All posts by Matthew Callan

Baseball

A John Sterling Home Run Primer, By John Sterling

sterling.jpgGreetings, fans! John Sterling here, voice of the Yankees! If there’s one question I get asked more than any other, it’s “Why are you still alive?” After that, the question I get asked the most is, “How do you come up with your famous personalized home run calls?” Often followed by, “What possessed you to come up with these home run calls?” and “Who lets you come up with these home run calls?”

Each home run call I develop takes days, sometimes even weeks of trial and error. When the Yankees acquire a new player, I sit down with my little yellow notepad and come up with a few “punny” riffs on his name. I then stand in front of my full-length wardrobe mirror and bellow them at the top of my lungs, as I twitter and shake like Julia Roberts in Steel Magnolias (still one of my faves!).

Then, if the downstairs neighbors haven’t called the cops again, I judge the way they sound on my own Sterling Scale, with 1 Sterling being poor and 32 Sterlings being just grand! If I have a friend over for dinner, I’ll seek feedback from him as well. I know I’ve hit the mark if he says he’s not hungry anymore or turns green and runs to the bathroom.

I don’t take this process lightly. After all, I am the voice of the Yankees, the most celebrated franchise in all of American sports. I understand that my choices should reflect the history, tradition, and mystique of this team. Of course, not everything can rise to the majestic heights of ROBBIE CANO, DONTCHA KNOW! or A THRILLA! BY GODZILLA!, but striving to achieve such grandeur remains my goal.

The most important factor when choosing my home run calls: Will it allow Suzyn Waldman any time to speak? If the answer is yes, it’s back to the drawing board.

Of course, not every idea makes the cut. Here’s a list of a few proposed home run calls for Yankee greats, past and present, that were not up to my usual, exacting standards:

Chuck Knoblauch: IT’S ANOTHER KNOB-POLISHER!

Jason Giambi: GO TO THE MATTRESSES! THAT’S A VICIOUS HIT BY THE GIAMBI-NO CRIME FAMILY!

Jorge Posada: HEY THERE, GEORGIE BOY, SWINGING AT THE PLATE SO FANCY FREE!

Bernie Williams: THAT BALL’S BEEN BERN-ED BEYOND ALL RECOGNITION! ANOTHER SKIN GRAFT-TACULAR HOMER FOR WILLIAMS!

Paul O’Neill: EVERY TIME I SEE YOU HOMERING I GET DOWN ON MY O’NEILL’S AND PRAY!

Chad Curtis: HE HIT THE BALL INTO THE STANDS WITH HIS BAT!

Brett Gardner: THE CONSTANT GARDNER! STARRING RALPH FIENNES AND RACHEL WEISZ WHICH I HAVE NOT YET SEEN BUT IS IN MY NETFLIX QUEUE!

Curtis Granderson: The entire original soundtrack to the 1953 musical Kismet

I’ve been blessed to call so many great moments in Yankee history. But if I have one more wish, it’s to record an album of my home run calls with a full orchestra. Nelson Riddle will have to arrange, of course.

What would my own home run call be? I’m glad you asked. I think it would go something like this.

Sterling steps up to the plate, wearing his custom-made wool pinstripe Botany 500 suit. Two men on, two out, we’re in the bottom of the ninth, and the Yankees trail by two. Theeeee pitch is BELTED TO DEEP LEFT-CENTER FIELD! THAT BALL IS HIGH! MMM-IT IS FAR! MMM-IT IS GONE! STERLING POUNDS ONE! THE JOHN BACKS UP–A HOMER, THAT IS! A STERLING SILVER PERFORMANCE! JOHN JACOB JINGLEHEIMER SCHMIDT, HIS NAME IS MY NAME TOO! STER-LING UP SOME TROUBLE! JOHN JOHN, THE PIPER’S SON, HIT A HOMER AND AWAY HE RUN! YOU’RE SOME KIND OF MONSTER-LING! MATTHEW, MARK, LUKE AND JOHN, BLESS THIS HOMER WE JUST WON ON!

Or something equally as quiet and dignified.

Basketball

The Unbearable Lameness of Chris Paul

Yesterday, Barry Petchesky at Deadspin wondered why Chris Paul’s public and prolonged demand to be traded from the New Orleans Hornets was not getting the same amount of “outrage” as LeBron James’ Decision/Hank Scorpio-esque unveiling in Miami. There is a very simple reason: While Chris Paul’s gambit is a total dick move, it is also totally lame.

The NBA free agent frenzy is, for all intents and purposes, over (the fact that Tracy McGrady is the most coveted remaining free agent would indicate so). The weeping and gnashing of teeth over L’Affaire LeBron has subsided, at least until the basketball season begins anew. With football training camps opening within the next week, NFL talk is starting to dominate the sports talk-o-sphere (C).

In other words, there’s no damn reason at all to be hearing from Mr. Paul. But clearly, he saw what LeBron did and stomped his feet and thought, “I shall not be out-douched!”

You could argue that what Chris Paul did was worse than what LeBron did. After all, LeBron’s free agency was anticipated by every human being on the planet for years (at least that’s what ESPN says). As crappily as he handled the whole thing, everyone and his mom (especially your mom) knew he might leave Cleveland. Paul’s demands to be traded, on the other hand, came out of nowhere, and were seemingly motivated by little more than LeBron’s histrionics.

However, while LeBron certainly deserves scorn, Paul only deserves laughter. Because what LeBron did, when he did it and how he did it, was a supremely shitty thing to do. But what Paul idid is just funny.

Coming on the heels of LeBron’s move, Paul’s machinations had the feeling of a shameless attempt to exploit a fad that’s already passed. It’s like releasing a third or fourth lambada movie in 1990. Or rushing into the studio to record a swing album in 2001. Or pretty much the entire Golan-Globus filmography. If LeBron is Rambo, then Paul is Cobra.

The overall lameness of Paul’s move is accentuated by the fact that he didn’t have a leg to stand on. The Hornets had neither the incentive nor the imperative to trade him. Paul couldn’t opt out of his contract. Basically, he had zero power in this situation, but operated as if he was in total control. Depending on your perspective, that either takes an enormous amount of balls or an amazing lack of brains.

Paul seems to realize this now; on Monday, he had meetings with the Hornets, and made statements afterward that indicated he was throwing in the towel. Because when it comes to the offseason, no one wants to be the free agent equivalent of Delta Force 3 or Death Wish 5.

Pointless Nostalgia

“A Bunch of the Boys Were Whoopin’ It Up in the Malamute Saloon…”

It’s been a brutal July thus far, on pace to be the hottest one in history. (Strangely enough, all those Brave Truth-Tellers who screamed about global warming being fake when it was sort-of cold in April are nowhere to be found.) I’m trying my best to beat the heat by thinking cold thoughts. This is a psychological technique known as Self Delusion.

While trying to find some Cold Thought Fodder, I ran across this video, and I’m so glad I did. This is an excerpt from an episode of Jean Shepherd’s America about Alaska.

Jean Shepherd, radio host, author, and raconteur (who I’ve written about here before), had a PBS program that ran for two widely separated seasons: 1971 and 1985. The later season was decent, and is readily available on DVD via eBay and similar outlets. The earlier season, which predated the VCR, is not in general circulation, except for a few episodes that were rerun in 1985. That’s is a shame, because I’ve seen many of these episodes and they are AMAZING.

The reason I’ve seen them is because I did some research for Excelsior, You Fathead!, the Jean Shepherd biography penned by Eugene Bergmann. Part of this research included a trip up to WGBH in Boston, which produced this series and a few other once-off programs starring Shep (including a bizarre show from 1961 in which Shep stood on a wharf in Boston Harbor and just riffed for a half hour, much like he did on his nightly radio show). I had the privilege of delving into their vast video archives, and came back truly stunned by what I saw.

The original series of Jean Shepherd’s America is a wonderful, vibrant time capsule. It was shot on video, which was still in its infancy back then (the producer, Fred Barzyk, told me the poor cameramen were weighed down by bulky nigh-prototypes). But because it wasn’t shot on film, which can age poorly, the footage appears as if it was shot yesterday. The episodes are all pretty much like the excerpt above: Simple shots of quiet, everyday occurrences, with Shepherd’s inimitable narration.

There’s a mind-blowing episode (“It Won’t Always Be This Way…”) about new planned communities and mobile homes. It ends with chilling footage of ghost town on the site of an old mining boom town, as Shep talks about how mankind always moves on, looking for bigger and better things, and how one day this whole planet may be similarly abandoned as we seek greener pastures out among the cosmos.

My description is not doing it justice. If there is a just god, he will make sure everyone gets to see this in some format, some day.

I also can’t think of Shep and The Cold without thinking of the poems of Robert Service. In the winter months, Shep would devote parts of shows, and sometimes entire shows, to reading this now-obscure but once ubiquitous verse. Service’s poems all depict depraved goldpanners trying to make a buck or start trouble in the frozen Yukon wasteland, who all find death in some gruesome manner or another.

My father was a huge Jean Shepherd fan, and this was one of his favorite features of the show. He loved to recite the first line of Service’s poem “The Shooting of Dan McGrew” in a deep, Shep-like vibrato: A bunch of the boys were whoopin’ it up in the Malamute Saloon…

Ironically, my father died five years ago this summer in snowy, faraway land (very long story). So I think he would take perverse pleasure in hearing this Shep rendition of another Service poem, “The Ballad of Blasphemous Bill”, which comes from his program on January 15, 1965.

[audio:http://66.147.244.95/~scratci7/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/blasbill1.mp3|titles=Jean Shepherd: The Ballad of Blasphemous Bill (January 15, 1965)]

And just for good measure, here’s Shep doing another one of his favorite routines: singing loudly (and badly) along to a ragtime piano rendition of an old timey tune.

[audio:http://66.147.244.95/~scratci7/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/afteryouvegone1.mp3|titles=Jean Shepherd: “After You’ve Gone”]