Farewell to the Captain, Hello to Tradition

Every once in a while the stars align. An opportunity arises. A chance to not only right a wrong, but to create a memory and to set things aright all in one. Every once in a while.

Remember your first major league baseball game? Yankees Orioles in the Bronx. 1987. I was 10. Eddie Murray went yard to right field to win it for the O's. I sat up in the upper deck of the old Yankee Stadium along the first baseline. I still smell the cigars along River Avenue.

I attended that game with a then distant friend of the family, not my dad or anyone else who could walk me through the game, the Stadium, the lore, the history. I just remember the sights, the smells. No audio.

This fall, though, I got a chance to set things right for the next generation. By a luck of the draw I had tickets to the second to last regular season home game in the Bronx this year. Derek Jeter's second to last home game at the Stadium before he retires. I chose to take my two year old nephew. It was his first game.

We took the subway up so he could get a feel for the fans, for the pre-game chatter, and the ritual and rhythm of mass transit. We listened to the Bleacher Creatures so he could hear the roll call. As each player responded to the crowd I filled him in on their position, their season, and their place in Yankee history. This introduced him to the second most important cheer he learned that day: DER-EK JE-TER.

Next to thunder, my nephew's never heard anything so sonorous as the Jeter chant. And next to his family, he's never heard anything so full of love, admiration, adulation, and gratitude.

It's times like these that I curse the new Stadium and it's solid structure. In Game 1 of the 2006 ALDS against Detroit I witnessed Jeter go five-for-five with a home run in a winning effort (remember that, Harris?). By his fifth at-bat the chant was so pervasive that the lower deck shook. I have never been so delightfully afraid. [The old Stadium, like Venice, used to open up to fans the way St Mark's Square unveils La Serenissima - the tunnels from the entrance down to the field giving way to what Bart Giamatti referred to as the Green Fields of the mind - that oasis of green amid the concrete jungle.]

Between at-bats we walked around the stadium so he could see the field from different angles. He heard the Voice of God, Bob Sheppard, before he too posthumously retired. I pointed out the area behind third base where Jeter dove into the stands against Boston (remember that, Batters?), the gap between first and second where he tied Gehrig (remember that, Javy?), the lower deck in right field where he became Mr November and the city of New York cried in catharsis after 9/11.

After a long day through three boroughs, the kid nodded off in the middle innings, but I like to think the sounds of the crowd, the smells of the park, and the ambiance of the moment have baptized him in baseball. I'm just glad I got to take him to his first game. May this tradition continue.

O captain! My captain!

eath. Taxes. And the New York Yankees. Three things I can pencil in every year.

When asked why I like baseball, a game some complain is too slow, is boring, doesn't have enough action, I allude to Bart Giamatti's essay, "The Green Fields of the Mind":

"It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone. You count on it, rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive, and then just when the days are all twilight, when you need it most, it stops."

And:

"Whatever the reason, it seemed to me that I was investing more and more in baseball, making the game do more of the work that keeps time fat and slow and lazy. I was counting on the game's deep patterns, three strikes, three outs, three times three innings, and its deepest impulse, to go out and back, to leave and to return home, to set the order of the day and to organize the daylight."

More than any other sport, baseball mirrors our lives in its dailyness and in its grueling schedule. We wake up, go to work and return home in the same way baseball players run out to their positions inning after inning, day after day and return home afterward. More than any other sport, the fans can identify with the players' long season and not only wish them success, but survival through one year to the next. The game's parallel existence mirrors our own continued existence.

Fans of all baseball teams are free to claim this parallel. Few fans, though, can make a claim for immortality through their teams. Every year teams such as the Cubs, the Red Sox and the Yankees stay in the same location and wear the same uniforms they extend their lives past the lengths of our own. And in the same vein as "you don't have to be faster than the bear, just faster than the other guy to not get eaten", anything older than you or your direct memory is that much closer to immortality.

A few years ago Brian Cashman, the general manager of the Yankees said, and I'm paraphrasing, "Our fans count on the Yankees on a daily basis." I understood that to mean a few things. First, no matter how crappy our day, the Yankees will end it well. Second, no matter how unfair the day, the Yankees will play the game the right way and in winning, will (in a very small and personal way) level the scales of justice. Third, no matter how tempting the short cut, the high standard of the Yankees  -and their subsequent success - will give us something to emulate.

Cashman spoke of the entire franchise, but he could have been speaking about just one player: Derek Sanderson Jeter.

The Captain injured his ankle last night and it seems he will miss the rest of the playoffs. Saying he will be missed is an understatement. I refuse to write his eulogy today: That's like making his Yankeeography in 2002 (which they did) as there's more to come.

Some may argue that the Yankees and their fans have hit Giamatti's "stop." Even Whitman's poem, "O Captain! My Captain!" does not end well for its leader. Nor did it for Mr. Keating in Dead Poets Society who also invoked Uncle Walt. But rather than sulk in loss, Keating's students atop desks picked up the mantle of captain, each of their own ship.

No, the game continues. And last I checked, the Stadium is still in the Bronx and the Yankees still wear pinstripes. Jeter will play another day. The Yankees will play today.

Swinging at the first pitch

ince posting about the marshmallow test the other day, I've given it some more thought. Taking the first offer of a marshmallow is akin to taking the first pitch. (I know, a baseball metaphor, shocking.) And good hitters take the first pitch, right?

Not Derek Jeter. Jeter has 3,238 hits and counting. His lifetime average is .313. His lifetime average when he swings at the first pitch? .381. Significantly better. This is also true of Tony Gwynn (.338/.375), Wade Boggs (.328/.362), Albert Pujols (.325/.370), Miguel Cabrera (.317/.406) and Ichiro Suzuki (.322/.382). Even Don Mattingly, who seemed to take the first pitch religiously, did better (.307/.363). So why doesn't Jeter swing at the first pitch every time? Because if he did word would get around and pitchers would intentionally throw junk out of the strike zone for him to chase.

604 of Jeter's 3,238 hits (18.6%) have come on the first pitch. So when does he know it's a good idea to swing at the first pitch? As someone who tends to hit first or second in the lineup, part of his job the first time up is to take pitches so his whole team can see what the pitcher has. So maybe he takes the first pitch in the first inning more often than not. But when would he swing at the first pitch in the first inning? If he and his teammates are familiar with the pitcher or if there's a nervous rookie on the hill who just wants to throw strikes and not plunk the mascot.

So then Jeter's going to swing at the first pitch later in the game then, maybe the third time he's seen the pitcher because by then, we can assume, the team has a better idea of what to expect, so DJ can swing away. Perhaps. But later in the game, the pitcher's more tired. Maybe Jeter takes the first pitch to wear the pitcher down. Or, being tired, the pitcher throws more first pitch strikes for hitters like Jeter to pounce on.

In short, Jeter's no fool. He's likely done his homework and put his common sense to work to know when to swing at the first pitch based on statistical information and personal experience.

So when should Pablo take the first marshmallow offer? If he thinks the one offering it can only produce the one now and not the two later. If he thinks the one now will be fresh and the two later stale. Essentially, Pablo should take the first marshmallow if he doesn't trust the person offering it to come through with the second marshmallow.  Because why turn down a good offer for a less likely one? If he trusted the person to come through on the bigger payoff even if it meant he had to wait, he'd wait.

I presume that the person administering the marshmallow test in most cases is a well dressed adult who speaks well and appears credible. The kids who trust the tester wait for the second marshmallow. Maybe the kids who take the first marshmallow are impatient, short-term thinkers as they've been called. Maybe they don't trust the tester. Maybe they're just really hungry right now.

While I think the marshmallow test could use some more variables (namely, the presentation of the tester and the time when the test is given (is it right after lunch? has it been a while since the kids have eaten anything?), I do, on the whole, believe in its general finding that not jumping at the first thing offered is a good idea. Why? Because there's a lot of crap out there and as soon as people know you'll buy it without flinching or saying boo, they'll keep offering you more crap.

That being said, as someone who has personally far too often waited for the second marshmallow only for it never to arrive, the savvy child (or adult) should take each offer in context and not turn down the first marshmallow out of hand. Because you know Jeter would take that first marshmallow 18.6% of the time.

The Closer In A City Of Closers

ast summer, by far the shittiest summer I'd had in quite some time, I attended a Yankee game in the Bronx with a buddy. After the game, we hit Stan's. In Stan's I found a poster, this spot-on New York poster, which gave me a little perspective and hope. After a litany of bad news, the poster reminds the reader that, "We have the Yankees" and features a picture of Mariano Rivera on the mound.

On days like today, days when Rivera is not in the bullpen, but on his way to the disabled list with a torn ACL and, quite possibly, the end of his freakishly consistent and superb career, it's easy to say, "No, we had Rivera." Say what you will about Derek Jeter's intangibles and the Core Four, without Rivera do the Yankees achieve the success they have since '96? It can be argued that Rivera was the difference maker; the one player who set the Yankees apart from all the rest. The Yankees could play nine innings: With Mo, the opposition could only play seven, especially in October, 14 out of the last 15 Octobers.

I take solace in baseball because like daily life there is far more failure than success. Hell, the best hitters of all-time, the guys in the Hall of Fame, failed 70% of the time. With that in mind, Rivera's success provided solace against all the failure: Batters failed against him 79% of the time (.210 BAA). Watching Mo pitch was like watching a beautiful aberration. His skill, his talent and his performance never diminished. Clocks stopped. Entropy receded.

In the summer of 2009 when the Yankees hosted the All-Star Game in the new Yankee Stadium, another ad ran in the subways. It ran horizontally and was broken into seven or eight square blocks each block depicting a different iconic part of the city. The line? One I'd never heard before, not even between fans, but which rang truer than any I'd ever heard describe Rivera: "The closer in a city of closers." Poetry, just like the way he pitched.

All the broken bats on a pitch everyone knew was coming. Go ahead. Hit it. Mo fooled no one and everyone. He even sent bat makers back to the drawing board. And to those few that did hit Mo's cutter? Congratulations. We tip our cap. You beat our best. You lucky fuck.

Of course, the "No, we had Rivera" reaction is just that. Complete knee jerk. Do I think he'll pitch again? Yes, I do. Will it be in a real game? Hey, it's Mo, so you never know. If nothing else he'll pitch on Old Timers' Day; that great Yankee tradition of local baseball immortality; that annual Thank You from fans to former players and former players to fans each for remembering the other. Some day. He may even jog in from playing centerfield like he always wanted to.

Till then, the poster's right: We have the Yankees.