BETTER THAN THE ALTERNATIVE
It's nice to have a winning streak to assess for the first time this year. As BGW pointed out a few days back, the key was game three of the streak, the finale against the Chisox, which set them up for a return home, a weak opponent and Roger's return. In that game, they got pretty lucky, one would have to admit. Torre sat both Jeter and Posada, leaving the Yankees with no offense to speak of, while starting Mussina, who has needed more offense than the Yankees can provide. But then the Sox, with Erstad and Crede on the DL, decided to sit Dye and Uribe as well, leaving them with only 2 hitters in the line-up likely to hurt you. As a result, Mussina was able to challenge hitters keep his pitch count down and last 6 fullinnings instead of the ususal 4 and a third. He couldn't get anyone out in the seventh and coughed up the slim 1-0 lead, but kept us in the game. It is worth noting, however, that the Yanks were unable to win the game until Torre put Jeter and Posada in.
Still, the game did feature one of the hallmarks of this streak, the Yankees ability to produce in the late innings. for this stretch, they have been refusing to give up at bats; Pirates manager Tracy even referred to their incredible grinding ability, which was of course entirely AWOL in May. They have found a balance, patience without passivity, which they have been unable to strike previously. When the season began, they were passive, except for Jeter, AROD and Posada. Once losing set in, they were impatient, except for Jeter and Posada. But now they seem willing to take pitches, including strikes, but aggressive in their swings. Why this has happened is difficult to say. I would assert that the replacement of Giambi by Melky has been a big help. Giambi walked too musch given his slowness afoot, struck out too much, and refused to try and contravene the shift. He really was a much too quiet at bat in the middle of the order. Melky allows Posada, Matsui and Cano to move up, and for his own part makes solid contact, particularly with men on base. He's really a much better player, in every phase, as a regular than as a parttimer. He is not only a great improvement on Damon defensively, by playing CF, he makes Damon a better player offensively. Lastly, one of the big problems the Yankees have had in recent years is a tendency to wait for the home run. This line-up will have problems--like a low hit to run ratio--but that won't be one of them. AROD is now the only legitimate power hitter in the line-up. Little Buster Brown Olney has pronounced this a great problem, but I'm not so sure. I think the team as a whole is less laid back offensively without all the boppers, and players like Posada and Matsui can still get you 20 bombs apiece.
Torre so rarely makes a tactical move worth praising that I don't want to pass up the opportunity to notice when he does. Having just sat Posada a couple of games ago, it might hqave seemd unwarranted to do so again today. But ther truth is the Pirates are the kind of team you can afford to be undermanned against. This way Posada can start the next 6, D-Backs and Mets without a problem (and with another day off).
Still, the game did feature one of the hallmarks of this streak, the Yankees ability to produce in the late innings. for this stretch, they have been refusing to give up at bats; Pirates manager Tracy even referred to their incredible grinding ability, which was of course entirely AWOL in May. They have found a balance, patience without passivity, which they have been unable to strike previously. When the season began, they were passive, except for Jeter, AROD and Posada. Once losing set in, they were impatient, except for Jeter and Posada. But now they seem willing to take pitches, including strikes, but aggressive in their swings. Why this has happened is difficult to say. I would assert that the replacement of Giambi by Melky has been a big help. Giambi walked too musch given his slowness afoot, struck out too much, and refused to try and contravene the shift. He really was a much too quiet at bat in the middle of the order. Melky allows Posada, Matsui and Cano to move up, and for his own part makes solid contact, particularly with men on base. He's really a much better player, in every phase, as a regular than as a parttimer. He is not only a great improvement on Damon defensively, by playing CF, he makes Damon a better player offensively. Lastly, one of the big problems the Yankees have had in recent years is a tendency to wait for the home run. This line-up will have problems--like a low hit to run ratio--but that won't be one of them. AROD is now the only legitimate power hitter in the line-up. Little Buster Brown Olney has pronounced this a great problem, but I'm not so sure. I think the team as a whole is less laid back offensively without all the boppers, and players like Posada and Matsui can still get you 20 bombs apiece.
Torre so rarely makes a tactical move worth praising that I don't want to pass up the opportunity to notice when he does. Having just sat Posada a couple of games ago, it might hqave seemd unwarranted to do so again today. But ther truth is the Pirates are the kind of team you can afford to be undermanned against. This way Posada can start the next 6, D-Backs and Mets without a problem (and with another day off).
posted by joe valente | 1:43 AM
5 Comments:
Ok, so really Fuck Joe Torre for the time being: will Joe V. use this space to weigh in on the Sopranos finale?
I have little patience with those like Mike golic who are enraged that they weren't spoonfed easy answers and given facile "closure", and even less with those who just wanted some kind of climactic blood feast. Everyone liked to say the Sopranos was art, well then stop insisting it that it end formulaicly. I thought the creation of paranoia in the final scene, through the camerawork, the dual allusions to Godfather I and episode i of this season (where Tony says you never see it coming) were brilliant touches, as was the alsmost pornographic frustration of watching Meadow try to parallel park. But what I liked best was the fact that the entire series began with Tony complaining to Melfi that he had missed the good times, when the Mob and America were at their power-hungry peak (even showing her a picture of Johnny and Uncle Jun in front of a finned Caddilac) and then the show ends, with the claustraphobic possibility of Tony's life ending, in a fifties style diner, replete with those little bookpage jukeboxes, just like a place called Tony's grill, still in operation, in that Mob capital of New Jersey, Atlantic City.
I have to go just now, but I could wax on and on about the brilliance of the final episode, the final season really, of a show that to me had seemed to lose its way pretty badly at points.
One piece of virtual textual criticism to note: I looked at the official HBO site on Monday. The episode summary ended thusly: "Meadow arrives [at the diner] just in time for..."
I was trying to remember soemthing about the episode today (Tuesay) and checked back--to see it now reads: "Meadow arrives just in time for dinner."
Odd!
The episode certainly has created a bi-polar response: brilliant or bust. I'm somewhere in between, inching toward brilliant as I get farther away. When it ended, I thought I was underwhelmed, but then I couldn't sleep Sunday night and I haven't been able to get the last scene out of my head since. Predictably, I haven't been able to get "Don't Stop Believin'" out of my head either.
I had long predicted that Bruce Springsteen's "Atlantic City" would be the last song to air over the credits; a jersey-philly mob song in the voice of someone Tony would, in his grandest delusions, no doubt identify with--a basically good guy who does what he needs to survive. and deep down, he just wants to be loved...
an astute friend of mine called it: silence over the creidts, with Journey as an aborted lead in.
I thought this season, with the exception of the gambling episode, was as good as the show ever was.
I too liked the godfather 1 ref. in the final scene, but cringed a bit at what I took to be a reference earlier, when Tony is at Carmela's beach house and is peeling an orange a la Brando in his death scene.
I appreciated the thing about how New York's Little Italy is so faux that even a tour bus operator must announce its death. and Butch's subsequent disorientation when he hangs up with Phil aftre wandering down that 1 block, and is surrounded by Chinese people going about their lives in Chinatown, re-inforcing your point about how the episode and the series always came back to that decline of the tradition narrative.
I really liked AJ ending up where he does: essentailly, he's set up to be Little Carmine the second. Son of a Boss, doomed to have that secondary status as part of his name (Anthony Junior...), without the ethical wherewithall to get away from the family business, but lacking the brains or ruthlessness to be really involved--relegated instead to a life in the porn/B-movie trade, always on the margins of his father's business. Maybe an incompetent puppet mediator now and again.
I don't understand a lot of the comments I've heard from people about Meadow, though. There seems to be a reading out there gaining some status of orthodoxy that she is the virtuous member of the family. This is the preferred reading of those certain the blank screen at the end means Tony has been shot--Meadow escapes the "Mayham"--as Paulie would say--because she's better than the rest. Did I mis understand something, or did she not declare her wish to become a Mob lawyer so she can protect her father from being "persecuted" by the government?
I did miss Silvio, though I understand his coma as Chase's plot version of the formal techniques at the end--permanent suspension. I think one of my favorite shots in the whole series came a few episodes back--they cut to Sil reading a book called "How to Clean Practically Everything." Earlier, he had a conversation with Tony while carefully affixing shards of colored glass to a lamp, and in the penultimate episode, was seen buffing his shoes. And don't forget, when he and Carlo kill that NY guy who was ragging them about Vito, he has a duster buster in his hand.
I always felt that it is in such details, such a rich a rich and superfluous background, that elevated the show to real genius.
"an astute friend of mine called it: silence over the creidts, with Journey as an aborted lead in."
My friend was that astute--they called the silence, not Journey. I wonder what the payoof would have been to getting that right?
The one thing, the only thing, I hated about the last episode was Meadow's speech. She does have a reputation for virtue and however ill-deserved it does tend to support the notion she sets out of these guys being ethnic victims and first amendment heroes. Please, they are utterly unredeemable fucks, as petty and inglorious as they are vicious. That's why for my money one Good Fellas is worht all the mandolin and basil mob mystification movies ever. And I must admit, I don't like to see Chase giving even an inch toward warped canonization of these clowns. as a libertarian, I have no use for the feds, but a day that begins with a newspaper story about the decay of the thing of theirs has had a good start.
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