Today in The Journal News
-
- April
- 12
Mike Mussina was the latest Yankee to get injured in what proved to be a 5-1 loss against Minnesota. The Yankees have to be wondering what’s going on.
Derek Jeter, Robinson Cano and Joe Torre will wear No. 42 in honor of Jackie Robinson on Sunday. Meanwhile, this notebook updates A-Rod’s hot streak and a great night for minor leaguer Chase Wright.
Had no idea until I got back last night that the great Kurt Vonnegut had passed away. “Slaughterhouse-Five” is one of those books they made you read in school that turned out to be compelling.
Of course he also had a great cameo in “Back to School.” For my money, the best Rodney Dangerfield movie other than “Caddyshack.”
Time to leave freezing cold Minnesota for sunny California. I’ll check back in later today with hopefully an update from Brian Cashman.
This entry was posted
on Thursday, April 12th, 2007 at 7:23 am by Peter Abraham.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
Share and Enjoy: 
| 
Print This Post
| 
Email This Post
Peter Abraham
“Rodriguez is hitting .355 and has an extra-base in 11 straight games dating back to last season. Not counting the playoffs, of course.”
Of course.
Come on Pete, I expected better from you than 56 seconds. I know with a little training you can beat that punk from the Times.
“It raises some eyebrows,” Damon said.
Tyler Kepner’s blog seems to indicate while that quote may have been the angle best suited for your story, it was only part of the story.
I dont know if I call Oakland “sunny”
“F me? F you, Vonnegut!”
i remember in 1968 doing a paper for an american studies class at a LA junior college on vonnegut and the dresden bombings. there was nothing at all about the bombing of dresden in the readers guide to periodical literature( no internet iback in the day) even though more civilians were killed than at hiroshima or nagasaki. it was totally censored in the US. vonnegot was prisoner of war in dresden when the bombings took place. it was a non military city that was full of historic art treasures. dresden was the florence of germany. the war was over.the bombing was just revenge,mostly by the british.vonnegut because he lived through something that no one knew about was radicalized. the resulting aubiographical slaughterhouse five helped radicalize a whole generation including me.
one difference between then and now is if you flunked an engish class you lost your deferment and found yourself in vietnam 3 months later.
in baseball, things happened like bobby murcer missing a few years from getting drafted. baseball was still a common denominator that still unified the polarities of the time. the college baseball coach made me get three haircuts( in one day) before i stepped on the field the first day of practice. there were campus anti-war protests in the afternoon, but i never missed a day checking on the yankee box score in the latimes. mantle was gone. the yankees were in last place. a former cia spy, michael burke, was the yankee gm. you can’t make this stuff up.
thanks peter for throwing in more than just baseball, even though for us addicted, it all still comes back to baseball.
Pete – Easy Money is another great Rodney movie. A young Joe Pesci giving it his all…ya gotta love that!
Randy 1,
Great comment! Thanks for sharing. That’s the kind of stuff that makes blogging so great. Also, thanks to Peter for paying tribute to Kurt Vonnegut and getting the discussion started.
Caddyshack rules.
sadly, i don’t think i’d have even heard of Kurt Vonnegut if it weren’t for Back to School.
Off Topic, But,
I wanted to thank Melissa and Chris NY for the trivia answer about Joe Torre. I never would have guessed that!
Thanks.
Giambi is very streaky,and I wonder if the Yankees let Arod go after this season will he be our cleanup hitter? Hmmm…that’s not a great idea.
Randy:
You and I are old, dude : ) One even bigger difference between then and now: now you can’t flunk a class.
And, (slap ourselves on the back), we had that discussion about the whole Yankee conditioning thing before the latest issue with Mussina.
my uncle just called me to tell me that someone from the yankees was fired. he wasn’t sure if it was the head trainer or the strength and conditioning coach. has anyone heard anything?
When was Rodney NOT funny??
since when can’t you flunk a class?
Someone tell Giambi that he’s going straight to the minor leagues if he doesn’t start hitting.
Thats the ticket.
Randy:
Just wanted to say that, while the bombings in Germany were obviously terrible, the argument that Dresden was worse than Hiroshima/Nagasaki or Tokyo Firebombing has come under heavy criticism lately. Mostly because it was David Irving that first started popularizing the idea of how awful Dresden was.
In an unrelated note, another city not bombed during the war is Regensburg. Absolutely gorgeous city; the old downtown in still intact.
So it goes. I’ll miss Kurt Vonnegut.
Anyone else worried about Cano’s lack of discipline at the plate? He has a great swing, but he hacks at every pitch. I don’t think he’s walked yet. It’s tough to see him developing further as a hitter with his approach.
murphydog-
yeah, we’re old but we have wifi on our walkers right : )
Pete – 56 seconds??!?!?? C’mon dude, Ty Kepner made it down from the box to the field is 38 sec. You don’t want the Times having a leg up on you at the Metrodome do you? Lohud is where it’s at…!!
Treadmill time!
http://blogs.nydailynews.com/yankees/
(Mark’s picking on you)
Randy L & Murphydog: Thanks for the history lesson. I’ve got a degree in American Politics from one of the most Leftist Universities around, and had never heard of the Dresden Bombing. With all my hippie Professors, you’d think that one would’ve come up. My parents only graduated high school in ‘72, so they missed all that radical stuff.
Anyone hear who the Yankees fired??
while i agree that caddyshack is a far better movie on the whole, i think that Dangerfield’s performance in Back to School was much funnier.
I think I have seen Back to School more than just about any movie ever. that’s scary.
Vonnegut’s loss is sad indeed. Great author and a unique American. Sadly that generation of thinkers/writers/artists is slowly withering away. We are left with the James Frey’s of the world who invent interesting lives for themselves as a substitute for lived experience.
great writer, sad loss.
i hope somebody loses a job over this conditioning thing. they need to get this figured out before somebody else important goes down. this is absolutely ridiculous.
Vonnegut was a left wing nut case who wrote 2 good novels. Not like we lost Hemingway here.
Jess in PA:
I’m a German historian (American, but I study German history). The Dresden bombing is not an old issue, and is often brought up as a “The Allies were naughty too!!!11!!” type argument.
The argument isn’t totally false, btw.
Bopper: What 2 novels did you like?
Bopper:
FYI a number of folks would disagree with your scoreboard on Vonnegut but nobody says you have to like or admire the guy. As for Vonnegut being a left wing nut case, mental illness runs in his family so I’m sure you are not making fun of that. Putting that aside, can you name even one great post WW1 novelist who wasn’t a lefty? WW1 is kind of the line of demarcation of the anti-war, anti honor culture movement. Few great creative literary or artistic minds after that point tilt to the right. (Sorry Bop, but Ann Coulter, Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity are not great novelists).
Good thing Moose ran his big obnoxious mouth during ST about Pavano—just in time for him to become the new Pavano.
Careful there Peter, before you whip people up into a frenzy and demand the firing of Marty Miller. I don’t know anything about the guy but before we cost him his livelihood you should consider a few things.
You know Muss has had hamstring problems in the past and has a tendency to pick up small niggling injuries. Even Torre said that Matsui probably got hurt because it was so cold. You also know that all of the players who are hurt (with exception of Wang) are vets who probably pretty much ignore the coach and stick to their own regime (Pettitte definitely hurt his back doing the same weights exercises he has been doing for 10 years and said it was a freak thing).
Just cos his methods and stretching routines are different from what the players are used to doesn’t mean they are wrong (I mean the last guy got fired so perhaps some changes are warranted). It was Damon who was quoted as saying he wasn’t familiar with his stretching. The same Damon who ended the season with at least a strain in every major muscle group!
Plus the guy has kept the Rajah on the mound for two straight starts. I’d be amazed if he hasn’t demanded a raise already!
Sometimes athletes get injured, regardless of how well they prepare. As you have often pointed out with the players so far this season, their results are too small a sample size to judge them this early. (That said, if Jeter or Mariano feel so much as a twinge just tell him to pack up his things!!!)
Also if you are going to include injuries from camp you should also note that more than 60 guys came into to train after a layoff of about 4 – 5 months. A few small setbacks were inevitable.
Brian—
I do not know about anything else in your post BUT Mussina last night on his interview with YES said specifically he has NOT had hamstring problems before. He was asked that specific question.
Also I think the credit for Pavano goes more to the guy in Arizona he worked with and Pavano then the guy with the team now.
the great Sam Kinison, in “Back to School,” too.
and Burt Young (or “Paulie,” from Rocky).
and the bad kid from “The Karate Kid.” Whatever his name is.
just a great movie… one that belongs in the “B-List All Star Movie Hall of Fame.”
Mr. Vonnegut, your semicolon has been punched through on the typewriter.
you will be missed.
yeah Justin, because a “twinge” in his hamstring is the same as missing almost 2 full-years with injuries like a “bruised butt” and self-inflicted broken ribs that he lied about and made worse. Good point.
Randy I and Murphydog, it sounds like we’re all from more or less the same generation and have gone through many of the same experiences. Randy I, in the previous thread you mentioned that you thought Sal Maglie might have been the guru for the Bamberger type pitching coach (the same Sal “the Barber” whom I loved as a pitcher, but who Jim Bouton, I believe, rightly castigated in “Ball Four”)but, in fact, I think it was the great Johnny Sain who was the inspiration for those guys. His mantra was that a pitcher should throw, throw and throw some more. I don’t think he was even big on running, but I can’t recall all the details of his philosophy. He had a long successful career as pitching coach, including a number of championship years with the Yankees.
I’m not an historian, but I’ve read quite a bit about WW II and I believe the general consensus of modern historians who specialize in the subject, agree that Dresden was a useless bit of revenge, and that it was every bit as dreadful as we’ve been told. It wasn’t the only German city that was uselessly mauled. “Bomber” Harris, who was the British air force chief, had Hamburg, Cologne and other mostly civilian targets blasted. Almost as many people died in Hamburg alone as died in all of Britain as a result of German air attacks (reference Keegan.) German civilian morale was no more broken as a result of these attacks than British civilian morale was broken by the ‘blitz.’ The Germans brought war upon themselves of course, but the allied response did not spare civilian lives anymore than the Nazis in their bombing of open cities like Amsterdam and Rotterdam (all of this civilian city bombing stuff having its birth in the fascist led attacks during the Spanish Civil War.) Sorry for going off on such a tangent, but this is stuff that far too many of us are no longer being taught.
Murphydog:
As a lefty, I don’t read much right-wing literature, but I always found Tom Clancy to be a top-notch fiction writer. He’s no Vonnegut, to be sure, but the Jack Ryan series were all compelling reads.
Yanks61:
Don’t forget the indiscriminate bombings of Japanese cities by the Americans in WWII. The AAF under “Bombs Away” LeMay involved itself in a strategic bombing campaign of the Home Islands that rivalled anything that happened in the European theatre. One firebombing raid over Tokyo killed more civilians than either of the atomic bombs that were dropped.
World War II should forever be held up as an example of how disgusting war is. Whether you’re fighting with spears or atomic weapons, there are no winners, only losers left to clean up. (Unless you are Americans, in which case you haven’t cleaned up from a war since 1865.)
Pete-
Haven’t really had the chance to read a lot in the last few days, but I would like to comment on the 9th inning last night.
I agree that Farnsworth is not a contender when it comes to those clutch situations, but can’t you also blame Torre for not walking Mauer with 1st base open to set up the double play?
I mean cuddyer was up next and you are gonna try and get out the batting champion from last season?
What do you think torre’s thinkin’ was behind that? I was very frustrated as the INEVITABLE hit came and the twins took a 2-1 lead.
I am never against torre but in this situation I feel like he made an inexcusable bad call.
Any explanation for this??
Aaron
One more point. I did not mean to suggest that the Dresden or any other civilian bombing was morally just. The basic point is, as Matt said, War Sucks™.
The Allies hoped to destroy German infrastructure (which it eventually did, though it took far longer than expected), lower morale (which it failed to do), and, yes, kill Germans (successful here). We must also remember that this is how war was conducted then.
This isn’t an argument of “The Nazis did it to us first.” It’s an argument of “this is how they fought wars then.” It’s nigh on impossible to recapture the passion, anger, dread, and horror of that conflict. We should remember that all the armies had large stockpiles of chemical and gas weapons at all times – just waiting for the other side to use it first.
Also (I love that word today I think), the idea was that if killing 50 German civilians saved one American soldier’s life, it was a good thing. Another awful factor of war; the lives of the enemy become meaningless to you.
Has anyone seen this:
http://tinyurl.com/2nlmjt
Interesting stuff. Just sad that she is a Dodgers fan.
I come here for Moose updates and I get discourses on Vonnegut.
Clemens! We need ya!
Triple Lindy time!
Jake,
Maybe Moose is reading Vonnegut as we read this blog. Probably, Breakfast of Champions.
Ahhhh, Breakfast of Champions, great book. As is Galapagos.
Jimmy the Saint, you know that she is Glass Carl’s ex right? If you click around you will see that she has a line of Yankee gear – if that is what you are looking for.
Im pretty sure Moose is doing a crossword puzzle.
Whoo, these comments are really on the shmart end of the spectrum today (said like the caveman in the commercials).
Anyway, as a Moose fan more for my fantasy team then reality, I am disappointed that he is hurt, but maybe it is karma for the Pavano calling out. Funny how Pettitte immediately embraced him and befriended him whereas Mussina chose the bad cop role. I’m still mad at Moose for not holding a 3-1 lead last Oct at a game I was at.
Phil Hughes making his second start vs. Richmond Braves
[quote]
http://web.minorleaguebaseball.com/index.jsp
I love my blog. Discussions on Kurt Vonnegut and Rodney Dangerfield at the same time.
>more civilians were killed than at hiroshima or nagasaki.
that post didn’t come through. i will try one more time.
>more civilians were killed than at hiroshima or nagasaki.
Please address Farnsworth as Kerosene Karl
Thanks Gayle dont live in the States so I didn’t get the YES broadcast. Thought he had hamstrings probs before. He has had numerous little aches and pains of the last couple of years.
I know Pavano spent the summer rehabbing, I more or less threw him in for a joke, but he’s been out of Arizona for about 2 months now and he isn’t on crutches yet.
As much as I’m nt gonna say that is down to Miller, I think it is harsh to blame him for an injury Muss got after pitching 2 full innings. Surely he is warm by then? So it’s not the stretching, conditioning – maybe but I’m not ready to blame Miller for that one yet either.