Maybe If I'd Been a Cage Rat...

When I was 11, I was selected to play for the Niskayuna Rotary Little League team.  I'd hit pretty well at the A and AA levels, and I could catch a fly ball in left field.  I'd been too sick to attend four out of five weeknights of major league tryouts, so unlike my more qualified peers, I had the crucial advantage of not yet having demonstrated my incompetence to the coaches.  I got the call!

(Similar logic by Internet analysts -- buy anything that hasn't publicly failed yet -- explains in large part the NASDAQ tech bubble of the late 1990's.)

That first year in the majors, I batted two hundred points below the Mendoza Line.  (You might say, I had a NASDAQ crash of my own.)  Needless to say, Kevin Long was not my hitting coach.

Fortunately for the New York Yankees, Kevin Long is their hitting coach.  Even better, he's a good coach, the 2012 postseason notwithstanding.  He's written a book, Cage Rat, describing his years as a minor league player and coach, ultimately getting the call to join the Yankees and serve as a second pair of eyes for All-Stars Derek Jeter, Alex Rodriguez, Mark Teixara, Robinson Cano, and the rest of the Bronx Bombers.

Even more fortunately for Little Leaguers, Cage Rat presents Coach Long's instructions, with photos, on how to stand in, balance, stride, sit "dead red" (assume a fastball is coming), and keep your head still so you can see the pitch without distortion.  For the professional ballplayers, Long spends hours upon hours in the video room and the batting cage (his "office") analyzing, deconstructing, and reconstructing the mechanics of each player's swing.

Imagine a book by an auto mechanic who absolutely loves being an auto mechanic.  He may be a bit shallow, personally, but he knows absolutely everything there is to know about steering linkages.  He also knows how to sweet-talk and persuade the especially balky steering linkages into yielding willingly to his wrench.  The steering linkages love him for it.  That's the tone of this book.

Mostly, however, this is Long's personal and professional story.  He struggled as a minor league player for eight years in the Kansas City organization, never quite achieving a promotion to the majors (maybe he should have feigned illness during tryouts?).  He restarted his career as a minor league coach, working his way up and eventually shifting to the Yankees' organization.  As minor league salaries are less than table scraps, he was supported financially for more than a decade by his wife Marcie, who worked crazy hours at restaurants and bars to support their three children.  The wisest move K-Long made in writing this book (with the assistance of sportswriter Glen Waggoner) was to hand Marcie the pen for a chapter plus several more passages.  The lady more than earned the right to tell her story, and to sport her Yankees-blue playoff scarf proudly.

The behind-the-scenes views of the Yankees' clubhouse and batting cages are limited to various stars' pregame routines.  The limited look through the peephole in the fence that we're allowed isn't nearly as salacious as a true clubhouse exposé -- this is no Ball Four, despite a few personality and work habit descriptions -- but it should satisfy fans who are truly interested in the mechanical aspects of hitting and the detailed work that goes into daily game preparation.

It also serves as an excellent cover letter and resume for one Kevin Long, Professional Hitting Coach, should the need ever arise.

Yankees Win, Blah Blah Blah

Speaking of Philadelphia, weren't they just in a World Series? It's been only two weeks since the end of the baseball season, but the victory by the Yankees over the Phillies has already receded from front-of-brain consciousness.

For me, the iconic play of the postseason came in Game 4: Johnny Damon's alert steal of third base when nobody was covering the bag. That play showed verve and spirit. Other than that, not much comes to mind. Hideki Matsui hit a bunch of homers and doubles in the final game, and Mariano Rivera pitched more than one inning a few times. Andy Pettitte pitched with his usual Pete Sampras-like countenance. Derek Jeter got on base some, I'm pretty sure. Must have. A-Rod had a big game at some point, didn't he?

Ever the fair-weather fan, I tried to get excited about the Yankees win, which (unacceptably to some) was nine long years in coming. I'd grown up in Upstate New York during the losing Yankee seasons of the late 1960's and early 1970's, post-Mickey Mantle, pre-Thurman Munson and pre-Reggie Jackson. After pitching ace Mel Stottlemyre, graceful outfielder Roy White, and the late Bobby Murcer, the talent level on those teams fell off sharply. Recalling those lean years, I hold that a championship is never to be taken for granted -- even by a pinstriped franchise with a payroll large enough to fund NASA.

In that spirit, I caught some of the 2009 post-parade ceremony at City Hall. Honestly, I've never seen a more subdued, workmanlike celebration. With few exceptions, the players sauntered out when their names were called, most looking for all the world like they'd rather be somewhere else, or wanted a fee for their appearance. (In fairness, serious hangovers could have been involved.) Keys to the city were presented by Mayor Bloomberg to each Yankee player, including minor-league call-ups, as well as every last team employee down to the shoeshine kid. A few short speeches were made; a few onlookers cheered.

Most of the speakers credited Yankees owner George Steinbrenner, now in failing health, and his sons for their massive spending on star players that has driven and disrupted the economics of baseball for three decades. To finance astronomical salaries, ticket prices have risen over the years, and have now reached the level of the absurd in the new Yankee Stadium. It's no longer New York's barbers and cabdrivers who can afford to attend the games, especially in the seats closest to home plate, but bankers, lawyers and celebrity politicians. Perhaps this explains the curiously underwhelming response when the final out of Game 5 was recorded. "The-e-e Yankees win!" said the team's broadcaster. The fans cheered; the players put on special caps and t-shirts; the loudspeakers played We Are The Champions. All according to plan.

(Is noone aware that Queen's vainglorious winner's anthem was meant to be ironic?)

Excellence through expectation and execution is admirable in business and sports alike, but only in the corporate world is it enough. Sports requires passion as well as achievement to hold fan interest and build loyalty. As the Yankees report to spring training in 2010 and prepare to defend their 27th championship -- will Manager Joe Girardi change his number from 27 to 28? -- the best they can hope for if they succeed is not ecstasy but relief at meeting the annual plan.

Meanwhile, baseball enthusiasts everywhere else will hope that their team can stoke up, catch lightning, and take down the mighty Yanks. Explosive exuberance awaits the franchise and its fans whose players can, just once, overachieve wildly, steal a pennant and a championship, and reach the very pinnacle of their professional existence.

          Irrational, yes; impossible, no --
          We're in first place! Go, Brewers, Go!

Baseball's Back! It's Opening Day

A Tarnished Palace

In this age of superlatives, a work of art that is merely good instead of great can seem like a near failure. Like a bronze medalist in a track meet or honorable mention at a bake-off, City Hall (1996) both elates and disappoints. It redeems itself in its treatment of grand, human themes, from loss of innocence to lost potential, in a political fable which, I speculate, might also represent the filmmaker's intent to illuminate the still-baffling story of a contemporary American politician.

Al Pacino, as Mayor John Pappas of New York, carries the film. His oratory soars to astounding heights when addressing a deeply skeptical African-American congregation, mourning a child of the community caught in the crossfire of a notorious shooting. Pappas decries the violence that has taken root in his city and implores the parishioners, in rising, climactic tones, to join him in civic participation "until this city...your city...our city...his city...is a palace again!"

This superlative scene is supported by several understated, well-acted and directed moments. Immediately after the memorial service, Pappas reflects silently in the mayor's car, as John Cusack's young Deputy Mayor Calhoun waits for the proper moment to break in with the day's agenda. Finally, Pappas quietly says, "Terrible thing to lose a child." That's the moment; they share a sigh and proceed anew. In another quotable scene, Mayor Pappas reflects on the comprehensive responsibility of the office: "If a sparrow dies in Central Park, I feel it."



Would that the rest of City Hall lived up to Pacino's performance. John Cusack, likable in the portrayal of an unlikely, Louisiana-raised political transplant to New York, can't quite locate a southern accent with confidence. His character's credibility is burdened by an inept subplot -- or is it the main plot? -- in which the Deputy Mayor of New York City practically assumes the role of an action figure, chasing gangsters by boat one night and traveling by train upstate on another occasion -- all the way to Buffalo, round trip! -- to track down a lead. (At a minimum, one would think his absence from his office duties might be noticed.) Danny Aiello's affable Brooklyn politician, under the thumb of Tony Franciosa's menacing mobster, is more sharply defined, and Bridget Fonda animates the plot by getting in Cusack's face and under his skin. Still, as with Michael Douglas in Wall Street or Martin Sheen in The West Wing, we can't wait for Pacino to return to the screen.

Ultimately, City Hall is a morality tale as well as a portrait of New York City as a tarnished but beloved metropolis. Without Pacino's Mayor Pappas as anchor and focus, however, it would just be an extended, long-winded episode of Law and Order -- without the crisp editing and snappy titles.

With Pacino in the lead, it assumes the status of parable -- and perhaps even a political explication. For years I have wondered about former New York Governor Mario Cuomo's decision not to run for President, following his rise to national prominence occasioned by his brilliant 1984 convention speech. A gifted orator of his era, perhaps the last progressive Democrat to inspire the liberal-to-moderate populace in the way that Barack Obama has in this current era, Cuomo was derided by critics as the "Hamlet of Albany" for waffling on the decision to run, ultimately withdrawing from contention. Is City Hall wholly fictional in its origins, or could it be a cloaked tale of a promising national political career, derailed through events and associations never revealed?

As Calhoun laments in a closing scene with Pappas, after the fictional mayor's political downfall becomes inevitable: "The things you could have done."

Summer of Sam

A Wall Street programming intern, I was walking on the streets of midtown Manhattan after work on a hot summer evening in 1977 when the lights went out. As in: out out. The Big Out. Street lights, traffic lights, office buildings, storefronts; everything but car headlights and emergency lights went dark.

The remaining sounds of cars and voices echoed eerily. You don't notice the pervasive 60-cycle hum of the urban, electrified world until it suddenly stops.

A few brave, most likely inebriated citizens took it upon themselves to stand in intersections to play traffic cop. That didn't work so well. Yet the Manhattan scene in my vicinity wasn't all that chaotic; it was only in the aftermath that I read reports of the smash-and-grab storefront looting in various sections of the city.

Being a suburban college kid from Upstate New York, where blackouts are considered almost cute, it didn't occur to me at first that my situation on the Midtown streets was possibly perilous. Then it did. I hustled back toward my room at the Vanderbilt Y, and ran into a friend who was gathering up a posse. "They're filming Superman at the Daily News building," he said in earnest. "They've got huge floodlights!" This seemed important at the time. We had to investigate.

We first saw the glow of the movie lights from a few blocks away. The Daily News building had been renamed The Daily Planet using an overlay facade. There was no sign of Christopher Reeve, Marlon Brando, or Margot Kidder, but dozens of cops in uniform swarmed the set. I thought they were there to prevent vandalism, until I noticed their uniforms: each officer's shoulder patch said "City of Metropolis". (The thick facial make-up should probably also have been a tip-off.)

Still the same kid from Upstate N.Y., still oblivious to the paralyzing effects of a wee little power outage, I actually tried to go to work the next morning. Figured out that the subways wouldn't be running, so I took the bus; but I forgot that the elevators (not to mention the computers - duh!) wouldn't be. Fortunately, I phoned upstairs before climbing the 27 stories. The phone rang and rang...

Excellent! I did what any Wall Street flunky with a suddenly free day and little cash should do, even today: I took the Staten Island Ferry and back, a.k.a. the poor man's guided tour of New York Harbor. The Statue of Liberty is magnificent, but it's nothing compared with the sense of freedom that's experienced by a summer intern who's escaped the office on a sunny day!

Two decades later, Spike Lee portrayed 1977 New York City in his movie, "Summer of Sam"; the "Son of Sam" serial murders had gripped the city. ESPN recently aired its terrific serial docudrama, "The Bronx is Burning", about the player-manager-owner melodrama on Reggie Jackson's 1977 Yankees. CBGB's, the iconic underground rock club that closed last year, was in full swing, and Judy Collins, Harry Chapin, and Bonnie Raitt played to mellow summer crowds in Central Park. Disco ducks wore leisure suits.

Completed only four years prior, the World Trade Center was still acquiring new tenants. The city itself was all but bankrupt, needing a federal bailout from the Carter Administration. Its fiscal woes led the voters to usher out the diminutive Mayor Abraham Beame and send in the brash Edward "How'm I doing?" Koch, with Mario Cuomo and Bella Abzug also in the running. The record-setting heatwave scorched the city, and the massive blackout roiled the populace. Apparently, I experienced a pivotal time in the storied history of New York. Who knew?

Did I mention that my Dad's name is Sam?

A Different Look

"The thing about the Redskins' defense is, they give you a different look every time," said John Madden on the NFL game broadcast.

Not long afterward, I started to notice other things that give you a different look every time.

On Christmas morning, the Yule log in the fireplace gives a different look every time we stop smiling at each other long enough to catch a glimpse of it. (Never mind that it's a video loop on our TV screen.)

Seen from Bradford Beach in Milwaukee, Lake Michigan can look indescribably brilliant or exceedingly gray. The water can be a shocking deep blue or a muddy brown, placid or choppy, rippling or white-capped, roaring or calm. The shoreline can be a seagull's paradise or caked with ice, the beach a haven for sunbathers or a foreboding no-man's-land of storm fences. The sky over the horizon can be featureless or filled with cottony clouds, wispy cirrus clouds, or thunderstorms, sometimes minutes apart. Sometimes you can't even see the horizon.

Lake Michigan gives you a different look every time.

Here in Denver, it's the Front Range of the Rockies that gives you a different look, its alternately snowcapped and barren black and purple peaks changing both daily and with the seasons under spectacular violet, pink, red, yellow, and blaze-orange cloud formations that reach to the high sky.

In New York, it's the Hudson and East Rivers, flowing under commuter bridges to New York Harbor. In Boston, it's skulls being rowed on the Charles River; up by Dartmouth, it's the Connecticut River; near my Upstate New York hometown, it's the Mohawk River; all changing constantly, always the same. "All-ll this time/The river flowed", as Sting's song lyric puts it. The rivers give you a different look every time.

In Washington, D.C., lots of things give you a different look every time. The stately Potomac River; the reflections of the monuments off the Tidal Pool; the exhibits at the Smithsonian; the ballroom dancers at Glen Echo Park; the insane traffic patterns around Crystal City; the crystal lattice that forms from the branches and twigs in Rock Creek Park after an ice storm.

From January 20th forward, the White House will give us a different look, too. It's about time.