Tag Archives: new york

The DET Offensive: Delmon Young swings and misses

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While I was generally unplugged last week, bdoyk forwarded me this article from ESPN New York, which reports:

Detroit Tigers left fielder Delmon Young apologized to his team and fans Friday, just before getting arraigned on a hate crime harassment charge for a fight at his hotel during which police say he yelled anti-Semitic epithets.

Young posted a $5,000 bond at a brief hearing in Manhattan court and was released less than an hour before the Tigers’ game against the Yankees. He faces a misdemeanor aggravated harassment charge that entails targeting someone for his or her religious beliefs. If convicted, he could face up to a year in jail.
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The Tigers arrived in New York at 10:30 p.m. Thursday after their plane sat on the tarmac for 2 hours, 15 minutes in Detroit, according to Leyland.

Around 2:30 a.m., Young was standing outside of the Hilton New York. Nearby, a group of about four Chicago tourists staying at the hotel were approached by a panhandler wearing a yarmulke and a Star of David around his neck, according to police. After, as the group walked up to the hotel doors, Young started yelling anti-Semitic epithets, police said.

It was not clear whom Young was yelling at, but he got into a tussle with the Chicago group, and a 32-year-old man was tackled and sustained scratches to his elbows, according to police and the criminal complaint.

Not good. Since their hot start, the Tigers have been in a free fall, dropping eight of their last ten games in series against Texas, Seattle, and the Yankees. Perhaps even more concerning has been the lack of offensive production widely expected and on display in the season-opening series against Boston and Tampa Bay. Young is a starter because of his bat. He’s a defensive liability and now a mental and legal liability going forward, whatever “going forward” means for Young vis-a-vis the Tigers. Simply put, this was not the type of offensive production Jim Leyland and Tigers fans were looking for out of the streaky Young this year.

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Previously
The DET Offensive: Brennan Boesch’s Birthday – 4/12
The DET Offensive: Tigers open 2012 season with Sawks sweep – 4/9

The Strange, Tense Power of Talking Heads’ ‘Fear of Music’ (via The Atlantic)

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When Fear of Music was released, the group was on the verge of outgrowing local New York success and moving toward the arena-filling, ten piece musical funkanauts they would be circa 1984’s concert doc Stop Making Sense. The success of their cover of Al Green’s “Take Me to the River” and appearances on Saturday Night Live and American Bandstand had gained the group a wider audience, yet made them wary of selling out. This gave rise to a set of contradictions that would manifest even on Fear of Music‘s jacket: all black with raised worm-like shapes reminiscent of tire tread or, in Lethem’s view, a steel door that evokes both a “chilly authority” and “desire to be stroked.”
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[Author Jonathan Lethem’s] slow approach [to the album] yields big, as it reveals a record composed not of disparate songs, like, say, a short-story collection, but a “concept album” in the most abstract yet perhaps truest sense. Fear of Music tells no narrative, but weaves together its bleak motifs in such a way that a resonance chamber forms, the pop music equivalent of the postmodern, fractured books of Italo Calvino. Parts that at first seem only distantly related start to feel of a piece the further one goes and the closer one looks. The majority of the song titles act as a table of contents of sort—”Mind,” “Paper,” “Cities,” “Air,” “Heaven,” “Animals,” “Electric Guitar,” “Drugs”—all riffing on themes of restlessness, dissolution, and instability. Crackpots, conspiracy theorists, criminals, and druggies emerge as characters, and a bleak landscape forms. Make no mistakes, it’s the apocalypse. … Read More

(via The Atlantic)

Jeremy Lin: Knicks’ star is Warriors’ loss (via Yahoo! Sports)

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In 1965, the San Francisco Warriors traded Wilt Chamberlain to the Philadelphia 76ers for Connie Dierking, Lee Shaffer, Paul Neumann and $150,000. Chamberlain went on to win two NBA championships and three more MVPs after leaving San Francisco.

In 1980, the Golden State Warriors traded Robert Parish and a draft pick – used to take Kevin McHale – to the Boston Celtics for a draft pick. The Celtics landed two future Hall of Fame players who would join Larry Bird to form the franchise’s legendary “Big Three.” The Warriors used the draft pick they received in the deal to select … Joe Barry Carroll.

Chris Webber developed into one of the league’s better power forwards after the Warriors traded him for Tom Gugilotta and three draft picks. Tim Hardaway became an MVP candidate for the Miami Heat after the Warriors moved him. Mitch Richmond turned into a six-time All-Star for the Sacramento Kings after the Warriors traded him.

The list of players whose success grew after they left the Warriors is long and paints a not-so-flattering portrayal of the franchise. If you’re on the Warriors’ roster and seeking stardom, history suggests you should head elsewhere.

Like Jeremy Lin did. … Read More

(via Yahoo! Sports)

Super Monday

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Winner: The New York Giants. They scored first, with a technical safety on the Patriots’ opening drive, when Tom Brady stood in his own end zone and intentionally grounded the ball, and they scored last, when Ahmad Bradshaw carried a little more momentum than he probably expected on a largely undefended running play, to beat New England 21-17.

Loser: The New England Patriots. Despite going down 9-0 early in the game, they took a lead into halftime, thanks for a field-traversing drive on which Tom Brady was 10-10 in passing. The Pats suddenly looked like their old, domineering, mechanistic, enemy-vaporizing selves. And they got the ball to start the second half! I sent a text message to Bdoyk at halftime: “Tide has turned.” Her response: “Don’t say that.” To the hyperstitious greater Massachusetts sports community, I’m sorry if that in-game prediction of victory caused your players to develop stone hands on the final drive.  Keep reading…

Tigers win Game 5, series against Yankees, 3-2

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Here's your Game 5 winner

The Detroit Tigers hung on to beat the New York Yankees in a decisive fifth game last night, advancing to the ALCS, which starts Saturday night in Arlington, TX.

I questioned Jim Leyland’s personnel decisions before and during the game, but they turned out to be exactly the right moves. Keep reading…

Jim Leyland’s ALDS Game 5 lineup

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When a reader told me he’d seen Tigers’ manager Jim Leyland wearing a suit on TBS last night, I knew something was awry. Earlier in the day, ESPN Insider, Vanderbilt graduate, and Vermonster Buster Olney reported that Justin Verlander would not start Game 5 against the Yankees in New York, and that Don Kelly would start at third, with Magglio Ordonez in right field.

I’ve only ever seen Leyland in a baseball uniform, includng hat, or some other Belichickian attire like a windbreaker pullover or hooded sweatshirt, so to see him dressed as pictured above somewhat shocks my brain.

Less shocking, but still surprising, were Leyland’s starting lineup choices. That Verlander would not start was expected. In the playoffs, you have to be able to count on your number two starter in a must-win game, and Doug Fister is more than competent to handle that task. I’m still scratching my head over the Kelly/Ordonez decision, though, and I’m trying to figure out which came first. Both mostly play right field. Ordonez has been an offensive power in the past, but he generally has cooled off in the last year or two. Kelly usually is described as a defensive replacement, meaning that he does not hit especially well, although he has been making good contact in this series.

Leyland had been working a similar pairing at third base with the recently acquired Wilson Betemit and longtime Tiger Brandon Inge. Like the Kelly/Ordonez pairing, one (Betemit) is the better hitter and the other (Inge) the defensive replacement. Also like Kelly/Ordonez, Betemit’s bat has cooled off in this series, while Inge’s has heated up.

In a vacuum, Leyland’s decision to start Kelly and Ordonez is not necessarily strange, but when examined together with the consequence of that decision– both Betemit and Inge on the bench– I have a hard time understanding it. Which is why I, unlike Leyland, wear a suit most of the time and don’t manage a baseball team. Still, I hope the Tigers aren’t getting away from what got them to this point.

The Toronto Blue Jays have eyes in the skies

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From ESPN New York:

New York Yankees manager Joe Girardi said his team needs to use multiple signs even when there is no one on base at Rogers Centre because the Blue Jays “could be” stealing signs using illegal methods.

“Sometimes we have inclinations that certain things might be happening in certain ballparks and we are aware of it and we try to protect our signs,” Girardi said.

What author Andrew Marchand did not mention was that the Jays’ record as of the day he posted that article was 47-48, good enough for penultimate place in the AL East. Yes, Yankee pitcher Bartolo Colon’s meltdown was somewhat epic (and arguably somewhat epoch), but you’d think they’d be winning more if this was their strategy. After all, the Patriots went 18-1 in 2007-2008.

Maybe it’s a new strategy and they want to make a run in the second half. With the Yankees, Red Sox, and D-Rays, Toronto’s division is a tough one, but they knew that going into the season. Why wait so long?

(UPDATE: The Jays now have eked above .500, with a 55-53 record, having gone 8-5 since that game. They nevertheless remain in fourth place in the division, twelve back of Boston.)