5/18-5/28: Five Below and Back

My twenty-ninth birthday was last Wednesday, May 21^st.

I was not a professional baseball player on that day, nor a professional writer, or even a lawyer for that matter.

But you know what?  My wife went into labor with our second son, David Cook won American Idol, and the Yankees began to turn their season around with the first of five straight wins, en route to a 6-and-2 mark through last night. 

I mean, honestly.  Can anyone ask for a better birthday?

The secret to happiness, I have begun to realize, is appreciating what has been given to us, not what other people have or what they have accomplished.  And the secret to accomplishment is dedicating your sole purpose to physically getting something done, as opposed to dreaming about it on a nightly basis, or during the day in the back of a New York City bus, or on the couch with a beer and the ballgame.

Take, for example, the wonderful world of baseball.  If X player comes up in Y situation and does not come through, one team wins, one team loses, and that player has to deal with his failure.  However, if that same player causes Z to happen, well then, he is a hero, a winner, and a physical God all wrapped into one shining, clutch performance.  The difference between success and failure in all walks of life is doing that which you set out to do in the first place.  For an athlete it’s a hit, a pass, a catch, or a kick.   For an artist it’s an audition, a take, a track or a note.  For me, the indifferent law school graduate who wants to inspire himself before he even attempts to inspire someone else, it’s a thought, an idea, a paragraph, or a final draft.

One day I will finish something I’ve started in this crazy life, and that will make all the difference.  What I have been lacking for the last twenty-nine years is the effort to make it so.

And that’s what people want to see more than anything from someone on TV, across the airwaves, or embedded in a newspaper or magazine – effort.  They want to see you hustle, take risks, and leave it all out their between the lines, inside the frame, or up on that stage.   They want to see you sweat, suffer, and grow as you overcome all obstacles in your path, and they want to see you do it with grace and humility. 

This is why everyone loves Derek Jeter and questions Alex Rodriguez.

This is why the country crowned David Cook over David Archuleta.

This is what inspires people, and in the end, that is all the matters to most of us in this perpetual, corporate rerun of a fast food, cynical, sarcastic, and corrupt sitcom called Society.

Talent only begets opportunity.  Character and heart beget respect.  And respect, my friends, turns into the love, admiration, and inspiration required to do something truly great with your talent.

Take, for example, my courageous and gracious wife, who has inspired me for the better part of eleven years now.  Take also David Cook, who has inspired me for the past five months.  And, don’t look now, but the Yankees are on the verge of inspiring me once again.  As of last night’s 4-2 win over the Baltimore Orioles at Camden Yards, they are 26-27, Alex Rodriguez has returned to the lineup, and Joba Chamberlain is on his way to the rotation.  Signs of life and fire and effort are brewing in the Bronx, and all that is left now for this team to do is to physically accomplish that which it set out to do in the first place.

Win baseball games.

Take a lesson from David Cook, would you all please?  Dig deep, be true to yourselves as athletes and people, and let your hearts hang out there for the world to see on the TV, across the airwaves, or embedded in the newspapers or magazines.

Maybe then you will inspire yourselves, and become a truly great team.

Only then will you find the effort it takes to win it all.  I will be watching, of course, waiting for the inspiration that makes all the difference in the world.

5/10-5/17: Two and Four

The sunlight warmed the nylon of his jersey like it hadn’t done in quite some time.  God, what a beautiful day for baseball, he thought to himself, the deep blue of the number two tracing hot lines in graceful arcs and right angles on his back.

Why is it that we always start so slow, he muttered to no one in particular, methodically swinging a black, weighted bat, back and then forth, as reciprocal and true as a metronome.

Why must we always give everyone else a head start?  If it’s our penance, I think I understand.

Derek thought long and hard in the on-deck circle.  Not about the Subway Series, or how Hank Steinbrenner’s Venezuelan dream was busy striking-out his fellow countryman, Bobby Abreu, from the extreme right side of the mound.  No, he thought about how his Yankees had just lost three out of four to the first place Tampa Bay Rays, and six of their last nine overall.  He thought about how pathetic and surreal his team’s name looked at the bottom of the standings.

This one’s for you, Hank.

Derek dug into the box against Johan Santana like he was just any other pitcher, exactly what you want your Captain to do.  He took a ball, he took a strike, maybe he fouled off a fastball or two.  Somewhere between Ian Kennedy’s last shellacking and Phil Hughes’ fractured right rib, however, DJ looked into the eyes of a hanging, drifting change-up from the blue and orange clad Santana, and smiled.

Boom.

Derek doesn’t turn on a pitch often, preferring to keep his hands in and angle base hits to right-centerfield all day, but on this afternoon he turned.  And he turned hard, didn’t he, smacking the wanderlust right off the face of that smug baseball, and sending it on a rope into the upper deck down the left field line.  Just like that, it was 2-0 Yankees in the bottom of the first, and now every fan in attendance smiled.

You see, who needs Johan Santana?

But then Johnny Damon got thrown out at the plate in the bottom of the third, snuffing out a sure-fire, Johan-killing rally, and Andy Pettitte had a three-run top of the fourth on only one hard-hit single from Carlos Beltran.  Add in a couple bloops, a couple walks, and one obnoxious swinging-bunt from Luis Castillo, and the score was now 3-2 Mets.

Man, you just had a bad feeling about this one.

How sad is that.  For the 2008 New York Yankees, as soon as they fall behind you feel like the game is over.  Even with a line-up that doesn’t have A-Rod or Jorge Posada, you still have your Jeters, Abreus, Damons, Matsuis, Giambis, and Canos, but they have shown no signs of tenacity, fight, or even a flair for the dramatic through the first quarter of the season.  In point of fact, this squad has not one come-from-behind victory when they are losing after six innings.

Not one.

And once again, they threw up another 0-fer with runners-in-scoring-position yesterday, dropping to a season-low three games under .500 without even a whisper of protest.  Of course, it doesn’t help when Kyle Farnsworth gives up three runs on two home-runs before he even records an out in the top of the seventh, but that’s to be expected, right, even when he is having a somewhat respectable year to this point.

What’s not to be expected in the Bronx is losing, and it’s starting to feel like this team is accepting their defeats, as opposed to fighting them off with every once of their competitive fire.

The Captain tried to send a message in the bottom of the first yesterday, to his new owner, to his teammates, and to this increasingly frustrated city.  But after the Yankees dropped their seventh game in their last ten, the question must be asked.

Was anybody in the dugout listening?

5/3-5/9: Three and Three

Another week of baseball, another week of life, and everything feels .500.

You could sense the sun beginning to shine though, couldn’t you, with Mike Mussina winning his third and fourth games in a row, and Darrell Rasner giving up only two runs over six frames in his first big league start of the season.  But no, not so fast, because then the normally lights-out Joba serves up a three-run jack to blow a vintage Andy Pettitte performance – his first regular season runs allowed at Yankee Stadium ever – and this coming on the heels of another perfect seventh inning from the normally maddening Kyle Farnsworth, a twist a fate that emphasizes just how humbling this sport can truly be.

And then of course, Chien-Ming Wang gets out-aced by the Indians suddenly emerged pitcher of perfection, Cliff Lee, and the roller coaster continues for the Yankees.

Win two, lose two.

Get swept by the Tigers, go ahead and sweep the Mariners.

Maybe if Joe Girardi stuck with one line-up for more than one game, this on-again, off-again offense could start to develop a rhythm, even with Morgan Ensberg, Wilson Betemit, Shelly Duncan, and Jose Molina playing starters each night.  Even with Robinson Cano and Jason Giambi having to combine their averages to reach .300.  Even with the rotation being held together by one Ace, two aging, gritty veterans, my other brother Darrell, and – drum roll please – Mr. K. himself.

Ladies and Gentlemen, may I please re-re-re-introduce, for your viewing pleasure, from the land of the rising sun, and direct from the Hashin Tigers… Kei “Triple-A” Igawa.

Last night he returned to the mound in Detroit, and the Detroit Tigers immediately returned the favor.  When it was all said and done, Kei allowed six runs in three-plus, batting-practice-type innings, and his debut ERA for the big club rang in at a resounding 18.00.

Please.

Whether you actually scouted him or not, Cashman, before you forked over nearly $50MM, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist now to realize this guy was not made for American League baseball.  His pitches are slow, his pitches are up, and his pitches just don’t move that much.  For lack of a better visual, it’s literally like watching batting practice.  The Yankees’ Triple-A rotation currently has their team in the division’s respective drivers seat, so there must be somebody else, right?

Please, anybody else.

Even a three-run, ninth-inning rally against Detroit’s pedestrian Todd Jones couldn’t give the Yankees their first come-from-behind victory of the season, and the boys from the Bronx fell back to one game below .500 at 18-19, losing this one by the score of 6-to-5.  If I didn’t love the game of baseball so much, and the New York Yankees for that matter, I might go out on a limb and call this team boring.  I might accuse these players of going through the motions.  I might even say that their new manager, for all the talk of fire and attitude and life, is looking about as flat and tired as Joe Torre ever did in that dugout.

And no, I don’t care if he stands up instead of sits, or paces instead of peruses.

This team is just different, and I can’t quite put my finger on it.

Ah well, what’s one week of baseball and one week of life if you can’t complain about the inconsistent, .500 performance of your favorite team for five consistent minutes.  Just as long as it doesn’t turn into another five consistent weeks, or five long months, and we’re not sitting here in September talking about injuries, unrealized potential, and a lack-luster 81-81 record.

You are the New York Yankees guys.  Start acting like it.

Or, at the very least, feeling like it.

4/30-5/2: One and Two

So the Calendar turned from April to May, and the rain remained.

In fact, for the New York Yankees, the drizzle began to change to a steady pour.  No longer is it a question whether or not “Generation Tre” will remain in tact for a full season.  It was revealed Thursday that Phil Hughes has a stress fracture of the ninth rib on his right side – funny, he has a 9.00 ERA in six April starts – which will sideline him until July at the least, according to the suddenly talkative (or nervous) GM, Brian Cashman.  And as for his embattled compatriot, Ian Kennedy, after last night’s additional sub-par performance on the losing end of a three-game-sweep to the Detroit Tigers, he may finally be on his way back to Triple-A Scranton Wilkes-Barre.

Manager Joe Girardi, who is growing more and more irritated with the media by the question, revealed that the team will not need a fifth starter for a while, given the way the off-days fall in May.  This means that when the Yanks bring up Darrell Rasner to replace the “injured” Hughes (somewhat shockingly, Rasner has a 4-0 record and 0.87 ERA at Scranton thus far), Kennedy will be expendable on every fifth day.  Suffice to say, this has not been a great month for the Yankees experimental Youth Movement.

Unless, of course, you want to talk about Melky Cabrera.

Here is a young man from the Dominican Republic who couldn’t catch a routine fly ball when he was first called up in 2005 for limited action, but is now known for leaping over walls to rob the Red Sox hitters of home runs, and gunning runners down from his perch in center.  The Melk Man went from a fourth outfielder in 2006, to flat out taking the hallowed green lawn of Yankee giants Joe D. and Micky Mantle out from under Johnny Damon in 2007, never to relinquish this piece of real estate again.  Just like his ascension to the starting line-up over the past three seasons, Melky is quick, tenacious, and versatile, willing to hit lead-off or ninth whenever he is asked to do so.

Last night at the Stadium in the Bronx, Cabrera’s two-run double in the bottom of the second inning was the difference in the ballgame, as he reached down to the dirt with his bat and raked a nasty Eric Bedard curveball inside the third base bag.  With the ball screaming down the line and headed for the blue-walled corner, Morgan “the accountant” Ensberg ambled home from third, and slick-fielding newcomer Alberto Gonzalez raced all the way to the dish from first.  Melky, of course, trotted into second with a stand-up double, his confidence and machismo growing taller by the day.

Thus far, Cabrera’s bat is hovering around the .300 mark.  He is also tied for the team-lead in home runs (5) with the .167-hitting Jason Giambi.  Melky’s big hit last night against the Seattle Mariners quickly made the score 3-0, and that is all the Ace-turned-Stopper Chien Ming Wang would need, as the talented, evolving pitcher threw six strong innings of one-run baseball.

Driven to adapt by postseason failure from a year ago, Wang is now mixing in more and more change-ups and sliders with his bowling ball sinker, and this is one Yankees experiment that is paying early dividends, and paying well.  The man’s new pitches move like angry, hump-backed waves on a stormy, Taiwanese sea, and opposing hitters can no longer sit and wait to ride his sinker safely back to shore.  They have to think about what’s coming next, and by the time they recognize a particular break in the water, it’s way too late and much too futile.

Wang is 6-0 now through his first seven starts.  The word indispensable comes to mind, especially with Pettitte getting knocked around for his second straight start on Wednesday night.

Guess who didn’t get knocked around in the seventh inning against the Mariners?  Much to my chagrin, Kyle “the Farns” Farnsworth came in and mowed down three straight hitters with a steady diet of 97 MPH fastballs.  Could Brian Bruney’s freak ankle injury be just the opportunity Kyle needs to motivate himself toward the realization of his own tantalizing potential?  If the crowd’s standing ovation and his teammates’ post-game words of praise are any indication, Yankees Universe is sure hoping so.

 Much to my subsequent pleasure, the Farns was followed by the meaty right hand of Joba, and the ice-cold right hook of Rivera, quite possibly the deadliest and most intimidating combination in all of baseball.  This game was over when the Yankees reached the eighth with the lead, a game-shortening advantage they have not possessed since the glory years of the late-90’s dynasty.  If Farnsworth can gain the momentum and confidence he needs to lock down the seventh for the next two months, then we’d really be talking about something, wouldn’t we?  However, it’s a marathon not a sprint, and Kyle has a few more laps to run before I’m ready to move Joba back to the rotation.

Ah, the rotation.  While Wang turned the steady pour of mid-Spring back to a drizzle for a night, two through four now consists of Pettitte, Mussina, and Rasner.  Hey, maybe Darrell will be the ray of sunlight both Hughes and Kennedy were supposed to be, and May will bring out the flowers of winning baseball in the Bronx.  At 15-16 on May 2, I can almost smell the roses in the morning light.

Can you?

Or am I dreaming of roses… it’s hard to tell from my perch on the couch.

4/28-29: One and One

Quiet.

That is my impression of last night’s game, and the game before that, and the whole month of April baseball for the New York Yankees.  Quiet like a construction man who walks alone from the worksite toward his beat-up pick-up truck at day’s end, lost somewhere between the motions of time and endless routine.  Quiet like you’re already gone, and only the body remains.

Quiet like that.

Twenty-seven games in twenty-eight days, eighteen of their last twenty on the road, two all-stars hitting somewhere around .150, and the collective cast hitting just South of .220 with runners in scoring position.  Quiet like a team that is stuck somewhere over the skies of America for one month solid, uncomfortably asleep in their jet-like home of steel, always moving and never knowing exactly when the merry-go-round will spin to rest.  Maybe today is the day I love this game again, they think to themselves.

Phil Hughes knows quiet, doesn’t he?  It’s the sound of six starts in April and never a fourth inning reached.  It’s the sound of expectation and youth with their backs turned toward one another, unwilling or maybe incapable of looking each other in the eyes, of speaking the unspoken truths tickling the tongues of every one watching this early season progress.

Maybe this kid just isn’t ready yet?

Patience or no patience, maybe we need to think about sending him down, stretching him out, and rebuilding some of that no-no confidence he displayed in Texas last year, just before a hamstring cried “pop” and turned his season inside out.

Maybe six runs over three and two-thirds innings in last night’s loss to the Detroit Tigers, at the Stadium for once, is not the type of performance that will re-energize a team that won a 1-0 game on Sunday in Cleveland, and scratched out four runs in Monday’s win on the strength of one hit, one walk, two infield singles, and two RBI groundouts.  There is nothing wrong with winning by attrition occasionally, don’t get me wrong.  Except for the fact that your offense may start relying on fortune instead of firepower if allowed to continue.

Or maybe the Yankees just need to sleep.

I know I do, and all I do is write about what they do.

Quiet like a Stadium on its last tour of duty that has nothing to cheer about for one painful, obligatory ballgame, and the length of a night to think about leaving thirteen runners stranded on base.  Not to mention sending both Jorge Posada and Alex Rodriguez to the DL on two consecutive days.

Quiet like that, wouldn’t you agree?

4/23-27: Two and Three

Yesterday was one of the best days I can remember in a long time, and it had nothing to do with the Yankees.  My son and I did yard work in the cool of an overcast, late-April afternoon, and I knew at once why fathers are meant to have their sons.

Because they love you, unconditionally.

As mine followed me around the front lawn in true toddler earnest, trying to pick-up the shovel I was using to edge the shrubbery at one turn, trying to race his plastic dump truck faster than the breeze at another, I felt a closeness to him that cannot be explained, only related to by other fathers.  This was my son, and even at the young age of two I could see him looking up to me, wanting to do everything I was doing, wanting to impress me with every move, asking the questions that he knew only I could answer on this particular day.

For instance, was the bee really inside the yellow tulip?  I don’t know son, but let’s look together.  So we did, pulling apart the fragile, vibrant petals slowly, ever so gently, the excitement building as only searching for bees in the half-light can provide.  There was no bee on this occasion, but we would see him later, and I would explain to my son while we whispered how these insects use the flowers for food, much like he uses his plate at the dinner table with me and his mother.  Not the most perfect analogy when you think about it, but it was perfect to him, and only because I spoke the words.

On and on the afternoon went, me digging and knocking the dirt from the stubborn clumps of grass I had unearthed, Frankie’s golden locks running circles around the giant oak tree I was edging, as simple and sublime as a childhood memory with my own father.  Who would have thought pure happiness could be found in the tedious routine of yard work, the reason for life itself embodied in the love and admiration of a two-year-old little man?

It’s shocking how much this journey teaches us, the when and the why always the mystery and the pleasure at the same time.

I remember college, and rebellion, and cross-country road trips.  I remember Jack Kerouac and Ernest Hemingway, and never wanting to let up.  I remember a fire inside that gave life to dreams and poured gasoline on words that could only burn on paper, and I remember that I was going to write it all before I was even twenty-five.

Well, it has been a long, winding, unbelievable road since I sat on the edge of the Grand Canyon for what seemed like an evening, since I crossed the Great Plains alone and slept in the basement of a church in a Minnesota cornfield.  It was on this night that I waited for God to walk through the door and into my room, maybe to tuck me in for the ending of youth, and maybe just to tell me everything was going to be alright.

For one, crystallized period of time, everything was so real… so alive.

Somewhere between that quiet, lonely basement and my front yard today, the Great American Novel never got written, and my Academy Award-winning screenplay never produced.  But you know what, I am happy in a way I never saw coming, and maybe I never would have been if my dreams of fame and fortune and endless wandering had somehow come true.

Everything happens for a reason, I truly believe it so.

Maybe that’s why Aaron Boone hit the home run that knocked me out of bed on 96^th street, and slammed not only my fist into the ceiling, but baseball back into my life.

I love the New York Yankees because my father does.  And now, I am suddenly coming to realize, because they give me an excuse to write, every single day.  Maybe my former boss dubbed me Yankee Joe for a reason, looking back on it now.  Maybe these words, my lightly-trafficked blog, and this pin-striped team are my chance to finally write something worth reading… to finally see if the potential will ever find the courage and the discipline to step up to the plate, every pun intended.

Or maybe I should just stick to the action across the diamond, and leave these late-night revelations to Chris McCandless, somewhere out there in the wild.

We are twenty-six games into this thing now, and the Yankees stand at 13-13.  Not spectacular, but not terrible either, just predictably inconsistent for a team that is indeed in transition.  When Mussina finally pitches a gem to stifle his critics for a much-needed night, such as last Wednesday against the White Sox in Chicago, the always dependable Pettitte gets battered around like a rookie, a la Friday’s opener with the Cleveland Indians.  When both rookies Phil Hughes and Ian Kennedy turn in decent performances of their own to stifle the eminently quotable Junior Boss, both Thursday’s weather and Saturday’s untimely hitting serve to put a damper on their outings.

Such is baseball, especially in April.

What has not been so predictable is Chien-Ming Wang’s record, 5-0 after he pitched seven shutout innings yesterday in a pitchers duel against Cy Young winner C.C. Sabathia, and Mariano Rivera’s 0.00 ERA, the number as it stood when he closed out Wang’s game and earned his seventh save in only thirteen Yankee wins.

Pitching and defense wins championships, as we are told time and time again by the experts.  Well, the Bombers are winning their share of games so far without an inkling of timely hitting, so maybe it’s pitching and defense that is getting the job done.

Either way, it’s still April, and I’m still in my front yard in the half-light, even if only in my mind.  There will be better stretches of games for the Yankees over the course of this season, mark my words, but there may never be another day as perfect as the one I just had with my son.

Here is to happiness, like only championship rings and searching for bees can bring.

4/22: Yankees 9, White Sox 5

                Bobby Abreu witnessed Derek strike out.  Taking his easy, fluid swings from the on-deck circle at U.S. Cellular Field in Chicago, he watched in quiet amazement as Octavio Dotel blew a high heater right past the Captain on a 2-2 count.

                “Whoosh,” said the bat, fighting the air on its way through the strike zone.  Derek just shook his head and stared back at the mound, looking as comfortable with his failure as he does with his countless success.  Try teaching that in Little League, coach.

                Bobby was amazed though.

The more he thought about it, the more it didn’t make any sense.  The bases are loaded right?  There are two outs in the top of the seventh, and we are down 3-2… the game is hanging in the balance, am I wrong?  Bobby wrinkled his brow into deep, wavy furrows and began digging his back foot into the batter’s box.  He was miles away in the far reaches of his mind.

Why didn’t Jeter get a hit?

“Whap,” the glove grunted, Octavio having throw ball one.

Suddenly, oh so subtly, Bobby realized the inevitable truth.  This game is on my shoulders now, isn’t it?  It’s up to me, and nobody else in that dugout over there, to make sure Wang-er gets the win.  After a gritty, gutsy, less than perfect six innings of work, Chien-Ming Wang could only sit and observe, a jacket and a towel wrapping his valuable right arm in warmth.

So valuable, in fact, the Taiwanese stock market fluctuates on its performance.  Can that be true?

“Whap,” the glove shouted this time, Octavio having thrown ball two.

Alright, Bobby, time to wake up.  He’s gotta groove one right here.  No way he’s going 3-0.

So Bobby came back down to earth, and with the clarity and conviction of a wandering, salt-of-the-earth prophet, launched the fastball that he knew was coming deep into the Windy City night.  The left-fielder leapt, Bobby Abreu tossed his bat, and just like that, the Yankees went for losing this game 3-2, to winning 6-3.  Talk about a New York minute.

And talk about a clutch, two-out hit.

No, talk about a baseball player picking up his Captain, and dusting off his ace.

Even when Billy Traber and Brian Bruney loaded the bases on three walks and one strike-out in the bottom of the seventh, Joba rolled in and picked up his fellow relievers.  Pumping in nasty heat and snapping off ridiculous sliders, the young stud from Nebraska got out of the jam without breaking a sweat.  He did walk one run home to tighten the score to 6-4, but shrugged it off and got Juan Uribe to pop-up on the very next pitch.

Try teaching that in Little League, coach.  Try moving this kid into the rotation now, Hank.

The heart of a champion beats with the blood of a fighter, a cool, calculated, single-minded confidence that cannot be taught, and cannot be denied.  Jeter knows how it feels, so does Mo, so does Pettitte, and as is becoming more and more obvious by the New York Minute, so does Joba Chamberlain.

Bobby Abreu got a taste Tuesday night in Chicago.

Don’t think.  Just swing.  Grand Slam.

Sweet, saucy, Venezuelan perfection, and the Yankees win.