Death comes a-callin’ again at 161st St. I just posted this at Baseball Prospectus: A titan has fallen, and an era has ended. Just two days after legendary Yankee Stadium public address announcer Bob Sheppard’s death, and nine days after celebrating his own 80th birthday, principal Yankees owner George Steinbrenner passed away Tuesday morning due …
Continue reading ‘Bluster and Luster: George Steinbrenner (1930-2010)’ »
Like virtually anyone who set foot in any iteration of Yankee Stadium over the past 60 years — Yankees fan or tourist — I’m greatly saddened to learn of the passing of public address announcer Bob Sheppard. The New York Times obituary‘s first sentence says it all: Bob Sheppard, whose elegant intonation as the public-address …
So this past Sunday I got up to Yankee Stadium for my first game of the season, where my friend Julie and I watched Dandy Andy Pettitte and the Yankees subdue the Rangers, 5-2. Given last year’s ugly ticket drama, I’m pleased to report that we’ve moved up in the world. Last year, we were …
Still buried in winter work, and will be for the next few weeks, limiting much of my current writing to 140-character missives via Twitter. Rounding up some of my stray BP links in case you haven’t been following along: • A few weeks back I looked at 2009 home run rates, overall, by league, and by …
Continue reading ‘Clearing the Bases—Post-Turkey Lurkey Edition’ »
Attending a postseason game is always a thrill, particularly the later in October the Yankees’ run goes. I’m lucky enough to have gotten to go to Yankee Stadium twice in one week, first for the ALCS clincher and then for Thursday night’s Game Two of the World Series. It was my first World Series game …
What a night for the Yankees! It wasn’t pretty, but they managed to turn nine singles, nine walks, two errors, an anxious extra day of waiting due to weather, a sterling 6.1 inning effort from Andy Pettitte and a six-out save from Mariano Rivera into their fourth win over the Angels in the American League …
On Tuesday night, I had the quite the treat. Not only did I attend an exciting (if rather meaningless) Yankees victory — complete with made-to-order Kyle Farnsworth meltdown — with friend and colleague Steven Goldman, but thanks to a connection on the inside, we had a view from the so-called Legends seats down the right …
One of the post-9/11 Yankee Stadium policies that made attending a game so annoying during the park’s twilight years was their ban on bags and backpacks: Accompanying the regular renditions of “God Bless America” were heightened security procedures that subjected patrons to no small litany of hassles while doing little to make them more secure. …
If all you watched was baseball pertaining to that Bronx team — and let’s face it, that describes a certain portion of this blog’s readership — you’d think that home run rates were off the charts this year given the major league-leading 1.81 homers per game that are being hit at Epic Fail Stadium. That’s …
There are futility infielders, and there are Futility Infielders. Today’s New York Times features a Tyler Kepner article on Yankee first base and infield coach Mick Kelleher, an exemplar of the good-field/no-hit players whose baseball cards clogged my collection in the late ’70s. Joe Posnanski has his Duane Kuiper, owner of one major league home …