accent works well with a character whose manic rants rarely give him a chance to breathe. If I were doing my Top Ten list now, Michael Clayton would make the top five--maybe the top three--and Wilkinson is neck-in-neck with Javier Bardem for the best supporting performance of the year. Very highly recommended.

Top 10 Movies of 2007*

* That I saw...

1. Once -- I'd expected that one of the Fall's heavy hitters would take this plucky Irish musical out of the top spot, but it persevered, and takes the crown as my best movie of 2007. I missed quite a few of the challengers--particularly There Will Be Blood, Michael Clayton, and Atonement--but I still feel comfortable with this pick.

2. The Wind that Shakes the Barley -- A savage tale of the Irish fighting for independence against the British, and once the British are gone, against each other. Cillian Murphy, starring here as a med student who decides to join his brother in the IRA, might actually be too good-looking to be a star in Hollywood, but he's definitely got the acting chops to go with the face. This film featured the single most heartbreaking scene I saw all year, although that might say more about me than about the movie.

3. No Country for Old Men -- This was the one that I expected to knock Once off its perch, and from that standpoint, I'm disappointed. Mind you, it was beautiful. Javier Bardem was mesmerizing as the villanous Anton Chigurh, Josh Brolin actually managed to make me forget his dad's married to Barbra Streisand, and Tommy Lee Jones gives a gut-punch of a performance as a Texas sheriff left to process the carnage in Chigurh's wake. But I guess I wasn't as blown away as everyone else was by the scene with the dog in the river, or by the plot, which doesn't go much farther than a simple (and not incredibly satisfying) chase film.

4. Ratatouille -- Brad Bird is the man. Who isn't leery about the idea of an animated movie about a French rat who hallucinates conversations with a great chef, and who lives his cullinary dreams by acting as a puppeteer to an unskilled kitchen apprentice? Just trust Brad Bird, the guy behind The Incredibles. More imaginatively directed than any other movie on the list.

5. The Lives of Others -- The first time I'd heard of this film, it'd just beaten Pan's Labyrinth for best foreign film, and I was indignant. I still don't think it's better than Guillermo del Toro's masterpiece, but it's another lively take on the death-throes of the Soviet Bloc, and the perils of a surveillance culture.

6. Breach -- We discussed this one when it first came out. I still don't think I've seen a lead performance as good as Chris Cooper's Robert Hanssen, except maybe Bardem's turn in No Country. Strange that Cooper's work here--much like Forrest Whitaker's in the Last King of Scotland and Denzel Washington's in Training Day--is considered a lead performance even though he's a villain and not the main character, but Bardem's being pushed as a supporting actor.

7. Hot Fuzz -- All told, the funniest movie I saw all year, although it took a while to pick up speed, spending much of its running time setting up jokes that pay off only in the last 15 or so minutes. A better film than Shaun of the Dead, but less accessible--unless you're well-versed in '80s and '90s American action films, much of what's on the screen won't register.

8. Helvetica -- A documentary about a typeface? That's right. The filmmakers managed to tap into a genius discovery: graphic designers, whose work straddles the line between art and the written word, often combine the eloquence of writers with the insane passion and conviction of artists (those of us who know Jay Jaffe already had an inkling of this). What that gives you is some very intelligent and off-beat discussions about how a font can affect your world. Don't think I've seen a documentary this good since Capturing the Friedmans or Fog of War.

9. The Bourne Ultimatum -- Another one discussed previously. Gets downgraded because of the veritable drinking game you can play by taking a shot whenever someone incredulously asks Matt Damon's Jason Bourne "You really don't remember, do you?" Still, it had to make the top 10--otherwise, I'd run afoul of "The Asset."

10. Waitress -- We start with a chick flick, we end with a chick flick...what's happened to this blog? It seems like 2007 was a pretty slim year for female performances--Keri Russell has the best female performance I saw last year, and I can't think of enough good lead performances to populate a decent top five.

Others from 2007: Darjeeling Limited didn't quite make the list--I enjoyed it, but didn't fall in love--and I'm not even sure I liked it more than its companion short film, Hotel Chevalier, which has many of Darjeeling's virtues, a 100% reduction in Luke Wilson playing his stock Wes Anderson character, and a nice helping of Natalie Portman in various states of undress. The Host just missed inclusion by much less than Darjeeling; it was my favorite horror film of the year, but the only competition was the annoying 28 Weeks Later.

Any thoughts? Suggestions about other films I should watch? Put 'em in the comments.

******

Now that the Holidays are over, and most of my big writing assignments are done, I should be able to get on more of a regular posting schedule. Back when I started this blog, four years ago today, I never imagined that I'd have to interrupt writing it to work on the Baseball Prospectus annual, or any of the other stuff that's been going on in my life. One of my resolutions for 2008 is to figure out if I can do my minimum of three posts per week here, or else consider shutting down shop...but that's talk for another time. In the meanwhile, Happy Birthday to the WTDB!

Thankful

Of all the secular holidays, there probably isn't one that resonates with me as much as Thanksgiving. The proposition that we should dedicate time to be thankful for all the good things in the world is simple, elegant, and necessary. Tomorrow--as I am on just about every other day--I'll be thankful for La Chiquita, for my brothers, my parents (who are currently somewhere on the other side of the world), and my friends. I'll also be thankful for baseball, the fact that I get to write about it and get paid to do so, and to all of you who stop by here or Baseball Prospectus to see what I have to say.

Today, I'm going to single out a couple of things that I take for granted, but for which I'm grateful:

Thanks, Andy Pettitte:

I've been doing a bunch of research on Yankees rookies for Bombers Broadside 2008, and it's given me a big appreciation for how big a step it was when the farm system produced Andy Pettitte in 1995. It had been quite a while since the Yankees had groomed and kept an elite starting pitcher--arguably since Ron Guidry in 1976 (guys like Jose Rijo, Doug Drabek, Bob Tewksbury and Al Leiter were all dealt away before getting established; Dave Righetti had been acquired as a high-level minor leaguer, so he wasn't really a product of the Yankee system).

Andy's given Yankee fans over 2,000 innings of excellent baseball in his career, and a ton of great memories. Last season, after a regrettable (but brief) separation, he returned to the Yankees and really was a rock in a sea of uncertainty. It's only fitting that we should thank him, and Steve Lombardi over at Was Watching has thought of a great way to do that, and ask Andy to come back for one more go-around. He calls it Project P46 (shades of Alex Rodriguez's Project A13 last season). I'll let him take it from here:

Here's an idea - where maybe Yankees fans can help the team's chances in 2008. Some time over the next 5 days (meaning over the long weekend where you should be able to find 15 minutes to get this done), why not send a card or note to Andy Pettitte? You can send it to:

Andy Pettitte
c/o Hendricks Sports Management LP
400 Randal Way Ste 106
Spring, TX 77388

Tell Andy that you're a Yankees fan. Offer best wishes for the holiday season and new year to him and his family. And, of course, tell him that you would be thrilled to see him be a big part of the Yankees season in 2008.

Maybe an outpouring of affection by Yankees fan would help sway Andy towards returning next season? At the worst, it wouldn't hurt.

Are you willing to try it? Also, if you think this is an interesting idea, please pass the word about it. Let's try and get over 100,000 cards and notes to Andy by the end of this month. Wouldn't that be something? But, you have to have one sent before you can have 100,000 sent - so, that means you have to send one...yourself.

Again, why not take 15 minutes between today and Sunday night and "pitch" in on Project P46?

So pass the word along, get some stamps, and let's get going!


Thanks for Local Theater:

Yeah, a lot of people are bummed out about the big Broadway Theater Strike that's shut down much of the Great White Way through this weekend's holiday. But hopefully, something good can come from the strike--not just making sure that a little bit more of the money from those high, high ticket prices trickles down to the men and women who make things run behind the scenes. Hopefully this is a good time for anyone who's in New York to discover that there's much, much, more theater off-Broadway than there is in the big production houses, and that it's just as much fun, and often a much better viewing experience.

Off-Broadway can be scary, with lots of off-putting "experimental" entries that--although I enjoy them greatly--might not be suitable for everyone's palate. Personally, my most reliable off-Broadway pick is Classic Stage Company. I just caught their presentation of Richard III this weekend, and it was fantastic. People are alternately intimidated by Shakespeare, or else consider his works to be old chestnuts. What pleases me about CSC's presentations of the Bard, led by lead actor Michael Cumpsty and director Brian Kullick (this time out, he's co-director with Cumpsty) is that they bring the text to place that's more human than either of those camps would expect.

While we often consider Shakespeare's language lofty and archaic, Cumpsty's line readings show us that it's the delivery that makes them seem so. At the same time, without changing the text (other than the cuts that are necessary to bring Shakespeare's second-longest play down under three hours) the Classic Stage troupe wrings all the comedy possible from one of the canon's bloodiest plays. And it isn't inappropriate, since Richard III is a very strange tragedy: usually, tragedies are about good people who are unable to overcome their flaws, and wind up ruined as a result. Richard starts the play, and he's already a villain. There's no indication that he ever was a good man, and he doesn't get any better as things go along. When the end comes, it's not tragic in the least--so it all kind of makes sense.

Anyway, it's very highly recommended, and it's running through December 9. Go see it, and if you're not in New York, I entreat you to find the group of people near where you are who are putting on a play, and give them some of your time. It's the least I can do, by way of thanks.

A Night at the Opera

One thing I didn't share with all of you when I posted the other day about Phil Hughes' major league debut was that I wouldn't be watching the game live. No, my TV isn't broken, nor was I expecting a rainout of Hughes' start--I had tickets for the opera.

Yeah, you heard me, the opera. You got a problem with that?

When La Chiquita's uncle, who's an opera buff, bought us tickets for the Barber of Seville at the Met several months ago, I couldn't have imagined that the Yankees would choose the same night to unleash Phil Hughes on the major leagues. I almost hoped that the Yanks would push Hughes' start over a day when Wednesday's game was rained out--but I knew that that was just being selfish, that there's just no way the Yanks' most promising prospect should be thrown into the Yanks/Sox meatgrinder, even if it was a home game. Plus, 1) the promise of Phil Hughes debut would probably sell a few extra tickets, and therefore would be wasted in a Yanks/Sox near-sellout, and 2) the rotation sets up better with Pettitte facing Boston rather than the righty-heavy Jays lineup.

So I set the DVR and decided that, even though the opera was starting at 8:00, I wouldn't try to catch the top of the first live (it's a matter of willpower--if I'd been watching the start of the game I would have been able to peel myself away for my scheduled dose of Rossini, but I probably would have delayed enough to make us late). Since I didn't watch the beginning, I chose a "media blackout" approach, promising not to look if we passed any TVs that were showing the game, and not to look for the score on my phone. Before the performance and during intermission, I answered the phone with "Whatever you do, don't tell me what's going on in the game." I still checked my email, taking the risk that some stinker would put something like "Hughes no-hitter through five" in the subject line. I lucked out on that score. I also worried vaguely that I might pass guys, not under a similar self-imposed media blackout, taking about the game while at the Met. I needn't have worried. First of all, for someone to have spoiled the game for me, I'd have had to run into opera fans who spoke English--which, along with people under the age of 60, was pretty rare. I just don't think the cross section of opera/baseball fans is all that big--feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

[Taking things out of order, this is how the best laid plans of mice and men work out: after the opera and dinner, I get home, put on the DVR, and for some reason it starts playing from the three hour mark rather than from the beginning. So after staying away from TVs and not checking the score, the first image I see tells me that the score was 6-0 in the eighth. Grrrrr.]

Back at the Met, prior to the opening curtain, someone came up to make the announcement that, even though she would still be singing, the female lead, Joyce DiDonato was fighting a throat infection. Strange thing is, the announcement put me in my element. Someone's playing with pain, when they could just pull themselves out for an understudy--this is like sports! Then, as the conductor walked into the pit, the crowd started cheering, and didn't stop until the conductor turned and acknowledged the audience, just like Roll Call at a Yankee game. Alas, we weren't chanting "Mau Be-Ni-Ni (clap, clap, clapclapclap)" to win his wave to the crowd. I would have paid good money to see that chant get started. Then, since there are also box seats at the opera and I wasn't sitting in them, we could have finished up strong with a chant of "Box seats suck!" all before first pitch--er, I mean the opening curtain.

[Later, La Chiquita got into the sports-themed spirit of the evening, saying that the Met should really have vendors walking the aisles, ready to bring you a beer or a hot dog. What can I say, she's a woman after my own heart.]

The Barber of Seville is a great experience for someone who's not an opera expert because it's genuinely funny. All the lyrics are in Italian, but at the Met you get subtitles from a machine on the seat back in front of you. Since the lyrics are often delivered lightning-fast machine gun-style bursts, it's easy to catch the rhythm of the humor, even if you're not keeping up with the dialogue too well. Add to that a lot of physical comedy, a few self-aware digs at opera itself, and a few pieces of staging that evoked Monty Python, and you will laugh, guaranteed.

The story's simple. Count Almaviva wants to get with Rosina, a pretty girl newly-arrived in Seville. Rosina's guardian, a doctor, keeps her locked up in the house. In a creepy turn that might have been slightly less creepy in the early 19th Century, one of the reasons the doctor keeps her locked up is because he wants to marry her himself. Into this love triangle steps Figaro, the eponymous Barber...who's also a semi-pro dentist, pharmacist, wig-seller and matchmaker. Even though Figaro's feeling stressed out because everyone's putting demands on his time (that's what he's singing about in the piece from this opera just about everyone knows, sung here by George Steinbrenner favorite Robert Merril, Largo al Factotum) he takes on the wealthy Count as a client, promising to find a way to hook him up with Rosina. Hilarity ensues.

As you can probably tell, I had a great time at the Met, probably a better time than I would have had watching the Jays beat down the Yanks for the Bombers' sixth straight loss. As promised, Ms. DiDonato was a gamer, despite her hurting pipes and a nasty unscheduled spill she took in a scene where one of the characters is supposed to pull her around like a rag doll. Met newcomer Lawrence Brownlee--who resembles a much stockier Prince onstage--was great in a role that calls for an ultra-sincere lovestruck dolt one moment and over-the-top wackiness the next. Although the Count and Rosina are the protagonists, the real stars are the men playing Figaro and the Doctor--since they have to play broadly for humor, and rattle off the faster tongue-twisting arias. Russel Braun and John Del Carlo were amazing in those roles, particularly Del Carlo, who simultaneously evoked pity, loathing and humor as Dr. Bartolo.

Once I got home, I finally got to see Hughes pitch his debut. The results were ugly, but he wasn't bad--he was definitely nervous in the first inning, when it looked like he was over-gripping the ball, making for a couple of curves that came nowhere near the strike zone, and one fastball that hit the ground at least five feet in front of Jorge Posada's target. He gave up a couple of runs that inning, on a booming double over Johnny Damon's head off the bat of Vernon Wells and a nice piece of hitting by Frank Thomas for an RBI single. Still, Hughes seemed more in control of himself in the second, third and fourth before Alex Rios and Wells touched him up for another couple of runs in the fifth, and ended his night. Despite the results, it was a pleasure to watch him pitch, and it promises better things in the future.

I can't say that there was any pleasure watching the Yanks bat in last night's game, however. The Captain was out of the lineup, still bothered after getting drilled in the leg during Tuesday's game against the Devil Rays. A lineup which simultaneously carries Miguel Cairo and Doug Mientkiewicz is an aberration of nature, the kind of thing you'd think we'd be done with in the 21st Century. Johnny Damon, Bobby Abreu and Jorge Posada all looked bad against AJ Burnett. This team is coming into the weekend set against the Red Sox ice cold.

In other news, the rainout means that, at least for the moment, Kei Igawa has been demoted from the starting rotation. I'm curious to hear what the reaction to that is in Japan. As a way-side note, Damon and Mientkiewicz were mobbed by press before the game, due to Orioles broadcaster Gary Thorne's accusation that the red spot on Curt Schilling's ankle during the 2004 ALCS was paint, not blood. Even for the Red Sox, that sounds just too stupid to be true.

Movie Reviews: Breach, The Host

Been a while since I posted any movie thoughts here, so here's a couple of highly recommended movies I've seen recently:

Breach -- This is the fictionalized account of the Robert Hanssen case. Hansen was an FBI counterintelligence expert who spent almost 20 years spying on the US for the Russians. Breach covers only the very end of that period, focusing on the events leading up to Hanssen's capture, particularly the role played by Eric O'Neill, an FBI trainee who went undercover as Hansen's assistant.

Like Training Day or The Last King of Scotland, this movie features a younger actor protagonist (Ryan Phillippe as O'Neill) who gets the most screen time, but the focus is really on the veteran actor/antagonist (Chris Cooper, in the role of Hanssen) with whom the younger character finds himself partnered. Cooper, biting deep into the meaty role of the ultra-patriotic, extremely religious, traitor, gives a performance that's as Oscar-worthy as Denzel Washington and Forest Whitaker's performances in those other films. What's special about Cooper's performance here is the unrelenting intensity he brings to each scene. His Hanssen is a man who never lets down his guard, and never stops thinking. He doesn't look at things and people, he scrutinizes them. To Cooper's (and writer/director Billy Ray's) credit, no effort is made to explain Hanssen's behavior or put him in a sympathetic light. Cooper just lays the man, with all his contradictions and oddities, out on the screen.

Based on the trailer, it was expected that Phillippe (best known, until recently, as Mr. Reese Witherspoon) would get blown off the screen by Cooper's performance. Amazingly, Phillippe does a better job of hanging in there than his counterparts did in Training Day or Last King of Scotland (and that's no insult to James McAvoy and Ethan Hawke, both of whom are actors I really like). As O'Neill, Phillippe uses his pretty boy looks and lightweight demeanor to inhabit a role that requires everyone, including Hanssen, to underestimate him. Phillippe's line readings, which have always sounded slightly artificial in his other roles, are effective in the role of a relatively ordinary man called on to pull off a huge deception. Overall, the confrontations between Cooper and Phillippe make for a very satisfying movie.

The Host -- Probably the best horror movie I've seen since 28 Days Later, the Host is a Korean import which draws some of its inspiration from a real-life incident in which a U.S. army coroner ordered several gallons of toxic formaldehyde to be disposed of using a normal sink in the U.S. military base near Seoul. In director Joon-ho Bong's imagination (he co-wrote the script, also), this leads directly to a huge mutant creature, looking like a cross between Geiko gecko and the giant worms from Tremors, coming out of the waters of the Han River with a surly attitude and a taste for human flesh.

The action centers on the dysfunctional Park family, who own a riverside food stand. Hyun-Seo, a 12 year old schoolgirl, is the only member of the family who really seems to have her act together. Her father, Gang-du, is a dyed-blond layabout whose main gift seems to be an ability to fall asleep at will. Her uncle, the first college graduate in the family, is unemployed and has an alcohol problem. Her aunt, a competitive archer, seems like an achiever, but her perfectionism keeps her from being a success. The patriarch of the clan raised Gang-du and his siblings, so he's immediately suspect.

When the monster from the river drags Hyun Seo back to its lair, the Park clan doesn't quite pile into a yellow VW bus, but they do embark on a rescue mission while dodging cops, shady health officials who want to keep them in quarantine, and, of course, their surly feelings toward each other. Horror/Comedy is a hard genre to pull off, because most films that try for it wind up simply as limp comedies, which don't function as horror films at all. The Host keeps up the suspense while mining some unexpected situations (such as a scene at wall of remembrance for the victims of the monster's attack) for laughs. The secret ingredient here is a lack of sentimentality reminiscent of the best of Peanuts. No matter how bad the Park family's situation is, or how badly its members screw up, we're never invited to pity them. Not even when they're being chased by a giant amphibian lizard.

Is This Thing On?

Yeah, last time you guys heard from me, it was Wednesday and I was promising my Hall of Fame column "tomorrow". Life intruded, so I've been pretty quiet. In the interim, I've finished one major project (more on this shortly), started another, seen an opera (La Traviata at the Met), got bounced hard out of the playoffs for my pool league, had a couple of celebrity sightings (Famke Janssen, John Turturro), saw a play (A Spanish Play, directed by Turturro), helped tear up a concrete sidewalk in my friend's backyard (who ever knew that a well-swung sledgehammer was so cathartic?), and experienced pain in muscles I'd forgotten I had in the aftermath (the mysterious one is the muscle that sends me into a nice bit of pain whenever I try to reach my right hand into any of my pockets).

So I've been busy. The Hall of Fame column is still coming, even if it's stale. A few notes while we wait for that:

The Iron Sheff, now happily situated in Motown, is bringing out an as-told-to book this spring. Guess this must have happened pretty quickly after he was traded, because according to the New York Times, Sheff is one of the first players I can recall to focus some criticism on Joe Torre, saying that Torre got on his nerves by constantly talking about how much he wished the Yanks had signed Vlad Guerrero.

Tom Verducci has an article mentioning both Phil Hughes and Roger Clemens, so I'm linking it. Tim Marchman, whose articles are now available to everyone now that the New York Sun isn't subscription-only, is optimistic about the Bombers' future, so that gets linked as well.

The pool league playoffs I meantioned in the intro were held at Amsterdam Billiards' new location, across the street from Webster Hall, after their old location on Amsterdam Avenue and West 76th Street closed down at the end of the year. Not mentioning the closing of the place where I met La Chiquita, and spent huge amounts of my young adult life was definitely an oversight. Some of it I'll have to chalk up to denial--the old Amsterdam was the best pool hall in the city, upscale and well-maintained, but also down-to-earth and entirely focused on the game (unlike, say, Slate--the former Chelsea Billiards--which is now a high-end lounge/sports bar with several dozen full-size pool tables thrown in as an afterthought). I loved the old hall's wood paneling and exposed brick; its working fireplace, and the front tables were pool pros (Jeanette Lee, Mika Immonen) and celebrities (Paul Sorvino, Jerry Seinfeld) were put on display. But most importantly, it was my pool home. I'd played every single table in the room at least a couple of times, I knew the place like the back of my hand. Shortly, there will be a soulless apartment building in its place.

Amsterdam's new home is the former Corner Billiards, down on Fourth Avenue. It's just a walk away from where I live now--the move saves me a ton on cab fare--but it'll take lots of time for me to get as comfortable downtown as I was on the Upper West Side. It's just a different room with a different vibe--and management hasn't gotten to shake out all the kinks, yet. The Bank the Nine Blog has some awesome photos of them getting the new pool hall ready to open at the start of this month.

As the saying goes, you close a door and open a window. I had a chance to say good-bye to the old Amsterdam, dragging Brother Joe out there while he was in town for the holidays, and spending the last nights the place was open there with La Chiquita. Now, we've moved on to a new place, which despite the 7-2 whupping I took there on Saturday, we're intent to call home. Back with some baseball tomorrow.

Fight Night

I don't usually do politics here, but tonight, before the game, something interesting is going to happen. Regardless of your political stripe, I think that if you're in New York--or even anywhere where you can get a feed to the New York One news station, you should tune in.

This election cycle has been a big snoozefest in New York State. The Governor's race seems sealed up, with Democrat Eliot Spitzer capturing the Governor's mansion after 12 years of Republican rule under George Pataki. Hillary Clinton's opponent for the Senate has resorted to calling her ugly, which we suppose will be followed by "...and your mother dresses you funny!" The one Republican who was expected to run a competitive race, onetime senatorial candidate, Jeannine Pirro, now running for Attorney General against Andrew Cuomo (son of the former Governor), seems hopelessly sunk by reports that she called now-convict Bernie Kerik about illegally wiretapping her husband's yacht, and that it was Kerik who sounded more conscientious about not breaking the law.

But today's interesting thing is a race that was not supposed to be competitive, the race for New York State Comptroller. The Comptroller is basically the fiscal watchdog of the state, conducting audits and investigations and making sure that the state isn't losing money to fraud and waste. It's probably the third-highest elected office in the state.

Last winter, at an event honoring an Irish talk radio host, I meet a fellow in a bow tie who introduces himself and shakes my hand. As usual, it's a loud room and I don't catch his name, quick exchange of vague pleasantries and I'm on to the next person in the room. Later on my boss catches up with me and says, "I see you met Chris Callaghan."

The name was familiar. One of the things I do is manage the firm email account, which means wading through spam, particularly from political candidates and wannabes.

"Guy who wants to run for Comptroller?" I asked.
"Yeah."
"You serious?"

There's something about politicians. When you catch them among civilians, they usually stand out. Almost invariably, they're alpha dogs. They carry themselves like they know that they're someone important, and they expect deference from you. The guy that I met had none of that. He looked like someone's accountant---which is pretty much what he is.

I filed J. Christopher Callaghan away under "Sacrificial Lambs" and went along my merry way.

You see, I'd also met the incumbent, Alan Hevesi. He is an alpha dog. When I was in law school, we hosted a debate for the New York City Comptroller's office, which was basically uncontested--so this was a pro forma contest of showing up against the Republican challenger as well as "candidates" from fringier climes like the Communist Party, the Right to Life Party, and the Libertarians. Hevesi won in a walk, as he did when he ran for the state Comptroller's position. He's got a good, professorial tone to him that's just a little bit wonky for discussing budgetary issues, but when someone gets out of line he slips on his Queens accent, and sounds like someone who could get in a good shot or two in a fistfight.

A few weeks ago, however, Hevesi's cakewalk started to resemble a street fight, somewhat. You see, Callaghan did what a good comptroller's supposed to do, and investigated some waste and fraud...by the incumbent Comptroller. Turns out Hevesi has had a couple of state employees whose major work duties have been to drive his wife around. That led to an Ethics probe that recently found that Hevesi probably violated the Public Officials Law.

As the controversy brewed, the two candidates' standings in the polls didn't change all that substantially. Callaghan has only a very small fraction of the money that Hevesi has in his war chest, not enough to do any real advertising. Callaghan has no name recognition, and most voters couldn't pick his face out of a line-up, unless you clued them in about the bow tie. And Hevesi refused to debate him, prefering to coast to victory rather than have to meet Callaghan face-to-face to discuss the issues, and explain his chaufeur controversy.

Until tonight at 7:00 PM, that is.

Forget party politics--this is one of the most interesting political science experiments, out there. Can a guy who came out of nowhere, who has no money, and who doesn't look like your average politician win political office? Will Callaghan fumble the ball when he finally gets to take the big stage against a smoother, more politically-experienced opponent? Does it even matter? Does anyone decide how to vote based on debates?

Even more fascinating, I have no idea what Hevesi is going to say tonight, or for that matter, why he suddenly opted to debate after all. Maybe he dug up some dirt that allows him to go on the offensive. Maybe he'll offer a tearful apology; or he could angrily accuse his critics of being a "vast right-wing conspiracy." Anything could happen.

It should make for good TV. Here's hoping it makes for good government.

Take That, Haters!

Hopefully, Alex Rodriguez did something to relieve his boo-bird blues yesterday when he smashed an extra-inning two run shot, to bring the Yankees back from a one-run deficit in the bottom of the 12th inning. The Yanks had fallen behind in the top of the inning, on a solo homer by Marcus Giles that gave the Braves a 3-2 lead in the pitching staredown, which started with John Smoltz and Chien Ming Wang looking good for the first seven and eight innings, respectively. The Yanks trailed 2-1 through seven and a half innings, but tied it on Jason Giambi's homer to take the game into extra innings.

After Wang hit the showers, Mariano Rivera threw a couple of scoreless innings, followed by the stylings of Ron Villone, Kyle Farnsworth, and Scott Proctor. These were not overpowering--Proctor did allow Giles's homer--but they did get a measure of redemption for the blown game Tuesday night.

For the Yanks, they get the day off to gear up for the Subway Series coming to the Boogie Down. The Mets get no rest, instead trying to stave off a sweep by the Red Sox today. Weblog will be on shutdown Saturday thru Tuesday, but I'll do my best to post updates if possible. No promises.

****

Today's also the deadline for All-Star Ballots. Since I'd been lax in filling out my punchcards, I went over to MLB.com to see what my final ballot would look like:

AL

First Base: Ortiz, D., BOS
Giambi should be in this slot, for a Yankee sweep of the infield. But with the All Star Game in Pittsburgh this year, there is no DH (that's a "Top 5 things that make no sense about the All Star Game," for sure), so Ortiz gets the nod at a position he doesn't really play anymore.

Second Base: Cano, R., NYY
It came down to Cano and Brian Roberts, and I voted for Cano, by a nose. Roberts' offensive stats are better, but Cano seems to be having the better season with the glove. Since Robbie's injured, Roberts should probably be the All Star.

Third Base: Rodriguez, A., NYY
Over Troy Glaus. 'Nuff said.


Shortstop: Jeter, D., NYY
For once, a guilt-free Jeter vote.

Catcher: Mauer, J., MIN
.392. That's Mauer's batting average as of this morning.

Outfielder: Ramirez, M., BOS
Outfielder: Sizemore, G., CLE
Outfielder: Wells, V., TOR

I take the outfielders all together here. Manny is Manny, an All Star until he plays his way off the team. Sizemore is a newcomer to this level of production, but we think he'll stick. It's tempting to do like Brother Joe and play "We Won't Get Fooled Again" on Wells (and stick a vote for Damon onto the ballot) but he is the third best performer in the AL. Actually, Ichiro!, Nick Swisher, and Alexis Rios are probably ahead of Damon.

NL

First Base: Pujols, A., STL
If he was healthy, this should be a unanimous vote. Nick Johnson, of all people, is the second guy on the EqA leaderboard, here.

Second Base: Utley, C., PHI
Dan Uggla and Jeff Kent have better EqA's, but Utley's been the man for the past few seasons.

Third Base: Wright, D., NYM
Wins against Miguel Cabrera. Bit of a New York slant, perhaps, but I can live with that. Kid's the real deal.

Shortstop: Reyes, J., NYM
A month ago this pick would have looked silly. Doesn't hurt that the runner-up is Omar Vizquel.

Catcher: McCann, B., ATL
Exception to the "established player" guideline--when a player is by far outperforming the competition. The runner-up is Michael Barrett.

Outfielder: Abreu, B., PHI
Outfielder: Bay, J., PIT
Outfielder: Beltran, C., NYM

Some usual suspects. In the NL, you don't have to get past "B" in the alphabetical listing of outfielders, and for once, that's without Barry Bonds. Brian Giles, Andruw Jones, and Brian Holliday are the next three names on my list, followed by Bonds.

Predictable

You can see something coming and still be surprised by the awfulness of it.

For example, this story in the New York Times brought up the disparity in treatment between three crimes. Three years ago, a young college student named Romona Moore went missing. She was a good girl, well-known for keeping her routine. At that time, when her parents tried to get help on Romona's disappearance, they couldn't get the police to open a case, and they couldn't get any attention from the media. Romona's disappearance was overshadowed by the disappearance of a white, middle-aged rare books dealer from the Upper East Side. Sixteen days after she disappeared, Romona turned up dead. She had been violated and tortured before she died. Eventually her killers were caught, although--based upon the Times' account--it was no victory of strong policework:

As the trial of the two men accused of killing Ms. Moore has unfolded, the allocation of police resources has been on display. Defense lawyers pointed out lost evidence and searches in which investigators overlooked condoms, condom wrappers, chains, bloody tools and clothes stained with bodily fluids. On the witness stand, Detective John Cantone was forced to admit that he had left several rooms out of a crime scene sketch and marked north as south.

In contrast, the rare book dealer was never found, despite the unusual care and resources allocated to her case.

The reason that the disparity of treatment Ms. Moore's disappearance received three years ago was in the spotlight this week, was because the trial of the two men responsible for Romona's death concluded, and the verdict was held until Thursday--just in time for the verdict to be overshadowed by the redball crime of the moment, the case of Imette St. Guillen. Ms. St. Guillen was raped and murdered a few weeks ago, after a night of drinking in bars downtown. Since then, her picture has been a fixture on the covers of the local tabloids, every detail of her case a new excuse to run pictures of the pretty, young, tragically dead woman.

The treatment Ms. St. Guillen has received, in death, is typical of New York City's reaction to the death of someone beautiful. All violent deaths in New York seem to be placed on a spectrum, in the decision of how much attention we pay to them. The top of the charts are young women, beautiful, whose family and friends have lots of good photographs of them. Ranks are drawn according to race, neighborhood, and perceived virtue (i.e., social workers, students, and "actresses" have priorities over strippers and junkies). Next in line are children, again, seemingly ranked by looks and the number of good photographs available, girls taking priority over boys. Mixed in there, are members of society, with emphasis on people with good connections to government (police priority) or to the press (media priority). There are x-factors throughout the process: more attention paid to someone who's killed on a slow news day, for example.

And it's not just New York, either. I mean, how many front pages and hours of television news have been dedicated to Natalee Holloway, the teenager who didn't return from her vacation to Aruba? Yes, her disappearance is tragic, but the coverage is out of all proportion with the event. How many teens have disappeared since Holloway disappeared last May? Why is this young girl, and her family, more important than anyone else who's gone missing in that time?

Back to Romona and Imette, the conflict noted in the Times piece was that by announcing the verdict in the Moore case on Thursday, it would run afoul of the arraignment of the suspect in the St. Guillen murder, in the same courthouse.

The Times called it correctly on Thursday morning. On my ride to work the next day, I didn't pick up the newspaper--a combination of disgust, and the simple fact that there's not much baseball news around this time to make the newspaper worth my fifty cents. Then, on the train, I wound up sitting next to an abandoned Daily News.

Imette's story got three whole pages of the newspaper, pages 2-4. That's one page on her family's reactions, one page on the arraignment, and another page divided between one of the News' columnists, and a graphic pointing out the evidence against the accused murderer.

The first degree murder convictions in the Moore case were buried on page 9, at the bottom of the page. Without irony, the story noted Romona's mother's anger at the news media and the police.