When the year began, we were worried about Derek Jeter's poor 2008 but he rebounded in ways that no one was predicting.We bid adieu to the Giambino.
We questioned the clutchiferousness of CC Sabathia, but he happily proved us wrong when it mattered most.A-Rod was A-Fraud then A-Roid. He admitted some stuff, made some faces, and then admitted some more. He was injured and returned (with a bang). He copped a feel. He went from choke artist to clutchmaster. He and Kate Hudson came and went. An entire post could be written just about his year - and it already was.Andy Pettitte returned and returned again.The Yankees played pool.After a long offseason the Yankees got off to a slow start and some of the more fragile among the fan base lost their minds.Nick Swisher pitched.We saw the worst of it in person. Frustrations mounted but rock bottom wasn't that far down. Two games later they returned home, went on a 9 game winning streak and reclaimed first place in the AL East shortly only to give it back to the Sawx. It took a while, but the Yankees put them to bed too.There were baked goods.Damaso Marte went missing.Melky hit for the cycle.We were introduced to Slade Heathcott.The Yanks kicked ass and took names in the second half of '09, going 51-22 after the All-Star Break. No team was safe from the fury.Derek Jeter climbed "the Yankees' Mount Olympus".The regular season was almost gone. And then it was.We bid farewell to Hideki Matsui and said hello to Curtis Granderson.Javier Vazquez and Nick Johnson brought things full circle.
Dave did not look at it. But Doris did.We got "extremely" drunk in Boston and New Jersey.I had some second thoughts and made some first impressions. I got fired and time turned elastic. I enjoyed myself. For a moment, I was a legend. Then I moved upstate.Matt and I heard some joyful noise.
MLB.com: What was your reaction when you found out that you were traded to the Nationals?
Brian Bruney: I feel good being a National. I think there is a better opportunity for me there. I'm going to enjoy helping a team that hasn't been a winning franchise. We are going to be the 25 guys that make it a winning franchise.
MLB.com: It sounds like you are excited to be a member of the Nationals. Why?To be fair, Bruney's bit about the expectations of winning as it relates to being on the Yankees sounds pretty similar to something I wrote after the Vasquez trade, but let's see how much fun winning is when you only do it 60 or 70 times a year.
Bruney: It's a new journey. It's a new challenge. You have to continue to challenge yourself. It seems it's going to be a lot of fun. When you expect to win every night like we did in New York, I don't know if the winning is as fun as when nobody expects you to win. You are the underdogs every night and you prove people wrong. I think that is a lot more fun. That's the part I'm looking forward to --- being on a team where nobody expects us to do anything. Hopefully we'll put some wins together, get on a roll and play good baseball for six months. We'll see where it goes.
Bruney: I can finally grow some facial hair after four years. That's great. That was one of the first things I thought about. When I was traded, I said, "Wow, finally, I can grow a beard."
It Might Get Loud is the kind of ambitious project that needed a name brand director. I can't imagine how else they would have convinced Jack White, the Edge and Jimmy Page to do it. Each of the three represents a different musical generation and distinct background, giving the film three dissonant storylines. It's subjects are three guitarists, but it's more about music in general than guitar.
As the film weaves together the formative years of each guitarist, revisiting scenes of their youth, backdrops roam from a farmhouse in Tennessee to an English manor to the bleak grayness of Dublin, culminating on a well-lit soundstage in Los Angeles.
Good morning Fackers. Hopefully everyone had an excellent weekend of food, family, tradition, presents and of course drinking (and if not, Chinese food and movies). It was a busy one for me, starting with a friends party on Wednesday night, then a Christmas Eve Wigilia at my aunt's house, Christmas Day at my Mom's and a huge annual gathering with my father's side of the family yesterday, scheduled squarely over the Giants' Work on pacing yourself and putting out regular, predictable content that people can come back to on a regular basis, and soon they'll bookmark you or put you in their reader, and from there things grow steadily.
Just a heads up, Ken Burns' Baseball is on the MLB Network today. It started at 6:00 this morning and runs until tomorrow at 5:30AM.It was our intention to pursue the game — and its memories and myths — across the expanse of American history. We quickly developed an abiding conviction that the game of baseball offered a unique prism through which one could see refracted much more than the history of games won and lost, teams rising and falling, rookies arriving and veterans saying farewell. The story of baseball is also the story of race in America, of immigration and assimilation; of the struggle between labor and management, of popular culture and advertising, of myth and the nature of heroes, villains, and buffoons; of the role of women and class and wealth in our society. The game is a repository of age-old American verities, of standards against which we continually measure ourselves, and yet at the same time a mirror of the present moment in our modern culture — including all of our most contemporary failings.
But we were hardly prepared for the complex emotions the game summoned up. The accumulated stories and biographies, life-lessons and tragedies, dramatic moments and classic confrontations that we encountered daily began to suggest even more compelling themes. As Jacques Barzun has written, "Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball."My plan: turn it on and hide the remote. Sure beats watching A Christmas Story over and over again.
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