All posts by Matthew Callan

Baseball

MLB Playoffs YouTubery: Yankees

To celebrate the advent this year’s MLB playoffs, which I am looking forward to with rapt anticipation (no, really), I’d like to do a few posts featuring YouTube finds representing each team that’s made their way to October. First up, the Yankees.

When I was a kid, Phil Rizzuto was still the voice of the Bronx Bombers, and it was awesome. It’s too bad there’s a whole generation of fans who only know Michael Kay and John Sterling, because Scooter was a delight. Sure, he was goofy as hell and would occasionally seem to get tired of actually calling the game. (I remember once Jackie Mason joined him in the booth–seriously–and they spent two innings talking about their favorite delis.) And his lengthy digressions and inattentiveness drove poor Bill White, his broadcasting partner, up the wall.

For all of that, Rizzuto’s goofiness was natural and endearing, not the studied, monstrous eccentricity of Sterling. Plus, he wasn’t one-tenth the homer that Sterling is. I can’t imagine him doing something so undignified as Sterling’s unbearable THUUUUUUUUUUUH YANKEES WIN!

Of course, I can’t show you any footage of Scooter actually calling a game, because that would bring MLBAM’s fiery wrath upon me. So I’ll have to settle for another touchstone of my youth: Phil Rizzuto’s commercials for The Money Store. As a child watching these commercials, I was quite confused; why would you buy money? If you needed money, you wouldn’t be able to buy money, would you? If Phil was just as confused, he didn’t show it (hardly).

Sadly, Phil was replaced in these commercials by pretty boy Jim Palmer, right around the same time he was unceremoniously removed from the Yankees broadcast booth. The world is a cruel place.

If you were watching Phil circa 1987, you might have seen a promo like this for Yankees baseball on WPIX, the local channel that carried their games for approximately 937 years. You also would have seen a terrifying teaser for the evening news like the one that opens this video, which is fairly typical of New York news during this era (with anchor Donna Hanover, aka The Future Mrs. Giuliani).

Or you might have seen these promo ads, also from 1987. I have no memory of these at all, but they’re pretty slick for the era. Also, Rickey Henderson walks down a Yankee Stadium tunnel with some kind of wild jungle cat because of course he did.

If we take the Wayback Machine even further, we find Phil Rizzuto the mystery guest on an episode of What’s My Line circa 1970. Soupy Sales seems to be a big fan. Amazingly, Phil points to the recent worst-to-first story of the Mets as a reason why the Yankees could do well in the coming season. (Spoiler: They actually won 93 games that year, but finished well back of the steamrolling Baltimore Orioles.)


Baseball

Bart Giamatti Said it Best, 2010 Edition

If you can stand it, here’s the 2009 edition.

manuel.JPGIt breaks your heart.
omar_2010.jpgIt is designed to break your heart.
wright_openingday.pngThe game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again,
dickey.jpgand it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings,
bay.jpgand then as soon as the chill rains come,
krod_arrest.jpgit stops and leaves you to face the fall alone.
20_innings.pngYou count on it, rely on it to buffer the passage of time,
reyes_2010.pngto keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive,
ollie_2010.jpgand then just when the days are all twilight, when you need it most,
citifield_empty.jpgit stops.
Baseball, Boob Tubery

Things I Learned from Ken Burns’ The Tenth Inning

  • 10thinning.jpgDid you know Cal Ripken saved baseball? Really, he saved baseball. I know that’s not the way you remember it happening at the time, but some guy showing up every day saved baseball. Just keep repeating it, Cal
    Ripken saved baseball. What, you still don’t believe Cal Ripken saved baseball? Okay, you’re gonna need to go to one of Bud Selig’s reeducation camps.
  • Every single non-Yankee fanbase is long-suffering and star-crossed.
  • The explosion of steroid use in baseball can be traced solely to Fay Vincent’s overzealousness in pursuing the “epidemic” of recreational drug use, which was in turn caused by the the journalistic epidemic of insisting that recreational drug use in sports was an epidemic.
  • Collusion? I’m sorry, you must be thinking of a word that doesn’t exist.
  • Joe Torre is largely responsible for the turnaround in George Steinbrenner’s reputation, which is a good thing for some unspecified reason.
  • The wild card added more excitement to the game by adding another round to the playoffs. You’ll have to take our word on this, because we won’t be showing any footage from these playoffs.
  • Only the 1996 Yankees actually won the World Series. Every other “championship” team just lost theirs so some anonymous opponent could reap the undeserved reward (see: 2001 Diamondbacks, 2003 Marlins).
  • Kevin Millar is much more responsible for the 2004 Red Sox’ historic comeback than all the other guys on the team who were actually good at baseball.
  • On the one hand, baseball had no serious anti-PED policy until 20 years into the so-called steroid era, and it can not be conclusively said steroids are the sole reason for the offensive explosion of the 1990s. On the other hand, HOME RUNS ARE SACRED AND WHENEVER YOU INJECT STEROID PILLS, BABY JESUS WEEPS HOLY BABY TEARS!
  • After the terrorist attacks of September 11, the Yankees’ postseason exploits lifted the hearts of their fans, who before then had almost no media exposure and very little to cheer for.
  • Nothing else baseball-related happened in New York, post-9/11 that might have helped people cope. Also, we have always been at war with Eurasia.
  • The only thing more disturbing than Jon Miller saying “VORP” and “OPS” over and over again with contempt and confusion would be if he said it while wearing clown makeup.
  • Barry Bonds’ titanic home runs are sadly tainted, while David Ortiz’s remain free of suspicion.
  • There may have been some teams other than the Yankees and Red Sox in Major League Baseball in the 1990s and 2000s, but Ken Burns’ instruments are not fine enough to capture them.
  • Bud Selig has done an excellent job on curtailing all of the terrible things he let happen under his watch for a few decades.
  • Jeffrey Maier? Who’s that?
  • You know that fantastic, unbelievable thing your favorite team did that blew your mind and reaffirmed your love of the game? Yeah, we don’t have that. Bob Costas needs the air time.